Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

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Well to cite some examples from the recent past by the US:

You may be drummed out as CEO of a major corp on trumped up charges (almost any high level exec could be found guilty of this):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-punished...

You may be assassinated without trial or explanation anywhere in the world:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-ki...

You may be kidnapped in any country and tortured at a black site in Syria:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

You may be arbitrarily pulled off the streets and detained by unidentified paramilitary forces:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/20/trump-...

It's extremely unlikely if you are white, non-muslim and do exactly as they ask, which may give you some comfort, but the US or other Western states do engage in the things you listed too.

I agree China is a much worse state at present than the US say, but I wouldn't be too comfortable about defying the US government on something they care about - they have murdered, coerced and ruined lives too in the recent past.

> It's extremely unlikely if you are white, non-muslim and do exactly as they ask

True now, but that one poem will come up; First They Came (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...). If this keeps up, anyone who is more left / liberal leaning will be next, then the intellectuals, etc. It's happened before, pretty much exactly like this, it's just that the uniforms are different.

Why isn't the international community pulling on the emergency brakes? The UN was founded to prevent this exact shit. But the problem with the UN is that the perpetrators in this case all have a lot of influence there + veto powers, so it's basically powerless and useless.

> The UN was founded to prevent this exact shit.

Untrue. The UN was founded to prevent WWIII.

Shades of both:

Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world...

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

The Declaration does not name Nazism or Fascism specifically, but does describe the characteristics common to them and other authoritarian and aggressive forms of government.

"worse" perhaps based on whatever scale you're using.

Starting illegal wars and overthrowing governments to put in puppets tends to be quite atrocious, but I guess if you benefit from it, no problems then.

China has done this too and will continue to do so. They've also recently perpetrated genocide, ethnic cleansing and massive oppression of their population.

It's very hard to compare countries, and there are certainly major problems with civil rights in the US, but I'd rather live in the US than in China right now.

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