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MKUltra
- cies 2y ago[flagged]
- kolinko 2y agoAs a Russia’s neigbour - it’s nowwhere even remotely close.
- jasonvorhe 2y agoSo you've been briefed on all secret black budget projects or where does this assessment stem from?
- kolinko 2y agoThe levels of corruption in Russia are crazy high and easily visible to everyone - nobody I know who has been there would claim otherwise, and various stats confirm that. If you’re of a different opinion, I’d love to see any sort of proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that :) This is a good starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Russia It’s like conparing a person that has thrown a piece of trash on a ground and a person that dumped a garbage bin and saying they are the same.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoIn the US we just legalized corruption. Does that mean there’s less of it?
- verisimi 2y agoBut without government, it would be anarchy!
- cies 2y agoSign me up!
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoI don’t think people appreciated this one, but it made me chuckle thanks.
- n4r9 2y agoThe US doesn't have a "dear leader" who imprisons political opponents on spurious grounds in order to win elections. So there's that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- roenxi 2y agoIt'd be remiss to pass that by without noting there were something like 100 frivolous court cases launched against Trump around the time his poll numbers visibly overtook Biden's in an ongoing attempting to get him knocked out of the race. There is still hope that they weren't coordinated through the White House, but the gap to somewhere like Russia isn't as comfortably wide any more on that front.
- n4r9 2y agoNot too remiss. Probably the most remiss aspect is a lack of citations and use of loaded terms like "frivolous". Even granting your interpretation, the gap between this and the persecution, imprisonment and effective assassination of Navalny is extremely wide indeed.
- chomskyole 2y agoI don't know, there aren't many countries that imprison more people per capita than the US, including historical countries. There are also lots of political prisoners, secret courts and that kind of stuff. In terms of winning elections, it maybe is better to simply only have two parties that are propped up by oligarchs' money and offer pretty similar politics but different coloured flags. That way you don't have to imprison any opponents to start with....
- n4r9 2y agoThis is all true, and still far better than the situation in Russia.
- mopsi 2y agoWhen's the last time you were forced to pay a bribe? How often have doctors, cops, city officials, ladies at the DMV and other people in power explained how they cannot help you despite a completely valid request, and at the same time, made a suggestion that there might be other ways to solve your problem?
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago[flagged]
- mopsi 2y agoWhat you call "petty bribery" are vast networks where people at every level squeeze citizens for bribes, take their cut, and pass the rest upwards to their superiors. People who run the country are the bosses of various bribery chains whose influence depends on the depth and width of the corruption network. They are like competing mafia families: military mafia gets money by skimming contracts and squeezing people for bribes to get their children out of forced conscription; legal mafia gets money by selling verdicts; etc. It's funny that you mention corporate lobbying. In a truly corrupt place, companies are treated no better than citizens. Companies are squeezed for bribes too, and if they resist, then companies get raided and taken over. Owners get imprisoned on made up charges (or, ironically, for past bribing that they are unwilling to continue) and new owners are installed, usually members of the same corruption network, such as children of officials. In places like Russia, the equivalents of governors and congressmen are all owners of factories, oil terminals, ports, banks and other major businesses. They just steal the companies. It is impossible to run a successful major company without being one way or another a piggy bank for the corruption networks, permanently at risk of losing it all in illegal takeovers. (I recommend Bill Browder's books if you'd like to know more.) The western world has so little corruption that an average citizen or company never experiences anything like this.
- cies 2y agoLobbyism is legal corruption in my book. See what AIPAC has paid senators (over 10 million for Biden over his whole carreer), and that the US gives money to Israel (whom in turn pays AIPC for it's work). That means that, in a way, americans pay to corrupt their own politicians... legally!
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYes this is what I was getting at. I thought this was a common enough sentiment that I didn’t need to spell it out, but no one seems to have understood what I mean. And sure, your example is politically charged right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Another example is universal healthcare. This is popular amongst the general population but powerful lobbies keep it at bay. This has extreme life and death consequences for Americans! It’s legal corruption with serious consequences.
- cies 2y agoIt's a total subversion of democracy. Remember the "russian interferrence" scandal that supposedly happened? MSM was all over it, the only thing you heard. 10 million to Biden got from AIPAC is never even mentioned in the MSM. It's beyond repair I'm afraid.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYep. Actually I hadn’t even thought of pro-Israel donations to Biden until you mentioned it, but you’re right we heard all about Russian interference. OpenSecrets lists the figure as $4.2m since 1990, but that is still the highest amount for anyone listed and clearly a great deal of funds. (And I suspect there are multiple ways to classify money as “pro-Israel”) https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind... And yeah, you’re getting downvoted but what you’re saying is nominally accurate, just uncomfortable for people to face, and we’ve quite effectively been trained to dismiss those thoughts. I don’t think anything politically is ever beyond repair, and I’m in favor of change, but it’s going to take a lot of work and it’s going to require broad-based grassroots efforts to get anywhere.
- jasonvorhe 2y agoWho cares? Do you honestly think things are much different in the US or Europe? It's just more corporate corruption that doesn't leak through society where you suddenly find yourself having to openly bribe a cop for a traffic violation. It's also not like anyone really cares about corruption or Germany would've long been penalized for not having implemented a EU ratified anti corruption law. If anyone in the West actually cared about corruption we wouldn't be sending billions in cash and military equipment to Ukraine.
- kolinko 2y agoYes, they are much different in Europe. We have a direct comparison in Poland - over the last 20-30 years the levels of corruption almost equalised with western countries and it’s like night and day. And I’m speaking both about corporate and government corruption. Have you been to Russia? Do you know people that live there? Did you speak to them about corruption? (asking about anecdotes, because stats don’t appeal to you I understand)
- SequoiaHope 2y agoI think it’s fair to say that the covert illegal activities of the US government probably exceed that of any other country by any reasonable measure. And we also manufacture and ship weapons all over the world, including to horrible regimes like Saudi Arabia. We are currently about to ship over $1 billion in weapons to a country actively perpetrating a genocide. So yeah, you’re right. It’s not even close. It’s much more extensive. We are however more concerned with hiding those activities. We’re a “democracy” after all.
- n4r9 2y agoRussia, Iran and China match or outdo the US in all of these. I'm no fan of the US at all, but to claim that they are worse than those countries is absurd.
- chomskyole 2y agoDo you have any data supporting this? The five largest weapon manufacturers are all from the US [1]. The US army is bigger than the next ten-ish armies together by budget [2] (I eyeballed that one). The US has a rich history of propping up extremist to take over democratically elected governments and supported the killing of millions of civilians. And they gave amnesty to some of the worst criminals from Germany and Japan after WW2 in order to give them jobs after the war to make use of the "knowledge" these criminals gained during their crimes. Honestly, I can't see any country competing with the US on this one. Even if there would have been intent, they would still lack scale.... [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/12221/the-worlds-biggest-arms-companies/ https://www.statista.com/chart/12221/the-worlds-biggest-arms... [2] https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.php https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.php
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoYeah I suspect this person is immersed in western news and just hears all about “the bad guys”, but I wonder what the USA looks like to someone in those places. I appreciate your sharing of links. I didn’t have the energy to dig up a bunch of data, but the note about military expenditures supports the point nicely.
- entropyneur 2y agoAs another Russia's neighbour, americans making comments like that makes me seriously worried for my life.
- illuminant 2y ago[flagged]
- theguppydream 2y agoThis is great if you read it in a Fox Mulder voice.
- rickdeckard 2y agoOr as "True Detective" Matthew McConaughey, sitting in a car next to Woody Harrelson...
- krapp 2y agoNo, this is definitely a Smoking Man diatribe. It written from too much of an insider's perspective to be Mulder.
- verisimi 2y ago> The greatest secret of our age is that we are not alone in our own minds. > Through entanglement we are networked, and the clues have always been there. What shape am I thinking of then?
- richrichardsson 2y agoOrange.
- verisimi 2y agoWow - fair enough! ;)
- superb_dev 2y agoHey both can be true though
- skilled 2y agoFrom 5 years ago, Project MKUltra (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21165137) - Oct 2019 (121 comments) Stephen Kinzer wrote a book about MKUltra: Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb-Control/dp/1250140439/ https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb-Contro...) And these two articles talk about the book in brief: The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief' (https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que...) When the C.I.A. Was Into Mind Control (NYTimes) (https://archive.is/cRmWm https://archive.is/cRmWm)
- beaugunderson 2y agoPoisoner in Chief was a great read.
- bhaney 2y agoI'm glad that we learned from this and took measures to prevent the US government from carrying out any more abhorrent secret operations on its own citizens. All the extra accountability and transparency that's been woven into our institutional frameworks since this was discovered makes me much more confident that it won't happen again.
- dbspin 2y ago/s
- bhaney 2y agoNaturally
- xyst 2y agoThe American obsession with torture is wild. Psychological and physical (esp during post-9/11)
- XorNot 2y agoBecause most people believe torture works. They believe we shouldn't do it because it's "bad", rather then the reality which is that it's ineffective at information extraction. Same problem with WMDs: people tend to think there's just tons of chemical and biological weapons which would definitely immediately win wars, and we don't use them because for some reason dying by a bullet is "better" then dying nearly instantly from nerve gas - like that makes a difference. The reality, again, is that they don't actually work (specifically: they are ineffective against military forces in achieving military objectives, but very effective against civilians who are unlikely to have counter-measures on hand and/or too uncontrollable to be create a useful strategic advantage). EDIT: Like to drive the point home, in Zero Dark Thirty - which the CIA got to consult on - the line is that a prisoner broke under enhanced interrogation...and while it's true Bin Laden was located by intelligence from a prisoner who was tortured...they didn't get the intelligence from the torture. All the information which was useful was found by regular interrogation before they tortured them.
- mikelovenotwar 2y agoThe 'behind the bastards' podcast did a series of episodes on this that are worth checking out.
- ted_bunny 2y agoNot really. I've listened to most of that podcast's episodes and noticed a pattern (AFAICT). He leaves out a lot of relevant information anytime the CIA is involved in a story.
- chomskyole 2y agoWhat info did they leave out in the MKUltra series?
- ted_bunny 2y agoDon't remember specifics, sorry.
- mikelovenotwar 2y agoI don't seem to recall that being the case, the CIA are discussed multiple times.
- ted_bunny 2y agoI didn't say they're not discussed.
- mikelovenotwar 2y ago> He leaves out a lot of relevant information anytime the CIA is involved in a story. What do you feel has not been covered sufficiently in the MKULTRA podcast series?
- ted_bunny 2y ago
- jakeogh 2y agoIs that over? Interesting how we are expected to collectively[0] experience every piece of bad news and pretend humans aren't awesome. [0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pretext.mov https://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pret...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bitcharmer 2y ago[flagged]
- wheresmyshadow 2y agoReading through this gave me serious chills. This sounds like something straight out of Josef Mengele laboratory.
- faizan-ali 2y agoThere is an excellent behind the bastards podcast on this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5kSz7fsdOV9fzFFC93tdS7?si=UcZQnj2QS4SSAgFSGMjMZg https://open.spotify.com/episode/5kSz7fsdOV9fzFFC93tdS7?si=U...