Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

There is now a rich history in outsourcing activities that would otherwise be illegal to other countries where it is legal. For example, the CIA's extreme rendition [1], knowingly sending prisoners to countries to be tortured and/or executed. This is how such countries make themselves useful to American empire.

Likewise, restrictions on the NSA spying on American citizens, for example, are bypassed by outsourcing that spying to, say, other Five Eyes countries.

Israel's role in this hacking phones of politicians, dissidents and now journalists on the behalf of the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia [2].

The Israeli company NSO Group was sued by WhatsApp for their use of Pegasus [3], something Israel tried to intervene to block [4].

I honestly don't know how people work on things like Pegasus knowing it's being used to target and kill journalists and politicians.

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/upda...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/world/middleeast/israel-s...

[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77n76kzmz4o

[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/israels-attem...

Chomsky described these countries as "mercenary states". One of his books, Understanding Power, dives into the topic quite a bit.

Chomsky has supported "anti-imperialist" russia and ignored all warnings by the eastern European people, who dared to walk out on socialism in a freedom movement. Blood on the hands, blood on the quill, blood in the will..

That might be true, but it doesn't disprove the fact that this is happening, does it?

I think it's a matter of lesser evil..

Chomsky also believes 2+2=4. Is that also wrong because you don’t like some of his other beliefs? You seem to think so.

His language hierarchy holds up, but thats not how this works . You can not heap personal catastrophic beliefs into a train waggon and by proof of chaining that train, your work is invalidated or valid and valued.

His academic works stand independent of the unsavoury character -similar to Werner von Braun. But that doesn't remove the fact he supported "any-but-american-imperialism" decorated with racists undertones ("the brown people can not be perpetrator and victims at the same time") and tried to undermine the western value based world order.

This is an inexcusable ad-hominem argument. This is not how we discuss things on this platform.

Chomsky is right about some things and wrong about other things, like every human is.

When we call people experts, that doesn't mean they are infallible, but they are supposed to be better than average.

"I honestly don't know how people work on things like Pegasus knowing it's being used to target and kill journalists and politicians."

You can make many people do pretty much anything under orders, and even more by rewarding them.

"I was just putting food on the table for my family..."

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

FYI Milgram is one of the many popular examples of fake science, wiki link has some critical review links

I feel like dunking on personality psychology was Milgram’s big mistake. Live by the sword…

Auschwitz wasn't in Germany.

and? was build by german in german occupied Poland

Bad people often put their bad stuff in other countries.

>I honestly don't know how people work on things like Pegasus knowing it's being used to target and kill journalists and politicians.

Is that all it's being used for? I can easily see situations where its use is saving lives, in which case it would be easy to justify working on.

> I honestly don't know how people work on things like Pegasus knowing it's being used to target and kill journalists and politicians.

Sorry, but it looks like you simply don't know people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com