Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#231

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

jasonkostempski wrote: post #190

3131s wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American too (and I posted this) and I fear that you two are correct. I live on the other side of the world though, hence the posting hours. I was totally surprised to see this at #1 for a bit, though I am just happy that it's getting discussed. No candidate for president will ever get my vote unless they talk seriously about scaling back the American military-industrial complex.

Do you think the HN crowd is the type to bury their heads in the sand? I don't get that impression. I'm on here all hours of the day and I see things like this hit the front page pretty regularly. They don't stay up long, I think, because they're a bit outside the targeted topics for this site.

You can't downvote things off the front page, but people can and do abuse the flag button for this.

There's also an algorithmic penalty for "too controversial" topics with too many comments, I believe.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#232

Post by deepnotderp » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #42

deepnotderp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i hope the technologists who created this infrastructure think about that when they try to sleep. Yes, because people flying planes instead of drones is so much better, right? (/s) The problem isn't in the technology people, it's in who's using it. Obama and Trump's expansions of these programs is what the problem is.

The problem is both. Obviously prime responsibility lies with the decision makers--but that doesn't absolve the many people who are making a lot of money building these systems. Systems which they know will be used to kill people extrajudicially, invisibly, far from any war zone; people whose deaths will never even be acknowledged.

In general I would agree, but isn't autonomous warfare a more humane type of war?

We say that robots should take our dangerous jobs. What jobs are more dangerous than a soldier?

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#233

Post by adjwilli » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

How difficult would it be to create a map of worldwide military strikes, not just by the US, but all countries? Where is data like that available? What other countries are so transparent as the US in publishing that data? Do Russia and China? Could be an interesting project that serves the public interest globally. Sort of like crime maps, but at world scale.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#234

Post by Mikeb85 » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #152

Ntrails wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a clip on the news recently of a reporter badgering Trump about his intent to create closer ties to Putin. "He's a murderer, he's killing innocent civillians", the reporter states as though this is particularly important. The President responded with something along the lines of "And we're so much better?". I'll freely acknowledge his flaws but by Gods it felt good to see someone acknowledge the tricks of persp…

He's not making a humble, leftish point about our moral failures in foreign policy! He was shrugging off the use of murder as a political tool. America may be in a bad place right now, and we've done a lot of awful things in other people's countries. But unlike Russia, we are not at a point where our leaders simply "disappear" domestic political opponents and journalists. Things can get a lot worse. Trump was express…

> He's not making a humble, leftish point about our moral failures in foreign policy!

Morality doesn't exist along the left-right spectrum. Also, this is simply your perception.

> But unlike Russia, we are not at a point where our leaders simply "disappear" domestic political opponents and journalists.

No, they magically commit suicide, get killed in a car crash, or get murdered in a botched robbery.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#235

Post by mistermann » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

3131s wrote: post #41

csallen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. People don't know the half of it, and in my experience, they don't want to know. It's comforting to feel like the good guys. The media is complicit, in that it intentionally leaves out relevant facts that might make us look bad. For example, take Iran. In 1953, we overthrew their democratically-e…

> Our "defense" of Vietnam. And most people only think of Vietnam itself regarding that conflict, yet Cambodia and Laos were absolutely decimated too. The US dropped more tons of bombs on Laos and Cambodia individually than the combined amount dropped by the allied forces in WWII. There are still 80 million unexploded bombs in the Laos countryside. Landmines sold by the US and China to the Lon Nol government and the…

Any suggestions on where might be the best place to read more about this online?

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#236

Post by dhimes » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #205

linuxkerneldev wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the USS Vincennes incident took place Summary for those who like me didn't know about the incident. Our guy shot down a passenger flight, murdering 290 human beings, we gave him a medal but we then paid USD$213,000 in blood money per passenger to Iran without ever admitting fault. " Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was sh…

> Our guy shot down a passenger flight, murdering 290 human beings, we gave him a medal but we then paid USD$213,000 in blood money per passenger to Iran without ever admitting fault. Vincennes believed it was shooting down an attacking Iranian fighter, not a passenger jet. It wasn't murder; it was an accident (due to faulty electronic data). We didn't give the skipper a medal for shooting down the plane; we gave him…

You are correct on Vincennes. And it was reported. It was talked about. We (Americans) were horrified and apologetic- and angry with our military (at least on the college campus).

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#237

Post by dhimes » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #213

maxerickson wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/04/world/downing-flight-655-u... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flight80... The "Page A01" on the WaPo article is the front page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuWOCLEuXu4 Which is not to say that such events are prominent in the memory of Americans, but it's just not true that they don't get put on the news. 2 of the biggest papers in the country (and I'm sure ma…

You are correct, they are reported, I was overly hyperbolic to say "nary a peep". They are just drastically underreported compared to attacks no the US and its allies.

Very hyperbolic. There was an entire investigation. It was scandalous.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#238

Post by mistermann » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #214

csallen wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it to the Soviets shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Chomsky writes, "For the month of September 1983 alone, the New York Times index—the very densely printed index of articles that have appeared in the Times —has seven full pages devoted to this story. That's the index , for one month alone. The liberal Boston Globe on the first day of coverage had its first ten full pages devoted to that sto…

The phrase "nary a peep" means "never one single small sound". The context of this discussion is about entirely unreported drone strikes, not the number of pages devoted to a front page incident. Your points are fair, but there's no need to start an argument over misreading what the parent comment what trying to say.

This seems a bit disingenuous to me, without your parent's comment I for one would have had a misleading perception of the reality (assuming that comment is true, is it not?).

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#239

Post by 0xfeba » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #71

educar wrote: post #5

If you still think of the world as divided into good and evil, then I have to break it to you that you have been played. Brainwashed by years and years of media programming. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity. If the bombed people retaliate, they are terrorists. The truth is not black/white. Same way U.S data surveil…

Here's a thought experiment you can use to clarify the difference between good & evil: What would each side in a conflict do if they had overwhelming power? We have plenty of evidence to see what the US would do. When they defeated Germany & Japan at the end of WWII did they enslave their people? Use their nuclear advantage to conquer new lands and colonize them? No, they rebuilt their economies and tried to ensure t…

> No, they [the US] rebuilt their economies and tried to ensure that they had stable governments & trading partners.

Except we completely stiffed Russia, who without which we wouldn't have won WWII, at least not so easily.

And then since things were peaceful we decided to make the USSR the enemy for then next 40 years, via the threat of "communism" spreading. And that led to Vietnam, Korea, etc., and all the military action in virtually every country of Central/South America.

No one is claiming we're all morally equal.

Re: Thousands of deadly U.S. military airstrikes have gone unreported

#240

Post by mistermann » Wed, Feb 08, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

jasonkostempski wrote: post #190

3131s wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American too (and I posted this) and I fear that you two are correct. I live on the other side of the world though, hence the posting hours. I was totally surprised to see this at #1 for a bit, though I am just happy that it's getting discussed. No candidate for president will ever get my vote unless they talk seriously about scaling back the American military-industrial complex.

Do you think the HN crowd is the type to bury their heads in the sand? I don't get that impression. I'm on here all hours of the day and I see things like this hit the front page pretty regularly. They don't stay up long, I think, because they're a bit outside the targeted topics for this site.

Burying one's head in the sand might be a bit rich, but I believe a lot of young liberal types here who've known little more than the Obama presidency and subsequent love-in with his departure have "a bit" of a skewed vision of the way things really are, now and in the past.