7 ms·

Google also operate in USA. USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges.

jacquesm 7y ago
> Google also operate in USA. They're based there, in case you didn't notice. > USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. And is substantially larger, and tends to not lock up everybody that might be against dear leader. For now. > Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges. Definitely not a very good moment in the history of the USA but there are plenty of worse examples and besides the case was dropped. You really can not compare Turkey and the United States in this way.
- DSingularity 7y ago
  Why not? Turkey survived a coup. We can critique the governments handling all day but can we at least all agree that when a democracy barely survives a coup it ought to institute policies to solidify the rule of law and endurance of its institutions?
  - Twixes 7y ago
    Turkey did not survive a coup, Erdogan survived a "coup"
  - jupp0r 7y ago
    Your premise of democracy is wrong. Turkey is an authoritarian dictatorship at this point.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      ...and the US is shockingly close to being one.
      - colejohnson66 7y ago
        How? Genuine question. Is it because Trump? Because while Trump and many of his supporters may be authoritarian, he was still duly elected, and if he had lost, Hillary would be President. In a dictatorship, Obama would have chosen his successor (generally).
        jacquesm 7y ago
        Let's wait for the next election before we call this one.
  - dyeje 7y ago
    A coup that many think was orchestrated by Erdogan so he could clean house.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That there even was a coup is subject to debate.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    A coup doesn't happen with democracies/countries, it's dictatorships that "survive" coups.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      Technically, a coup is just a violent overthrow of the government. That can happen with democracies; it just generally doesn’t because the people can just vote out the current president if they don’t like him/her.
- La1n 7y ago
  >And is substantially larger And it still has the world's highest incarceration rate. I am not saying it "the same" but using size of the country is a non argument here.
- rimliu 7y ago
  It's amusing how for many things you "cannot compare X and US in this way" for whatever reason. Seems that the US is beyond any comparison. Go to this page, sort by the number of incarcerations per 100,000 population and enjoy the interesting picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
  - UserIsUnused 7y ago
    incarceration because war of drugs is fundamentally different from incarceration because I don't like my dear leader.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      "One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies" [1] It's not that different. 1: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...
      - ulfw 7y ago
        It goes even further. By having a large (Democrat-leaning) non-white population jailed up, it reduces potential Democrat voters - in some states for life even after incarceration. The only western democracy who does that. https://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286 https://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=...
        vageli 7y ago
        This has always disgusted me. Civic duty is a foundation of representative democracy and we strip that right from former felons while talking about reintegration with society with the other side of our mouth.
    - rimliu 7y ago
- perlgeek 7y ago
  > > USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. > And is substantially larger, and tends to not lock up everybody that might be against dear leader. For now. Just for the record, the incarceration rate is much higher in USA than in Turkey. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2... lists 737 vs. 97 per 100k population (though I can't find a date there), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... says 655 vs. 288. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300986/incarceration-rates-in-oecd-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/300986/incarceration-rat... has data from 2019 and says 655 vs. 318. Still more than twice as high in the USA than in Turkey.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Yes, the United States has a problem and it is well documented. But that does not at all begin to tell the whole story about why people are locked up. In the United States it is large numbers of people that got caught up in the so-called war-on-drugs, in Turkey it is because Erdogan has used the failed coup (if there even was one) as a pretext to lock up just about everybody who he felt might be a threat to his regime.
    - banads 7y ago
      It seems Nixon's and Erdogan's motivations were similar. The war on drugs was created by the Nixon regime as a way to neutralize threatening political movements like Black Power and the Hippie Peace movement.
      - umvi 7y ago
        > The war on drugs was created by the Nixon regime as a way to neutralize threatening political movements like Black Power and the Hippie Peace movement. This seems like one of those Illuminati/Knights Templar conspiracy theories. I don't buy it. I'm imagining Nixon's cabinet in a super secret meeting: Nixon: "Those hippies and negroes. They are growing too powerful. Soon, democrats will dominate every level of government" Secretary of State: "But what can we do?" Nixon: smirks and peers over reading glasses directly at the camera Nixon: "We hit them where it hurts. Tell me, what does the hippy and the negro have in common?" Secretary of Agriculture: "High rates of homelessness?" Nixon: "No, the Reefer. We can't outright declare war on US citizens. But we can attack the thing they hold most dear and get the religious right to love us for it." Secretary of Defense: "Mother of God... a war... on drugs" Nixon: "Precisely. The hippy and negro cannot resist the draw of the Reefer. Thus, we simply declare war on the Reefer. We can lock them up in prisons where they will harmlessly live out their days, unable to empower the democratic party."
- mcv 7y ago
  The US is larger than Turkey, but that's irrelevant to the argument; the US locks up a larger percentage of its population than practically any other country on Earth. The US has more people in prison than China, which has 4 times the population. I'm not denying there's a lot wrong in Turkey, but the US isn't all freedom and democracy either.
  - lstroud 7y ago
    Are you counting re-education camps and capital punishments? Pretty sure China will surpass most of the rest combined.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Quite possibly. But still, I don't think "not as bad as China" is a sufficiently high bar for what was once supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world and a champion for freedom.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Only China knows how many people are in prison/education. Same as business revenue, which is mostly fake for the outside world.
  - spicyramen 7y ago
    We Americans hate the autocrític. Good argument
DSingularity 7y ago
Thank you. It’s insane how people put zero effort into looking at the surrounding context before passing such huge judgements.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
> Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges. And released when the accusers were found the be lying. How does this incident put the US in the same league as Turkey?
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Let's list some stuff that doesn't look good. Guantanamo - detention and physiological torture without trial. Hounding of whistler blowers of illegal activity - Snowdon, Manning, Assange etc. Destabilizing countries around the world - many with democratically elected governments. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...) Now, of course, this is largely directed at other countries citizens rather than US citizens - so that makes it ok..... In terms of internal US politics - how do you explain George W Bush as president if the US is a meritocracy and not a oligarchy? Let's be clear - I'd prefer to live in the US over turkey, but it's not all rosy.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    The vast majority (at least 99.9%) of the documents that Snowden, Manning, and Assange leaked contained no illegal activity. No judge would classify them as whistlebowers.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      OK you've outed yourself here. It is ridiculous to claim that Snowden and Manning are not whistleblowers. You're probably down with redefining "whistleblower" to only include made-up imaginary people like the supposed "CIA agent" who was so secretly stationed in the White House that she overheard multiple private two-person conversations.
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        > It is ridiculous to claim that Snowden and Manning are not whistleblowers. I just explained why they aren't. Are you going to explain why you think they are or just include me in your wild conspiracy theories?
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824570 and marked it off-topic.

jacquesm 7y ago

> Google also operate in USA. They're based there, in case you didn't notice. > USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. And is substantially larger, and tends to not lock up everybody that might be against dear leader. For now. > Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges. Definitely not a very good moment in the history of the USA but there are plenty of worse examples and besides the case was dropped. You really can not compare Turkey and the United States in this way.

DSingularity 7y ago
Why not? Turkey survived a coup. We can critique the governments handling all day but can we at least all agree that when a democracy barely survives a coup it ought to institute policies to solidify the rule of law and endurance of its institutions?
- Twixes 7y ago
  Turkey did not survive a coup, Erdogan survived a "coup"
- jupp0r 7y ago
  Your premise of democracy is wrong. Turkey is an authoritarian dictatorship at this point.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    ...and the US is shockingly close to being one.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      How? Genuine question. Is it because Trump? Because while Trump and many of his supporters may be authoritarian, he was still duly elected, and if he had lost, Hillary would be President. In a dictatorship, Obama would have chosen his successor (generally).
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Let's wait for the next election before we call this one.
- dyeje 7y ago
  A coup that many think was orchestrated by Erdogan so he could clean house.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That there even was a coup is subject to debate.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  A coup doesn't happen with democracies/countries, it's dictatorships that "survive" coups.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Technically, a coup is just a violent overthrow of the government. That can happen with democracies; it just generally doesn’t because the people can just vote out the current president if they don’t like him/her.
La1n 7y ago
>And is substantially larger And it still has the world's highest incarceration rate. I am not saying it "the same" but using size of the country is a non argument here.
rimliu 7y ago
It's amusing how for many things you "cannot compare X and US in this way" for whatever reason. Seems that the US is beyond any comparison. Go to this page, sort by the number of incarcerations per 100,000 population and enjoy the interesting picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
- UserIsUnused 7y ago
  incarceration because war of drugs is fundamentally different from incarceration because I don't like my dear leader.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    "One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies" [1] It's not that different. 1: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...
    - ulfw 7y ago
      It goes even further. By having a large (Democrat-leaning) non-white population jailed up, it reduces potential Democrat voters - in some states for life even after incarceration. The only western democracy who does that. https://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286 https://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=...
      - vageli 7y ago
        This has always disgusted me. Civic duty is a foundation of representative democracy and we strip that right from former felons while talking about reintegration with society with the other side of our mouth.
  - rimliu 7y ago
perlgeek 7y ago
> > USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. > And is substantially larger, and tends to not lock up everybody that might be against dear leader. For now. Just for the record, the incarceration rate is much higher in USA than in Turkey. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2... lists 737 vs. 97 per 100k population (though I can't find a date there), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... says 655 vs. 288. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300986/incarceration-rates-in-oecd-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/300986/incarceration-rat... has data from 2019 and says 655 vs. 318. Still more than twice as high in the USA than in Turkey.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Yes, the United States has a problem and it is well documented. But that does not at all begin to tell the whole story about why people are locked up. In the United States it is large numbers of people that got caught up in the so-called war-on-drugs, in Turkey it is because Erdogan has used the failed coup (if there even was one) as a pretext to lock up just about everybody who he felt might be a threat to his regime.
  - banads 7y ago
    It seems Nixon's and Erdogan's motivations were similar. The war on drugs was created by the Nixon regime as a way to neutralize threatening political movements like Black Power and the Hippie Peace movement.
    - umvi 7y ago
      > The war on drugs was created by the Nixon regime as a way to neutralize threatening political movements like Black Power and the Hippie Peace movement. This seems like one of those Illuminati/Knights Templar conspiracy theories. I don't buy it. I'm imagining Nixon's cabinet in a super secret meeting: Nixon: "Those hippies and negroes. They are growing too powerful. Soon, democrats will dominate every level of government" Secretary of State: "But what can we do?" Nixon: smirks and peers over reading glasses directly at the camera Nixon: "We hit them where it hurts. Tell me, what does the hippy and the negro have in common?" Secretary of Agriculture: "High rates of homelessness?" Nixon: "No, the Reefer. We can't outright declare war on US citizens. But we can attack the thing they hold most dear and get the religious right to love us for it." Secretary of Defense: "Mother of God... a war... on drugs" Nixon: "Precisely. The hippy and negro cannot resist the draw of the Reefer. Thus, we simply declare war on the Reefer. We can lock them up in prisons where they will harmlessly live out their days, unable to empower the democratic party."
mcv 7y ago
The US is larger than Turkey, but that's irrelevant to the argument; the US locks up a larger percentage of its population than practically any other country on Earth. The US has more people in prison than China, which has 4 times the population. I'm not denying there's a lot wrong in Turkey, but the US isn't all freedom and democracy either.
- lstroud 7y ago
  Are you counting re-education camps and capital punishments? Pretty sure China will surpass most of the rest combined.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Quite possibly. But still, I don't think "not as bad as China" is a sufficiently high bar for what was once supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world and a champion for freedom.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Only China knows how many people are in prison/education. Same as business revenue, which is mostly fake for the outside world.
- spicyramen 7y ago
  We Americans hate the autocrític. Good argument

DSingularity 7y ago

Thank you. It’s insane how people put zero effort into looking at the surrounding context before passing such huge judgements.

lern_too_spel 7y ago

> Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges. And released when the accusers were found the be lying. How does this incident put the US in the same league as Turkey?

DrScientist 7y ago
Let's list some stuff that doesn't look good. Guantanamo - detention and physiological torture without trial. Hounding of whistler blowers of illegal activity - Snowdon, Manning, Assange etc. Destabilizing countries around the world - many with democratically elected governments. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...) Now, of course, this is largely directed at other countries citizens rather than US citizens - so that makes it ok..... In terms of internal US politics - how do you explain George W Bush as president if the US is a meritocracy and not a oligarchy? Let's be clear - I'd prefer to live in the US over turkey, but it's not all rosy.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  The vast majority (at least 99.9%) of the documents that Snowden, Manning, and Assange leaked contained no illegal activity. No judge would classify them as whistlebowers.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    OK you've outed yourself here. It is ridiculous to claim that Snowden and Manning are not whistleblowers. You're probably down with redefining "whistleblower" to only include made-up imaginary people like the supposed "CIA agent" who was so secretly stationed in the White House that she overheard multiple private two-person conversations.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > It is ridiculous to claim that Snowden and Manning are not whistleblowers. I just explained why they aren't. Are you going to explain why you think they are or just include me in your wild conspiracy theories?

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824570 and marked it off-topic.