Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

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> a story that involves several million dollars in seed and development capital from Radio Free Asia, a CIA spinoff whose history goes back to 1951 and involves all sorts of weird shit, including its association in the 1970s with the Moonies, the hardcore anti-communist Korean cult.

It's hard to take a blog post serious which makes lots of big accusations and promotes conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence. I am not against conspiracy theories, it's something I find often very entertaining when people provide some evidence to support their views, but this article was just poor.

The above sentence alone could have had at least a few linked sources to support these statements:

- from Radio Free Asia, a CIA spinoff

- whose history goes back to 1951 and involves all sorts of weird shit

- including its association in the 1970s with the Moonies

- the hardcore anti-communist Korean cult

Sure, I can go on a hunt for evidence for these things myself, but I won't because I'm not the one claiming these things to be true and I've got better things to do. If you're taking me (a reader) on a journey to open my mind to the possibility of those conspiracy theories then at least provide something to back them up.

>The above sentence alone could have had at least a few linked sources to support these statements: from Radio Free Asia, a CIA spinoff

All "Radio Free XXX" were USA soft-power / CIA spinoffs of the Cold War era, and that has been common knowledge for decades. Not even controversial. The story of "Radio Free XXX" is like table stakes Cold War knowledge...

Now, I'll give you that the Moonies etc are more obscure unless you're into cult/BS guru histories, but still widely known and reported (especially in the 60s, 70s, and 80s), and one can easily find books about them.

Heck, even Wikipedia would do for the basic ties:

"Moon viewed the Cold War between democracy and communism as the final conflict between God and Satan, with divided Korea as its primary front line. Soon after its founding the Unification movement began supporting anti-communist organizations, including the World League for Freedom and Democracy founded in 1966 in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan), by Chiang Kai-shek,[251] and the Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation, an international public diplomacy organization which also sponsored Radio Free Asia"

And Radio Free Asia:

A short-lived organization also named "Radio Free Asia" existed in the 1950s during the Cold War, as an anti-Communist propaganda operation in Asia funded by the Central Intelligence Agency to try and prevent the spread of the supposed domino theory.[4][11] Radio Free Asia was founded and funded in the 1950s by an organization called "Committee for Free Asia" as an anti-communist propaganda operation (...) In 1971 CIA involvement ended and all responsibilities for then-defunct radio operations were formally transferred to a presidentially appointed Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) (...)

(Well, for "ended" read: "ended, trust us").

Common knowledge to whom?

Remember, this article talks about Signal which is a widely available app beyond just the USA. Where I come from we have not learned anything about Radio Free or what it has to do with the CIA. I have never heard of it. Same for Moonies. I have no clue what it is and I'm convinced most people in Europe who are of my age have no clue. We all know what Signal is though. So if someone is suggesting conspiracy theories they better provide some references otherwise it reads to me like a sci-fi story.

> Heck, even Wikipedia would do for the basic ties

I mean yes... Wikipedia will do the basics on literally any topic in the world :)

I am from Europe and know that Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America are all at least government sponsored. While I have no idea whether the original article is true or not (haven't read it yet), parent is AFAIK correct in that these media have had a propaganda function, similarly to Deutsche Welle. It's not quite "table stakes" as mentioned by parent but it's not far off either.

The combative style of your comment however makes it a bit hard to take you seriously.

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