As bad as governmental abuses can be in the U.S. I find it somewhat comforting that suing the CIA doesn't mean some people are going to start disappearing. I'm guessing not too many Russians sued the KGB.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/too-big-comply-n...
It's like comparing your sports team to one that consistently finishes low on the ladder - your team will always look good, even when they are far from the top.
If you want a comparison that will lead to improvement, compare your country to those known to have excellent human rights and freedom of information track records.
The OP compared one member of the UN Security Council with another. There are five permanent members.
Are any of the UNSC on your list?
?
You are partially correct but by and large the UNSC members are the key levers globally.
Regardless, the UNSC comment was to indicate that Russia is very much considered a peer of the USA. If they are not to be compared/contrasted then the debate is meaningless.
For example if we would take into account the incarceration rate, USA has a higher one than Russia.
On a more subtle analysis, it's unfortunately possible that there is actually a (undergoing) way to silence dissidence, which is "just" different from directly killing people, for example legal rape, or manufacturing of doubt, just to mention a few.
Essentially, I think that there's no such direct comparison, and constructive analysis should take into account many many factors and contexts.
So actually the OP's comparison seems fair. "The US may be bad these days, but at least it's not (yet) as bad as some of the worst in history!"
Pondering how bad things could get is not going to make things better.
Surely the comparison should be "It's not as good as it used to be, let's make it better!"
That Sweden?
[1]http://cjicl.org.uk/2012/06/20/assange-v-swedish-prosecution...
I assume you are ignoring the corruption detailed in
http://www.business-anti-corruption.com/media/3831417/TI-Sve...
The point is that we should be following our hopes rather than fleeing from our fears. Comparing yourself to the worst of your peers and patting yourself on the back because you are still somewhat better is blinding yourself to the absolutely unacceptable backsliding that has been occurring. Even comparing yourself to the best of your peers and dreaming about surpassing them is not enough. The ultimate, unattainable goal is zero corruption and perfect transparency. Effort required increases asymptotically as we approach that limit.
So it would seem that the only way to avoid having corruption in your government is to not have one at all.
I always explain it like this (try to):
Our ancestors did not have Internet, direct participation was not possible. We therefore cant expect those ancestors of ours to have seriously considered it - at any stage. Arguably, before the Internet, everyone did his best to participate as much as they could. The new ingredient our generation introduced is for voters not to have influence on par with the technical possibilities.
If we would be overly modest we could allow that single vote to be changed when the voter wants to change it. If the voter cant change his vote the election program is not legally binding. One can say whatever he likes to get elected and enjoy 4 whole years without any consequences.
Technically we should be participating in the debate about specific issues at hand. Our officials would have little to do beyond the organization of that information (a feat easily automated) If we can do social networks and we can do flash trading then we need very little beyond a tech team and a few symbolic figure heads to make a kick ass democracy.
We can do considerably more than vote 1 time, ideas from citizens are a type of resource, value waiting to be extracted. Extraction will help it grow faster. Clearly we are missing out on incalculable riches, just sitting there, expiring while waiting for exploitation.
But now, well... Nintendo even made a free Wii amusement called "Everybody Votes Channel". If people are willing to waste time voting on silly things just to see what other people in their tribe and around the world selected, they can certainly vote on things that actually matter to them, like taxes and laws.
The difficult problem nowadays is not the technical ability to get everyone participating, but how to avoid the pitfalls of democracy, such as an arbitrary majority tyrannizing an arbitrary minority, or a focused minority advancing a specific agenda over a relatively apathetic majority.
There would almost have to be a submission petition with a certain number of supporters, an initial 50% majority of those who care to vote to trigger spending development resources on the issue, then a funding round, where supporters have to supply the required budget directly, and finally a ratification round, where a supermajority, perhaps 67% of all possible voters, where non-voters automatically vote to reject, determines whether to proceed to implementation or not.
But that's all irrelevant detail when it is likely that those who currently hold power would use it to prevent a new system from taking it away from them. The status quo likes where it stands now. The system is ripe for disruption, but it is also quite good at retaliating against existential threats.
Do more than that[0][1] and the kid gloves come off.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coo...
That's especially true given that the feds have a history of illegal surveillance of (and even interference with) political activity that powerful people happened to find uncomfortable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
That is something I would expect, as the grandparent indicates, in the USSR. I don't expect it in the United States.
You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.
See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Oakland#Protestor_conduc...
Or do they do striaghtforward police work, provide a detail of officers at protests and counterprotests just in case anything gets out of hand, and generally behave reasonably?
There is a very far divide between "wholly ignorant" and "actively subverting." There is also a far divide between that and "sharing information on what to expect."
See also: undercover police excesses in the UK and US, including having children with activists to maintain cover.
According to the documents Naomi Wolf (your link!) cites, this is pretty much what happened. Try reading them for yourself instead of ignorantly complaining about "propaganda".
I agree that it's not as bad as COINTELPRO. That doesn't make it right, though.
I'll inline my other comment: Mass gatherings of any kind are a public safety issue, and an organized nation-wide protest with anarchist overtones is hardly the least likely to result in violence and property damage. For police to not gather and share information on what to expect would be stupid.
You may get tons of warm fuzzies thinking about OWS, but it still involved thousands of angry people gathering in one place, which is not something any reasonable person expects the police to be wholly ignorant of.
See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Oakland#Protestor_conduc...
Go watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ6mhRZ8LjM
Now we can see the police and FBI behavior toward the civil rights movement for what it was: the police helping people in power stay in power.
One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power. It's amazing to me how quickly that can switch to justification when it's the "wrong" people getting policed. The reason Aaron Swartz got pursued so vigorously is exactly the reason that Occupy did: they were both (correctly) perceived as a political threat to people with power and wealth.
I'm just saying the documents mentioned above[1] don't back up your claims, and that what they do describe is mundane, expected behavior. (I know this because I read them myself, rather than relying on the summary of someone with a clear agenda.) If you weren't speaking in the context of the thread, why post in it?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881884
One of the defaults on Hacker News is a general skepticism toward increasing police power.
First of all, that's not a default of Hacker News, that's a default of individual users of Hacker News. If you want a community of uniform opinion, I suggest digging out your dog-eared copy of 1984 and re-reading the scene of the two-minutes' hate to see where that leads.
Secondly, I'd like to point out that I share that default, but with the additional (and seemingly rare) default of skepticism toward reporting about increasing police power.
The fact that your motivation is political does not provide a license to break the law, and you must expect a response from law enforcement if you do so.
Because of that, I believe that political activity should be given relatively wide latitude for anything that is basically related to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. For example, here in San Francisco, a person blocking traffic for the hell of it might get ticketed for jaywalking. But if a group of protestors takes to the streets, the police will just direct traffic around it and keep an eye on it as long as it stays peaceful. And I think that's about right.
I would expect the law enforcement response to, say, an actual terrorist group to be nationally coordinated.
I would not expect the law enforcement response to semi-legal public camping to be nationally coordinated.
The fact that it was implies that there was a political motivation to the specific law enforcement actions that took place, which is something typically considered inappropriate for the American government. We like to think that in America, we have the freedom to assemble and organize with fellow citizens to coordinate social change.
These documents tell us that we do not. Should we attempt to do so, should we go outside the gameboard for any action, we will be ruthlessly, violently swatted down. The tanks[0] will roll in, the LRADs[1] will blare, and armored stormtroopers will march alongside firing tear gas and pepper spray[2].
And not only will that dismantle that movement, but it will make every subsequent movement have to overcome not just a typical barrier to adoption, but also the fear of being there when the gloves come off and the gas canisters fire. It's what's called a chilling effect[3].
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic... (among many articles documenting this trend; if you want to see it in person go to any large protest in a major city, I have seen them in DC, New York, Pittsburgh, and Oakland among other places)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRAD
A strong democracy's pros outweigh its cons by a large margin - almost always.
Democracy is fundamentally anchored on the idea that the legitimate right to govern derives from the people, not from the sword or from the blessing of a priest. This means that governments exist to serve the people, not the other way around. The freedoms of the constitution derive from this principle.
So, not a democracy, but right to govern still derives from the people. It has been done.
From wikipedia:
> The ritual was performed in the Slovene language by a free peasant who, selected by his peers, in the name of the people of the land questioned the new Prince about his integrity and reminded him of his duties. Later, when the Duchy of Carinthia had fallen to the Habsburgs, the idea that it was actually the people from whom the Duke of Carinthia received his legitimation was the basis of the Habsburgs' claim to the unique title of Archduke.
As a french humorist (Coluche) used to say :
Tyranny is 'shut the fuck up'
Democracy is 'Talk to the hand'
One of the strengths of the US Government is that they're smarter than to whisk people away in the middle of the night. That's why they're around and the KGB isn't. It remains to be seen whether that's a good thing or not.