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You don't see the irony of complaining about a "false equivalence" complaint in the same comment where you attempt to compare Russia, where bloggers will have to register with the state and are forbidden to use services outside the state's jurisdiction, with the US?

NSA's actions have been indefensible, but they aren't the same as Russia's. Your comparison is itself a textbook false equivalence.

No they are not the same as Russia's but are they any better?

Forced registration vs. forced de-anonymisation.

At least in Russia's case there is some input required from the blogger. With the NSA you just have to sit back and let them do all the hard work. Better customer service I guess.

Either way, arguing over whose government is less tyrannical is probably not the conversation we should be having. But the OP certainly had a point when he stated that preemptively calling out "apologists" is a bad debate technique.

EDIT: Also he wasn't complaining about false equivalences (the post he was replying to was doing that). He was complaining about certain genuine equivalences routinely being called out as false.

Yes, what the US is doing is bad, but it is better than what Russia is doing. "Ask a simple question", &c.

Thanks for falling back to "Whatever.. my opinion is better than yours."

It's always a treat to see the resilience of subjective convictions on display.

>You don't see the irony of complaining about a "false equivalence" complaint

Complaining about "false equivalence" complaints that have yet to have been made, rather. Just like the PHP people who preemptively defend PHP in threads before it has been criticized.

The PHP people have an excuse though: they're punch drunk from being constantly attacked. Attacking Russia is attacking from the herd, and very easy to do. The last thing anyone who cares about truth should be doing is discouraging dissent from the herd.

I have to say that the tradition of accusing people of setting up false equivalences by daring to even compare any aspect of America the Incomparable to places like Iran, Russia, or China is a reprehensible one, too. The confidence in the tautological superiority of every aspect of the US to every aspect of every other country is why clearly broken things about the US can remain broken for decades (like health care, etc.)

It also exposes a sensitivity (thus a recognition) of the critique. In all forms of analysis that I'm aware of, the way you examine things that are broken or eccentric is to compare them to things that work correctly or in a straightforward manner through noting the differences. If you do that between the American and Russian media, you will quickly realize that you're working with two horribly broken systems, and it's about as worthwhile as comparing a kick in the nuts to a punch in the face.

This isn't responsive to my comment. I don't know that I disagree with this point. I just thought it was ironic that the other comment made the same point while at the same time setting up an overt false equivalence.

Of course NSA's actions aren't "the same" as Russia's. The question you should ask is if the NSA was somehow transplanted in the place of the Russian intelligence services in the Russian political environment, would they do the same things? I think it's likely they would.

If that's true, and if there is anything more morally reprehensible about on the one hand requiring bloggers to register with the state, and secretly de-anonymizing them, as you claim, then I think it follows that you can't give the NSA credit for being less morally reprehensible just because they happen to be constrained in that way.

> the NSA is busy de-anonymizing any blogger or any other internet user they wish bypassing the systems of law and democracy entirely.

Western governments routinely de-anonymize citizens. E.g. when a serial killer finally gets tracked down despite taking pains to remain anonymous, we normally consider that upholding justice, not subverting law and democracy.

So while the NSA has certainly done some horrible things, merely trying to de-anonymize reasonably suspicious actors isn't necessarily one of them.

And even if we assume the NSA were unreasonably de-anonymizing people as a matter of course, their job would certainly be a hell of a lot easier there if the U.S. could force bloggers to register after 3,000 hits!

Note that the democratic world's media are very heterogeneous. It isn't often they agree on much (see the Viernam war, Israel, Iraq war, etc in European media).

On this subject, most everyone do agree. Again note -- that is unusual. Maybe unique. And you claim that is a conspiracy, based on that there are lots of spin used on every subject by everyone with a finger in a pie?

That is exactly what Putin's media writes -- the whole [non dictatorial] world is in a conspiracy against Russia. Because they hate Russia!

(I can tell you how unanimous this is in Sweden: Most of the left wing extremists don't support Putin re Ukraine. These people in Sweden are USA haters which have never supported a democracy in a conflict with a democracy...)

Both Iraq and Israel are absolutely notorious for being subjects where all major western news outlets toe or toed the political line.

Whilst Israel is treated somewhat neutrally outside the USA, the puppy-like behaviour of American media is so extreme it is itself worthy of news articles:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/america...

The runup to the war in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the western media's biggest and most damaging failures, including by those outlets themselves:

http://www.salon.com/2007/04/10/media_failure/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/27/media.iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War

With respect to your assertion that "most everyone do agree", did you read my comment? It's very much NOT the case that everyone agrees on this. Here's the Guardian's view:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/guardia...

Hardly a ringing endorsement of sanctions.

Now go look at the comments section. Pick comments pointing out western hypocrisy and take a look at the posting history of those accounts. For instance, check out TheGreatRonRafferty. Posting on the site for years, thousands of comments. Many other views like his expressed there. If you think this is all the work of the FSB you're delusional, I don't know how else to say it.

You can't say these things on HN. It's not nice. Putin is a villain, period. Who are you to spoil the bashing with your rational arguments?

For sarcasm to work it must mock something that does exist.

Are you saying that strong anti-Russian bias doesn't exist on HN? You must be reading it in some filtered form.

Conflating "anti-Putin" with "anti-Russian" doesn't help your argument.

There probably is an anti-Putin sentiment, but there are good reasons for that. In any case, the post you replied to wasn't even pro-Putin and hasn't been punished by any anti-Putin bias on HN.

Just because people don't like a particular person doesn't mean they are biased against them. Their dislike could be rooted strongly in the actions the person has committed.

By the way, its very difficult to prove bias against a single person as opposed to a group.

With a group, you can show bias easily by pointing out someones dislike for a member of the group who only shares superficial traits with the rest of the group (e.g. ethnicity/nationality/gender/etc.).

But for a person? Even if you're suspicious of every seemingly innocuous action of them, it can be justified by saying they have lost your trust due to actions in the past.

I personally enjoyed this comment and this type of humor in general. It was witty, critical and open about it's satirical nature, distinguishing it from a troll post (which would disguise itself as genuine extremist view). Unfortunately the community doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as I do. Quite the opposite actually.

The comment specifically touches the following issues.

* The community's overall pro-western tendency

* Pointing out that the parent comment has been one of the few moderate ones in a thread that has otherwise been rather 'emotionally charged'

As much as I enjoy the content and the discussions here, the lack of appreciation of satire has always puzzled me.

You are arguing -- hey all these cats are grey, so all are the same. All are grey, but there is a very large difference in how dark some are.

Let me discuss your examples:

Israel handled neutral in Europe?!

With all due respect, you have just a clue about English media? I can talk about Swedish media. There, Pallywood was never mentioned in the major news outlets. Torture between Palestinians was straight out censored, even when it was front page news on BBC/NY Times. Negative news for Israel was/are consistently front page.

(I can go check my bookmarks, there are lots of cases.)

There were lots of criticism in Swedish of the Iraq invasion. And especially after the occupation was so incredibly mismanaged.

Whichever, this was my point -- the Western media is heterogenous.

Was the Guardian article the most pro Putin on Ukraine you could find [in major English language media]? :-) It basically said: We can't get rid of Putin, let's try "Peace in our time" and be careful with sanctions, Russia is a smaller problem now than 1989.

That article specifically didn't discuss how nice Putin's regime is. What is the Guardian's position there? No link?

Do you think it is a western conspiracy that Russia is classified as authocratic these days by democracy indexes?

And so on.

No, this is nothing at all but a paltry false equivalence. Let's say the big bad NSA was all you they are ....

You've already lost this false equivalence.

In that case, what would the NSA do to a blogger, the answer because the US has something called the Constitution, and though you may cynically, the US couldn't throw someone in jail for whatever the NSA dredges up or whatever while in Russia, the same is not the case. There are not any real credible cases of people being poisoned for thought crime.