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As an American, I would rather get spied on by the US than by China, too. All of the pro-China downvoters on this and many other HN threads.... I do not unders

As an American, I would rather get spied on by the US than by China, too. All of the pro-China downvoters on this and many other HN threads.... I do not understand you. I recall from my political sciences courses in university that a hallmark of progressivism was being against imperialism. The basic idea here is that imperialism involves deliberately expanding a government's control of physical territory through violence, subjugation, cultural appropriation, theft, and many other means. The idea why imperialism is a moral BAD was that it inextricably involves suppressing the human rights of others. Now, China is an imperialist power. Full stop. It wants more land and more people. It has killed and is killing to get more land and more people. The same cannot be said of the US. So why the constant whataboutism on China issues here on HN?

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nativeimigrant 8y ago
As a human being... I'm concerned by so much defeatism on this issue. If someone is spying on you and you are just a civilian, it's bad full stop! I get the feeling that most of the comments are just apologetic to the US govt because the hypocrisy is just sooooo obvious As for imperialism... How many countries has US invaded compared to China? Don't be silly
mola 8y ago
I'm not sure the US isn't imperialist by your definition. At the very least the second Iraqi war hints to the contrary. It appears the main agenda there was a grab for oil and not a security threat. Not to mention its behavior in South America during the cold war. Now, I prefer the US over China, because its ideals are at least against imperialism and pro human rights, democracy and freedom. They might not always do what they preach, but these ideals combined with soft power approach, is (was?) A source of good. (If only they didn't hate socialism so much, and didn't prefer corporation freedom over human freedom, it would have been even better... well, let's hope the EU can survive)
thereare5lights 8y ago
The US is not an imperialist power? Are you kidding me? We have military bases and troops all over the world. Our black ops interferes in the internal affairs of any country it wants with virtually no oversight. We use our economic might to twist arms and bend other countries to our will. We have a ridiculous treaty with Cuba that cedes use of Guantanamo Bay to us in perpetuity for $2000 a year. We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil. No one believes they fucked up so badly that they thought there were WMDs and then whoops couldn’t find any! And then there's Puerto Rico. We won't let them become a state despite multiple referendums with the outcome in favor of statehood. Instead we keep them pretty much in colony status. Sounds great for us. Sucks for them when they have no right to provide input into their own national government. The administration is threatening to invade Venezuela because they don’t like the government. And to go straight to your specific definition of imperialism, the only thing you have is that we are done conquering. And now that we’re done we get to tell others that they can’t do it right? I mean really there are good arguments that can be made here but “The same cannot be said of the US” is not one of them. We just make it look cleaner.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil. I have heard that before, but did we ever get any oil out of it? Was there ever any chance of getting any oil out of it?
  - chrischen 8y ago
    By securing the region they almost definitely factored in the control of the oil. Obviously they couldn’t factor in the eventual shit show and complete destabilization of the region that spawned Daesh/ISIS.
  - cf498 8y ago
    The interesting part about oil is not so much who can extract it but who controls if it gets extracted. Which in turn means who can control the oil price by extracting more or less of it.

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nativeimigrant 8y ago

As a human being... I'm concerned by so much defeatism on this issue. If someone is spying on you and you are just a civilian, it's bad full stop! I get the feeling that most of the comments are just apologetic to the US govt because the hypocrisy is just sooooo obvious As for imperialism... How many countries has US invaded compared to China? Don't be silly

mola 8y ago

I'm not sure the US isn't imperialist by your definition. At the very least the second Iraqi war hints to the contrary. It appears the main agenda there was a grab for oil and not a security threat. Not to mention its behavior in South America during the cold war. Now, I prefer the US over China, because its ideals are at least against imperialism and pro human rights, democracy and freedom. They might not always do what they preach, but these ideals combined with soft power approach, is (was?) A source of good. (If only they didn't hate socialism so much, and didn't prefer corporation freedom over human freedom, it would have been even better... well, let's hope the EU can survive)

thereare5lights 8y ago

The US is not an imperialist power? Are you kidding me? We have military bases and troops all over the world. Our black ops interferes in the internal affairs of any country it wants with virtually no oversight. We use our economic might to twist arms and bend other countries to our will. We have a ridiculous treaty with Cuba that cedes use of Guantanamo Bay to us in perpetuity for $2000 a year. We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil. No one believes they fucked up so badly that they thought there were WMDs and then whoops couldn’t find any! And then there's Puerto Rico. We won't let them become a state despite multiple referendums with the outcome in favor of statehood. Instead we keep them pretty much in colony status. Sounds great for us. Sucks for them when they have no right to provide input into their own national government. The administration is threatening to invade Venezuela because they don’t like the government. And to go straight to your specific definition of imperialism, the only thing you have is that we are done conquering. And now that we’re done we get to tell others that they can’t do it right? I mean really there are good arguments that can be made here but “The same cannot be said of the US” is not one of them. We just make it look cleaner.

whatshisface 8y ago
>We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil. I have heard that before, but did we ever get any oil out of it? Was there ever any chance of getting any oil out of it?
- chrischen 8y ago
  By securing the region they almost definitely factored in the control of the oil. Obviously they couldn’t factor in the eventual shit show and complete destabilization of the region that spawned Daesh/ISIS.
- cf498 8y ago
  The interesting part about oil is not so much who can extract it but who controls if it gets extracted. Which in turn means who can control the oil price by extracting more or less of it.