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Comment by dandelany | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by "these kinds of people"? Greedy people? People who say things that are tasteless and mean? I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that. Please enlighten me re: the law they've broken, otherwise I hope you can see the inherent irony in your statement... </unpopularOpinion>

edit: I'm not being ornery, I'm really actually curious what people think they should go to prison for. Tastelessness != criminality.

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These people aren't just a group of kids on xboxLive making idle threats. They are making real plans and use their influence to make money at the cost of killing people. Conspiracy to commit murder for financial gain sounds like a good fit here. Or at least intent to indirectly end lives for money.

EDIT: Ouch, game over for me... I thought these email leaks involved government officials 'n such. If these are like reading the emails of FOXNews, then nevermind. They're bad people(IMHO), but can't jail 'em anymore than we can jail the people of stormfront.org

Conspiracy to commit murder? What are you talking about? Do you even know what Stratfor is? They're a glorified news organization. They're no more involved in the Mumbai terror plot than CNN is. As I said, they stand to profit because people will want more information about these events, which they provide. The stuff about supplying weapons is clearly a (bad, stupid) offhanded joke.

Profiting from the deaths of others is morally wrong, and it should be illegal. Judging by the number of up votes my parent comment has, there are lots of people that agree.

>I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that.

You're right, there is no law against it, yet.

There also didn't used to be laws against a ton of morally wrong things, but at some point, enough people thought it was wrong and a law was made.

We should be looking to make the world a better place, not saying "there's no law against that, they can do it". The status quo needs improvement.

Profiting from the deaths of others is morally wrong, and it should be illegal.

The media makes a lot of money from bad news, especially death. Perhaps only the state should run news organizations?

Profiting from the deaths of others? They're a news organization. I don't understand what you're accusing them of that CNN isn't also guilty of, save some tasteless emails with bad jokes in them.

I'm really actually curious what people think they should go to prison for.

Terrorism, for material support of international war for commercial gain.

If they are actually engaged in selling weapons; well, arms trafficking is generally a crime unless you are very close to your government and very up to date on the paperwork. And even then most people would consider it a "moral crime", to profit from the misery of war.

The weapons they mention are traditional Roman gladiatorial weapons. I think that they're meant to be taken literally but are simply a reference to the presumed entertainment value (sigh). And honestly, even if literal giving swords to an army with automatic rifles is just giving them ceremonial props, not weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retiarius

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmillo

Spoiler alert: they aren't. The weapons they talk about supplying are "a net and trident" for India and "the shield and short sword" for Pakistan. Seems pretty obvious that's a dumb joke. The closest they get to the illegal arms trade is reporting on it, eg. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/global-arms-markets-seen-thro...

Laws are made up by humans - we could create laws that disallow this kind of behaviour, it's a bit surprising that it's not, no? Oh wait, the for-profit military-industrial complex lobbies politicians who are pro-war ...

Again, what kind of behavior are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting we pass laws prohibiting saying things that you find objectionable, tasteless or greedy? In a thread defending a whistleblower's free speech?

No, the action of selling weapons to both sides is much different than someone simply talking about it. Giving someone the ability to make money selling weapons has its own problems - which will incentivize those people who are looking to make profit do things they wouldn't normally otherwise do, and then worse - if they have the ability to sell weapons to both sides of a battle or war, what might they be willing to do in order to incite violence of one party against another? Do you not see a problem with this?

Please do some research before you make accusations like this. I have seen zero evidence that they're involved in the arms trade whatsoever. Your conclusion to the contrary is based on a misreading of a bad joke taken out of context. See my other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6743185

You're right - I assumed they are involved in the arms trade. I should have clarified what I meant. I assumed too that this wouldn't be a mob going after them, though a due process to gather information and evidence. What would your thoughts be if they were in fact say an employee (of any level) of a weapons company? Also, you're equally assuming it's a "bad joke taken out of context."

Yes, Occam's Razor tells me that when an employee of a media organization says he's going to arm Pakistan and India with tridents and swords, it's most likely and therefore best to assume it's a joke. Assuming otherwise would require some evidence.

I don't wish to engage in hypotheticals, suffice it to say I'd sooner be a prostitute than work for a weapons company myself.

Also, when's Turntable.fm making its way to Canada? :) I know I could use a way to pretend I'm in the U.S. - though I'd rather not circumvent.

> I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that.

Agreed. Unfortunately there is no recourse until a power center rises elsewhere. They say written history would have been very different in case Germany had won their war.

No I don't really think it would be. I doubt it would have been in recent history after Germans won either, and even if it did dynasties fall. "History is written by the victors" denies the fact that even the victors have their doubts, internal doubts, and some after reflection regret.

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