Be careful all of you criticizing DominikR don't fall of your high horse.
We all know that government authorized assassinations and kidnappings are always directed towards terrorists, and not to achieve geopolitical goals. /s
I'm not saying this is the case here; I'm saying serving in elite forces and battling "terrorism" doesn't instantly mean "hero".
His time in the IDF being, of course, not why the article is referring to him as a hero. I'm not defending assassinations and kidnappings, I'm pointing out the holier-than-thou attitude in these comments based on what appears to be a quick skim of the article is totally unfounded.
True. Whether or not one might feel that his actions as an IDF commando were heroic, I think we can agree that standing up to terrorists on one's plane is heroic.
US west coast prices are terrifyingly similar to prices in the Baltic States(unless you're living in a metropolis such as NYC).
Something to remember: It doesn't matter that you're from Ukraine. It matters where the company you work remotely for is stationed. If you find a company in the US or western EU willing to hire you, you can probably ask for their domestic market rates :)
Except corporate espionage is not just about economic leverage, it can also be just about intel. You don't have to steal IP for it to be corporate espionage.
Basically, the military is acting as an arm of corporate espionage. In the US.
I'm guessing you're not aware that top secret clearances more often than not require "code words" and you are read in aka given access to said code words on a strictly need to know basis. Some code words themselves are classified. Having a too secret clearance does by know possible way grant you access to everything like say the US nuclear defense details.
>Because if they are "heavily" spying on the U.S., they already knew all what Snowden had, and more.
We don't know this, and how would the Chinese know specifically what Snowden has? Do you have anything to suggest that they did?
>How many gov employees + contractors have top security clearances in the US? That's how.
This doesn't say much. Just because you have a clearance doesn't mean you have access to classified documents. In the miltary, for example, almost all aircraft maintainers have a secret clearance and they just fix tires.
The difference between "other countries" and the US is that the US puts up a show of "human rights", "scrutiny", and "court battles" in order to show that they "care", whereas the other ones just do not bother.
Where are the results? Better yet, public scrutiny? Everything's a fucking national secret.
Excuse me? How is that somewhat OK? I don't give a damn about the NSA charter or even the constitution which so many people seem to bring up in hopes of justifying mass surveillance of civilians abroad - is mass spying on foreign civilians really OK at this point? Pre-emptively setting up infrastructure for surveillance without any warrants, in a sovereign state?
What about enterprise customers? Is it still "OK" if they carry out economic espionage?
Surely laws should only be considered if the situation in question relates to an american?
There is a difference between having the ability to spy and using it en mass without warrants. Tampering with routers gives the NSA the ability to spy.
The question of whether or not data is being collected illegally should not be confused with the ability of data to be collected.
You have a point. However, something really rubs me the wrong way about them having the ability to spy on every person. They are actively going out of their way to set up future channels of spying, without the consent of customers who bought the router in question.
And honestly, while your point is valid, there's plenty of discussion available online about rubber stamping warrants - and this sort of implanting of surveillance tools just makes it economically/logistically viable for them to spy on everyone.
The question is - do you feel OK about a foreign nation state embedding the ability to invade your privacy? Like you said, they don't have to use it, they just have to be able to use it when necessary. Honestly this sort of hairsplitting is just silly.
You inserted "mass spying," "foreign civilians," and "pre-emptive." They are nowhere in the evidence around this program. For all you know, NSA is only rerouting shipments bound for legitimate threats.
I wouldn't be surprised if this tool is used inappropriately as well, but there's nothing inherently mass, pre-emptive, or civilian-targeting about it.
> Please show me where the U.S. has officially declared war on these countries it continues to blow up civilians in e.g. Yemen.
The US declared an open-ended war against those people and organizations that the President determines were involved in the 9/11 attacks, and al-Qaeda is one of those organizations. While one might argue (as many have) that the an open-ended declaration of war was a bad idea, or (as others have) that "al-Qaeda", given its nature, is more of an ideological alignment than an actual organization, the power to declare war has never been Constitutionally limited to declarations with nation-states as the target of the war declared.
> There was no declaration of war, there was an authorization for the use of military force. Two very different things.
No, they aren't different Constitutionally at all. The AUMF is an exercise of the Constitutional power to declare war, which does not require any particular language to be used in exercising it, just as the Constitutional power to levy a tax depends only on whether the effect is a tax, not whether the Congressional action imposing the liability calls it a tax.
(It's possible that statutory provisions passed by Congress under its other powers may be conditioned on the specific language in a declaration, such that there may be different effects of something like the 9/11 or Iraq AUMF and something that explicitly uses language like "declares war", but that's a distinction caused by the exercise of other Congressional powers, not a Constitutional distinction that makes the former something other than an declaration of war from a Constitutional perspective.)
How exactly do you know that the AUMF-2001 invoked Congress' power to declare war rather than Congress' power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."?
> How exactly do you know that the AUMF-2001 invoked Congress' power to declare war
Because its the only Constitutional power of Congress which could support it.
> rather than Congress' power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."?
The necessary and proper clause isn't an independent alternative to other Constitutional powers, there still has to be a base Constitutional power to which the function is necessary and proper.
The base power needn't be a Congressional power given the section I highlighted. It could be an Article II power, such as the CinC power.
You've also overlooked the possibility that the AUMF is simply unconstitutional.
In any event, to end this sub thread, at least for my part, whether we are at war or not still doesn't answer the question because declaring war is not a carte blanche to ignore the rest of the constitution (see Hamdi v Rumsfeld). It in no way comports with war traditionally understood to assassinate personel vaguely associated with the enemy involved in the production of propaganda thousands of miles from any active battlefield. Nor is such a killing 'necessary and appropriate' in the words of the AUMF.
> The base power needn't be a Congressional power given the section I highlighted.
That doesn't change the answer. There's no other Constitutional power to which there is even a colorable argument that the AUMF is "necessary and proper" such that it would be supported independently of Congress power to declare war.
> It could be an Article II power, such as the CinC power.
It's doubtful that any such power exists -- the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the military in Article II is a limitation on Congress' Article I power to regulate the military (specifically, it prevents it from dividing the roles that the founders saw as having an executive character by creating a separate C-in-C of the military, which its Article I powers would otherwise permit). But its not a power of government -- the designation of the President as CinC doesn't give the government any power that doesn't come from some other provision of the Constitution, it simply limits the manner in which other Constitutional powers may be exercised (it distributes some powers to the President to the extent that they already exist within the federal government, but for them to exist within the federal government, they must be grounded elsewhere in the Constitution.)
> In any event, to end this sub thread, at least for my part, whether we are at war or not still doesn't answer the question because declaring war is not a carte blanche to ignore the rest of the constitution
The answer was offered to the question of when did we declare war on the targets of these actions, and was not intended to say anything more about the Constitutionality -- and, even more so, appropriateness even if Constitutional -- of the actions, which is, I think, a much harder question that can't be answered without a thorough application of principles to the changing factual circumstances of technological means and realities of modern warfare.
You're delusional. There is plenty of evidence even operators of drones don't always have evidence that the people they're killing are "terrorists", they just "feel" it.
Without disclosing the rules, it opens us to moral hazard. There is no incentive to feel accountable, and as we've learned lately, the government does not do well without accountability.
I agree with you, but I don't know if you'll agree with me. In my experience, revolutions generally do not generate any sort of unbiased news. As a rule of thumb, it attracts extremist/opposition groups from both sides of the spectrum with their own agendas. Not to mention regular people themselves fall victim to bias.
How much can you really discern about the situation from a few tweets without context?
That's why I think regular investigative journalism should still be the norm.
Selective prosecution is a key tool of an oppressive government, reposting one of my comments here, which was related to a politician seemingly getting a similar treatment:
The problem with your post is exactly why selective prosecution is the
very embodiment of an oppressive regime. After all they DID break the
law, and they SHOULD be punished right? Who could argue with that.
Meanwhile half of Washington is doing the same thing, with the full
knowledge of people like the NSA, and the facts are sure to come out if
they take a meaningful stand against their agenda.
The example of the soviet election is also an excellent one. They knew
every bit of information about every candidate, and merely had to expose
the ones that didn't toe the line properly as the criminals or terrible
people they were.
Just like every single other person ever, they did something illegal or
unsavory at some point in their life.
Make no aspersions, the kind of information the NSA holds is complete
and total political power.
You an absolutely be sure that at the bare minimum a large minority of CEOs of large company are in or have been in a similar situation. Laws on insider trading are very all encompassing and are broken on a regular basis by practices that are considered normal. It may have been fraud, and it may have been illegal, but that dosen't make it any less of a leveraging tool for people like the NSA.
That might be true, but law enforcement agencies are trained to reconstruct evidence via a process called "parallel construction" to avoid revealing their sources (NSA for example) so you might never know the whole thruth: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/parall...
Your link isn't even an account of the trial or the details of the charges, it's just one guy disputing one version of the Nacchio story.
The "fraud" involved an overly optimistic assessment of Qwest's future. That might indeed legally be fraud but it's hardly blatant in the sense one might argue it's a fairly common occurrence and most instances of such behavior go to civil, not criminal court.
"In its case, the government stated that Nacchio continued to tell Wall Street that Qwest would be able to achieve aggressive revenue targets long after he knew that they could not be achieved. This helped it buy up regional phone rival US West, the government alleges."
I don't know if I would call it blatant guilt. The prosecution of insider trading in this case seemed to be very selective. How often do CEOs go to jail for that?
With enough budget and motivation, it'd be easy to paint even you -- regardless of who you are and what you have done -- as a villain, especially with the cooperation of the press.
- It's easy to believe a CEO is guilty of insider trading, because all CEOs are guilty of insider trading. (Few people take the next step to wonder why insider trading is a crime at all.)
- He's actually in prison, which makes him less sympathetic.
- He's a Bellhead, which makes him less sympathetic to me. (I've worked at multiple descendants of Ma Bell, so my prejudice was earned.)
- The biggest thing, I think, is most of us imagine that if we just behave in socially-accepted ways, that's enough to keep us out of trouble. It's uncomfortable to consider the possibility that isn't true.
We all know that government authorized assassinations and kidnappings are always directed towards terrorists, and not to achieve geopolitical goals. /s
I'm not saying this is the case here; I'm saying serving in elite forces and battling "terrorism" doesn't instantly mean "hero".