Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
№ 6: It’s run by one side or the other?
№ 2: Oh, certainly. But both sides are becoming identical. What, in fact, has been created, is an international community – a perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides, facing each other, suddenly realize that they are looking into a mirror, they will see that this is the pattern for the future.
№ 6: The whole Earth, as the village?
№ 2: That is my hope. What’s yours?
№ 6: I’d like to be the first man on the moon.
— № 2 & № 6, The Prisoner, The Chimes of Big Ben, 1967
If the games were to be held in North Korea then this would be morally reprehensible in my view. Such an evil regime should not be rewarded with hosting them. Russia does not rise to the level of barbarity of North Korea, clearly. But I think a compelling argument can be made that it is morally wrong to hold them in Russia (and the U.S. too).
It is certainly true that the games were held in Nazi Germany. I don't know what pointing this out has to do with whether or not it can be morally wrong to hold the games in a country with a sufficient level of human rights abuses. Clearly my position is that holding them in Nazi Germany was morally wrong.
That organizers made bad choices in the past does not negate my position or diminish my point.
Considering Jesse Owens threw SERIOUS doubt on the Nazi precept of racial superiority.
Certain American athletes also chased Hitler from the Stadium once the Track and Field events started, and Hitler was informed by the IOC that he must receive ALL winners... or none.
Hitler chose to receive none.
After the first day... seeing how things were going... he no longer attended the stadium.
Speaking of transcending political intentions, there's a story from those olympics where German long jumper Luz Long gave Jesse Owens tips to help him qualify for the event. There are countless other gestures that demonstrate the same spirit at that event.
The fact that Russia wants to imprison the athletes for being open about what they are is an affront to the games themselves. Hitler didn't even imprison Olympic athletes that didn't match with his views.
It's possible that the North Korean government has killed more North Koreans over that time period; I see estimates for the 1948-1987 period of 700,000 - 3,500,000 deaths. However even assuming that rate remained the same subsequently it is at most within the same order of magnitude as US caused deaths. I don't really see a great difference morally.
It's a strange argument to make anyway. We don't need to compare the US government to poorly understood North Korean atrocities to measure the awfulness of the atrocities it commits which are numerous and heinous.
North Korea also threatens to attack civilian populations indiscriminately (e.g. Seoul, Japan, etc) if they don't get their way. They even threaten nuclear war on an semi-annual basis.
On the other hand, the US strikes may kill civilians due to poor intelligence gathering or 'acceptable levels of collateral,' but they have not indiscriminately bombed (or even threatened to bomb) civilian populations. There is at least an attempt made to limit the amount of death dealt, even if it's not always successful. I'm not admitting that this is good, or that (e.g.) the US should have been in Iraq in the first place, but claiming that the US is on the level of North Korea is laughable.
>they have not indiscriminately bombed (or even threatened to bomb) civilian populations
That is pretty disingenuous. We both know that the US government counts any adult male in certain countries/regions as a militant rather than civilian. If you claim nobody is a civilian then of course you never kill civilians
Also, I would like to hear your defence of the Iraq sanctions. You can hardly claim that was accidental or poor intelligence or that it wasn't indiscriminate. Much like in North Korea those excess deaths can be (and were by the US government) attributed to natural causes.
I challenge you to cite an incident where the US has openly said, "do this or we will launch nukes at [city full of civilians]."
> That is pretty disingenuous. We both know that the US government counts any adult male in certain countries/regions as a militant rather than civilian. If you claim nobody is a civilian then of course you never kill civilians
Your post is the one that comes across (to me at least) as being disingenuous. My claim was that the US is not indiscriminately bombing civilian populations. You somehow are trying to conflate this with me saying that the US is not killing any civilians at all, which I did not claim, nor do I believe.
This section of your post comes across like you're looking for a way to vent your anger about how the US counts "any adult male in certain countries/regions as a militant." In doing so, you are also discounting women and children as civilians by implicitly claiming that only male civilians are killed (and then 'covered up' by claiming that they must have been militants).
> Also, I would like to hear your defence of the Iraq sanctions
I'm unsure what you're talking about. The economic sanctions against Iraq post-Gulf War but prior to the invasion? If you claim deaths due to economic sanctions are the fault of the countries that are imposing sanctions, then technically most of the world was responsible. Carrying this line of reasoning further, you could blame the US for deaths in North Korea due to economic sanctions, no?
From what I've heard so far, LGBTQ athletes will not be discriminated against at the Games. The anti-"gay propaganda" laws have no affect on the sports. Needless to say the law is abhorrent, it doesn't seem like it will prevent athletes who have been training all their lives from competing.
Olympic Athletes have diplomatic immunity.
The only REAL concern athletes have... is from the IOC.
But yeah... that's a pretty big concern... because the IOC is worse than the Russian Government.
And there lies the problem now:
Since the US together with the EU have become too corrupt, there is no one left to guard the moral high ground. The conclusion would be that this misery is now the new standard - unless we begin to act.
Ultimately the IOCC should do a better job of picking host countries in the first place, but they are more hopelessly corrupt than almost any other organization in the world.
Internationally Putin is seen as having struck a blow against American imperialism. It's clear Obama wasn't anticipating Russia to helpfully offer a way out of his "red line".
Perhaps you were hoping for the US to totally and completely control the entire process, and be able to take all credit? Seems a little greedy in the context of a diplomatic negotiation.
It is not part of the mission of the Olympic Games to destroy democracies.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/kroll/software-transparen...
If you conduct mass surveillance (as does the NSA, the brits and apparently many others too), then people will refrain from expressing themselves freely, out of fear of blowback. Problems will not be discussed anymore, solutions will not be proposed and corruption will flourish. That's the end of democracy.
Usually, schools teach these basics.
Rule of law is still a thing that exists, and courts play a part of it.
I don't know about the extent of spying to deal with political dissent in the EU, but I know quite a few people who were subjected to rather intense illegal surveillance in Norway, that was often clearly intended to intimidate (when top level people in the security services start conversations with you on the street about the argument you had with your wife, in your living room, the other night, it is pretty clear what the purpose is). When this monitoring was rolled up, it eventually was revealed that the leader of the parliamentary commission investigating the illegal surveillance had been put under illegal surveillance while he was investigating the illegal surveillance...
Given that this level of surveillance was happening in Norway relatively recently, I find it highly improbably that there's no extensive politically motivated spying in other European countries too, to this day, whether legal or illegal.
There is difference - sure. It is not politically acceptable to be seen to interfere with political parties at home in Europe or the US, so there may be less blatant interference these days, other than with fringe groups that are easier to find ways to label that makes them tolerable targets.
Some links from recent UK cases to get you started:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/12/met-chief-bri...
Steven Lawrence was a black teenager murdered in a racially motived attack in 1993. The racist police force bungled the investigation. This was a big scandal and there was eventually a public inquiry. Recently it has emerged that the police used undercover police officers to infiltrate and undermine the campaign by the family to get justice and expose the racism in the police force. The police neglected to mention this during the public enquiry.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/24/undercover-officer...
Over the course of several decades dozens of under cover police officers stole the identities of dead children and infiltrated environmental protest groups and were encouraged to enter into sexual relationships with women in the groups they were targeting. In some cases even fathering children with the women they were deceiving. All while still being married in their real lives, which they returned to once the assignments ended.
"Upon hearing of the Orwellian-like surveillance at the Olympic games in Russia, the US team has decided to boycott the games. However, we are not boycotting the games because of Russia's surveillance plans, but because several major world governments now consider ubiquitous surveillance acceptable in free and open societies, with out own government, the US government, leading the way. We will cease our boycott when the US government sets a moral and ethical example for the Russian government to cease its plans by canceling its dragnet surveillance programs of both US citizens and our brothers and sisters from around the world. We are asking our brothers and sisters in competition from Russia, China, England and any other country guilty of mass surveillance to join us in this effort. If this demonstration ends any significance of the Olympic games this year and into the indefinite future it will have been because our collective governments no longer should good faith towards the people of this World, and we will no longer see a reason to continue to compete atheletically on their behalf."
The average person doesn't care about NSA surveillance-- just as the average person didn't care about Lincoln arresting newspaper editors and suspending habeas corpus, FDR putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, J. Edgar Hoover sending agents to spy on and harass suspected communists (or just people he didn't like), George W. Bush locking up terrorists in Guantanamo, etc.
When you get right down to it, historical precedent strongly indicates that the average person does not care whether the government actually respects the law in its pursuit of national security.
London Olympics were tapped as well. At G20 summit in 2009 GCHQ even spied on foreign diplomats by hacking their devices and setting up fake internet cafes.
In this case, the comment is really saying:
a) The parent comment suggests it's ok because other people do it.
b) The argument that things are ok because the other side does it is not a valid one however.
c) Take murder, for instance. If one side commited murder, no-one would consider it's ok for everyone to.
d) Hence, by analogy, the argument is incorrect.
I'm sorry for having to write this out, but this line of misreading does frustrate me. Surely it's possible to read subtext in people's writing, and not jump only to the literal meaning?
Before, everyone knew that spying was happening here and there, but as an ordinary, politically uninteresting person, you could (perhaps naively) pretty much assume it wouldn't affect you.
But we are rapidly reaching a stage where intense surveillance is close to guaranteed on everyone, and the potential for abuse is much greater. "Ordinary" people going to Russia to watch to the Olympics won't just have to worry about being targeted for political reasons, they'll have to worry about their business communications, financial information, having details of their sexual life leaked and then being confronted by a brutal mob, reaching a position of power and being blackmailed in the future, etc.
In the past, Western countries could have protested in some way about behavior such as this and perhaps used their leverage to make changes, but now it appears that this tyrannical approach to human rights is becoming standardized.
This is case everywhere. Do you think NSA will just delete their databases? It is just question when all this data will get connected with Visa Applications, IRS and others. In 10 years DMV will be sending speeding tickets based on data -mining.
I can even imagine petabyte leak when all this data will just appear on bittorrent.
I expect the same is true in much of the rest of the world too. But as a European, I can say the sentiment is widespread here.
How about that western word?
None of those "putin journo killings" has never been proven to have any links to Putin. All these anti-Russian accusations are moral equivalents of people claiming that US government killed Michael Hastings.
So please - STFU.
When the Russian government has someone killed, they don't die in a mysterious accident. They're gunned down, when they're lucky. When they're not, they die an agonizing death after being subtly and fatally poisoned by radioactive isotopes.
There's a big difference between countries in Europe and their views on the world. I'm pretty convinced countries more envelopped in realpolitik will have people less convinced of your equivalence.
Not trying to defend Russian govt (which is without a doubt pretty sinister), but this 'journalist murdering' thing that pops up every time Westerners discuss Russian internal policy is a bit off the mark. The way you say it cues that all Russian media is pro-government and Russian citizens en masse are either brainwashed drones or impregnable oppositional free-thinkers. While in fact its only TV which is thoroughly controlled by the government. Russian press is pretty vocal and most of it is clearly critical of the United Russia party policy. More so Russian online press — I don't know a single popular online news outlet which isn't critical of United Russia (modestly or very much so). Sure there are a couple of high profile murder cases that may be linked to Russian govt, but list of murdered journalists found in wiki is in its entirety composed either of people died in 90s or people whose death may (or may not) be connected with provincial level oligarchs, especially on North Caucasus. So saying that murdering journalists is what Russian govt does is just not true. It is true that govt doesn't provide them with utmost security though.
Why do I even care? Because you guys could be more critical of real and serious United Russia's wrongdoings (like prosecution of a row of activists involved in protests of 2011-2), instead of reiterating on secondary matters like journalist murders (ostensibly committed by government) or gay rights.
I hope I will not have to change accounts after this post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_R...
Tell me that anything remotely like this has happened in the US or Western Europe.
Reading that list, it almost feels like murdering a Russian journalist is what one does instead of sending an angry letter to the editor.
Sure, it looks like government isn't providing them (and everyone else, for that matter) with enough security, but it's nothing like saying it deliberately murders them. The most hard evidence for me is that Russian press itself doesn't put much emphasis on it.
About Politkovskaya and Litvinenko:
The version about Politkovskaya murder I find the most plausible is that her murder is linked with Putin's ally and appointed president of Chechnya Kadyrov. Before her death she was working on human rights violations in Chechnya, including torture. In fact, you can still find her last interview about it on Novaya Gazeta (newspaper she worked for) website, dated 9th October of 2006. What Russian government did here is covering Kadyrov and finding scapegoats who are supposed to represent Chechen 'terrorists' (opposed to Kadyrov and Russian govt). Torture committed by federal and local pro-Russian forces is still a reality in North Caucasus, just about a year ago there was a story on it in 170 thousands readers strong Russian Reporter Magazine. Western press didn't seem to give due attention to the cause Politkovskaya died for, instead preferring, as usual, to focus on apparently more important issues such as gay people forbidden to proclaim their sexuality in public. At least no one has died over that story yet.
Litvinenko case is a weird one. So he is some sort of whistleblower who apparently disclosed Putin's inside job and had to die due to Polonium poisoning. The story goes like this: Litvinenko has disclosed Putin's inside job (which most likely isn't an inside job, basically it's a Russian equivalent of 9/11-as-an-inside-job story), so FSB had to make him painfully die almost in a Sicilian mafia fashion. I am not a Western layman so I don't automatically deem crazy everyone who happened to be in power and at the same time to the East from certain meridian. I see why Sicilian mafia would kill somebody after the fact: it doesn't care much about publicity and it doesn't want to be betrayed once again. But I don't see why would Putin do that, he deeply cares about his perception in the West (as long as it doesn't meddle with his authoritative pretensions and support of his electorate) and he doesn't often blow up houses (if at all). Since the word already spread and you could buy a book in Putin-blows-up-houses genre in any Russian kiosk that sells cigarettes, yellow rags and pulp fiction, killing the man responsible for that in such a bizarre fashion (poisoning someone with radioactive materiel is in the same basket with feeding someone to their pet bear, between two shots of vodka, saying 'Na zdorovje, tovarishchi') is acknowledgement of guilt. Tldr if Putin did kill Litvinenko, it was the most stupid thing he did in his entire career.
Is there some cultural convention in the US that I don't understand whereby murdering (white) journalists is really really wrong and never possibly justifiable but murdering (arab) children is a perfectly acceptable part of the rough and tumble of geopolitics? Otherwise I don't understand your narrow focus on journalists.
As an aside, it's not like the US never deliberately targets journalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Death_of_Tareq_Ayyo...
I've got no trouble making a distinction between killing someone because of a mistake or even because of negligence and killing someone deliberately because they are writing things that are inconvenient to you. Come to think of it, neither does the law; the law has made that distinction since the middle ages. It calls one of those "murder", and the other something else.
So, attributing their death to "Chechnya" is a little like attributing a hypothetical murder of Sy Hersh to the Iraqis.
Shorter: no, I think you're wrong about this.
The law doesn't have a specific term for people who just have a callous indifference to the lives of others, but people throughout human history have used a lot of terms to describe such people. Today I will use the term 'scum'.
Secondly, the collateral damage is not the goal of the drone strikes, in fact they use drones to reduce the amount of collateral damage(for reasons beyond precision munitions). If you run the numbers, the amount of collateral deaths are far lower than conventional airstrikes. The deaths of journalists is/was the explicit intent of the power structure in Russia because it furthers their political goals.
Second, terrorism is not an existential threat. In fact, there is a strong argument that the drone strikes actually increase the number of "terrorists" and make a successful strike against the US more likely, not less.
So the way I see it, Russia kills journalists who threaten the existing power structure, and the US kills more-or-less random people in order to bolster the existing power structure. Two, equally-disgusting, sides of the same coin.
http://rense.com/general36/camm.htm
US bombed al-Jazeera in Kabul
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/nov/17/warinafghanista...
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27688647