That is absurd. Do you think every country, and every country folk, would let the government pass a bulldozer all over their rights like this? This is just projecting.
In other words, that shit wouldn't fly everywhere, for sure. This all emanates from the 9/11 and Patriot Act and Secret Laws with no oversight, that's your problem specifically, of course every government must be wanting it's own surveillance supermachine too, but it doesn't mean every single one of them is willing(or have means) to pass every possible barrier to do it.
Other countries have their own constituitions too and people guarding it, and different political systems, and different relation of the people with their government. Brasilians, for example, are not patriotic(as you are), we like the localization and our folk but absolutely everyone despises the government, the governants are completely cowering with the demonstration, pulling their repression apparatus out and on...
It's absurd and it's also a derrotist statement, this lavabit guy is a hero and the more people go against this rotten government, more clear it becomes the damage is shared by everyone AND the country itself.
I wholehearteadly agree with your larger point, but as a Brazilian I think Brazil is not a good example in this regard.
People here despise the government because of corruption of the "stealing" kind, and inefficiency. Despite our recent experiment with dictatorship ended in the 80's, We have a long road to travel in terms of awareness about the dangers of tirany.
The government takes the fingerprints of every citizen when we go make our I.D. Cards, for example. No one makes a fuss. Official propaganda is standard practise (how else would one call the government-bought advertisements to raise awareness about its deeds?) Recenty the folks who organize electios are all over the TV with their campaign to take everyone's prints (see "inneficiency") in order to "make our elections even more secure". Though the last president's plans for "social control of the media" were soundly rebutted, it's telling that he even thought he could try.
I'm an optimist regarding the next decades, but it's a long road indeed.
Yeah, I didn't mean it like Brazil would be anything near 'an example to follow', I was just trying to illustrate how the landscape can be different everywhere else, also to the scope of how the population interacts with their state, for which Brazil definitely has a long way to go...
The picture I was going for would more of how it would not be so simple to have this elsewhere in the same manner, the starting point being that, I'd think, without a good Boogeyman, most peaceful countries do not have especial exception laws to walk over the basics of democracy, without secret laws, secret courts, secret interpretations, it's way harder, possibly impossible in some countries to get to this situation, not to mention technical limitations, budget(imagine the disparity between Inteligence and Military spending around the world x US), media, 'political temperature'(most of Europe and Latin-America are liberal/libertarian-leaning, currently, no?), public and judiciary scrutinity... Basically the framework of democracy is meant to prevent this kind of thing, there may be holes, but still.
If my understanding is correct (and it very well may not be), it is similar in Amsterdam; tourists have more restrictions than locals. Their laws still seem to benefit their tourism though.
Tourists do not have more restrictions to buy it in Amsterdam. They just banned it for foreigners in the south because that is close to France and France has a drug problem. I bet their country is completely addict free by now.
in all reporting I saw it was stated that it was for uruguayans only(although it's weird too because then will natives resell to travellers?), for Amsterdan I've always heard that tourists are allowed to buy it in one way or another at the bars or wathever it's called... still, I think the parent post is irrelevant as it takes focus out of the issue that the `war on drugs` is bad for everyone, like legalization would only serve to benefit gringoes looking for a place to party or stoners or wathever, it brings moral judgement.
that's easy to say after the 'successfull inception' of it, but honestly, what you said it's pure-nonsense... just like kicking a ball the wrong way to then scream "I knew it was gonna happen!"
I wrote a column for many years called "Police Blotter" and have some familiarity with law enforcement investigative techniques. This is what happens in real life, not on HN.
I pledged to abide the rules in my car, but somehow I still wound up with a speeding ticket. These assholes are doing 95 in a schoolzone during afternoon pickup, where the hell are the cops when you need them?
Yep I'm done, I'll just go about my life from now on...
It's total power, I think it's unlikely that they'll want to give up on this kind of power, they'll probably keep signing governments and 'the tech' will eventually be exported and in the hands of governments everywhere, they'll keep building this and they'll create tons of algorythms of course because it's just too much data, any resistance can be crushed... and it's so much power eventually some dark times will begin... I'm done with the topic.
Totally agree. They are not going to give this up... and worse, we are not going to fight this. We are speaking up only because this is the internet. We just want to get on with our lives.
Kinda surprising why all the people who are 'overwhelmed' and 'terrified' in the parent thread don't come out and protest. Oh wait, there's kids to feed. My bad, sorry.
For 99.9% percent of people, this is exactly what will happen. A few shocked moments, quickly followed by returning to all of the important things in their life. No one has time to protest all of the hundreds of wrong things we supposedly should be protesting and there aren't any clear or easy to implement steps to avoid NSA spying. There is simply no reasonable actionable item here for casual news readers.
The real consequences of this news will be seen in the actions of companies. As 'cloud' (oh I hate buzzwords) technology becomes increasingly more efficient and cheaper, as Amazon, Microsoft, Openstack and VMware duke it out over cloud customers, will those customers trust them with their data? Will companies invest in private clouds for increased security, or will large public cloud service providers be able to win over and keep their trust? How much money have public cloud service providers lost since the leaks began? How many companies are now unwilling to use cloud services from US-based companies?
Brazil is one of the most expensive countries around central/latin america and there's plenty of people living(maybe not living well) with this kind of salary, that on the economic centers, I believe there's plenty of beach cities(e.g.: in the northeast) that have ridiculous low costs of living because there's not much for the local economy to revolve at, only commerce, small biz, leisure and tourism so people make a little but live good lifes at a slower pace and if you've got a near-big-city-like income, or remote thing it's like you're rich if you go to a place like this...
Quora was always a 'club' and not a 'community', that's why it sort of can't grow... clubs are meant to be exclusive, when they grow there's always 'this place was so much cooler before', I guess an actual community won't care because it will provide ways for people to contribute that brings up the whole community, with a purpose and value enjoyed by everyone in it, that's an ecosystem that can grow. If someone contributes to Rails core, nobody will care if the dude lives in a nudist community in Camboja smoking pot and doing OSS code naked everyday. It's structural.
~Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.~
The fact that psychopaths and Obama share certain characteristics does not prove that Obama is a psychopath. Yet people continue to suggest that he is, citing the incongruent logic that overlapping characteristics imply equality.
The fundamental problem is not people's flawed logic, but the psychological diagnostic tests. Psychologists broadly categorize most disorders because they cannot find a reliable symptom that also acts as evidence of a disorder. That is, there is no symptom that definitively allows psychologists to say "Patient exhibits Symptom X. Therefore, patient has Disorder Y."
Contrast this to "biological" diseases like viruses or cancers. They exhibit physical evidence as symptoms. Doctors can detect the physical presence of a virus or a cancer. The evidence they find serves both as a symptom and evidence of their diagnosis. Thus, medical doctors can precisely define diseases by their symptoms.
Unfortunately, psychologists are not afforded such luxury. Yet many of them act as though they are. This is how we end up with severe misdiagnoses. We need to be aware as a society of how this affects us.
ITT: Armchair psychologists confuse "psychopathy" and "sociopathy".
The tops of government and business exhibit the signs of sociopathy, not psychopathy.
Psychopaths generally exhibit many behaviors that makes them fundamentally unsuited for public life, such as poor behavior control.
Sociopaths, on the other hand, have just the right mix of anti-social tendencies to turn their empathy on for the crowd, and off while making decisions that affect millions negatively.
Outside the public consciousness, the term's only real professional use is limited mainly to some forensic psychologists because of the criminal justice system's rather peculiar requirements of psychology. Given the hoops it requires they bend through, I wouldn't look towards FP for diagnostic guidance. Robert Hare as well, but personally I tend to think of his work is sophomoric at the best of times and idiotic at the worst . He's also (in my opinion) a world-class prick, having used legal action to prevent the publishing of a critical paper that had already made it through peer review:
Anyhow, setting aside the lack of any diagnostic definition for either term, sociopathy has never been anything more than a synonym preferred by certain individuals. But if we're looking for some point of differentiation, one of the main reasons to prefer one synonym over another was to try and emphasize causation by social factors. Certainly not some sort of empathy switch.
Generally speaking, that confusion is part of the problem with both terms. They carry a lot of baggage and pop-psych definitions, but sorting through the muck and deriving some sort of diagnostic criteria is an exercise in futility.
every discussion I've seen about this has inevitably come to the conclusion that psychopathy and sociopathy have entered the public consciousness, and have ceased being relevant diagnostic terms.
Every description I've seen of sociopaths and psychopaths is basically parallel.
My recommendation is to jump ship and avoid talking about psychopaths and sociopaths, and just stick to new material coming out about the spectrum of anti-social personalities.
Starting at the word psychopath or sociopath will get you to the relevant material, but those terms in and of themselves are not considered relevant anymore.
>The fact that psychopaths and Obama share certain characteristics does not prove that Obama is a psychopath. Yet people continue to suggest that he is, citing the incongruent logic that overlapping characteristics imply equality
Err, you don't get to the top chair of the west by NOT being psychopath in some degree.
You think people fuck their promises, move ahead as nothing happened, overpass the wild dogs in Washington and get to the White House by being boy scouts?
Right, as soon as we can get a psychiatrist to examine him, we'll get back to you. Until then, we'll have to rely on circumstantial evidence and induction.
It does seem likely that anyone able to rise to the pinnacle of American politics would be a psychopath, so it's not as if such accusations are shots in the dark.
Would you mind providing some citations for your idea that Psychopaths self-deceive? From what I've read the better Psychopaths are masterfully in control of their web of lies, that it's easy to believe what they say because they don't suffer the remorse of neuro-normals. And that it's more likely for the neuro-normal person who lies compulsively to believe their lies.
I really don't think it's helpful to classify Obama's behaviour as psychopathic. It demonises him instead of taking a practical, accurate look at his behaviour. It seems as useful calling someone "evil" or "a nazi".
Oh look, a comment that can see through the lies we've been fed, and shows us the malice of those who are 'above' us! And no citations or examples, to boot!
This is a real leap of logic. How can you diagnose the president without knowing his motivations?
For all we know, the wiretaps on State Senator Barack Obama uncovered some incriminating information that political elites have used to make the president their puppet. No one has to be a sociopath to contradict oneself. For all we know, he really planned to run an accountable administration and was met with either resistance or blackmail.
Sociopathy isn't really a specific diagnosis (whereas psychopathy is, in most places) - and the term is used largely interchangeably with psychopathy when referring to an actual disorder. Any semantic difference in the terms hasn't come from the broad medical community as far as I'm aware.
2012: President Signs Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act[1]
> Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
2013: Whistleblower Edward Snowden is charged by federal prosecutors[2]
Has something happened to Snowden that I'm not aware of? As far as I understand, he fled to avoid a trial, not because there was some imminent threat to his life.
How is he supposed to know in advance that they will not try to kill him if that legal option is on the table and they are known to be willing to make examples out of previous whistleblowers like Bradley Manning?
And even if he is not threatened with outright execution, even slightly less radical but more likely punishments, like that of Manning, are sufficiently radical to justify defecting to the Soviet Union. Even a simple life in some far away Siberian village will be more endurable than a US 24/7 waterboarding & force-feeding facility.
Russian Federation has a far less ominous sound to it than Soviet Union. When you say the Soviet Union (or USSR) you can almost hear the evil Ivan Drago music playing in your head.
I had to YouTube it immediately after typing this. There's just something terrifying about a man who speaks better English than I do, playing a man who speaks English like a man who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, that punches with the power and effectiveness of a chemical engineer.
> How is he supposed to know in advance that they will not try to kill him if that legal option
Well, in most countries it's illegal to deport someone if there's a risk of a death sentence, which is why US often cannot extradite people. Hence US has to convince the "host" country first, which I guess counts for something. That's what US is currently trying to do with Russia:
> "The charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional death penalty-eligible crimes," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Vladimirovich Konovalov.
I have heard the term secret court, for the first time only with reference the the USA. With secret courts, secret indictment, your statement of 'He isn't going to be charged with treason' only looks like a trap being laid.
> There are no secret courts that can issue indictments
You are 100% correct. The US government now thinks it's a court all unto itself and is now above the law.
It's got to the point where it doesn't even try to hide these indiscretions.
Rendition of prisoners to foreign countries by US personnel is now OK as long as no US personnel are involved in the subsequent torture.
It’s a well known fact the US government does not participate in torture, they don’t condone torture and as a government they do everything in their power to stop it. But rendition is OK. Out of sight, out of mind.
So that does not mean they can't assist in the process of rendition.
Also water boarding is not considered a form of torture by the US government. We the government consider it a form of intelligence gathering.
Unlawful detention? There is no such thing. We can hold any one for any length of time as long as it is in the national interest.
Is this the new US democracy?
The big disappointment for me is Obama.
I actually thought he was different, but I now know that was just foolish of me.
In many ways he is turning out to be much worse than the alternative :(
> Unlawful detention? There is no such thing. We can hold any one for any length of time as long as it is in the national interest.
It appears that you are referring to the people
the US is holding in Gitmo.
Uh, an issue here is the "lawful" part: A claim
is that the whole Gitmo thing is part of the
US military fighting a war. The Gitmo
people are prisoners of war or some such.
So, they are not to be handled in the US
legal system. So, for how they are being
handled, "lawful" in the US legal system
makes little or no sense.
For "torture", the US military claims
not to use torture. Okay. Maybe
water boarding is torture, but apparently
it does no physical harm and, so, maybe
is not really torture.
In broad terms, many well informed people,
e.g., D. D. Eisenhower, understood very
well that the US military in times of
war does things on battlefields that
would be totally unacceptable against US
citizens
inside the US.
E.g., Ike was
very reluctant to send the Army to
Little Rock. So, one broad lesson is
that (1) the US legal system and law
enforcement inside the US are one thing
and (2) what the US military does
outside the US to enemies of the US
is a very different thing. In particular,
Gitmo is just not like a US prison or
a county jail. Asking if Gitmo is
"lawful" is like asking about the
wings on hogs.
I don't say this because I like Obama
or liked W or Cheney.
For W and Cheney, they got
us into foreign wars that were good
candidates for "absurd foreign adventures"
and didn't get us out. There's "Occupy
a country, pull down a statue, now what?
Do you know what I mean?"
or some such from just retired
Marine four star General J. "Mad Dog"
Mattis.
For Obama, my first time really torqued
off was his early 2008 interview with the
SF Chronicle (off and on on YouTube --
once when on I typed in a full transcript
which I still have) where he said that he
wanted to use carbon cap and trade to
ratchet up the charges on coal fired
electric generating plants to "bankrupt"
the plants. From some DoE reports, at the
time that was 49% of our electric power and
about 23% of all our energy. Outrageous.
He'd need a crash program in nuke construction
to make up the difference. He also said
that of course "electric rates would
skyrocket".
So, what was he doing? Best I can tell,
he was waving a smell of raw
meat to get some greenies up on their hind legs. And he
was building a consensus to throw money
at green projects, please some
greenies in business, and get back some
campaign donations. For shutting down
coal plants, likely the EPA has been
slowly shutting down some of the older
plants the owners didn't want to
upgrade to cleaner burning. There I
would be more concerned about NOx
emissions, that cause acid rain, than
CO2 (that plants like!).
So, my reading is that mostly he has just
played politics with the greenies: Give
them a little smell of what they want,
throw some money their way, pretend to
be doing what they want, and otherwise
do essentially nothing.
E.g., in Mideast Arab Spring politics,
he doesn't want to appear to be on
the side of either secular dictators
or the radical Islamists. So, in
Libya he did something but apparently
mostly (set aside Bengazhi) not enough
really to entangle the US. Apparently
in Syria he trained a few rebels
to use some Russian missiles -- again,
appearing to fight the dictator but
not getting the US entangled. Now the
US DoD has given him a list of options
for more in Syria; my guess is that
he will take none of the options
but continue to find ways to
posture. For actually influencing
the outcome in Syria, I suspect he
will do nothing. Of course, I
don't see a good outcome in Syria --
it looks like either Al Qaeda or
back to Assad as the Mediterranean
branch of Iran.
Maybe in Egypt he did or enabled something
productive: Uh, it appears that from
the deal between Sadat and Begin
at Camp David, the US heavily
funds the Egyptian military.
Sooooo, net, the Egyptian military
is nearly a branch of the US DoD!
Sooooo, the US essentially has
a big veto and say-so in Egypt.
So, after a year of Morsi and his
true believers messing up the economy,
there was enough discontent in the
streets to let the military
dump Morsi and set up an interim
techocrat government and then
hold elections. If this works
out, good. If Obama played a
significant role, also good.
My explanation for
nearly everything Obama does is
he just wants to play politics or
be a political leader. So, pick some
issues, appear to be for some and against
others. For each side, make some statements
and maybe some weak actions and otherwise
do next to nothing.
When would he actually do something? Maybe
when about 70% of the voters really wanted
it. Otherwise he will just say things and
do little things that make his base
feel good.
My take is that basically he is indifferent
and cynical about government and, instead,
is willing just to play feel good politics.
E.g., "bankrupt" the coal plants is just
feel good nonsense to please some greenies
and not something he's actually going to do.
So, as an engineer, to me one place he
fails is (1) see a serious US problem,
(2) analyze the problem, (3) find a good
direction, (4) explain the problem and
direction to the American people and
build a consensus to solve the problem,
(5) move on with a solution. Instead
he just plays politics until some other
forces get maybe 70% approval for some
action and then steps in front of the
crowd as the leader.
In part playing such politics can
generate political capital that
can be used for something definite.
It seems to me that such leadership
looks weak to the voters and, as
a result by now, is costing him
political capital.
One place where maybe 70% of the people
will get torqued at him is the
Trayvon Martin matter: So, again, Obama
hasn't done much, and since it really
isn't necessarily a Federal issue he
didn't have much to do. But he has
said some things that appear to please
his base. And his buddy the AG
has said some more such things. Apparently
so far their actions have amounted to
next to nothing except one might
guess that some of the rioting that
has happened since the jury decision
was stimulated or encouraged by some of what
Obama and his AG did say. Sure, that
can mean that some dumb people rioted
for no good reason so blame the dumb people; still, the statements
were not good.
One danger of Obama is that many problems
in the US are permitted just to fester,
e.g., the economy, energy planning,
immigration, health care reform,
etc. instead of receive
serious attention. A second danger is
that if there were a serious problem,
would he be a good and serious leader?
One piece of good news is that Obama
seems to be going along with the plan
to put the DHS in the old DC
Saint Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital.
Sounds fully appropriate to me.
Hope that the TSA is one of the
first inmates. Sad part is that
they want to spend $4.5 billion
moving in.
Also apparently constitutional
scholar Obama failed to notice
how the NSA tracked mud over the
Fourth Amendment and, again,
let that problem just fester
until the sh!t hit the fan.
> The Gitmo people are prisoners of war or some such. So, they are not to be handled in the US legal system. So, for how they are being handled, "lawful" in the US legal system makes little or no sense.
Prisoners of war have legal rights too, under treaties to which the US is signatory. The Gitmo prisoners are not receiving those rights either. They're in a legal no-man's-land.
Okay, there are some treaties. But what
is the 'recourse'? Likely not the US
legal system. Likely not any legal
system.
The Gitmo situation is a mess, not the least
because apparently it's costing the US
$1+ million a year per prisoner. But while
a mess, I object to calling it a legal
mess. Laws, courts, justice, etc. just
have next to nothing to do with it.
Maybe there are a lot of lawyers and they want
to see every problem, e.g., the Gitmo problem,
as a legal problem. Sorry, lawyers, it's
not a legal problem; instead, it's something
else, a problem of a different kind.
In part Gitmo is an example to Jihaders:
Either we will kill you, and if they are
physically close maybe your family, or
we will ship you to Gitmo, and we will
let you decide which is worse.
Some of the Gitmo Jihaders believe that
it is just their natural, Allah-given
right and mission to fight the US
or go on a hunger strike. I'd say, that
120 days of hunger strike would be about
right.
Jose Padilla was never held in Guantanamo. He was held in a military brig in South Carolina, longer than he should have because of litigation surrounding the authority of the Bush administration to hold him without charges. The Bush administration did charge him, likely because they lost Hamdi v. Rumsfeld which rejected their attempts to detain a different U.S. citizen.
The only American citizen targeted in a drone strike was Al Awlaki. The others were killed because they happened to be traveling with Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan or Yemen who were targeted. We can argue about the legality of targeting Al Awlaki, someone who was actively waging war against the U.S. and tried to evade capture for a decade, but it's ridiculous to bring up the other three. Hundreds of U.S. citizens were killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fact that U.S. citizens may be killed collaterally in a military strike with legitimate targets has never been construed to be a violation of due process.
Snowden is a completely different situation. He's not waging war against the U.S. and leaking classified information is a criminal charge, not an act of war.
Halliburton, the US energy services giant, has admitted destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst such disaster in American history.
A Justice Department statement released late on Thursday said the company had agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct that occurred when it was carrying out its own post-accident investigation.
Is any one going to pay for the fact that they broke the law, screwed up in the lives of so many people in Florida, stuffed up the environment for years to come all for the sake of a dollar?
No. The Justice Department is going to do nothing more than slap them on the wrist.
You make it sound like Halliburton just wrote a check to the DOJ to make the problem go away. Big companies don't need to write checks--they have hostages.
Put yourself in a DOJ prosecutor's shoes. You've got evidence of illegal conduct. You can't pin it on anyone specific, but you know the company overall engaged in the conduct. What do you do?
Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.
Do you shut down the company, in the process putting tens of thousands of innocent people out of work in the midst of a shitty economy, punishing shareholders who had nothing to do with the illegal activity, and destroying a local economy?[1] All for what? To prove a point?
No, you don't do any of these things. You do exactly what the DOJ did in this case: force them to make a $55 million "donation" to the National Wildlife Fund, pay a token $200k fine, and let them go on with a stern warning. That's just the nature of law enforcement in a globalized economy, where multi-national corporations can "vote with their pocketbooks" and have countries compete to see who can be the most lax about law enforcement.
[1] E.g. consider the criminal indictment and subsequent dissolution of Arthur Andersen, and its impact on Chicago. While most of the personnel moved to other accounting firms in the city, losing the global headquarters of a $10 billion/year giant in the industry was not a good thing for the local economy.
You make good points, but I think you overlook the fact that when you're in a climate where anything goes -- a climate that has come to be that way precisely because of a series of complex precedents where it had been unclear where the blame fell and so the real villains often went unpunished, a lack of drastic, disruptive action is probably ultimately much more disastrous than what slaps on the wrist of varying intensities will get you.
This whole thing to me is pretty reminiscent of Wall Street problems. I'm sure there will always be a number of economists who'll defend the situation there, who'll pedantically frame the issues in detailed legal, economic orientations but overlook the more damaging, permanent problems people at large face. Without drastic actions (e.g., handing Jamie Dimon a lengthy prison sentence; fining Halliburton something that'll seriously debilitate (but not bankrupt) their operations, an amount that will make it absolutely clear to management, shareholders and everyone else that strategies of 'play dirty, make big profit, pay relatively small fine' are completely unacceptable), I don't think we're likely to see any meaningfully positive change.
As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence. Much like how folks are okay with that, I'm pretty much okay if we start seeing a more rash justice come down upon CEOs and upper management, I'm okay seeing shareholders suffer a little, I'm okay with seeing fines in upwards of billions figure, I'm okay with the threat of nationalization looming over companies at detection of naughty behavior. And I don't think this is sloppy anarchist thinking, this is action apparently needed for a larger utilitarian interest (which in my view is generally a reasonable goal).
Okay, that sounded a little extreme, but tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore? How things are currently going is obviously not working very well.
> Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.
Great. Another one will pop up in its place, who we should reward if they uphold higher ethical standards by doing business with them.
> As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence.
By and large, black teens aren't incarcerated on "shakey evidence." That's the great thing about crimes that affect poor people: they're really easy to prove. The difference between an aggressive deal/outright fraud/honest mistake is difficult to prove. Who knew what? When? What were they thinking? Possession of an uncontrolled substance? Felon in possession of a firearm? Robbery? That stuff is easy to prove.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's okay that we imprison so many low-income minorities. But I don't think its the result of "high-entropy" prosecutions based on "shakey evidence." It's the result of astronomical sentences and three-strikes rules for relatively minor crimes (drugs, theft, gang activity) that are very common among low income populations.
> Great. Another one will pop up in its place,
Because we're doing such a great job keeping businesses in America as it is? All that will happen is that the capital will slowly migrate elsewhere.
> But tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore?
The fact of the matter is that we don't have any choice. My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout. All they do is call up a state legislator and say: "I create 300 jobs in your district; this is how high you're going to jump." And the legislators ask: "how high?"
And the people absolutely will not do anything about it, because far and away their #1 political concern is getting a job or keeping their job. And no government official is going to be stupid enough to do something like punish a corporation overly harshly because a simple ad along the lines of "so and so cost such and such county in Illinois 300 jobs!" is a nuclear weapon in the current economy.
>My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout.
And I was thinking that in US companies can't make campaign donations at all, but what do I know...
First, he would have been released from detention earlier if the Supreme Court hadn't dismissed his first case for an error in his habeas petition.
Second, Bush was not "judge, jury, and executioner." Bush persued a policy on his interpretation of the law. The Supreme Court smacked him down. He backed off that policy. Padilla got a civil trial. It took time because litigation is slow and always has been. But that's an example of the system working, not an example of it descending into dictatorship.
The ouch is that the Obama Administration has been hyper aggressive in attacking whistle blowers and leaks of all kinds.
"The Obama administration has already charged more people — six — under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)"
It doesn't matter if he's tried in a civilian or military court, if he's tortured or otherwise subjected to inhumane treatment and if he is not likely to receive a fair trial then he should flee.
Remember, we are now in an age where we do not know what our government is doing. In fact, we're not allowed to know what it's doing, or even why we're not allowed to know.
Smart money shouldn't bet that this is the only actual occurrence.
Yes, anything else is pure speculation. Wars have started because of speculation like that.
> Remember, we are now in an age where we do not know what our government is doing.
That's naive. We are not now in such an age, it has always been like this. We are now in an age where it's far easier to know what is going on. Things aren't getting worse. They aren't getting less transparent. Read your history if you think the government was more transparent in decades past. It wasn't.
We've done far, far worse than target Al Awlaki. Hell, if that's our biggest concern, we are doing well.
We _know_ of one instance and that instance alone is bad enough that we should be alarmed, but "smart money" doesn't legitimize the claim that it has happened on multiple occasions.
If I'm not mistaken, he was responding to the question of whether he would put pressure on China to extradite Snowden, and he basically said that he wouldn't scramble jets or start wheeling and dealing for a single case of a 29-year-old hacker suspect.
Reading this in the context of what his actual powers and responsibilities are in this case, it seems to me like he was diminishing the crime, rather than rallying for a witch-hunt.
Besides not rallying for a witch-hunt, which is of course extremely commendable, he could acknowledge Snowden as a whistle-blower who sacrificed comfort and freedom for protecting constitution. Even while pursuing him for prosecution.
The ouch to me is how much this that's written relates to what's happening today, I just imagine the shame he ought to feel if he reread this today, or someone read this to him...
Obama is great at keeping a straight face(he's a lawyer, after all), but sometimes it makes me wonder how far can he handle since there's so much dirt with all that stuff... I mean, the "The programs are transparent" is a Bush-like statement from 'the great talker', and really, he is, but he's now completely demoralized in many eyes, people from the world rooted for him, I watched the fucking debate and shared a pic of 'debate drinking game' with my friends, we all wanted that seemingly enlighted dude at this position... it's just a very ugly story, even considering that arriving there it was inevitable that he would have to give in to a shit or two or three, but it went overboard, this is a disaster in my 'very-far-away' eyes... what will it be of his name in history? What will this do for future 'enlighted-hopeful' candidates? What about the next black person running for it?
- save taxpayers dollars : looks like this was rejected just yesterday by the Congress. Who cares about taxpayers dollars anyway?
- whistleblower laws : did Obama ever do anything in that regard apart from public speeches as a candidate?
- abuse of authority : Obama himself clearly abused authority in the Snowden case in what he said and in the threats he placed on the guy.
- full access to court and due process: yeah, isn't Obama the one who agrees to keep secret court secret in the first place, and protect them from monitoring ?
This sounds, to me, similar to Mao's Anti-rightist Movement [1]. Basically, Mao encouraged all of the concerned citizens to come forward with their concerns, putatively so that any problems could be corrected. But in fact, Mao used this as an opportunity to identify those that could be viewed as political problems, imprisoning all of those who foolishly believed his rhetoric and who genuinely wanted to help the country. (My wife's uncle spent two decades in prison for this, and his wife was forced to denounce him.)
After the leaks we've seen, wouldn't publicising protection of whistleblowers potentially motivate more leaks of state secrets? I can see how the government would be nervous about that. Clearly they think that some abuse of authority is justified to maintain global power.
In other words, that shit wouldn't fly everywhere, for sure. This all emanates from the 9/11 and Patriot Act and Secret Laws with no oversight, that's your problem specifically, of course every government must be wanting it's own surveillance supermachine too, but it doesn't mean every single one of them is willing(or have means) to pass every possible barrier to do it.
Other countries have their own constituitions too and people guarding it, and different political systems, and different relation of the people with their government. Brasilians, for example, are not patriotic(as you are), we like the localization and our folk but absolutely everyone despises the government, the governants are completely cowering with the demonstration, pulling their repression apparatus out and on...
It's absurd and it's also a derrotist statement, this lavabit guy is a hero and the more people go against this rotten government, more clear it becomes the damage is shared by everyone AND the country itself.