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Comment by kumarm | Hacker News Reader

The Article doesn't cover basics of Criminality of Indian Politicians.

These are just two example in last week from 1 south Indian state caught on camera (Because Local media would not cover since pretty much media in state supports ruling party):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOueUSVSuYk [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hG2fqW-tcM [2]

Very rarely criminality of Indian politicians comes out because Media do not want to cover it. These showed up because someone could record. But in both cases, elected representatives and their goons are already out of trouble.

India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.

[1]A journalist being beaten by local representatives brother because he wrote on their corruption.

[2]Goons of local representative beating a women (1 eyed mind you) because she didn't agree for their illegal construction in front of her house.

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The videos you linked were so hard to watch.

> India is a land of lawlessness and that's a reality.

It's a little more subtle : well connected people to whatever they want and get away with no consequences. People who dare to oppose these powerful people discover the true meaning of hell. It's true practically everywhere in the world including the US.

IMO for all the shit that social networks receive (for good reasons), one of the side effects is that it's a lot easier to share such gross violations of law an example of which are the above videos. In a way social networks give people power.

I disagree, at least for more local issues. Social media or other attention platforms only help if there's a single action that needs to happen.

Case in point: a few neighbors had a shitbird stealing milk bottles delivered to our porches. The police obviously aren't sending in the detectives for 4-5 $2 bottles a week. But we captured the guy in camera, did a social media assault that attracted the news. A city fireman saw the guy on TV, recognized him from another petty theft, and called his cop friend who found the guy.

That's what social media does for individual or small group problems.

If you have a problem with a building project or city action, social media will attract sympathetic comments and crazy people. To get action, you need to round up people and show up at events and hearings.

I've helped people out fighting powerful interests.l at a local level. They always fight back, but in modern America you don't have people showing up to rape your wife or beat you. At the end of the day, powerful people need money, and its very possible to create the perception of risk that will slow down the funding stream. That tends to solve David v. Goliath issues.

>People who dare to oppose these powerful people discover the true meaning of hell. It's true practically everywhere in the world including the US.

It can be true in the US, but it definitely is not the norm. This statement rings false. For all the problems the US has, yes including corruption in some places, it is almost entirely unique in its freedom of speech and its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.

It may not take exactly the same shape in the US, but a friend of a friend employed by some billionaires was injured on the job, and when the employee made a workplace injury claim, the company sued the employee. They play other psychological techniques to keep the other employees from speaking up or leaving. [Deliberately vague]

> its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.

Are we talking of the country of COINTELPRO, that killed civil rights activists, or obliterated unions and the US socialist party by force and shady tactics? it's like, you can say what you want, as long as it has zero consequences -- otherwise, prepare to meet some serious shit.

We destroyed the unions so hard that there are over 7 million government employees who are members of various unions.

Because when a government really destroys a group they let huge swaths of their own employees join that group.

No, they make sure that what's left as unions is pretty much harmless.

Where are the unions in Indian IT companies and BPOs?

It's because in the US, corruption is just legal thanks to lobbying.

Plus, you are in a country where you can go to war to satisfy your friends benefit. Lie blatantly about the motives. Spend billions of dollars for it in a country in massive debt. Get caught doing so. Yet ignore international instutiions, go kill thousands of people anyway and get away with it.

You are in a country bailing the banks that ruined themself.

You are in a country where it's legal to snatch somebody without a trial. Where you can get in secret prisons and be tortured. All that justified by events that killed less people than the flu.

Where massive surveillance is allowed by politicians for security, yet they ban all attempt of transparency on their own actions.

The only difference with India is that they are better at it :

- they don't make it obvious and chocking enough so that it leads to a strong reaction

- they use all the tricks in the book to divert attention

But in the end, the US is so corrupted it could be a case study for future historians.

France is pretty much the same, mind you. We have just less guns and more smug.

Lobbying is a good thing and as Indian citizen I wish it was legal in India. It helps small groups unite and openly and transparently seek legislative changes they want. In India you bribe secretly. The party wants all funds channeled to party supremo so they changes laws to make sure Individual legislators can not pass any bills of their own against party wishes. So that wont happen in India. We will always have to pay bribes secretly.

>Plus, you are in a country where you can go to war to satisfy your friends benefit.

India does not have financial muscle to start a war but Indian government starts projects to help friends all the time.

> You are in a country bailing the banks that ruined themself.

Almost all major Indian banks are owned by state heavily mismanaged and completely inefficient. They run as jobs program and are every year bailed out using taxpayer money.

>You are in a country where it's legal to snatch somebody without a trial. Where you can get in secret prisons and be tortured. All that justified by events that killed less people than the flu.

Indian government can put you in jail for years without trial. Even for a high profile celebrity case takes on an average 10 years to conclude.

>Where massive surveillance is allowed by politicians for security, yet they ban all attempt of transparency on their own actions.

There is no privacy in India. If the cop asks you to undress you better do.

Oh this is not a contest of India vs US. Corruption in India is terrible. I'm just saying the US has no advice to give in the matter.

> It helps small groups unite and openly and transparently seek legislative changes they want.

This is true, but it benefits the already wealthy a hell of a lot more.

I dont see a problem with that. Will you mind if Elon Musk convinces Trump to fast track alternative energy or Google convinces proper tests of self driving cars ?

Yes, because it's the pay for influence aspect as a concept that is the problem.

Elon Musk is one man with good intentions in a sea of obscenely wealthy, self-serving plutocrats. The bad far outweighs the good.

At the very least if you are going to allow financial lobbying, you need to put a hard cap on the amounts, and the cap should be low. Very low.

> ...it is almost entirely unique in its freedom of speech and its allowance for political opposition without fear of retribution as a modus operandi.

This is a common misconception of Americans and is blatantly untrue. America is absolutely not the only free country in the world and, in some areas, it is less free.

Take press freedom, for instance: the US currently ranks 41st:

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

There are plenty of other fully democratic countries in the world, where freedom of speech is accepted, encouraged, and enshrined in well-respected laws.

this is what people are thinking about when they refer to 'American exceptionalism'.

You can't seriously believe this?

It should go without saying given the state of the world at the moment:

People can believe some astonishing things; without making those things true.

    > well connected people to whatever
    > they want and get away with no
    > consequences

    > It's true practically everywhere
    > in the world

With the occasional glaring exception (Jimmy Savile, for example) I simply don't believe that's true in most of Western Europe.

The press, the judiciary, the police, and the civil service are strong institutions. Reading up on "Plebgate" will give you a feel for the truly pedestrian nature of power abuse in the UK, and what happens when the police go rogue.

Don't underestimate how much you don't see. Millionaires fly without even seeing border security, meanwhile every other person spends hours waiting in line. It may not be beatings in the street but there are many laws that simply don't apply when you're rich enough.

    > Millionaires fly without
    > even seeing border security

For clarity, you're saying that it's possible to arrive in -- for example -- the UK without being subject to immigration or border controls?

If you're merely pointing out that it's possible to receive much speedier service with money, then yes, there are a wealth of commercially available options operated by airports, private and public alike. That's hardly evidence of corruption.

You ever see the president get a pat down when he returns from over seas?

I'm as much in favor of equal application of laws as anyone else, but please explain how wasting the President's time would help anyone else one iota?

This is an extreme example, but I do think that having lawmakers out through the same process as the plebs would lead to better laws.

Johnny Depp would disagree with you that the laws simply don't apply:

https://youtu.be/ORpBAIB9j64

Remember that this was only notable because the laws did apply.

Organized crime have had a _tremendous_ influence in Europe, and most countries of the world, up to the very top of governments. In wartime, or when the government is in a weak position domestically, they don't hesitate to resort to the muscle of mafias, and of course this has long term consequences: once they have helped the "state", they have a free hand to do a lot of things -- a lot.

Could you provide some contemporary examples in Scandinavian or Western Europe of where organized crime has had a blind eye turned to it as a result of using mafia-sponsored "muscle"?

The muscle part is mostly historical, up to the '80s maybe. Now it's more about money eg. to fund campaigns. Cf. Berlusconi, Sarkozy.

Scandinavia is the poster child for ethics, and from what I know I would say rightly so, but it's not representative of Western Europe as a whole.

I think I was incorrectly using Western Europe to mean Western Europe minus Southern Europe. I don't believe this happens in France, Germany, Holland, the U.K., etc

Your inclusion of Sarkozy surprises me. Googling for Sarkozy and mafia is bringing me a bunch of antisemitic sites and a site called info-resistance — do you have any reliable sources?

Sarkozy is prosecuted for several charges regarding the funding of his electoral campaigns (who cost far more than what the law allows), and it is now extremely likely that Gaddafi is illegally involved. Prior to that, Chirac had strong ties with Charles Pasqua, whom he appointed Interior Minister -- Pasqua was clearly linked to the Corsican mafia and he later funded the infamous SAC -- muscle from the mafia to counter the OAS. As for Mitterand, he made it possible for Berlusconi to invest in France via Mediaset and "La Cinq", among others.

So there's a long history of shady ties at the very top of the French institution, pretty often in the form of what was deemed as a "necessary evil", but corruption nonetheless. That's pretty much summarizes the spirit of the French Fifth Republic, anyway: "we go to do what we got to do, and the public wouldn't understand".

You are severely exaggerating the US and severely underreporting the state of lawlessness in India.

You can get shot for simply brushing some up jumped real estate dealer's car in the capital city - a friend's colleague had to learn the hard way.

"Because Local media would not cover since pretty much media in state supports ruling party)' --What's the arrangement there? Do the parties own/control the local press or is the press frightened of the parties?

Jason Jones from the Daily Show years ago did a piece about not "fake news" in India but "paid news" for politicians, pretty interesting:

* Video: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mrx7ec/the-daily-show-with-jon...

* Reality check: https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-was-The-Daily-Shows-expos...

As an Indian, there are two things I take for granted:

1. Politicians, by default, are corrupt. They are also not to be trifled with - if I accidentally bump into a small-time politician's car at a signal, I'm hightailing it out of there lest I get beaten up.

2. If I get into trouble (especially with a politician or a well-connected person), the last person I'll turn to for help are the cops.

Most occidental countries have corrupted politicians as well. They are just better at playing the system to never be convicted.

In France the elite is incredibly good at it. The best example of this is Charles Pasqua. He has been linked to many, many, manyyyyyyyy shady cases, but every time found innocent : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Pasqua

What's coming now is worst. The old generation was trying to cover their track. The new one doesn't even bother. They are exposed, play a little TV game, and then carry on like nothing happened. It works so why not ?

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