I think you're longing for a US that never was. Its always been about who has "the right power" and who doesnt. Everything from Mccarthyism to the Salem Witch Hunt.
it also stands to be said that America doesnt exist as America, instead as a revolving door of loosely defined groups that step up to the levers of power and try their luck.
Its best to understand the actors instead of the machine. Its most often where the problem is.
I think OP may have stopped one or more causal links short of the systemic issue. In general, politics is vulnerable to actors who work in bad faith.
You can blame the current power-hungry narcissistic wealthy sociopaths who are doing what power-hungry narcissistic wealthy sociopaths can be expected to do, or you can accept that there will always be people who fit that description and try to fix the incentives and checks that they're responding to.
If a person claims that one country is oppressive, it does not mean that rival countries are not. There is no reason why two dictatorships could not be enemies.
No ONE is complaining on HN! He is stating his opinion on the current and past US relations, something which many of us can agree with. Furthermore, if your reasonse to each statement is “leave” then you don’t understand what fighting for the country you love means.
How lol? You hold the US to the highest possible standard, without looking at every single other nation in the history of the world.
US has the most credibility. Europe is great, but they live in a protective bubble offered by the US. Russia and/or China would steamroll them if able to. And those two countries are autocratic. We wouldn't even have a hackernews type thing there.
From outside the US all we see is exceptional USians braying about how democratic, Christian they all are - it's vomitous to all thinking people. The other dictatorships don't do this afaict.
What are you talking about? Just because a loud minority say that, doesn’t represent the diversity of the US. Melting pot of the world.
So just because you don’t like a loud subset of the US... you would rather support autocrat countries like China and Russia that are “quiet” and not vomitous.
America is not a democracy - - it is an AUCTION.
America imprisons the most of it's citizens per capita of any country on the face of the earth.
Every American Commits Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent:
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
Edward Joseph Snowden is the American I admire the most today.
He sabotaged the United States' most ambitious, long-term well-planned program to completely privatise spying around the world (through tech companies that would make money off it - a true capitalist wet dream), thus helping democracies around the world survive a bit more longer.
To this end, Hollywood had also slowly changed the tone of their content to carefully push narcissism to the public, so that people would overshare information about themselves, the people they know and their own activities, publicly on the internet. Private tech companies (like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook etc.) meanwhile slowly moved on to harvesting more and more data, testing the boundaries each time slowly, to create profiles of their users they could analyse for behavioural insights and this allowed them two streams of income - from providing access to personal data of individuals to government agencies and by using this personal data to manipulate the users to sell something.
Another big goal, with the "cloud computing" push is to get government agencies and companies worldwide to store their privileged information on servers online that can be easily accessed. This serves two main purposes - the push to "computing on the cloud" means access to technology can be highly controlled, and denied to other countries. (In today's connected world, US companies can deactivate and cripple nearly all computers, including smartphones and tablets, if it wants, of any country, if it is connected to the internet). The other purpose is that corporate espionage is easier if all data is on the cloud, thus allowing the US and the west to maintain a technological lead over others.
Ofcourse, it's easier to do this with some help with allies and thus we have the "5 eyes" and "9 eyes" program, where other spy agencies of other countries agree to share each others database.
It is a brilliant program but against democratic values.
People like Assange, who help whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, deserve our full praise and support. Democracy cannot survive in darkness and denial of information. The public are not dumb, as some politicians like to think so.
Your arguments have failed to sway me. Not every secret is antidemocratic and terrorists Snowden and Assange are still terrorists who put me in danger and I didn't learn anything particularly new or important from their supposed revelations. When these guys get gassed please know its not the evil faceless government its everyday moms and dads like me signing their death warrant.
You realize that the democratic spy agencies have to deal with China, Russia, and terrorists? So you would want us to hold ourselves to the highest standards, while they could play every dirty trick in the book and eventually take us over.
Then we lose our democracy that you and I both cherish.
Also these things don't even impact 99.999% of people.
> So you would want us to hold ourselves to the highest standards, while they could play every dirty trick in the book
Yes. You want democratic values to survive over generations, not "democracies". Spying on your own citizens, to figure out how to manipulate them better through corporates, transfers the power from the people to select corporates and government. It upsets the balance of power that democracy promises. And is thus an attack on its very essence.
I'm afraid the initial decision may as well be a staged attempt by the UK to save face, so they don't appear to the rest of the world as a spineless lackey of the US. The US is really in no hurry to get their hands on Assange. They'll play along as long as they know that Assange stays in a prison somewhere, till they get a favourable extradition ruling.
If the UK is really serious on the well-being of Assange, they should allow him to seek asylum and relocate elsewhere, without obstructing him as they did in the case of Ecuador.
On what basis does the UK continue to hold Assange? Until today, they were holding him based on an indictment in the US...if they are not going to extradite him, then what? Permanent incarceration without due process??
27 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] threadit also stands to be said that America doesnt exist as America, instead as a revolving door of loosely defined groups that step up to the levers of power and try their luck.
Its best to understand the actors instead of the machine. Its most often where the problem is.
You can blame the current power-hungry narcissistic wealthy sociopaths who are doing what power-hungry narcissistic wealthy sociopaths can be expected to do, or you can accept that there will always be people who fit that description and try to fix the incentives and checks that they're responding to.
This is strawman nonsense.
US has the most credibility. Europe is great, but they live in a protective bubble offered by the US. Russia and/or China would steamroll them if able to. And those two countries are autocratic. We wouldn't even have a hackernews type thing there.
So just because you don’t like a loud subset of the US... you would rather support autocrat countries like China and Russia that are “quiet” and not vomitous.
What a naive outlook.
He sabotaged the United States' most ambitious, long-term well-planned program to completely privatise spying around the world (through tech companies that would make money off it - a true capitalist wet dream), thus helping democracies around the world survive a bit more longer.
To this end, Hollywood had also slowly changed the tone of their content to carefully push narcissism to the public, so that people would overshare information about themselves, the people they know and their own activities, publicly on the internet. Private tech companies (like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook etc.) meanwhile slowly moved on to harvesting more and more data, testing the boundaries each time slowly, to create profiles of their users they could analyse for behavioural insights and this allowed them two streams of income - from providing access to personal data of individuals to government agencies and by using this personal data to manipulate the users to sell something.
Another big goal, with the "cloud computing" push is to get government agencies and companies worldwide to store their privileged information on servers online that can be easily accessed. This serves two main purposes - the push to "computing on the cloud" means access to technology can be highly controlled, and denied to other countries. (In today's connected world, US companies can deactivate and cripple nearly all computers, including smartphones and tablets, if it wants, of any country, if it is connected to the internet). The other purpose is that corporate espionage is easier if all data is on the cloud, thus allowing the US and the west to maintain a technological lead over others.
Ofcourse, it's easier to do this with some help with allies and thus we have the "5 eyes" and "9 eyes" program, where other spy agencies of other countries agree to share each others database.
It is a brilliant program but against democratic values.
People like Assange, who help whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, deserve our full praise and support. Democracy cannot survive in darkness and denial of information. The public are not dumb, as some politicians like to think so.
Then we lose our democracy that you and I both cherish.
Also these things don't even impact 99.999% of people.
Passive surveilling (esp the mass metadata type) doesn't hurt anybody.
Yes. You want democratic values to survive over generations, not "democracies". Spying on your own citizens, to figure out how to manipulate them better through corporates, transfers the power from the people to select corporates and government. It upsets the balance of power that democracy promises. And is thus an attack on its very essence.
If the UK is really serious on the well-being of Assange, they should allow him to seek asylum and relocate elsewhere, without obstructing him as they did in the case of Ecuador.