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The vanishings like the sheriff who had three voter registration workers killed in Mississippi are not common, it tends to be straightforward extrajudicial exec

The vanishings like the sheriff who had three voter registration workers killed in Mississippi are not common, it tends to be straightforward extrajudicial executions like Fred Hampton. I wouldn't even include the car bombing of 25 year old Ronni Moffitt in 1976. The US police are killing people all the time. In January police killed an environmentalist in January, Manuel Taran. The US kills and jails political prisoners all the time.

ipaddr 3y ago
Who would be the US's Jack Ma?
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I don't believe the US could have a Jack Ma equivalent. We are more of a plutocracy than China is.
  - yafbum 3y ago
    There are about as many billionaires in China as in the US.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Plutocracy is about whether the billionaires or the politicians have the power. Not about the amount of billionaires.
      - yafbum 3y ago
        Well then the power structure in China is much much MUCH narrower at the top (1 person for life)
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    we are not a plutocracy at all, that's ridiculous. There are many places in the world where rich people hardly pay taxes. That is not at all true in the US where "the 1%" pay 40% of the income tax https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/FBIP-SOCIAL-04.jpg https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/FBIP-SOCIAL-0... if the rich controlled the government, don't you think they'd lower their taxes? or are we lucky to be ruled by the rich because they are so benevolent?
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      "If people were ruled by a king, don't you think the king would have taken every last thing in taxes? Therefore there has never been a monarchy ever."
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      Rich people in America pay taxes, don't be ridiculous. Wealthy (D) supporters abroad don't file tax returns and don't get penalized for it unless they fall out of line with the party. Then suddenly they're audited every year. This also happened to Trump, even though he was filing in NY.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  Billionaires are less oppressed in the US than China.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    bingo. The meta game in the US is to make enough money so you don’t have any limitations. Money pays for everything as we see with Elon. What a dystopia China is where billionaires can’t get away with paying a fee in a legal for a few world.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      Don't get it twisted here. The billionaires in China aren't punished for doing illegal shit. They are punished for going against The Party. They probably get away with at least as much or more than US billionaires as long as they don't ever go against The Party. Don't get the impression they are being held accountable for other stuff that The Party doesn't care about.
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        Jack Ma was literally bragging about breaking international law and that the government wasn't going to stop or regulate him before disappearing. Going against the party and going against the law are often the same thing stated differently.
      - orangepurple 3y ago
        The same principle applies in the USA. If you are best friends with the (D) party leaders, you are virtually immune to prosecution. https://jeffhead.webs.com/liberty/liberty/bdycount.txt https://jeffhead.webs.com/liberty/liberty/bdycount.txt (R) party is left to exist as a group of useful idiots who never pass any meaningful legislation that isn't immediately dismantled by (D) establishment within a few years.
- yafbum 3y ago
  Any billionaire who thinks of themselves as indispensable to society and has a highly visible public presence. If Musk was behaving towards the CCP half as disrespectfully as he does towards the the US political caste, he'd have been stripped of his China holdings and locked out of that market long ago.
  - thiagoharry 3y ago
    No, the equivalent in US wouldnt be a capitalist billionaire. It would be its opposite: a popular group with marxist or communist ideals that menaces the status quo and current order. Like the Black Panther Party. And, oh, they were disappeared, some of them still are in solitary confinenent because the government is afraid that they could spread their ideology to other inmates.
    - yafbum 3y ago
      The only example you can find is from 40-50 years ago? Around the time that China (while we're at comparing with China) was having its military shoot protesters in Tiananmen square?
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        Just because the government here was so successful that there isn't any remotely threatening fundamental opposition doesn't mean they wouldn't do it again. Those people are still unjustly in prison and still haven't been released.
        yafbum 3y ago
        The protestors summarily killed at Tiananmen are still unjustly dead
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        So is Fred Hampton, but the thread I was replying to dismissed it because it was a while ago.
- coldtea 3y ago
  That's not the way things are done in the west. Lacking absolute rule, you need to achieve similar things with a little more subtlety. Let's say a certain billionare enters politics, and is not a party favorite, and against the bipartisan elite consensus. Say, they are, god forbid, populist, and against job outsourcing, wars, and such. Media, who loved him for decades, can suddenly start covering his every action as if describing the leader of the Axis in WWII. Suddenly his associates might start to get investigated for things all sides in DC did since time immemorial with impunity. Experts might appear day and night on TV to give a psychological assessment of him. Some high standing people might openly advocate for his elimination. Government agencies might join the "good fight". Mere tech corporations might decide to ban his (the active President's) account. Others might pay some hack to come up with a bogus document binder hack job, a dossier if you will, that will feature day and night on the news. And inversely, his opponent's son might be news gold, be involved in all kinds of shady dealings, and even lose a certain computing device, and they're not covered, lest their parent is harmed. Or let's say another billionaire lacks the good taste to not antagonize the consensus of the elites and their lapdogs in the aspirational classes. Perhaps their glowing "let's all kiss the ass of the billionaire tech god" coverage changes overnight...
  - zyyyyyy 3y ago
    The lack of verification of the claims made related to the "bogus document binder hack job" doesn't preclude the possibility of conspiracy, sedition, etc. actually occuring, and the dossier played essentially no role in subsequent investigations. He also wasn't exactly anti-war. On the campaign trail rhetorically he was, but aside from the (disastrous but did need to happen) withdrawal from Afghanistan mostly continued the imperialist status quo. Iran and Syria are high-profile examples. He is an authoritarian populist, yes. I'm not sure why only people with money would have a reason to oppose that. The main reason people oppose him is he is an ineffective, narcissistic leader who did his utmost to personally enrich himself, continue to fan the flames of division, and forcefully push through fiscal policy that was basically the opposite of what should have been implemented at the time. It was not all bad, but it is hard to find much good. The market does not like uncertainty, and a bombastic cult of personality ball of teenage angst is not who you want with the levers to the world's largest economy.
JohnFen 3y ago
But that sort of thing is just murder, not anything legally sanctioned by the patriot act. Don't get me wrong, I think the patriot act is a travesty, but it doesn't go quite that far.
- late2part 3y ago
  https://www.aclu.org/video/aclu-ccr-lawsuit-american-boy-killed-us-drone-strike https://www.aclu.org/video/aclu-ccr-lawsuit-american-boy-kil... "The killings were part of a broader program of "targeted killing" by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts. "
simplotek 3y ago
> The US police are killing people all the time. Your comment sounds awfully disingenuous. I seriously doubt you do not see the huge difference between implementing official policies of extrajudicial imprisonments and having a random person murder people for their own personal reasons.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  there are several people that have been through gitmo that might disagree.
  - simplotek 3y ago
    What are you talking about? OP did not mentioned any example remotely involving Guantanamo bay. Are you trying to move the goalpost out of ignorance or cynicism?

ipaddr 3y ago

Who would be the US's Jack Ma?

plagiarist 3y ago
I don't believe the US could have a Jack Ma equivalent. We are more of a plutocracy than China is.
- yafbum 3y ago
  There are about as many billionaires in China as in the US.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Plutocracy is about whether the billionaires or the politicians have the power. Not about the amount of billionaires.
    - yafbum 3y ago
      Well then the power structure in China is much much MUCH narrower at the top (1 person for life)
- fsckboy 3y ago
  we are not a plutocracy at all, that's ridiculous. There are many places in the world where rich people hardly pay taxes. That is not at all true in the US where "the 1%" pay 40% of the income tax https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/FBIP-SOCIAL-04.jpg https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/FBIP-SOCIAL-0... if the rich controlled the government, don't you think they'd lower their taxes? or are we lucky to be ruled by the rich because they are so benevolent?
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    "If people were ruled by a king, don't you think the king would have taken every last thing in taxes? Therefore there has never been a monarchy ever."
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    Rich people in America pay taxes, don't be ridiculous. Wealthy (D) supporters abroad don't file tax returns and don't get penalized for it unless they fall out of line with the party. Then suddenly they're audited every year. This also happened to Trump, even though he was filing in NY.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sudosysgen 3y ago
Billionaires are less oppressed in the US than China.
- gmerc 3y ago
  bingo. The meta game in the US is to make enough money so you don’t have any limitations. Money pays for everything as we see with Elon. What a dystopia China is where billionaires can’t get away with paying a fee in a legal for a few world.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    Don't get it twisted here. The billionaires in China aren't punished for doing illegal shit. They are punished for going against The Party. They probably get away with at least as much or more than US billionaires as long as they don't ever go against The Party. Don't get the impression they are being held accountable for other stuff that The Party doesn't care about.
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      Jack Ma was literally bragging about breaking international law and that the government wasn't going to stop or regulate him before disappearing. Going against the party and going against the law are often the same thing stated differently.
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      The same principle applies in the USA. If you are best friends with the (D) party leaders, you are virtually immune to prosecution. https://jeffhead.webs.com/liberty/liberty/bdycount.txt https://jeffhead.webs.com/liberty/liberty/bdycount.txt (R) party is left to exist as a group of useful idiots who never pass any meaningful legislation that isn't immediately dismantled by (D) establishment within a few years.
yafbum 3y ago
Any billionaire who thinks of themselves as indispensable to society and has a highly visible public presence. If Musk was behaving towards the CCP half as disrespectfully as he does towards the the US political caste, he'd have been stripped of his China holdings and locked out of that market long ago.
- thiagoharry 3y ago
  No, the equivalent in US wouldnt be a capitalist billionaire. It would be its opposite: a popular group with marxist or communist ideals that menaces the status quo and current order. Like the Black Panther Party. And, oh, they were disappeared, some of them still are in solitary confinenent because the government is afraid that they could spread their ideology to other inmates.
  - yafbum 3y ago
    The only example you can find is from 40-50 years ago? Around the time that China (while we're at comparing with China) was having its military shoot protesters in Tiananmen square?
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      Just because the government here was so successful that there isn't any remotely threatening fundamental opposition doesn't mean they wouldn't do it again. Those people are still unjustly in prison and still haven't been released.
      - yafbum 3y ago
        The protestors summarily killed at Tiananmen are still unjustly dead
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        So is Fred Hampton, but the thread I was replying to dismissed it because it was a while ago.
coldtea 3y ago
That's not the way things are done in the west. Lacking absolute rule, you need to achieve similar things with a little more subtlety. Let's say a certain billionare enters politics, and is not a party favorite, and against the bipartisan elite consensus. Say, they are, god forbid, populist, and against job outsourcing, wars, and such. Media, who loved him for decades, can suddenly start covering his every action as if describing the leader of the Axis in WWII. Suddenly his associates might start to get investigated for things all sides in DC did since time immemorial with impunity. Experts might appear day and night on TV to give a psychological assessment of him. Some high standing people might openly advocate for his elimination. Government agencies might join the "good fight". Mere tech corporations might decide to ban his (the active President's) account. Others might pay some hack to come up with a bogus document binder hack job, a dossier if you will, that will feature day and night on the news. And inversely, his opponent's son might be news gold, be involved in all kinds of shady dealings, and even lose a certain computing device, and they're not covered, lest their parent is harmed. Or let's say another billionaire lacks the good taste to not antagonize the consensus of the elites and their lapdogs in the aspirational classes. Perhaps their glowing "let's all kiss the ass of the billionaire tech god" coverage changes overnight...
- zyyyyyy 3y ago
  The lack of verification of the claims made related to the "bogus document binder hack job" doesn't preclude the possibility of conspiracy, sedition, etc. actually occuring, and the dossier played essentially no role in subsequent investigations. He also wasn't exactly anti-war. On the campaign trail rhetorically he was, but aside from the (disastrous but did need to happen) withdrawal from Afghanistan mostly continued the imperialist status quo. Iran and Syria are high-profile examples. He is an authoritarian populist, yes. I'm not sure why only people with money would have a reason to oppose that. The main reason people oppose him is he is an ineffective, narcissistic leader who did his utmost to personally enrich himself, continue to fan the flames of division, and forcefully push through fiscal policy that was basically the opposite of what should have been implemented at the time. It was not all bad, but it is hard to find much good. The market does not like uncertainty, and a bombastic cult of personality ball of teenage angst is not who you want with the levers to the world's largest economy.

JohnFen 3y ago

But that sort of thing is just murder, not anything legally sanctioned by the patriot act. Don't get me wrong, I think the patriot act is a travesty, but it doesn't go quite that far.

late2part 3y ago
https://www.aclu.org/video/aclu-ccr-lawsuit-american-boy-killed-us-drone-strike https://www.aclu.org/video/aclu-ccr-lawsuit-american-boy-kil... "The killings were part of a broader program of "targeted killing" by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts. "

simplotek 3y ago

> The US police are killing people all the time. Your comment sounds awfully disingenuous. I seriously doubt you do not see the huge difference between implementing official policies of extrajudicial imprisonments and having a random person murder people for their own personal reasons.

sleepybrett 3y ago
there are several people that have been through gitmo that might disagree.
- simplotek 3y ago
  What are you talking about? OP did not mentioned any example remotely involving Guantanamo bay. Are you trying to move the goalpost out of ignorance or cynicism?