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dragontamer

Someone needs to learn American History...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

When the FBI start assassinating American Citizens in their sleep after an agent drugs their food to silence African American Political movements... THEN we can start talking about a "police state".

Remember: Martin Luther King Jr. was spied on by the FBI for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#FBI_sur...

Today's laws make such surveillance and wiretapping illegal.

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>>When the FBI start assassinating American Citizens in their sleep after an agent drugs their food to silence African American Political movements... THEN we can start talking about a "police state".

You do realize that the USA committed extrajudicial murder of an American citizen during the current president's term, right? Or are you just ignoring it because it's inconvenient to your narrative?

>>Today's laws make such surveillance and wiretapping illegal.

And yet we have the entire population under surveillance. Compared to that, spying on a handful of civil leaders is nothing.

> And yet we have the entire population under surveillance. Compared to that, spying on a handful of civil leaders is nothing.

If the FBI of the 1960's had the technology of today, I guarantee that they would have done the same—and probably more. Not to excuse the intrusion of today, but the government of the 1960's was certainly no better.

There's also a case to be made that it was no worse, and it was, in reality, extremely limited technologically.

Most people today living in industrialized countries are living under surveillance nearly as intense as MLK was under, and people of interest are under a lot more. This comment was probably logged.

>>> And yet we have the entire population under surveillance. Compared to that, spying on a handful of civil leaders is nothing.

You didn't read the Fred Hampton article.

The spying done under COINTELPRO allowed the FBI to assassinate US citizens on US soil extra-judiciously. Fred Hampton's cold dead body is historical proof of that.

King was just spied upon. But other civil rights leaders like Fred Hampton were straight up assassinated.

US Police power is _weaker_ today than it was in the 60s.

>>> You do realize that the USA committed extrajudicial murder of an American citizen during the current president's term, right? Or are you just ignoring it because it's inconvenient to your narrative?

Sorry, I seem to have missed this.

Americans were killed in all wars, extrajudiciously when they leave America and start making propaganda for the other side. Anwar al-Awlaki's death is an extremely common occurrence.

What happened to Fred Hampton makes Anwar al-Awlaki's death look patriotic. First, Fred Hampton's assassination took place in Chicago. Fred Hampton didn't run away from America, he simply went to his Apartment, talked with some "friends" (one of which was a plant who gave him a drugged beverage), and then went to sleep.

Soon afterwards, the FBI raided his home and shot him dead as he slept. Fred Hampton was completely unaware that he was even being tracked by the FBI, as it was all secret.

Anwar Al Awlaki on the other hand, ran away to foreign countries. The US made claims against Anwar Al Awlaki publicly, and ordered him to court. Al Awlaki refused, remained in foreign countries and worked for a terrorist organization. He may have been a US Citizen technically when he was shot by a drone, but his loyalty is most definitely under question.

And at very least, the nature of Anwar Al Awlaki's attack was entirely public the whole time. We all knew he was targeted by Obama for at least a year before they got him.

So when we start shooting hellfire missiles to assassinate US citizens in Chicago... entirely in secret like how we used to do things in 1960s, call me.

But from a historical context, Anwar Al Awlaki has _nothing_ on Fred Hampton.

> "Someone needs to learn American History"

Personal attacks like this add nothing to your comment. It would have been better to leave that sentence out, or replace it with something less personal like "there are examples of worse behavior in American History".

-----

"Not the absolute worst US presidential administration of all time" isn't really a compelling argument for why we shouldn't criticize this one.

Oh, he can be critical if he wants. Open Criticism of presidents is what makes Americans strong.

But when he says stuff like "like no other president before him" he needs to be ready for a historical counter-argument. I happen to know the history of several presidents ya see, and can see what Obama and Bush have done in context.

These recent Presidents are actually quite good historically, despite their disapproval ratings. Movies and stories romanticize the past, forgetting major details like Blacks illegally sitting in the front of busses... or illegally drinking out of certain water fountains.

"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this and every country but his own." --- W. S. Gilbert

If you are such a person, I will call you out on it. Criticize the president, for it is good. But if you start invoking history, be prepared for my counter-arguments.

Counter-arguments are great. Personal attacks are not. You can make your point better by not making it about the other person's personal failings.

Notice how I rephrased your point in my previous comment so that it wasn't about him, but was instead completely about history. It makes the point stronger.

And you can make your points better by attacking my central point. Besides, tracker1 isn't a child. If he is feeling uncomfortable with my prose, he can talk to me directly.

I don't have any reason to attack your central point (I find it mostly agreeable.)

I'm not defending tracker1; I'm defending Hacker News. Personal attacks make HN worse. They are low-value phrases that sometimes drag down high-value comments. The guidelines [0] are quite explicit about this, and the current top story [1] is about trying to improve comment quality (a discussion which is, in part, related to an e-mail exchange that came in response to a personal attack directed at my wife in [2].)

So, I reiterate: please don't make personal attacks on Hacker News.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html -- the paragraph with the word "shortened" in it

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585597

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552958

I'm not forgiving any past sins of the government. As for Hiroshima, that was during an active-combat war with an actual declaration of war that was against a set of countries and their allies not some conceptual enemy whose definition is completely flexible and often distorted.

The surveillance tools being used today far exceed what was used even in the 60's.

Then Vietnam / Korean War, the Iranian Civilian Plane the US blew up in 1988, Iran-Contra, and the platitude of covert ops that pissed off South America.

There is a platitude of terrible wars that the US has partaken in through the years. At least Bush's war started with 5000+ US Citizens dying. The war of our generation was the first American blood spilled on American Soil since Pearl Harbor.

Osama Bin Laden was the first successful attack on New York City by a foreign entity since the War of 1812. Keep that in mind.

The legitimacy of Bush's war is far more than any of the other massive mistakes of foreign policy the US has done over the recent decades.

Come on, the US actually has had its best run of Foreign Policy in decades, mostly because US Citizens these past few years are actually keenly aware of US mistakes abroad. In the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s, US Citizens routinely ignored American aggression worldwide.

As bad as Obama's / Bush's wars were, they didn't drop Agent Orange across a country and poison the population for decades to come.

>>> The surveillance tools being used today far exceed what was used even in the 60's.

Compare COINTELPRO, which allowed warrantless surveillance against American Citizens for decades before being disassembled in the 80s.

Contrast that with the NSA leaks, which are about metadata collection.

Unfortunately they are the tools of warfare used by enimies of the US as well as domestic terrorists as well. The werent used in the 60's simply because they were not available back then.

Oh, but our government had giving small pox blankets to Native Americans, or syphilis to African Americans or rounding up Asians and putting them 'segregated camps'.

That American History class may not be a bad idea. Just sayin.

>Today's laws make such surveillance and wiretapping illegal.

Which laws are you referring to here?

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1802

US Code 50, section 1802. This law was established in the 80s after the Watergate scandal showed US Congress how much police power the Presidents (specifically Nixon) were assuming.

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