I'm not an american, I live in a small EU country.
I've seen wikileaks, and I know what US did and can assume that they did a lot more and worse after that... and the NSA catalog was a fun thing to read too.
And on the other hand, we have speculations ("not too far fetched") about russians doing bad stuff on a massively-used search engine, in english, about malware that will be detected, dissected and analyzed in a matter of minutes by pretty much every government agency of every nato country...
I'll take my chances. And also, i'm pretty sure UK wouldnt extradite a russian journalist if they posted about yandex doing bad stuff.
Amen. I've never understood why people fear speculated Chinese and Russian spying, while they never seem to recall the US spying that is well documented and confirmed.
Seriously. This is extremely well documented behavior of various regimes all over the world and you will not be able to produce even one example of America doing it.
The reason that the US and RU/CCP aren’t treated the same is because they do not behave the same.
Ahh the good odl “my version” of democracy. We go through this with every single thread about Singapore.
Fun variants to play:
- Show me one instance of my country performing extrajudicial killings by drone that take out an entire unaligned wedding party (Russian? American? Afghan wedding party probably doesn’t see the difference)
- Show me instance where “my country”’s law enforcement kills random people in their bed because they were in the wrong house
- Frequently chokes people to death because, uh, definitely their skin color, religion, sexual orientation? (Plenty of candidates here)
- At least my country doesn’t force down planes in contravention of international law because there’s someone on board we don’t like (Belarus? Any takers for more?)
- Randomly grabs people off the street and tortures them in black sites around eastern europe. (This is a fun one, so many competitors)
- Or “definitely doesn’t punish family” as long as you don’t count separating children from their parents in internment camps and losing them (Fun family game of “Things that happen along which border for 20$ ? Ukraine or Mexico?”).
I get it, I get it, it’s less bad than outright torture killing, so one can still feel morally superior to the Nazis or Russians. Unless one remembers the picture from the extraordinary rendition blacksites.
Seriously. It’s extremely well documented behavior of “regimes” all over the world, but …
One can absolutely be proud of their country for whatever reason of their choosing, not much wrong with that, but when you’re forced to narrowly cherry-pick definitions to arrive at “phew, still less bad”, you’re pretty deep down the rationalizing game already and may want to ask yourself what your redline is. Because the Reich set a pretty damn high bar in the last century when it comes to comparative rationalization.
The point here isn’t to make you feel bad about your country, you can do very little about these things, whether you are an individual Russian or American - I think we all should rather hang our heads in shame about where we managed to get the world to slip, forgetting the hard learned history lessons that play these inane games of “if you position the lens exactly this way, how dare you imply my country is as bad as yours”.
Ah the good ol’ “I don’t have a response so I’m going to just throw mud into the conversational waters.” This has nothing to do with “is my country better than yours.” Someone asked a specific question about a specific dimension of comparison and I gave a specific example as to why they’re treated differently. It’s clear as day.
> I think we all should rather hang our heads in shame about where we managed to get the world to slip, forgetting the hard learned history lessons
If you think the world has “slipped” to some local minima exemplified by modern US behavior, you haven’t been paying attention to history at all.
Reducing collateral damage in military operations is a great reason for more US spying, not less.
It’s actually pretty remarkable that we even think about a single individual dying by accident these days. Great argument for how carefully the US conducts warfare.
The US was at war with a non-state actor who committed an act of war against its civilians. State-to-state warfare is not the only form that has ever existed.
I would not consider USA LEO illegally detaining or using excessive force comparable to the Kremlin ordering the arrest of a dissident's family members. One is an individual acting on ignorance, racism, or poor training while the other is a concerted regime effort to maintain control by scaring potential dissidents. The message being "even if you escape punishment we'll go after your family".
Children separated from parents at the border may disagree with your notion of non family punishment.
“My country is less bad than your country” is a fun game, but at some point it does require a very large amount of cognitive dissonance to stay ahead of the game. Especially when the country is standing with one foot in a perpetual white supremacist coup
Children who cross the border illegally are also breaking the law. A law that every country on the planet has. The punitive familial separation was absolutely atrocious and I hope people go to prison for it, but it’s nowhere close to “my son said something mean about POTUS on the internet, now I’m being detained.”
So you’re suggesting that you’re concerned about the US arresting and/or drone striking you in the EU?
In EU’s case, the reason you should view US spying differently from RU/CCP spying is that US spying just saved your continent from being rolled by Russia, while RU spying/influence is what rendered EU leadership blind to the largest military operation since WW2 on their doorstep.
Maybe not bomb, but if I did something high profile enough, I'd be afraid they'd extradite me to USA, even if it's illegal. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't extradite me to russia.
And yes, russia definitely attacked EU and google+nsa spying on my phone definitely stopped them, sure.
Maybe nato shouldn't build so many bases and put so much american weapons all around russia (and china). The world would be a much nicer and peaceful place if US kept their army at home.... just the list of attacked countries is huge.
You mean US bombs flying over my head not that long ago to bomb a country 4 hours away with a car, while still acting as if nato is a purely defensive organization? Yeah... thank you, but no. I'd be much happier if US just packed their stuff and went back home, and maybe be able to afford some healthcare for all the people at home... and education... and maybe deal with the homeless problem, instead of wasting all that money for wars.
> Show me one instance America detaining someone for a family member’s political dissidence?
Nah we're not playing your game of restricting this to family members for political speech.
Your original point was to address
> Amen. I've never understood why people fear speculated Chinese and Russian spying, while they never seem to recall the US spying that is well documented and confirmed.
> In some cases, family members – including young
children – of “ghost detainees” have been detained themselves, and
held in CIA secret sites, including 9 and 7 year old boys.
"Nah we're not playing your game of [responding to the point you actually made]"
The question is why US spying is treated differently than Chinese and Russian. The answer is that China and Russia behave dramatically differently than the US does. I never made any claim as to the US being some flawless benevolent entity, but I made a clear argument (that you've not refuted) as to why most of the global community views them differently.
> The answer is that China and Russia behave dramatically differently than the US does.
yes. they are open about what they do whereas we do it covertly
> why most of the global community views them differently.
citation needed
"most of the global community"
you mean the west, which is not even a majority of the global community.
but even if it was a majority, again, because we do it covertly, we hide it and everyone only sees the good things until someone like snowden comes along and leaks our dirty laundry.
I've seen wikileaks, and I know what US did and can assume that they did a lot more and worse after that... and the NSA catalog was a fun thing to read too.
And on the other hand, we have speculations ("not too far fetched") about russians doing bad stuff on a massively-used search engine, in english, about malware that will be detected, dissected and analyzed in a matter of minutes by pretty much every government agency of every nato country...
I'll take my chances. And also, i'm pretty sure UK wouldnt extradite a russian journalist if they posted about yandex doing bad stuff.