Snowden WAS the Feds' quarry in Lavabit case, redaction blunder reveals It was Edward Snowden's email account the FBI was targeting in its extraordinary legal case against Lavabit, we can now confirm. Lavabit ran an encrypted email service that Edward Snowden was thought to have used in 2013 to contact journalists about the top-secret NSA files he had in his possession. In documents published …
Does anyone know any longer ...
The guys trying to blow up your car, shoot you on the beach, or destroy the theatre are deffo bad guys.
The Governments spying on their own citizens with out specific warrant, killing people in countries they are not at war with, detaining people without trail... They are probably bad guys even if they claim it's for our own good.
> The guys trying to blow up your car, shoot you on the beach, or destroy the theatre are deffo bad guys.
I wouldn't have it as clear cut. I have found myself the victim of one such attack, in which me and my colleagues were targets because of what we represented. The individuals who carried out the attack might have been wrong, in my opinion, on a number of levels, but at the same time you see how their goals and their struggle did make sense in many ways. I hold no grudge against them and I respect them, as you respect your enemies.
So having got that t-shirt, I cannot agree with you that those blowing up your car or shooting at you are "deffo bad guys". I'm not exactly Mother Theresa myself after all.
"Bad guys" and "good guys" is subjective. In the end, it always comes down to "people who are on your side" vs "people who are against you".
Anyone who's trying to blow you up, no matter what their motivations, is against you.
Back in the day, we used to think that was pretty much the end of the story. People trying to stop you from being blown up were, therefore, on your side (a.k.a. "good guys"). But now, thanks to the ascent of a nasty little thing called "public choice theory", we don't believe that any longer: we think the people trying to stop us from being blown up very likely have Designs on us themselves, and need watching just as closely as the others.
Only time will tell who are the bad guys and who are not...
To quote Dan Browne
“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
"No level of injustice makes Terrorists into Good Guys when they attack civilians."
So what level of injustice makes soldiers/drone operators into Good Guys when they attack civilians? Remember, under the rules of war, most "terrorists" are civilians.
What "injustice" turns those occupying other countries many miles away from their own borders into Good Guys, which is an attack on civilians even if no-one is killed?
I initially planned to post a comment to the OP that, in my opinion, no-one thinks they are the Bad Guy when they act: either they think they are doing good, or they don't think about it at all After they act, some will decide that they were the Bad Guy, with psychological effects from remorse to a shifting of their world-view to make them the Good Guy in their own eyes.
If all combatants wore UNIFORMS it would be easy to tell who was and who wasn't a combatant. But they don't wear uniforms in the ME for the most part. I personally feel that if you want to tangle, be prepared to die regardless of whom. Civilians are going to be killed no matter how many attempts are made to minimize casualties but war is war. The recent use of mustard & chlorine gas weapons by ISIS and Assad's forces tells me that all things are allowed and that we now know where those WMD's went during the Iraq war. YOU CAN"T FIGHT WITH ONE HAND TIED BEHIND YOUR BACK!
Most of you are too young to have seen what happened in Vietnam but I'm not. Same lies perpetrated about "killing civilians" then as now. They didn't have many in uniform but they sure sent in children with hand grenades and bombs to kill Americans and French and British and Australians. Tell me again who is the coward? That made everyone that approached you an enemy combatant just like now. All you ever saw was the TV news lies and propaganda ginned up against the front line soldiers. Friends of mine who saw this first hand in Vietnam in the late '60's and '70's are still scarred from the experience but most of them still say it was a necessary evil.
EVERYTHING that is happening now has already happened before, right down to the Alinsky-ite, George Soros funded rioting in Chicago last week. There is a war for hearts and minds going on just like in 1968 and same communist instigators are trotting out the same lies.
Wow, there are still dumbasses trying to rewrite history to claim that Saddam maintained an active WMD program after the first Iraq War, hoping to justify the trillions spent ousting him when he had nothing to do with 9/11.
Sorry, you'll have to do better than that. Mustard gas is quite easy to make, and as for chlorine gas....well that's so easy to make that some people unintentionally make it when they mix household cleaners! Consider that as ISIS has overrun vast territories they've been able to take over various industrial plants that make various chemicals, so they have all the raw materials at their disposal.
Plus Assad may have had some WMDs of his own they found when they overran vast areas in Syria, so even if they used "manufactured" WMDs that doesn't mean they came from Iraq and certainly doesn't mean they were manufactured after 1991 (there were many caches of old rusting WMDs found by US troops that they missed the first time, many of which the Iraqis didn't even know about)
Try again.
"No level of injustice makes Terrorists into Good Guys when they attack civilians."
Those are emotive words and they put you in danger of being in the same camp as them. There are no terrorists. There are no good guys. There are no civilians. What you have is a group which will not be satisfied until all opposition to their thought patterns is annihilated.
That's why we should resist them: because they refuse to co-exist with any-thing/one different.
The guys trying to blow up your car, shoot you on the beach, or destroy the theatre are deffo bad guys.
Unless, of course, they sit behind a joystick somewhere in Nevada while trying to blow up your car or your wedding, in which case they are "deffo" good guys.
I do wonder indeed ...
"The guys trying to blow up your car, shoot you on the beach, or destroy the theatre are deffo bad guys." You realize Obama has killed American and British citizens with drones don't you? Then there's Parallel Construction (aka UK's Preston Briefings), falsification of evidence, perjury.
I wonder about Google.
That is a company that's turning now. I see their Android phone comes riddled with Google's spyware. That spyware can do everything from listen to your conversations to record video of your actions, record phone calls, to track location, even when the phone is off (it's called Google Play Service and you can't stop it). It's compulsory, it sends a mass of data to Google, and you technically don't need it running to use your apps.
If FBI demanded the domain keys from Lavabit under a gag order, they've certainly done that for the much bigger target of Google Android Phones.
Snowden reveals they technically can:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/28/edward-snowden-reveals-what-the-nsa-can-allegedly-do-with-your-phone-even-if-its-off/
You can see them picking a test case against Apple iPhone now, what you don't see them doing is picking a case against Google. And their reveal that Apple had previously been cooperative, suggest that Google IS cooperative in these secret surveillance orders. How many world leaders are within earshot of an Android phone or tablet?
You can also see the lack of judicial controls here. FBI demands technical means to spy on everything and is to be trusted (with no mechanism to confirm the trust)?
...the feedback loop between the bad guys of old doing unpleasant things and 'western' governments intervening and making themselves unpopular with people where the bad guys live has been going on for so long that the boundaries between good and bad buy have all but dissapeared, the reasons lost in time, leaving us with perpetual hate and violence on all sides.
"The good of the many" can be used against the manipulator though, strong encryption works well for everyone, it keeps information safe and the playing field level. However, as soon as someone trots out the "think of the children" argument their motives should instantly be suspect. People will do anything for their kids, which is exactly why the argument is being used.
Americans have always been the bad guys. I was brought up on post-cold war propaganda just like every Westerner, but history is all lies. America destabilized the middle east and got their come-uppance. America is the evil empire and needs to collapse for any progress to be made on earth.
I suggest you read up on a bit of history. Start with the two Barbary Coast Wars (when the Sultan of Tunisia told Jefferson, "according to Holy Kuran we are mandated to kill all infidels. It is only because we are merciful that we only hold them hostage" - that is when the Marines were created, and why the song has the "Shores of Tripoli" in it).
The Middle East has been destabilized almost continuously for many reasons and by many different forces since roughly 650 AD.
See also, hmm, let's see ... just for starters: Crimean War, the Great Game (including the Uighurs and Yajub Beg), Hasan Bin Sabbah and the Hashishins (great name for a band ...), the defeat of Alexandria by the Romans (where they salted the fields of North Africa, eliminating the Alexandrians' ability to grow crops and attain a competitive level of power ever again), the millennia of war between the Greeks, Turks and Persians, dating to 1000 BC (see Xenophon, etc.). And the
Oh - and it was the British who were largely in charge of the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th century, who divided the area up into countries that did not match the traditional tribal boundaries, and told the Palestinians and Israelits contradictory things.
You have about five years of study about the real history before you stick your toe into this swamp.
"I suggest you read up on a bit of history. Start with the two Barbary Coast Wars (when the Sultan of Tunisia told Jefferson, "according to Holy Kuran we are mandated to kill all infidels. It is only because we are merciful that we only hold them hostage" - that is when the Marines were created, and why the song has the "Shores of Tripoli" in it)"
<snip>
That is clearly wrong, the U.S. Marine Corps birthday is the 10th of November 1775 and it was formed on that day by a resolution in congress and was led by Captain Samuel Nicholas. It was disbanded later on for two years and then reformed in 1798. The first Barbary war (nominally against Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania [roughly Libya]) was against pirates sheltering in those countries and was from 1801 to 1805. it was during this war that 8 or nine marines and a few companies of mercenaries attempted to seize Tripoli but they were halted at Derna and added it to their battle honours, the marine hymn refers to this event.
Sooo, patronise not. I have served along side marines in a few places including Beirut in the eighties and I am one of those that believe that Bush and his naive little band of adventurers have further destabilised the Middle East to a point of no return.
The world we live in today is no longer the safe (ish) place it used to be and I would put this firmly at the feet of the American state (not the people).
p.s.
It was alleged that the Romans salted the fields of Carthage but this open to debate.
"Oh - and it was the British who were largely in charge of the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th century, who divided the area up into countries that did not match the traditional tribal boundaries, and told the Palestinians and Israelits contradictory things."
Close but no cigar.
True the British were involved in assigning boundaries after the Great War but that was in partnership with France and pre-revolutionary Russia. See Sykes-Picot Agreement
Before that it was the Ottoman empire that was nominally in charge though its influence had been declining for many years.
>You have about five years of study about the real history before you stick your toe into this swamp.
And you need another five years to sort out your own confusion. It wasn't Alexandria that the Romans salted - but Carthage.
Tripoli & the Barbary Coast aren't 'Middle East'. Throwing them in with Uighurs is crude, clumsy analysis.
"....it was the British who were largely in charge of the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th century, who divided the area up into countries that did not match the traditional tribal boundaries...." Ahem. You may want to read up on the Ottoman Empire and the French in Lebanon and Syria. Otherwise a reasonable B- effort.
"....and told the Palestinians and Israelits contradictory things....." Oh dear. "Palestinians"? Sorry, no such people. There were Jews; Christian and Muslim Arabs; Christian, Druze and Muslim Syrians (who did not consider themselves Arabs); Lebanese Muslims and Christians (with many of Greek, Roman, Armenian and Turkish origin) and Europeans all living in the area of Mandate Palestine in 1948, and all have equal right to call themselves "Palestinians". And do you mean "Israelites"?
Has America made mistakes... most definitely yes, but on the whole America has been the greatest force for good on this planet, and produced one of the greatest documents humanity has ever seen, the American constitution. Envious whining from the peanut gallery doesn't change this, the world needs America, America doesn't need you.
>>Envious whining from the peanut gallery doesn't change this, the world needs America, America doesn't need you<<
What a strange thing to say. USA has indeed done many good things, and has many fantastic people in their population, but that kind of nationalistic jingoism isn't healthy. It's either actively trolling, or laughably insular and naive about world events. USA - just a country. There are others.
So the US soldiers in their diverse wars, the drone operators, and those covert CIA operatives are always bad guys? They did a lot more blowing up and shooting up than the opposition ever managed. But then, so were the soldiers fighting Nazi Germany. And Hitler himself would not be caught by your definition, he only gave orders.
Sometimes people fight for some greater good (democracy versus fascism), sometimes they fight for survival (Assad), sometimes they fight for a badly defined concept (war on terror). To figure out who is on the right side is not simple and some poor fellow fighting for freedom in the middle east has the same chances for being right or wrong as you do. But he probably put some more thought into this than you did -- because he decided to risk his own life in the fight.
Let me close with a citation from Steven Weinberg: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” I think religion should be replaced with 'belief' to also catch the evil committed in the name of Fascism, Communism, and Capitalism. Keep that in mind when you vote for the next Believer in the oval office.
> But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion
1. Why would you bring up the topic of religion (and all the other bollocks) on a discussion about Lavabit?
2. Why would you quote a theoretical physicist on something completely outside his field of expertise?
3. Why is your particular "belief" better or less bigoted than anyone else's "belief"?
4. If we are going to go there and play Nihilists, let me continue the silly quotes game you started. I shall refer you to The Big Lebowski: "... say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
Almost without exception, the world is all 'good guys'. I'm going to play the Godwin just to shortcut the discussion - Hitler thought he was doing 'the right thing'. He had found a group he could blame for society's ills, and that if only more people were like him, how much nicer that would make the world *for people like him*. There seemed to be quite a lot of consensus easily rallied, so he was validated, too. To them, Hitler was the good guy who spoke simple sense, created a common enemy they could blame it all on, so they gave him power (America take note, you're bloody close to doing this yourselves right now).
If you ever want all your artificial divisions between 'good' and 'bad' destroying, read some Le Carré. He's terrible at writing love, but fabulous at writing grey, mixed, fallible, human motivations, leaving you unsure if there is a 'good' and 'bad' guy, or just a bunch of people on various continua with some outliers in all directions. Each considers themselves 'good'.
<snip>
"4. If we are going to go there and play Nihilists, let me continue the silly quotes game you started. I shall refer you to The Big Lebowski: "... say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.""
How about this for a quote from a former U.S. president by the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
I have often mulled this over, particularly over the past ten years of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeldt etc. Poor old Dwight will be turning in his grave.
> ... theoretical physicist on something completely outside his field of expertise?
Just because it's not theoretical physics doesn't mean it's outside his field of expertise. The defect of religion are apparent to anyone who chooses to look, to read a history book, or generally speaking, to be reasonably-well educated - in other words, it's in many people's field of expertise.
> Just because it's not theoretical physics doesn't mean it's outside his field of expertise.
Just because you have heard about theoretical physics it doesn't make you an expert in it. Likewise ...
I am myself a non-believer and I do not follow any religion. Nevertheless, I have great respect and genuine empathy for those who do and I really see no need or justification to claim or imply that my position in this matter is in any way better than anyone else's.
" Nevertheless, I have great respect and genuine empathy for those who do and I really see no need or justification to claim or imply that my position in this matter is in any way better than anyone else's."
Good on you. I don't. Having to respect one's right to his own religion is one thing, respecting someone in spite of what he chooses to believe is quite another, and it's not an obligation whatsoever. You're welcome to believe in whatever you want as long as that doesn't interfere with the physical integrity of my person, possessions or rights, but what my opinion of you will be based on what you choose to believe is not for you to decide.
> as long as that doesn't interfere with the physical integrity of my person, possessions or rights,
Perhaps you should watch a little less television and get out a bit more?
Btw, that's exactly the same discourse we used to be fed about communists during the Cold War.
" But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion
1. Why would you bring up the topic of religion (and all the other bollocks) on a discussion about Lavabit?"
Because the war on terror is a war against religious dogma, not a war on Islam, not a holy war, but nevertheless it is a religious war, a war against another parties belief system, irrespective of whether you or I find that system valid or not. You can't deny it, without religion a lot of wars throughout history would have had to have found another reason to be fought. And the FBI/CIA war on crypto is justified by the war on terror.
> Because the war on terror
Ah, the War on a Noun, had forgot about that one. :-) Always wondered why they didn't just call it the "Let's go over there and grab all those oilfields" war, or the "Let us give my friends lots of public money under some tenuous excuse of being under attack and needing to defend ourselves" war. Then again, I suppose there is a reason I'm not in marketing.
And what about the Cold War then? You know, the one against an actual opponent?
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'Does everyone think they're the good guys and the other guys are the bad guys?'
The thinking is analogous to the following: I'm normal. You're eccentric. He's round the twist. They're completely insane.
There are /some/ people who know that others would consider them evil, but to /their/ way of thinking their critics are are just idiots for not behaving the same way in a dog-eat-dog world where the 'fittest' survive and the weak deservedly go to the wall.
To them, they're not evil: other people are weak.
I've always thought that the 'good guys' can be spotted because they behave better than the 'bad guys'. They try to minimise collateral damage, they don't inflict revenge on defeated enemies, they try not to target innocent bystanders or civilians.
On the other hand if you have been invaded by and are facing the most powerful military machine in the world standing in an open field shouting, 'Come on then!", seems pretty self-defeating.
Not many 'good guys' around these days.
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