yourepowerless

Taking away a kids phone and giving him a doll will likely elicit a violent response, but cool on you to decide what brings people happiness.

Trotting out the token good case scenario while torture occurs in the bad case is classic propaganda, but way to defend torture, you get a hold star today.

How sweet, wonderful propaganda, mean while other innocents at Guantanamo experience the joys of anal rehydration and the Kafka esque life of indefinite imprisonment without trial.

But yeah, I'm glad the NY times can share such heart warming news.

This is a non-sequitur, or as the saying goes, the Germans kept the trains running on time?

If ISIS begins collecting taxes to fund road construction and terrorism does that somehow white wash terrorism? Of course not, yet the same tired argument is being made here because of misguided belief in American exceptionaliam, double think is alive and well when people can speak of road building one day while condemning torture the next. Those who work and fund the US government are funding genocide, you must accept that fact, you can down vote all you want to bury the truth but it remains the truth.

Disgusting hypocrisy on display, utterly disgusting, and no real counter argument has been made.

Considering those tax dollars go towards torture, murder, indefinite imprisonment, war crimes, genocide, illegal surveillance, and other tragedies I applaud any company which finds novel ways of resisting the tyranny of the united States government.

Huh, if only there were some way to digitally sign and secure communications, perhaps some sort of... Encryption scheme could be used to ensure accuracy of information...

Outlawing torture didn't make a lick of difference.

Anyone who trusts an institution which repeatedly lies, tortures, and murders with impunity, an institution responsible for millions of deaths, is insane.

Why comply with unjust illegitimate laws created to serve a monopoly?

Why comply with a framework designed not for your benefit or societies benefit but for the purpose of maintaining a monopoly on others peoples labor, socializing cost and individualizing profit. Laws are not created for the people and by the people, they are made by corrupted individuals for those with the most wealth and power, complying with them is no better than complying with any other sort of violent oppression.

Your equivocation of clearly immoral behavior is suggestive.

Is stealing wrong? Yes, yes it is. How many more decades of a failed war on drugs policy do you need before you accept and argue for a change of course?

When bad laws create the incentive which results in 10,000s of murders it is imperative to change those incentives, even the Mexican government is now clamoring for change, but the war on drugs is too convenient for the status quo and justifies all sorts of government empowerment.

But in the face of a murderous institution I'm happy we have some fellow Willing to equivocate and defend senseless murder, torture, and theft, good job dude.

How much more evidence do people need before we all readily conceed that America is a police state?

Before you can change reality you must first understand the reality that exists.

Police steal and murder without consequence. They are a gang of murderous thugs protected by a corrupt court and legislative body.

He is defending a corrupt institution which has repeatedly lied, tortured and murdered.

Also,what he wrote is wrong, chances are not better than even that some random issue is a certain way because of some complex technical reason, most decisions in DC are made through the lens of politics, ask anyone who works in policy and they will say the same.

I do not understand how someone can write such nonsense.

Are you familiar with a country called Iraq? It is nearby to Syria, and was often in the news not too long ago, surely you must of heard of this place?

You want the UN to administer ethics, the organization that thinks Saudi Arabia should be in charge of human rights?[0]

But perphaps that's just the normal in an age when some western commenter still believes the developed world has any roll in lecturing others on ethics, should these lectures occur during or after the class on how to torture, or perhaps after the panel discussion of why Cuba is an excellent place to lock up foreigners indefinitely, foreigners we even admit aren't guilty of any crimes.

The extreme myopia on display in this thread is plenty of reason for why violence begets violence, its sad and laughable that commenters believes the western world played no role in the millions of deaths and refugees that have come about since 9-11.

What most commentators have wrong is that the violence in France wasn't an act of terrorism, but just another battle in the decade plus war that's been mostly happening in the Middle East, only this time the battle occurred on the streets of Paris instead of outside Kabul, or in Mosul, or in the outskirts of Damascus. Westerners seen to have forgotten that their politicians have been waging a war for them, and now their politicians want to engage in even more of the same. insanity.

[0]http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/09/20/saudi-arabia-wi...

Millions have died throughout the Middle East, millions have become refugees, millions have sufferred from the economic consequences all of which is the directly because of Americans needed to avenge the death of 3000 new yorkers.

The Western world lost all moral superiority when they decided torture and genocide were acceptable acta to commit.

Syria? Iraq? Are you the Platonic cave dweller?

I assume thoughtless people will just dismiss this as conspiracy theory, somehow oblivious to how far that goal post have moved recently.

Governments kill way more people than terrorists ever will, but fear those the government tells you to fear...

Are you referring to the western powers which have killed millions of Muslims this last decade?

You need some perspective.

Estimates for ME casualties are between 500,000 and 2 million plus, not including refugees, the injured, nor the complete economic gutting for those who remain experience.

What should be done about that? Gonna let the US government get away with genocide?

Prison, like most other institutions in America, is about power and control. It has nothing to do with morality, efficiency, nor opinion, those are manufactured lies and opinions to keep the status quo.

You sound like another blood thirsty progressive calling for the wanton destruction of millions.

Want to stop Mexican cartels, support drug legalization. Prohibition doesn't work, it has never worked, drug use declines in countries, like Portugal, which decriminalize drug use. Calling out for the powerful to continue their spree of murder and to continue to gorge upon the lives of young black men is utterly disgusting and farcical especially when you sight the drug war as what we must fear. No fear the ones who imprison millions and kill millions more.

Get a heart.

So once this becomes law ( and surely it will ) how do these finer points of the law get decided, will it be done by the arbitration panel, ie the high paid lawyers who take turns being plaintiff, defendant, and judge?

Does anyone believe this will not become the law?

You can peaceably gather in protest and maybe get a few sniping remarks on the nightly news, you can call, write, knock on your representatives door, you can donate money and time, but none of it will stop this treaty from being passed because those in power wrote it for themselves and will pass it for themselves.

If anything were to stop it it would be the wide disregard and disobedience of the illegitimate laws it supposedly creates.

Again, how many times must the lie that voting counts be repeated, repeating it does not make it true.

Did voting matter in the 2000 presidential election, I recall the supreme Court decided who became president. If voting matters so much why do politicians spend the vast majority of time fund raising instead of interacting with their voters?

Have you even looked at gerrymandering? You believe voting in those districts matters? Oh we should spend our time in long and arcane primary votes? Who has the time besides the retired?

The government hands out social welfare(especially to the old) like Caesar gave out grain to appease the majority and ensure they will retain power.

Meanwhile our country jails about 1% of the population and denies felons from voting.

But please keep repeating that voting counts (SHOUT IT IN ALL CAPS EVEN!), if only you could actually explain how or give any argument for it beyond your insistence that it is true.

Obama taught constitutional law, the guy who signs off on killing Americans and is a torture apologist. Voting does not work and is a waste of time, if anything voting continues to provide a false legitimacy to an illegitimate system.

Hoover died over 40 years ago, who knows what he would say about the FBI today given their new found love of torture, and the governments new policy of murdering anyone, including US citizens without meaningful due process.

But do go on, trot out some stupid internet meme while the American government continued it's descent into the abyss.

indeed, all those Chicago cops using their blacksite didn't seem to have any trouble doing what they please to their victims, including murdering them.

Simply more proof that the laws have become illegitimate tools of power for the elite and corrupt. American is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word, but a tiered society of those inside the halls of power, given extraordinary and unaccountable powers to detain, torture, murder others and the meek who suffer such atrocities.

It's laughable and sad anyone appeals to the court system for a remedy when they simply are a rubber stamp, but what do people expect when secret courts and NSLs abound?

Voting won't help, legal redress won't help, what then can you do?

People who prattle on about conspiracy theories really having nothing to add after the snowden revelations or wikileaks. Conspiracy theory? Nope, conspiracy fact, the US government does so many secret and nefarious activities the only sane default is to assume ulterior motives.

Half hearted at best. The flimsy article mentions three cases, one of which was a witch trial brought by Goldman Sachs.

Libor fraud? Pass. Money laundering for drug cartels? Pass.

Would you believe it just if someone robbed you, was caught and had a pay a fine of half the amount they took?

The government essentially allows criminal fraud by the powerful and then takes their cut of the profits, meanwhile the weak and poor continue to suffer, but luckily we got intellectuals who can explain away how its all too complicated.

Complete and utter bullshit.

Lol, they aren't even trying, how can they lose if they don't even begun the suit. Lol, apologist failure.

The former top justice official is on record stating they don't prosecute becuase they fear systemic risk, ie too big to jail, too big to fail, all just mottos and lies to let your fellow country club members off the hook.

A basic fallacy and tautology, I'm sure if I list a thinker you will simply state they aren't respected or are 'fringe'.

Does the Chicago blacksite count extraordinary evidence? There is so much evidence of police illegality, wanton murder, and lack of criminal action at every level, from the bottom to to the top where our country commits torture and does nothing that it is extraordinary for anyone to not belief America is a police state. You life in an oligarchy ruled by a corrupt elite, I can even site academic evidence of such but again, you argue by tautologies so why bother? Open your eyes.

Simply untrue.

Airports. No fly lists. Mass surveillance. Free speech zones, civil forfeiture, national security letters. Millions of Americans have a security clearance, the government has created a two tier system of those inside and everyone else. Big media is tightly controlled in America, and after TPP and other international treaties the internet will also be even more tightly controlled. Civil liberties have been extensively erroded since 9-11, how can anyone besides a shill or the ignorant not know such basic facts?

Peoples bald assertion that America is not a police state is empty useless rhetoric, plenty of facts disagree with such simple, propagandistic statements. Try actually contributing instead of shouting useless nonsense.

EDIT:

It is clear no significant counter arguments can be made, so instead down votes and accusations. Enjoy your echo chamber HN

And what will be done? Nothing. The government can radiate you without consequence, without audit, without anyone being held responsible, and if that ever changes it will be the tax payers who pay the fine to radiate themselves while the corrupt gain lucrative contracts for doing such a fine service.

Americans live in a police state and they are too cowed to even admit such a basic truth.