Hacker News Reader

Comment by kasey_junk | Hacker News Reader

Neither is Australia but you’d almost universally call it the west. Because western in this instance is a cultural qualifier not a geographic one.

Objecting to calling Israel the west is at least as weird as including it in the context of this conversation.

View on HN

Not the poster, but the Mossad has made quite a name for themselves. I honestly have no idea if Australia even has an intelligence service - do you?

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

Australia is one of the 5 eye nations…

That’s NSA equivalent. But the point still stands - do you know the names of the agencies off the top of your head? I had to look them up on wikipedia, and they’re still pretty easy to forget about.

This is a thread about nsa style intelligence operations, where 5 eyes is explicitly called out.

What are we even talking about anymore? This sub thread is a weird digression on if it’s normal to include Israel in the phrase “western intelligence”. The US collaborates more with 5 eyes nations (2 of which are is the South Pacific) and Israel, be it Mossad or Unit 8200 than it does with France.

My contention is that the phrase Western Intelligence is a cultural signifier that has nothing to do with geography. And that pointing out that Israel is not in the west (while not doing the same for New Zealand) is more strange than including them by default.

At the point where you've suggested that Australia (of all countries) might not have an intelligence service, you've surrendered the ability to demand others come up with citations. For the record, not only do they, but they're one of the more important players. Trying to suggest otherwise to wriggle out from the "Western" argument was not a strong rhetorical move.

How are you defining West here? If we go by the international date line they're not all that far away and if you zag left as you go further south it works quite well. You need a similar shape on the other side too to get Europe but exclude Africa, so it makes for a pretty reasonable cut of the planet overall.

It's a tilted west.

Oof people hate this comment.

Look, I know it's cultural much more than geographical. But Australia can easily be both. It's not actually a counterexample.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com