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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
A procrastination in of itself
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
I will agree that saying "they didn't go through the official channels, so what they did was wrong" is...not a great take. Kind of verging on Lawful Stupid, really.
I mean, it's MLK Day - I feel like he'd have something to say about noncompliance with unjust laws.
Oh God! Natural light!
Guys, Imca's point isn't based on evidence. It's based on just knowing that lots of whistleblowers have been mysteriously vanished.
@Imca- Are there specific cases you can point to about whistleblower types that were assassinated by the U.S. government? Because I can't prove a negative in terms of argument that the U.S. government wouldn't kill whistleblowers, I would note that AFAIK, there's no instances (certainly not recent ones) of anyone Snowden or Manning like dying under "mysterious circumstances". And like it wouldn't be that hard to produce evidence of a government murdering people, since lots of people regularly die under mysterious circumstances in Russia.
Which actually supports another point. It's not a good argument to essentially assert "there's people who are or would be assassinated but we just wouldn't know, because it would be done in a non-suspicious way". Because it seems to me that governments that kill dissidents are usually pretty overt about it, since the whole point is to send a message to other dissidents. That's why it's so easy to infer that various murders in Russia (and elsewhere) can be pinned on the government.
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
Those are also fair points. What makes you so certain this is happening, Imca? Some actual links would be appreciated.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:05:13 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!
Or you know I have posted cases where the government has dissapeard civil rights protesters, but no that's not evidence, and no it is too hard to dissapear people.
Yet.... thats flat out what they have done in the past?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
and Civil rights protestors, I don't think its that hard of a stretch to imagine they would just cover any one who was too disruptive for there tastes.
@ Red: Not in the slightest, that's strawmaning the argument to the extreme.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:08:19 PM by Imca
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
Something I just noticed - your examples are, in fact, decades old, and while that's certainly an indictment of the government at the time...governments do change. Are decades-old examples really adequate evidence for the cases of Manning and Snowden?
Oh God! Natural light!
Decades old examples are used due to the declassifying procedures on government actions, they are bound to reveal what they do decades after it happens.
I cant get modern stuff because it is not public access yet, and wont be until it is also multiple decades old. :/
25 years it comes up for review, at 50 years it is released unless it is especially damaging, and 75 years it is released even then.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:11:06 PM by Imca
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
Then how can you assume that they're still doing it? You're making assertions with no proof, which seems rather disingenuous to me?
Plus...were any of those referring to whistleblowers?
edited 15th Jan '18 8:10:53 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!
A procrastination in of itself
A civil rights protester and an internal whistblower are not the same thing, I can provide examples of the British police having undercover officers make fake identity and father children with women they’ve conned, it doesn’t mean that they’re raping whistblowers to death in Downing Street.
A civil rights leader is outside the system and operating base dlargly on their person charisma and personality, a whistblower is operating within the system due to their moral framework and level of access. It’s much easiyer to silence one without violence than the other.
By the way several years back a member of the intelligence community did die in a super weird circumstance that was never fully solved, problem is that it was a British MI 6 operative.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:11:55 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
The example you link to is the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Which wasn't done by the Federal government (and in fact was invested- although halfhearted by the Federal government) and besides that is otherwise completely unlike the kind of "covert assassination" you are asserting is/would be carried out. Instead, this was done by local police affiliated with hate groups, and the perpetrators were really, really obvious.
I actually think it seems vaguely in poor taste to try to use this as an example of how the U.S. government is super-evil, because this was one of many examples of a murder/other horribly racism-based crime done by local people/authorities. And this was something the U.S. government was actually trying to stop.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:13:56 PM by Hodor2
The thing is if they did in in the past, and were doing it up to the most recent declassified info, what reason is there to suspect there not doing it now.
None of this was known at the time, none of it was suspected, until it was declassified..... I see no reason to suspect the inertia wouldn't carry through.
And why would that be the case? Why would it be easier to silence an outsider, if any thing I would think silencing the insider would be easier, you already know more about them, they have already done intensive background checks to get where they are, you probably know about about there routine and how to exploit it.
This isn't saying that "They do this by the thousands guys" this is saying that Snowden and Manning very much had reason to fear they would be killed, because its not really that unbelievable that the government would just decide its easier to vanish them if they wern't loud fast.
Dude, I support the government, I am not saying it is evil in the slightest, there is way more nuance here then just "government kills people, government bad"
edited 15th Jan '18 8:18:07 PM by Imca
You posted links to a local murder the American government tried to have investigated. You have, to say the least, not demonstrated your point.
...Seriously? Your evidence is the murder of civil rights activists murdered by the KKK, then given a shit investigation in the 60's by the FBI while being run by Hoover? The FBI was pretty bad until the 80's or thereabouts, but do you have anything more recent than 45 years or so?
A procrastination in of itself
X3 It’s easiyer to silence a whistblower without violence (the preferred method due to not just morality but also messiness) because you revoke their clearance and maybe do a search of their home for classified material (which if found might be enough to jail them), that doesn’t work on an outsider because you’re not trying to deny them evidance, you’re trying to stop them talking.
Also as pointed out the federal government and local police are not the same thing, hell I imagine if the Feds ever had wanted civil right leaders dealt with they probably just pointed the nearest racist cops in their direction.
What I don’t get is why you’re so committed to the idea of the US as a cartoon villain, it doesn’t make sense unless it’s as a way to justify evils by some other groups that opposes/opposed the US.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:21:50 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Brenner's Wolves Fight Again
The U.S. government being a cartoon villain is really not that unrealistic...
Heck, many cartoon villains are nuancedby comparison.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:23:24 PM by RAlexa21th
Where there's life, there's hope.
Oh, bother.
It was unrealistic before we ended up with a President who has somehow managed to become worse than the Eighties cartoon parodies of himself.
And what do you have to say about the points brought up earlier. Even if you think the US government wouldn't go as far as assassination, do really think that any whistleblowers that don't go through "official channels" are evil, worthless criminals? Do you really think the US government would let something that seriously hurt its image be released to the public without destroying the livelihood of the person who says they're going to do that. Do understand how fascistic you sound when say that all whistleblowers must run their information past the people in power, the very people who's abuses they are revealing?!
edited 15th Jan '18 8:24:00 PM by Ludlow
A procrastination in of itself
X3 Yes it is, it doing bad things isn’t, it being a murder happy villain in the style of the USSR, Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany is.
It’s possible for the US government to do bad things and not be the equivelent of Imperial Japan, I don’t get why that’s so hard for some people to get.
Which points bought up earlier, the one where you considered Jews in Baghdad to not be innocent or the one where you declared that working with the US against AQ meant you deserved to die?
edited 15th Jan '18 8:25:38 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Jupiterian Local
@Viper Magnum: Again, didn't you read, if its under 50 years old, and damaging to the government it is not declassified... I am picking the recent ones, if I wasnt I could bring up incidents like how the government poisoned people during prohibition, or how the navy mustard gassed its own sailors in WWII to test protective gear, but those are even farther back.
@Silsaw: Again, that's the problem, I DON'T see them as a cartoon super villain, the government does a lot of messed up things, but it doesn't do it because it is evil, this isn't ranting about "Oh my god the government is so bad they should never be trusted"
No, the government is pragmatic, it does what is easiest and cheapest, and some times people die.
This is why whistle-blowers worry about there life's, you can say it is easier to block them legally, and heck for the majority of cases that's probably right.
But that doesn't mean they wouldn't kill some one if it was cheaper and easier to just do that, and that doesn't mean they shouldn't worry about it..... no it should be there first priority to make sure killing them is more effort then it is worth.
Thats the point of this.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:28:46 PM by Imca
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
But your prime example was about civil rights workers killed by the KKK, which was covered up by the local government - that's not exactly evidence pointing to the federal government killing people, which would be where the assassination of whistleblowers would fall into.
Well, your argument seems pretty weak though. You are asserting that the federal government would murder whistleblowers, and then when it was pointed out that Manning, Snowden, and Assange haven't mysteriously shot themselves in the back of the head, you then argued that this proved your point, because the government practices Pragmatic Villainy.
edited 15th Jan '18 8:30:39 PM by Hodor2
The trick is doing it before the fire gets too big, before they start talking to enough people that it gets suspicious when they vanish.
This is what Manning and Snowden did right, and why there not dead.
edited 15th Jan '18 7:58:07 PM by Imca