5 ms·

The article is about a person who forged papers starting in WW2 and up to the 70s to get people out of dire situations. It ends in "“I did all I could when I co

The article is about a person who forged papers starting in WW2 and up to the 70s to get people out of dire situations. It ends in "“I did all I could when I could. Now, I can’t do anything,” he said. Surely, though, the rest of us can." Not so easy anymore, with all the biometrics and cryptographically secure data on a microchip embedded in today's passports.

gumby 8y ago
I think the point isn't "now it's time for someone to forge papers" but "there are plenty of ways to help and other people with more energy can take them up" From raising awareness, convincing governments, running for office, donating money and/or labor...just volunteering on a crisis line is a huge help.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  In the context of the original article, and the current world, it appears that far fewer are willing to bring personal risk than in the past. My guess - and it is a guess - is rather than signing an online petition, forwarding a meme, or attending a demo, in the past direct action, civil disobedience, underground networks and activism was more often used. I suspect that in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism or at the very least imprisonable.
  - cromulent 8y ago
    Really interesting discussion. I would add a guess that living a long life has become so normalized and expected that risk taking behaviour has become more eschewed.
  - hopler 8y ago
    Acitvists have always been attacked as "terrorists". Look at the brutal repression of the Civil Rights movement, where imprison was one of msnycworries when faced with a murderous police force and general public.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism I’m involved in local politics. The problem is a low give-a-shit factor. Older Americans will reliably show up to vote, stop to sign petitions (real ones, not online ones), donate to candidates and show up for town halls and protests. Young, well-educated, technically-savvy urbanites are a predictably anodyne bunch. (To be fair, I’m those things.) The risk isn’t higher. The cost just is. When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell.
    - ctrl-j 8y ago
      > When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell. Brunch and instagram aren't the problem. Working two jobs to barely afford rent is.
    - Retric 8y ago
      American politics is generally focused on meaningless issues for most people. For an older example, the keystone pipeline was going to have zero impact on 99.999% of Americans yet it somehow became a “Major” issue. That crap sucks up the attention so much that when issues that have real impact show up they get lost in the noise.
      - war1025 8y ago
        A thing I got a real kick out of with the Bakken (thought it was Keystone, but looked it up and it wasn't) pipeline, is that it was a big news event, and several people I knew were all worked up about it. The pipeline literally went within 5 miles of our city though, and no one cared about those portions. They cared about the parts that were hot in the news. There are still a couple semi trailers parked in fields with big "Stop Eminent Domain Abuse" signs painted on them though. So I guess at least the farmers whose land it cut through cared locally.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      I used to go to the planning board meetings for my neighborhood. They were at 4:00 on weekdays - I wonder why I was the only one under 60 there? Even then it was only because I was trying to bootstrap a startup and setting my own hours. Also, "When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, " - good points, but remember also that those old people largely could have one person working (and actually getting of at 5 with no bullshit emails/slack/other crap to follow them home) and the other doing childcare/household work/civic things, instead of 2 people working 8-6:00, rushing to childcare, and getting home tired as dogs.
- pjc50 8y ago
  True, although it's still the case that the really effective, immediate ways to help can get you arrested. Plenty of places are criminalising helping refugees. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mardini/syrian-swimmer-who-saved-refugees-arrested-in-greece-lawyer-idUKKCN1LG1FT https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mar...
  - lixtra 8y ago
    In the article you cited it is not about helping refugees, but about the WAY they were helping refugees. Of course you can argue that the laws violated are stupid or inhumane. But in a democratic country like Greece you’ll have a hard time. The laws are generally a result of balancing different interests, here refugees fleeing from a very unpleasant life in Turkey and there EU tax payers having to pay for their integration for the next few years. You can disagree and if caught happily pay the price (after all, why not go to jail for some time to save a few humans).
- bellerose 8y ago
  Every generation thought the same.
- skybrian 8y ago
  This downplays a significant problem. The man in the story didn't set out to be a forger; it was an opportunity he discovered by chance, based on previous knowledge and talents. Matching up people with jobs is hard enough with paid work. Doing a better job at matching people with volunteer opportunities that suit them would be a huge win. Figuring out where best to donate money is relatively easy in comparison; GiveWell does a good job of that.
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    I'd say it's actually very hard to find effective charities. Most charities don't evaluate the outcomes versus the cost of their work, regardless of their earnest desire to be helpful. While Charity Navigator and GiveWell can weed out some of the truly bad orgs, the orgs trying to do the right thing and being ineffective is probably a larger problem than anyone realizes. You want to make a huge impact on people's lives? Solve food transportation, early cancer diagnosis, or basic medical care. Those are easily the most impactful and least sexy parts of making lives better.
    - skybrian 8y ago
      GiveWell and Charity Navigator are pretty much the opposite. GiveWell has a small list of very thoroughly investigated charities, while Charity Navigator has a big list but doesn't say much of anything about their effectiveness.
cimmanom 8y ago
Surely forgery is not the only thing any of us can do about getting people out of dire situations (or preventing the dire situations from existing in the first place)?
CoolGuySteve 8y ago
I want to use the word crypto-fascism, but apparently there's already a definition for that. Maybe techno-totalitarianism? There's a disturbing trend of governments applying technology to bureaucracy to better track and control people. For example, there's no document you can easily forge to get past the face recognition and fingerprint reader at the US border. Under a tyrannical government, these technologies could kill millions of people, but under a normal regime they provide minimal benefit to society, like maybe they catch people overstaying their visa or whatever. Strange times.
- hedora 8y ago
  It is not a coincidence that people increasingly call the moderates (GOP and Democrats) in the US “corporatists”, which is a shortening of “corporate fascists”. From what I can tell, if you are a republican corporatist, you are sometimes called a neocon. If you are democratic, then the term is neoliberal. I might be missing some subtle distinction between the terms, but I think these definitions are basically accurate.
  - pmyteh 8y ago
    'Neocon' is a label applied to a group of formerly-liberal foreign policy hawks, who moved to the right in the 1960s and subsequently. They were some of the strongest voices for military intervention in foreign countries during and after the Cold War, and are considered part of the conservative movement. Think Paul Wolfowitz and colleagues. Neoliberalism is focused on economics, not military policy, and advocates free movement of goods, capital, and (sometimes) labour to build a global interconnected capitalism. It's probably the 'consensus' position amongst policy elites in most Western countries, though is suffering blowback from varying groups including economic nationalists (who dislike its open, cosmopolitan, nature and lack of concern for the nation) from the left (who dislike its promotion of the interests of capital over the needs of workers) and from localists (who dislike its homogenising qualities and dismissal of the value of 'place'). I think most people just mean by corporatists 'beholden to corporate interests' rather than specifically 'corporate fascists'; in either case they probably don't mean the original meaning of corporatism, which was control of the economy via negotiation between organised interest groups representing sectors of the people (farmers, businesspeople, industrial workers, etc.) This was prominent in Italian fascism in the 30s and had echoes in various other parts of the 20th Century such as the institutionalisation of trades union bargaining in some social democratic countries from the forties onwards.

gumby 8y ago

I think the point isn't "now it's time for someone to forge papers" but "there are plenty of ways to help and other people with more energy can take them up" From raising awareness, convincing governments, running for office, donating money and/or labor...just volunteering on a crisis line is a huge help.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
In the context of the original article, and the current world, it appears that far fewer are willing to bring personal risk than in the past. My guess - and it is a guess - is rather than signing an online petition, forwarding a meme, or attending a demo, in the past direct action, civil disobedience, underground networks and activism was more often used. I suspect that in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism or at the very least imprisonable.
- cromulent 8y ago
  Really interesting discussion. I would add a guess that living a long life has become so normalized and expected that risk taking behaviour has become more eschewed.
- hopler 8y ago
  Acitvists have always been attacked as "terrorists". Look at the brutal repression of the Civil Rights movement, where imprison was one of msnycworries when faced with a murderous police force and general public.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism I’m involved in local politics. The problem is a low give-a-shit factor. Older Americans will reliably show up to vote, stop to sign petitions (real ones, not online ones), donate to candidates and show up for town halls and protests. Young, well-educated, technically-savvy urbanites are a predictably anodyne bunch. (To be fair, I’m those things.) The risk isn’t higher. The cost just is. When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell.
  - ctrl-j 8y ago
    > When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell. Brunch and instagram aren't the problem. Working two jobs to barely afford rent is.
  - Retric 8y ago
    American politics is generally focused on meaningless issues for most people. For an older example, the keystone pipeline was going to have zero impact on 99.999% of Americans yet it somehow became a “Major” issue. That crap sucks up the attention so much that when issues that have real impact show up they get lost in the noise.
    - war1025 8y ago
      A thing I got a real kick out of with the Bakken (thought it was Keystone, but looked it up and it wasn't) pipeline, is that it was a big news event, and several people I knew were all worked up about it. The pipeline literally went within 5 miles of our city though, and no one cared about those portions. They cared about the parts that were hot in the news. There are still a couple semi trailers parked in fields with big "Stop Eminent Domain Abuse" signs painted on them though. So I guess at least the farmers whose land it cut through cared locally.
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    I used to go to the planning board meetings for my neighborhood. They were at 4:00 on weekdays - I wonder why I was the only one under 60 there? Even then it was only because I was trying to bootstrap a startup and setting my own hours. Also, "When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, " - good points, but remember also that those old people largely could have one person working (and actually getting of at 5 with no bullshit emails/slack/other crap to follow them home) and the other doing childcare/household work/civic things, instead of 2 people working 8-6:00, rushing to childcare, and getting home tired as dogs.
pjc50 8y ago
True, although it's still the case that the really effective, immediate ways to help can get you arrested. Plenty of places are criminalising helping refugees. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mardini/syrian-swimmer-who-saved-refugees-arrested-in-greece-lawyer-idUKKCN1LG1FT https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mar...
- lixtra 8y ago
  In the article you cited it is not about helping refugees, but about the WAY they were helping refugees. Of course you can argue that the laws violated are stupid or inhumane. But in a democratic country like Greece you’ll have a hard time. The laws are generally a result of balancing different interests, here refugees fleeing from a very unpleasant life in Turkey and there EU tax payers having to pay for their integration for the next few years. You can disagree and if caught happily pay the price (after all, why not go to jail for some time to save a few humans).
bellerose 8y ago
Every generation thought the same.
skybrian 8y ago
This downplays a significant problem. The man in the story didn't set out to be a forger; it was an opportunity he discovered by chance, based on previous knowledge and talents. Matching up people with jobs is hard enough with paid work. Doing a better job at matching people with volunteer opportunities that suit them would be a huge win. Figuring out where best to donate money is relatively easy in comparison; GiveWell does a good job of that.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  I'd say it's actually very hard to find effective charities. Most charities don't evaluate the outcomes versus the cost of their work, regardless of their earnest desire to be helpful. While Charity Navigator and GiveWell can weed out some of the truly bad orgs, the orgs trying to do the right thing and being ineffective is probably a larger problem than anyone realizes. You want to make a huge impact on people's lives? Solve food transportation, early cancer diagnosis, or basic medical care. Those are easily the most impactful and least sexy parts of making lives better.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    GiveWell and Charity Navigator are pretty much the opposite. GiveWell has a small list of very thoroughly investigated charities, while Charity Navigator has a big list but doesn't say much of anything about their effectiveness.

cimmanom 8y ago

Surely forgery is not the only thing any of us can do about getting people out of dire situations (or preventing the dire situations from existing in the first place)?

CoolGuySteve 8y ago

I want to use the word crypto-fascism, but apparently there's already a definition for that. Maybe techno-totalitarianism? There's a disturbing trend of governments applying technology to bureaucracy to better track and control people. For example, there's no document you can easily forge to get past the face recognition and fingerprint reader at the US border. Under a tyrannical government, these technologies could kill millions of people, but under a normal regime they provide minimal benefit to society, like maybe they catch people overstaying their visa or whatever. Strange times.

hedora 8y ago
It is not a coincidence that people increasingly call the moderates (GOP and Democrats) in the US “corporatists”, which is a shortening of “corporate fascists”. From what I can tell, if you are a republican corporatist, you are sometimes called a neocon. If you are democratic, then the term is neoliberal. I might be missing some subtle distinction between the terms, but I think these definitions are basically accurate.
- pmyteh 8y ago
  'Neocon' is a label applied to a group of formerly-liberal foreign policy hawks, who moved to the right in the 1960s and subsequently. They were some of the strongest voices for military intervention in foreign countries during and after the Cold War, and are considered part of the conservative movement. Think Paul Wolfowitz and colleagues. Neoliberalism is focused on economics, not military policy, and advocates free movement of goods, capital, and (sometimes) labour to build a global interconnected capitalism. It's probably the 'consensus' position amongst policy elites in most Western countries, though is suffering blowback from varying groups including economic nationalists (who dislike its open, cosmopolitan, nature and lack of concern for the nation) from the left (who dislike its promotion of the interests of capital over the needs of workers) and from localists (who dislike its homogenising qualities and dismissal of the value of 'place'). I think most people just mean by corporatists 'beholden to corporate interests' rather than specifically 'corporate fascists'; in either case they probably don't mean the original meaning of corporatism, which was control of the economy via negotiation between organised interest groups representing sectors of the people (farmers, businesspeople, industrial workers, etc.) This was prominent in Italian fascism in the 30s and had echoes in various other parts of the 20th Century such as the institutionalisation of trades union bargaining in some social democratic countries from the forties onwards.