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Comment by Cookingboy | Hacker News Reader

Because we don't live in a Disney movie where everyone gets along and lives happily ever after? Do you think if we get rid of CIA the Russians will just disband the FSB? The Chinese will just suddenly become transparent and stop all international espionage? The entire world will suddenly love US and try to suck up to the biggest superpower?

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>Because we don't live in a Disney movie where everyone gets along and lives happily ever after? Do you think if we get rid of CIA the Russians will just disband the FSB?

No, but I'm not American, and I know that 80% of the world has been royally fucked over (toppling governments, meddling, dictatorships supported) by the CIA, whereas few have had any issues with FSB (just/mainly their neighboring countries, and not the sweetest ones either).

At the time of USSR, yes, but not with Russia, which is, and will always be, a second player that just happens to have inherited nukes, so they can't be easily pushed over.

And same for China. Until now at least it was others who were the aggressors to China. I mean, the Senkaku Islands dispute? What's that compared to the hell that Japan created (and never recuperated or even really regretted) in Manchuria?

(All of those countries of course have disputes and issues with bordering countries and territories they claim as their own. But only the ex-colonial powers, the US and the diseased USSR harmed countries all over the world -- which can also be gauged by military bases presence).

(And concerning "territories they claim as their own", it takes a lot of "down-with-whataboutism-lalala-hands-in-the-ears" for US to point to Nepal and forget Puerto Rico, or for that matter Hawaii. And let's not go further back...)

>The entire world will suddenly love US and try to suck up to the biggest superpower?

Well, CIA is one of the main reasons the entire world doesn't love US.

Or rather, even in the developing world, people will love the country, the people, the music, the movies, the food, etc., but the foreign policies? Not so much...

What about Nepal?

Sorry, meant to write Tibet.

> 80% of the world has been royally fucked over (toppling governments, meddling, dictatorships supported) by the CIA, whereas few have had any issues with FSB (just/mainly their neighboring countries, and not the sweetest ones either).

I'd ask for sources for this claims... but I'm really afraid for the outcome.

If you really believe in all of this... it's extremely disturbing.

I'm not sure what exactly do you have to counter to this. If you really don't know 20th century history, then that would be extremely disturbing.

Of course I don't expect these things to be taught in school history programs there, but come on.

Just some random, well know items one can find within 10 minutes...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d'%C3%A9t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/35_countries_the_u_s_has_bac...

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/20/mapped-the-7-governments...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/cia-releases-files-that-descr...

This is "80% of the world" you've mentioned?

Some of us are not USians. I'd say if your goal is to make people elsewhere in the world love the US, then CIA dirty tricks isn't the way to do it. Dirty tricks by other governments wouldn't do much if the US was a genuinely beneficial influence in the world. At the moment it's not so clear that the US is beneficial, with it doing some things that are useful, but which Trump seems to want to eliminate as soon as possible, and other things that are questionable.

Nope, the goal is not to make the rest of the world love the US. It is to further our own national interest while fucking over our enemies. Just like any other countries that ever existed in the history of human civilization.

That seems about right. You have to wonder what "national interest" really means though. Something to do with making US billionaires richer than their foreign competitors, I think.

Currently our national interests can be defined as whatever the latest talking head Trump was watching on Fox News said they were.

Maintaining the use of the USD as default fiat currency for key commodities which in turn implies geopolitical leverage through access to USD and the banking system which supports it, with participation in this state of affairs defining what is and is not the 'accepted' system.

See also: BRICS & recent political turmoil in Brasil, Ukraine

>Just like any other countries that ever existed in the history of human civilization.

Self-Godwin'ed. Nice!

The accepted demonym in English is American. I don't go around dictating what inhabitants of other countries are called in their language.

In the English speaking world, North and South America are considered 2 separate continent, and the single word American is universally understood to refer to citizens of the United States of America.

We have referred to ourselves as American for over 200 hundreds years and we are the only country with the word America in the name.

Well, I'm a programmer and the ambiguity of "America" and "American" disturbs me. Maybe "US American" would be better than USian though, since it matches the name of the country.

There is always some form of ambiguity in natural languages. I get the desire to avoid it, but unless we want to communicate in Lojban, that's not possible.

In the English speaking world, there is no continent called "America" there is only North America and South America. If you want to refer to both we would normally say "The Americas" or maybe "The New World".

Since there is no "America" commonly used in English other than the country, there is for all practical purposes, no ambiguity.

Use is what gives language meaning, and if you look at the numbers "American" is almost always used to mean a resident of the US. Attempting to force a fix on a perceived issue is never going to work.

By the way prescriptivists have been trying to force manufactured demonyms on us for years and none of them have ever become mainstream.

I've met several South Americans who insist that they are "American", but after investigating further, even in South America, the word "American" is almost never used in English to refer to people who come from what we call North and South America.

When you think about it why would anyone want to refer to themselves as basically coming from the Western Hemisphere? There is no shared language, no shared culture, no shared government. It would be like saying "I'm from The Old World", when that applies to people from France, China, and Zimbabwe.

It's pretty much a useless distinction. And language use patterns back that up.

The logic of it is simple to me. The name "America" was initially assigned to a newly discovered area in the south, and was later used for the entire land mass. Eventually the USA was founded in part of that area, but with such an unwieldy name, "America" became a popular abbreviation. That doesn't invalidate the original meaning. I understand that it's not ambiguous to many people, but it's ambiguous in my own mind because I do think of "America" as applying to the entire land mass.

>That doesn't invalidate the original meaning.

It does invalidate the original meaning because no one uses America to refer to that landmass anymore (in English). Common use is what determines the meaning of language.

"Nice" used to mean simple or foolish, "Silly" used to mean blessed, and "Awful" used to mean worthy of awe--modern usage patterns have invalidated their original meanings in modern use.

>I understand that it's not ambiguous to many people, but it's ambiguous in my own mind because I do think of "America" as applying to the entire land mass.

And I think of Columbia as an alternate name for the US. It doesn't mean I'm going to get on a Colombian Spanish language forum and start making up new demonyms for them.

The worst is that you end up with statements like "America is a country in North America", which to me is just bizarre.

New York is a city in New York. Are you going to use New York Citians instead of New Yorkers?

Mexico City, Mexico.

Belize City, Belize.

Panama City, Panama.

Djibouti City, Djibouti.

The CIA doesn't follow the rule of law (as evidenced by this leak). Wanting to disband them is not the same thing as saying we shouldn't have a US intelligence agency.

They have consistently acted outside rule of law, helping to commit many egregious acts of human rights abuse. So, yeah, I'm not too pleased with them.

This is obviously a false dichotomy.

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