7 ms·
When "threats" like this get you in jail, it is time to admit we are in the USSR and not elsewhere. Read Soljenitsin; you have this for real. Not just a novel
by pfortuny 13y ago
When "threats" like this get you in jail, it is time to admit we are in the USSR and not elsewhere.
Read Soljenitsin; you have this for real. Not just a novel like 1984, the very real thing, like being afraid of making a joke, of criticizing nr. 1.
- jsonne 13y agoThis is complete hyperbole and you know it. Where are the secret police whisking away "dissenters" in the middle of the night? Where are the mass forced migrations of ethnic minorities? Where are the mass executions of political prisoners? Fraudulent elections? A one party state? The fact that you made this comment on a public forum is evidence enough that we are nowhere even close to living in a police state.
- pfortuny 13y agoYes, this is hyperbole, like the poor kid's. And just because you had to answer it and reflect a little on it, it has served its purpose. Exactly. So: we are not exactly there but do you not see the writing on the wall? Being afraid of making a joke is hideous. And being afraid because of the police is, honestly, horrendous. EDIT: did I say anything wrong? Enjoy the downvotes.
- Dylan16807 13y ago>did I say anything wrong? Yes you did. You're basically pulling the puppetmaster defense of 'I said something incorrect but you reacted so I win'. People tend not to like that argument.
- Alex3917 13y ago"Where are the secret police whisking away 'dissenters' in the middle of the night?" You mean like the 40-50,000 swat team raids against non-violent political dissenters that the US government carries out each year, almost always in the middle of the night?
- pfortuny 13y agoEven more: you can get phone-swatted, is it really believable?
- downandout 13y agoThat is an interesting thought. At any moment, an officer that can't get a search warrant could anonymously call 911 from a burner cell or pay phone and report a violent situation. That alone is enough for a full-scale paramilitary invasion of the target's home or office.
- anaptdemise 13y agoDoesn't even have to be violent. Just as easy to roll an informant to claim drugs dealings at a residence. Drugs seem to be easiest way to get a no-knock raid, even if your mayor. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor's_residence_drug_raid http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayo...
- thetrb 13y agoSo more than 100 a day? Where do you have that number from?
- will_brown 13y agoI honestly can not tell if you are being sarcastic or not... >Where are the secret police whisking away "dissenters" in the middle of the night? Think IRS targeting; think of the secret targeted kill lists (not only can you not know who is on it, you can not know the criteria to get on it). >Where are the mass forced migrations of ethnic minorities? Check the farms where you will find field hands who are likely undocumented immigrants. Or check the slums, no need to physically relocate anyone when you can economically relocate them. >Where are the mass executions of political prisoners? Thank goodness there is no argument here. However, we do have indefinite detentions and targeted kill lists without due process/judicial review. Maybe not mass executions, but one targeted killing by the government is to much for my tastes. >Fraudulent elections? Um...2000 Bush v. Gore? Florida? Certainly no known fraud, but an election decided by a single state and a few hundred votes, where thousands went missing for a period of time, not to mention the "faulty ballots" in Florida. I would say this is more like MLB during the steroid era, sure the new records still stand, but there is a asterisk next to the names. >A one party state? You have a choice between red or blue, either way you get budget deficits, a surveillance state, Gitmo, war of terror(opps *on), ect...
- lukifer 13y agoRead up on Greg Palast's investigation of voting machines. There's substantial evidence of vote tampering in 2000 and 2004.
- specialist 13y agoVoterAction.org proved in court that Kerry won New Mexico in 2004, even though its electoral votes were awarded to Bush. Just the tip of the iceberg.
- adventured 13y agoAnd the regular, massive voter fraud throughout major Democrat strongholds like Philadelphia. There's little question BOTH parties are engaging in routine election fraud.
- 13y ago
- StandardFuture 13y agoYou are referring to things such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ...but we are not talking in terms of building a model showing the equivalence in replica between each state's government and actions (actually Stalin was a very 'unique' dictator, the same as Hitler, in relation to ANY other leader). We are talking in terms of ideology behind a governments actions e.g. a complete disrespect for individual freedoms granted by the constitution. Tha kid was placed in jail for uttering a joke. Come on.
- downandout 13y agoThe US incarceration rate is higher than Russia's during the height of the KGB. That's right: while the political goals and tactics are different and somehow palatable to a pliable US population, the net results of our current system are actually worse than those of most oppressive regimes in the history of the world. What's worse is that there is no end in sight. The NSA scandal has shown the the people who make it into elected office these days are all about the same. US elections are nothing more than political theater designed to delude the population into thinking that it can make choices, when in fact the end result will be the same regardless of whom they choose. Who needs rigged elections in this environment?
- taylodl 13y agoDon't need secret police when the kids are whisked off to jail in broad daylight, out in the open. Secret police are only required when one wants to hide such grievous acts. Quite the opposite is the case now - our leaders our proud they're Fighting Terrorists.
- enraged_camel 13y agoYou must be living in some sort of alternate reality dreamstate where these things don't happen routinely. Allow me to attempt to wake you up: Eternal NSA surveillance. The TSA. No-fly lists. Secret prisons. Guantanamo Bay. Election rigging. Being targeted by IRS. The percentage of population that is in prison (much higher than USSR at the height of its power). I could go on. Out of everything you stated, the only thing we don't have is mass executions of political prisoners. But the fact is, the differences between the USA and USSR are only on a matter of scale. And that scale is growing at an alarming rate.
- rdouble 13y agoWhere are the secret prisons, anyway?
- enraged_camel 13y agoAlmost all of them are overseas, outside of US territory and jurisdiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_sites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_site...
- bussierem 13y agoAlso, why are they still considered "secret" if random people on HN are discussing them candidly?
- alanh 13y agoBecause their locations are or were undisclosed, and obviously not even everyone here has heard of them. They exist. Edited in reply They are explicitly said to exist in Hollywood propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty (2013). No, this is not proof, although it is evidence. If the establishment wants us to believe they exist, is that not troubling enough?
- Arnor 13y agoFYI hollywood propaganda films aren't usually the best citations... EDIT: spelling counts...
- rayiner 13y agoWhen "threats" like this get you in jail, it's time to admit the speaker is in small-town Texas (New Braunfels, TX, population 57,000, 30 miles outside of San Antonio and surrounded by nothing: https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=E+Ashby+Pl&daddr=S+Walnut+Ave&hl=en&ll=29.699982,-98.091431&spn=0.22456,0.308647&sll=29.702368,-98.12439&sspn=1.79637,2.469177&geocode=FbJbwQEd8SYh-g%3BFVEhxQEdFZAm-g&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=9&t=m&z=12 https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=E+Ashby+Pl&daddr=S+Walnut...).
- namlem 13y agoHow is that an excuse? Not to mention, 57,000 is not that small of a town.
- rayiner 13y agoSmall towns do stupid things the world over. It's like a universal constant. And for better or worse, in the U.S. there is relatively little high-level supervision of how small towns police themselves. Holding this kid for what he said is clearly unconstitutional. I think every federal court in the country would hold likewise. But a police department in a small town where residents are scared to death of another Columbine or Sandy Hook? They don't care about the first amendment, and they never have. Small towns have never been a place where you could just say whatever you wanted. They've never had that mentality. It's just much more visible now that everything is on the internet.
- pfortuny 13y agoAnd then again: who will pay for damages? You can bet: 1) nobody 2) nobody but the parents 3) nobody but the kid, who will have to go to jail for being insolvent 4) more nobody Of course he MAY get an apology from the Government. Or, come to think of it, he may not...
- anigbrowl 13y agoOf course he MAY get an apology from the Government Which government?
- StandardFuture 13y agoIt's worse. We are in an USSR running on capitalism. Which means a much wealthier and more efficient USSR.
- adventured 13y agoAmerica isn't a Capitalist nation and hasn't been for decades. America is between a mixed economy and Socialism, with the world's largest welfare system, and 'social safety net.' 3/4 of the massive Federal budget goes to social welfare programs. From 1930 to perhaps the early 1980s, the US was a mixed economy. Every aspect of the US economy is completely under regulation and Federal control. The number of Federal regulations has doubled since 1975. There are now over 170,000 pages of Federal regulations in total, governing every aspect of ... well, everything. Obama's Administration alone added over 11,000 new regulations in just his first two years in office. America is the ultimate regulation state (aka the opposite of a low regulation free market). America is heavily taxed, and has a total government system that eats 40% of the economy, and at $6.4 trillion is larger than the economy of Japan. Those facts alone disqualify the US as being Capitalistic. It's quite easy to demonstrate that America is in fact not Capitalistic any longer. A very short historical comparison of the economic structures (spending, taxes, welfare, regulations, etc) of the US economy in, say, 1820, 1890, 1910, 1930, 1975, 2013 - more than demonstrates the progression from highly unregulated Capitalism toward Socialism. Capitalism requires an unregulated free market based economy. America is almost as far away from that as you can get before becoming a full blown Socialist nation. Even worse, America's variation of Socialism is going to be Fascism, and is rapidly trending that direction.
- davorak 13y ago> 3/4 of the massive Federal budget goes to social welfare programs Is there anywhere that this is broken down by program, it is not obvious from looking at the wikipedia simple pie graph that this is the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY... >Capitalism requires an unregulated free market based economy. It is not clear what you mean here. Adam Smith seems to have been a proponent for the government paying for some public goods and regulation > It was the role of the government to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual" > provide public goods such as infrastructure, provide national defense and regulate banking. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith Which agrees with what I have read and been told elsewhere through the years.
- amerika 13y agoAll civilizations must collapse eventually. Rome, Russia, Greece, and now us.