Palantir's role or non-role aside, the idea that we're even looking into whether people wrote about a student protest is absurd. The "combating antisemitism" cover story for all of this is incredibly cynical.
I am European, traveling from Europe to New York. They picked me from the line. Then the guy got bitten by his own dog. [edit] I just realise this was 10 years ago, time flies :O
It’s terrifying that anyone would not only accept forbidding travel to critics, but also thinks it’s normal. From de Toqueville and Dickens to de Beauvoir to Žižek, the US used to welcome and embrace criticism.
Have we really become as thin-skinned as North Korea?
Nice! Such a great gotcha if you've never read the Constitution or spent 30 seconds thinking about how freedom of speech works.
You're free to have an opinion and be free from state-sanctioned consequences.
You are not guaranteed to be free from private parties choosing not to affiliate with you, calling you mean names, or banning you from their platforms... for the obvious reason that protecting that right would require that the state compel specific speech from private parties, which... See Step 1!
All of this should have been covered by about 8th grade. Were you paying attention?
Well, I'm not from the US and am just observing it from quite a distance, but a good comeback to you would be that the normal administration you wish for was good at letting people in, yes.
The "normal administration" to which I'm referring would be almost any administration in US history other than the current one. Freedom of speech is — at least putatively — a bedrock principle of the US.
In fact, the same Secretary of State who deported this man from the US for his speech (amongst dozens of other such deportations[1]) has announced a policy meant to prevent other countries from doing the exact same thing.[2] "Free speech for me, but not for thee."
Fascists consider applying double standards that enable them to enjoy what they deny others, virtuous. Not a logical fallacy. The purpose is to dominate.
The denied person seems to be a foreign national and by all looks of it, an activist, taking part in university protests. It doesn't seem all that surprising that he got denied entry.
Man, if we can't agree that "freedom of speech" includes protection from legal consequences for something you say then there's really nowhere to go from here.
Well, he appears to have been a protester at Columbia University in 2024, and he is also not a citizen.
If you yourself are a citizen, I'm sure you can express your views and not be sent anywhere. You can also vote to get people in power who are more to your liking, or even attempt be one of those people yourself.
Reductio ad absurdum: corporal punishment for people who say things the government dislikes doesn't violate their freedom of speech. Sure, they might get beaten for it, but they can still express their opinion and they can still protest!
Yes, my opinion is that there should be no legal consequences for speech. And again, that is the US Secretary of State's opinion too — just only for US nationals traveling to foreign countries, not vice versa.
> In your opinion, should anyone be able to travel to the US to protest? Would you set an upper limit to this process, or should any amount be allowed?
The government shall not take action in response to his constitutionally protected rights because the laws to authorize that action shall not exist.
They are not limiting foreigners (well, they are, but that's a separate issue). They are deporting people specifically in order to censor speech the government dislikes, irrespective of how many people are visiting the country.
I understand what corporal punishment is. My point is that the reductio ad absurdum of your definition of "free speech" does not preclude it.
If you actually care about these concepts then reading about them will be faster than relying on Cunningham’s Law to iteratively eliminate all conceivable wrong answers.
So I guess the neat way for US to deny entry to people is somehow have the denying done by non-law-enforcement and also perhaps somehow outside of its soil (if that matters)?
Yes, but isn't the current situation based on a technicality then? Assuming that reaching that when anyone reaches US law enforcement gets everything in the constitution applied to them and then must be let into the country because they only want freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I guess the workaround for this would be to have outposts in other countries where non-US law enforcement personnel is denying entry - this would be ok, as the constitution doesn't yet apply.
Or, I wonder if the the people for whom denying entry was wrong don't base their decision on a technicality, but would actually prefer foreign political activists to enter the country. I wonder if this is tied to the foreigner's specific agenda, or would they also like the opposing side to be let in. To me, this sounds either a way to get supporters for their own opinion, or, on the latter case, recipe to increase chaos.
What could the technicality possibly be? They explicitly said they deported him due to his speech! This is like the most egregious possible violation of the First Amendment. The police literally — in the fashion of a cartoon villain revealing their dastardly plot — copped to breaking the law.
What the police did here doesn't hold up to even the most stringent possible definition of "freedom of speech", and it's also obviously unconstitutional. And there are still people trying to defend it. I'm honestly a little flabbergasted.
As I read it, he was trying to enter the US from elsewhere and was denied entry at the border. Perhaps his student visa had been cancelled due to clearly getting involved with unrelated stuff.
I say "I wonder", "perhaps" etc to simply be polite, tease out the content of your argument, and also due to the person we are talking about not providing the legal reason given to him of why he was denied entry.
Remember, the far left uses terms like "assault" to describe speech they don't like. Maybe this is conservatives' chance to play "manipulate the meaning of words" and spin it as "denied entry in order to prevent assault" ?
Either way, they made certain forms of speech de facto illegal and we're not going to go all "free speech" a few years after people on the right were fired or kicked out of school for expressing wrongthink.
The far left is welcome to use those stupid terms. That is also their First Amendment protected speech.
Has anyone been charged with assault by the state for their speech? No.
Private schools and private employers are private entities (it’s in the name) ergo they do not have to respect the First Amendment. In fact they have First Amendment rights to kick out whoever they want, free of government compelling them otherwise.
Has any country ever functioned like that? The idea seems absurd. Of course you should be held legally accountable for what you say. You can see trivial examples in American culture with defamation law, laws against calling for violence, laws about when and where you're allowed to protest. Agree with it or not, we don't have a right to say what we want with no consequence. The devil as always is in the details. But people need to actually agree what sort of values we should have represented as a people to write those laws, and america has never figured out how to do that without either violence or a massive river of cash to distract us from each other.
For an instance of how bad free speech can get, look no further than the role RTLM played in the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994.
> You can see trivial examples in American culture with defamation law, laws against calling for violence, laws about when and where you're allowed to protest.
Defamation is extremely hard to stick in the US.
You also are allowed in general to call for violence in the US. Incitement is very specific and not merely "calling for violence."
> we don't have a right to say what we want with no consequence.
Yes, in the US you absolutely are allowed to say what you want with no state-sanctioned consequence. There are extremely, extremely narrow exceptions. Way, way narrower than most people on either side of the political aisle intuit.
For an instance of how great free speech can get, look no further than the role the 1st Amendment has played in creating a highly adaptive society that, despite the internal chaos, conquers most of its challenges.
I understand quibbling about specifics, but I'm still unconvinced "free speech" is a meaningful term or that it's necessary for industrialization with private investment. It's a bone given to morons to get them to not demand real rights. I would also not ever willingly live in a society with truly free speech.
> Yes, in the US you absolutely are allowed to say what you want with no state-sanctioned consequence.
When has this ever really benefited us? We complain endlessly but fix nothing. What value have unanswered complaints?
Sorry, can you illustrate which point you were confused by or which aspects of my sentiments you felt weren't fleshed out? On rereading I think i'm perfectly clear. Do you feel like one of your points didn't get the attention it deserves? I'm happy to comply—if I didn't respond to a point, it's because I don't want to indicate disrespect, and as a result I have nothing left to say. But I would be overjoyed to tell you my actual thoughts if you can bear the social conflict.
If you don't want to or do not feel equipped to reply to my thoughts you can do just that—not reply.
Ah apologies, you edited to expand on an extremely cryptic comment.
> but I'm still unconvinced "free speech" is a meaningful term
It is demonstrably a meaningful term given that it has prevented the imprisonment of countless people who have been unfriendly towards the state or other powers that be at various times in our history. You can look for "landmark 1st Amendment cases" for an extremely partial list. In reality the bulk of the power is in the deterrent effect against the state pursuing action against private entities for expressing themselves, and the obverse effect that private parties aren't afraid of the state when expressing themselves.
> or that it's necessary for industrialization with private investment.
Not sure what you're getting at here, but it doesn't matter whether it's "necessary" for anything. It's in the Constitution. If you want to debate changing the Constitution you can go ahead and do that, but I won't spend my time engaging with it.
> When has this ever really benefited us?
Every day! It is literally benefiting you right now. You're aware that these very comments, in a regime with weaker protections, would put you at risk? And that even if the odds are remote, you would experience a chilling effect on sharing your thoughts with me here?
This all sounded pretty abstract to me too until I spent some time in a truly authoritarian country. I went on a date and casually asked the lady "so what's it like living under [ head of state ]?" What was a warm and friendly evening immediately turned as she glanced over her shoulder and completely clammed up, hurrying us onto a different topic. That reaction sent chills down my spine, and if you're an American and have zero concept of what any of this stuff means in the real world, it would've sent chills down yours too.
> It is demonstrably a meaningful term given that it has prevented the imprisonment of countless people who have been unfriendly towards the state or other powers that be at various times in our history.
You can just say "first amendment protections" rather than the disingenuous "free speech"
> Not sure what you're getting at here, but it doesn't matter whether it's "necessary" for anything. It's in the Constitution. If you want to debate changing the Constitution you can go ahead and do that, but I won't spend my time engaging with it.
You were the person that identified free speech as a reason for western dominance. I'm saying it doesn't appear to be related at all.
> is literally benefiting you right now. You're aware that these very comments, in a regime with weaker protections, would put you at risk
I don't give a damn. No amount of free speech will help the homeless, so fuck it. Let's get real rights in this country. All americans do is complain and complain and complain, so I see it as a marker of american complacency that they don't actually want anything to improve.
It's the same thing a lot of the people on the right were complaining about ten years ago. Most people don't seem to understand these contradictions until it affects them.
Watching this happen twice has really killed the idea that polls are a useful way to determine mandates for government policy in my mind. Most of the population probably just shouldn't be involved.
What legal censorship were conservatives facing ten years ago? There is no real precedent for this that I can think of since maybe the Red Scare in the 50s.
Well there's all the fake censorship where private parties exercised their First Amendment rights to control which content they carried. According to modern "conservatives", private actors should be compelled by the state to carry certain kinds of speech (their kind, obviously).
They will claim the government pressured private platforms despite 1) the platforms never claiming coercion, 2) the moderation actions aligning with the platforms' own content policies, 3) the platforms routinely denying government requests for content moderation, 4) there being no evidence of an implicit or explicit government threat towards the platforms.
> Most people don't seem to understand these contradictions until it affects them.
And, by design, it won't affect most people. Except the people who have the chutzpah to speak out against israel, of course—good luck finding that on cable tv or the opinion column. That shit is only on social media.
The protesting and activism are the same. I think foreign students/citizens should refrain from doing either of these, as they are in the country for a specific reason (to study), and not to turn its government. You'll probably get away with it when you do it at a small scale, but as things get out of hand, you are unlikely to go unnoticed - as person in the topic apparently did.
There are no such considerations in the US Constitution.
As an American, I have a right to hear the speech of foreign students and citizens. The government does not have the power to prevent me from hearing what they have to say. Small or large scale does not matter.
Stanley v Georgia: "It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth is fundamental to our free society."
Yes, but this person arrived from another country. Would you say freedom of speech and freedom of assembly means that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States?
> Yes, but this person arrived from another country.
Yes.
> Would you say freedom of speech and freedom of assembly means that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States?
I wouldn't say that because it isn't a well formed question. It conflates multiple, distinct activities. It unhelpfully presents them as if they were a single, constitutionally addressable action, which they are not.
But he was denied entry at the border, so it appears that, according to you, anyone from elsewhere in the world should be able to assemble in the US and express his free speech.
> ... Allowing foreigners to join political protests in your country...
Protests are protected by the 1st Amendment. The constitution applies to everyone in US jurisdiction. Gov actions here are not appropriate or accepatble.
> ...obviously insane thing to advocate for.
Advocating for this individual's right to join a protest is not insane. Safeguarding constitutional rights is wise by default.
> Does it make sense for me and a bunch of friends to go to Thailand and protest the way they run their country?
This topic concerns the actions of US Gov; it's about which actions are specifically limited by the Constitution. Enforcing those limits is how we protect our rights.
It makes sense to advocate for the constitutional rights of individuals.
Further, not advocating for others' constitutional rights - this is a factor in erosion of rights overall. I offer that the 100mi constitution-free zone adjacent to US borders is an example of that¹.
If Thailand's government is similarly bound by it's constitution, it is probably wise for Thai people to advocate for individual rights.
The people who we are debating with seem to have the opinion that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States. That indeed is an interesting take.
> The people who we are debating with seem to have the opinion that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States. That indeed is an interesting take.
Our opinion is that the US Constitution applies to the people within a US jurisdiction. In this, our opinion is correct.
As far as you disagree with that, your disagreement will be with the Constitution - which is your inalienable right.
> It's ideological libertarinism taken to the absurd point of essentially anarchy.
Constitutionalism is about the core restraints placed on Gov. Not violating the constitution is it's own thing. Because it defines order, it is the opposite of anarchy.
Does some ideology or some facet of libertarian overlap here? I have no idea. It isn't relevant tho.
"Does it make sense for a place with a completely different governance structure, completely different laws, and completely different norms (notably lacking the US Constitution and its unique 1st Amendment protections) to behave differently?"
Uhhh yes. You would expect a different result in a different place. Here in America we have the laws that exist in America. In Thailand they have the laws that exist in Thailand.
The technicality being "to avoid violating the foundational laws of our country?"
Yeah, in the world of law you have to do stuff correctly and technically correctly. What country do you live in where this isn't the case, so I know never to go there?
He was trying to enter the country and was denied at the border (for a reason we don't know). The technicality being that he was on US soil. Had he been denied entry to the plane at point of departure, would that have been ok?
How horrible, how unacceptable. He probably even advocates for ending the genocide in Gaza. Good thing we have freedom in this country, to send the boots after those pesky peaceful protesters.
Yes, but you are currently arguing because the person on your side of the argument. For me, the question is more of whether you should allow people enter the country who cause civil unrest. It doesn't sound reasonable to allow a free-for-all entry to anyone, both to me subjectively, but I would also assume to all people for whom the US is their home country.
Well, we don't know the legal reason he was denied entry. Given that this is a foreign student and a protester, it could be that his permission to enter the country was revoked due to exceeding his purpose to be in the US.
I'm not debating what the legal formulation was, I just don't get the people who think he should have been let in. Since as in computer programming and in law, you can't nail down any circumstance in existence - you sometimes need apply the "do what I mean" rather than "do what said". In this case it does seem that the government did what the population would have liked it to have done. Though, I guess if he would sue, then you would do well in being his lawyers.
> “We both know why you’ve been detained…it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia”
I have no clue if this is actually true, but operating from the same set of facts that you have: we know exactly why he was detained, and assuming the facts we've been provided, we know for sure that it is unconstitutional
> it does seem that the government did what the population would have liked it to have done
You have no clue what "the population would have liked," and neither do I, and neither does the state. That's why we have the First Amendment, to preclude them from attempting such ridiculous assertions of omniscience.
But he was denied entry at the border. I guess it would have been better, if the person could have been not let on the plane in the first place - then it he would have not been needed to be "detained".
Does anyone anywhere qualify in this if your understanding? What does it mean to live here and not have an effect on on US politics? Can we use this same rationale to deny folks with dual citizenship office if they seek it?
He also took part in the protests of Columbia University and by the looks of it wants to continue his political agenda in a foreign country. If this happened at scale then then foreigners could come (perhaps even be imported to the US, if this were a known-to-be-usable loophole) and steer the politics of a country in some other direction. It looks like the government is trying to avoid that and, if I were a citizen, it's what I would expect it to do.
That's a really bizarre take. You think it's acceptable to deny entry to someone based on your assessment of their political opinions? Given the very directly related context that Columbia students with visas and greencards are being detained and facing deportation explicitly for their political opinions, you can't conclude this is anything other anti-speech policy. There is absolutely no threat to life or property stemming from their speech. Meanwhile, expressly pro-genocide political figures with documented history of violent crimes like Ben-Gvir are freely admitted and allowed to rile up mobs.
I don't know the specific reason for denial for this particular person. I just generically don't understand why why would you want students like this in the country. The citizens, sure, vote, assemble, etc. to express your view.
This person was sent back from the border, so it sounds like a technicality, as they probably didn't have the info at point of departure to not let him on the plane. He's also a foreigner and an activist, so I assume that's why the assumed visa was cancelled.
You seem to argue that regardless of what the US as a country wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because he made it onto US soil. Sounds like a technicality.
This will be my last comment as you've proven yourself incapable of loading words into your brain.
> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US as a country wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because he made it onto US soil. Sounds like a technicality.
This should read:
> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US federal government wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because their provided justification for achieving what they want would violate the Constitution. Sounds like how Constitutions work.
This person is from another country and is rather an activist than a journalist, and he also can continue to express his views to this day.
Does it not make sense to you that a country (i.e, its citizens) don't actually want foreign activists to come and steer its politics? Sounds like a recipe for country take-over if done at scale.
My recommendation is that when you're inquiring about another country's laws or norms, you actually open your ears to what they're telling you instead of just repeatedly asserting your own (as you admit) completely ignorant perspective.
The founders were proto-shitposters who ran a psyop on the public with the same technology used to print the daily paper. They knew what they were doing.
I agree with you, by the way. To a certain reading, this guy is creating a valuable resource in the attention economy: controversy. Give them a medal and a journalism grant.
It shows how quickly the far left abandons its charity cases once it finds greener pastures. Remember all the "end ___ hate" campaigns? Not when there's a new group to manipulate for votes.
I've responded now to several of your comments, but this is a common enough sign of miseducation among the terminally online that I'll respond again here:
The far left is within their First Amendment rights to create "all the 'end ___ hate' campaigns" they want. The far right is within their First Amendment rights to create all the "hate _____" campaigns they want.
Bystanders, commercial entities, private schools, your friends and family are allowed to be friendly with you or disown you per their own preference for which side you take. They're even allowed to call you mean names like "ignorant fascist incel" if they want. And you're allowed to call them mean names too!
The government is not allowed to utilize state power to suppress either side of the hate or not-hate debate. It is not allowed to utilize state power to compel the "end hate" crowd to be nice to, give jobs to, maintain platforms for, or educate the "hate" crowd, nor vice versa.
The title does not do the content justice. Since Snowden it's been known to the entire world, even outside of HN, that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
What has changed is that now they're actually using this to a degree that even China generally does not do. If a German had written a comment in support of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook at some point in time, they're extremely unlikely to get denied entry to China over this, despite them almost certainly having even stronger capabilities and databases to easily find this out.
> that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
This is an important point.
The Bush admin established systems to surveil ~everyone in the US (not suspected of a crime) in bulk. Bulk surveillance is the well known, core component of systems intended to harm people (in bulk).
This got a pass from Bush supporters (inc me at first). It got little-to-no strong pushback elsewhere.
The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone (excepting a period after the Edward Snowden revelations).
Not holding a reasonable PotUS accountable - this gifts power to the unreasonable ones that follow.
> The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone.
Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms. He also unequivocally condemned torture, promised to revise/sunset the Patriot Act, copperfasten Roe v Wade 'Day 1', etc...
But virtually all the Democrats I knew didn't give a single shit when he 180'd on all of that in his first few months. Still blows my mind a bit to this day; a marvel of mass brainwashing.
Now we're at the point where Democrats can arm and enable a literal holocaust inflicted on some of the world's poorest and most beautiful people, then get on a high horse when someone suggests voting for a non-genocidal party.
The ratchet effect is beyond extreme; and quite obvious for observant people with an outside perspective. Yet somehow Americans still seem to have hope that voting Dem hard enough will fix things. I wish I knew what it would take to inflict a sense of morality on the country.
> Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms
That's what I thought.
What I recall more clearly: He and Clinton both pausing their 2008 PotUS election campaigns to return to DC and vote in favor of granting retroactive immunity to AT&T.
Snowden showed that the tools were available to intelligence agencies operating under questionable rules. Now the coordination of those agencies is led by a Russian agent, and poorly trained keystone cops have access, courtesy of Palantir.
Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
No, im suggesting that what Palantir is illegal, the IRS and Social Security staff bullied into allowing it are likely felonies on providing it to the company.
My statement was confusing. The employees who were responsible stewards of this data have either been fired or resigned in protest.
It’s remarkable to me how someone like Thiel could be such a fan of Lord of the Rings, with its central themes of the corrupting influence of unchecked power and good triumphing over evil and evil’s will to control and dominate—then decide to become Gollum.
In all of these types of stories, "evil" rules for long enough that makes it appealing for those with the same views. Sometimes, it's generations before "good" overcomes. Plus, each one of the "evil" leaders feel like they are special and different. It's easy to understand why. You just need to be able to see it yourself.
There are no evil people, media (books, TV, movies) have plainly evil people so the story is easily digestible and appealing to the masses. But it is completely incorrect framing of how the world actually is.
In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place, and they are fighting "ignorant" people who are dragging society down by not conforming to their golden vision. And then "evil" becomes largely a function of who you ask. It's the opposition that labels them evil, not society on the whole.
There are very few leaders ever who are straight up storybook style evil. Almost all of them were/are deranged people who convinced enough people of their ostensibly good vision to begin executing it.
No one came to power because they wanted to turn society into burning rumble while they ate babies during daily random execution time. It's all nuance and complication.
Thiel on the whole is just providing technology that can be used for good or evil. The decision to deport pro palestinian protesters is down to Trump who was chosen by the American voters.
Because it's only evil when your opposition/competition is doing it. You're always the hero in your own story and for you the actions are justified because you're doing it "for good". The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hitler was also a fan of works of art with themes of peace and harmony.
The world, at the highest levels of competition and leadership, doesn't run on morals, it runs on unscrupulous force, conquest and domination. See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who tried to maintain peace on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
> See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who ran on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
Fortunately not so; some time around 50-100kya, humans rapidly became a whole lot nicer to each other.
Thiel and Karp have both said in various places that western civilization is worth saving and that it's better that we develop this power than enemies of the West, and I'm not going to lie, I'm inclined to agree with them.
Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khamenei are better stewards of the world than the West?
The West's introspective nature is good and all, but sometimes we unwittingly forget that there is actual evil in the world, and it's much worse than saying mean things on Twitter, or putting facts above feelings.
Students in Iran literally die protesting the regime, meanwhile students here who live a life of luxury and don't know what actual oppression is "protest"/simp for the Iranians (or one of their various proxies)...
And it is forgotten that people will do evil under the auspices of “western ideals” and power unchecked leads to an erosion of those ideals.
Reminder - Iran offered support after 9/11 but instead we rebuffed them and called them part of the axis of evil just because. Right at a time when they were really modernizing again but our jingoistic attitudes entrenched the autocrats further.
They agreed to a nuclear deal that we tore up just because.
We overthrew their government.
We have presidential candidates singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran” for fun.
The reason we have a bad relationship with Iran and a large reason why they have bad leaders is because the US has made it so.
I don't know the answer to your question, but it struck me that we can ask exactly the same question about the US today.
So why does US have bad relations with most of their neighbours? Why does US support terrorism against countries? Did Iran make US oppress women and minorities?
Because Iran is Shia and the rest of its neighbours are ruled by Sunnis. Some even have majority Shia populations that can be restive under a Sunni autocrat.
Even then, Iran still has strong ties with all of those neighbors. They trade actively, US sanctions be damned, and would pounce at the opportunity to invest in Iran if given the opportunity (Iran's industries are basically all owned by the Ayatollah and IRGC currently).
This is a very strange argument. I don’t have a problem in principle with a country developing a security apparatus. It’s how they use it, is the issue. The current US regime doesn’t feel like a particularly custodian of Western, liberal democracy
Thiel has explicitly advocated for the abolition of democracy and is funding contemporary efforts to do so. What privileges our students enjoy only exist because he hasn’t succeeded yet. You pose a false choice between authoritarian regimes. Claiming that Iranian protesters have it worse so we shouldn’t protect the free speech rights of our students is similarly disingenuous. It divides people using guilt around relative privilege rather than directing our efforts to solidarity in fighting the ruling class, of which Thiel is a part.
Based on the article, a foreigner is being denied entry to the US. Every country has the right to do this for whatever reason they see fit. Most countries don't allow foreigners to protest, see Egypt and the March to Gaza a few days ago...
Free speech is a human right not a right of citizens. You conflate several issues here under the notion of national rights: legitimate border concerns, deportation of students as retaliation of free speech (under your umbrella term foreign protest), increasing authoritarianism in the US (which this is clearly evidence of). Nor should we take cues from governments suppressing protests against genocide. Genocide is something all people and all countries should unite against. It is a crime against humanity.
>> Theil is spearheading a campaign of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
> Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
Intelligence is needed to bring harm to adversaries. Determine the intel, determine the adversary.
In this case, Theil massively funded an election
and then his data corp got the unprecedented access
to US Gov's most sensitive datasets (ss, dhs, irs, etc).
This includes compiling new databases that target migrants,
built from data across multiple DHS agencies.
So where's the "untold suffering to minorities and poor people"?
Database of migrants, you do know that it's normal for governments to keep track of who's in their country, right? It's why passports have your name, picture, DOB, etc... on them...
By omitting the qualifying part of the grandparent's statement, which is this...
>> Theil is spearheading a campaign
>> of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
the quoted part in this...
> So where's the "untold suffering to minorities and poor people"?
...unhelpfully misstates the GP's assertion.
That assertion is that Theil is leadership within a campaign.
The assertion is the campaign is intended to harm the vulnerable.
Funding an election to gain access to the data needed to build new datasets that specifically target a vulnerable segment of the population - this is evidence of who the campaign is targeting.
Thiel himself is part of a "protected class". If I was a standard consumer/ believer of leftist news publications wouldn't it be the time to defend him and say the reason he's being attacked is because he's a homosexual? If not, why should I believe it any other time they toss that accusation around?
"Leftist", "Rightist", and much "news" in general rots your brain by promulgating broken paradigms. This applies regardless of whether you think of yourself as supporting or opposing any given narrative.
You're twisting your thinking in knots acting like the authority claimed by some news, then contradicting itself, creates authority to the contrary. Really you're just helping spread brain rot.
Absurd. It's literally impossible, by definition, for gay white males to enact racist policy or otherwise act in ways harmful to minorities. "Gay" and "racist" are mutually exclusive terms, again by definition.
Its funny how trump is actually helping China long term to become top superpower. He either can't see long term consequences of his emotional tantrums or simply doesn't care in the name of ego polishing games.
That's a bit of a strawman argument, no? The options are not only become a tyrant or let Putin rule the world. There's many and more clever options. I think we can demand much better from the people in power.
Also, that rhetoric of The West vs the world is a bit lazy. Things are more complex, even recent events prove The West is not a unified block where everyone thinks the same way.
What power, specifically? Overwhelming surveillance of citizens? Whining that people attending universities in the US protested things?
Why on earth would anyone think Khomeini (who, of course, has been dead for 24 years) would ever have any say over the West?
You’re deeply afraid of a very strange bogeyman. It seems odd to pretend that Peter Thiel also fears dead men in politically/economically/socially irrelevant countries.
Help me make sense of this as an old timer because I’m lost
Everything described in the thread has been going on since the Patriot Act was signed in 2001.
As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton and see all links to other IMEI/SI collected worldwide.
By 2013 I could query those in Palantir on a Secret or SCI level depending on who held the data which would also aggregate and provide to me OSINT, LE reports or other data associated with those id
What’s new here?
Is it just that more people know about it now?
All the stuff I described above was public information as to both “capabilities” and used as casus belli for warrants (US) or kinetic actions (OCONUS).
Nothing has changed except the standard for denial of entry has been broadened here. There's a long history of denying entry to people for what their views are, this isn't new at all. You can just do a search and find examples of white supremacists, and imams and Islamic scholars, as well as probably other groups being denied entry to not only the US but it happens in Europe too and it goes back across administrations. So in other words, it's not just under the current administration where your political views could get you denied entry to the US.
What's new is they've started using all of that more aggressively to detain people who objectively, without the shadow of a doubt, have done nothing wrong but somehow displease the party.
Generally, in my lifetime (at 37 years old now), wide political awareness starting around 2004, Patriot Act / mass government data conversation was more about "This can be abused!", the most concrete story I had ever even close to the topic was by my junior year english teacher (17 years old) relaying that someone told her someone googled "how do terrorists make a bomb" and the FBI paid them a visit. Here, I'm a bit stunned to see we're investing in screening and detaining visitors if they seem to hold an opinion that doesn't imply any sort of violent threat.
Unlikely, but the person may have looked into it further. Agriculture stores that sell stuff like ammonium nitrate are all participants in counter terror programs.
What's new here is that Peter Thiel is a libertarian who wants to destroy democracies because he's a christian lunatic who believes in armageddon and the anti-christ and sees democracies and multi-national organizations like the UN and the EU as tsaid anti-christ. This is not a joke, even though I wish it was because it sounds so ridiculous. Palantir is not our friend. And they probably WILL read my comment.
A thought experiment I have been having asks if we should instead open it up to the public.
For some reason I have been fixated on license plate readers (probably not a bad parallel to Palantir?). Plenty of people on HN justifiably decry license plate readers due to their violation of our privacy (to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds).
But if license plate readers are already a reality (we know they are), why should only private actors have that data? This would make sense if we completely trusted those private actors, of course.
The opposite could be a public, open-source license plate reader that caught on (people using dash cams + open software) — the data sent to a collective, public database. (Perhaps the software strips out personal license plates — only logging tags of official or government vehicles?).
My first reaction is the degree to which that could be abused by ... stalkers? Truly a bad thing. But then I ask myself to what degree the private license plate readers are perhaps "being abused" (or will be more and more) and we don't even know about it.
As I say, a thought experiment that I find myself seeing merits both for and against.
I once had a firepit conversation with the Floc coordinator of a small US city's PD. A big part of the value he saw in Floc was being able to query the data within some window (maybe 30 days?) then no longer being responsible for it. If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data. Not only would that be an administrative cost, but it would also show the public how invasive the mass surveillance is. He clearly was not concerned about civil rights, he just wanted the convictions.
He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.
I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?
I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.
So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."
I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".
It is a crime to stalk people. When we catch people doing it, we should stop them.
I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.
When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.
When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.
When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.
They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.
> to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds
I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.
Open what up? This event isn't about finding some needle in a hackstack, but about power structures using unaccountable "AI" to create chilling effects on the freedom of speech. The public having a go-to list of journalists who committed wrongspeak about Israel wouldn't particularly change much, beyond facilitating the extension of this authoritarian dynamic into the corporate world in a uniform way.
What's with the title? It says "Journalists ..." (plural) when so far as I can tell it's the story of one journalist. While I'm sure there's at least one other journalist wary of traveling to the US, that's not the story at hand, and HN guidelines prohibit editorializing of titles.
I think with blogger the GP meant that he is not a professional journalist; an activist is somebody who is politically engaged, as clearly this person is. Does it appear to you that he is an actual journalist?
He makes money from journalism, does he not? Journalists are by definition politically engaged, so defining "activist" as a separate category like that makes no sense.
I've no idea how he makes his money, and no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side, and also is acting upon it by protesting.
> no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
> Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side
That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
> and also is acting upon it by protesting.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
I don't think few if any journalist I've read have taken part in protests.
Also, most journalists just investigate and present stories by assembling what they found. And then they go and investigate another topic. But this person has just one topic.
I'd say people who consistently protest and consistently write about the topic are activists, yes. Do you need an even stronger definition?
Having beliefs and advocating for them does not preclude one from doing journalism, and I would argue that undoubtedly any written account of occurrences on the ground during protests are journalism, regardless of the slant.
You really don't want to get into categorizing speech as protected or not based on content.
I agree the government shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping what being a "journalist" means, but I think we can all agree there's there's clearly a category difference between a BBC reporter objectively covering the protests, and someone involved with the protests giving a one-sided account.
>Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
"politically engaged" in this case refers to participating in the protests itself, or even taking a particular side. It's the opposite of being "objective", back when that was an ideal to strive for. Nowadays "objectivity" is being dropped in favor of "moral clarity".
>That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
No. Writing about resturants in New York is a "beat". Writing pieces consistently favoring one side is being an activist.
>Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
Yes? Are you going to gatekeep "actvist" to people who are card carrying DSA members or something?
If anything, I think the title severely understates what happened here. It's not journalists "wary" of traveling to the US, it's a journalist literally getting deported for writing about a protest movement.
I just started looking but I can’t find any supporting evidence for this story. The part where someone says “we both know why you’re here” just sounded like a cheesy movie line. The journalist mentioned that while being detained he met a woman who was on day 4 of detention… what exactly are the logistics of how they were handling detention?
It all just sounded so implausible. It reads like someone trying to spin a story to convince others of what they already wanted to believe, or maybe that kid in grade school who tells stories he read or saw, but swaps himself for the main character.
Why should I believe this person more than any random internet crank?
I'm sorry to write at length, I just feel so deeply in this moment. I've never seen such a stark denial of reality that has been reported widely recently, that also relies on a sweeping idea that we can't trust anyone ever, i.e. we cannot discern the difference between a random internet crank and a not-crank, and given that, there's no reason to ever explore anything we haven't accepted ourselves.
I don't think I'll be able to bridge the gap by lecturing or pointing things out or huffing about journalism. But I have no choice but to try something, because I care for you and for us.
I guess what I'd say is, to keep from lecturing, it's very normal to be in detention for multiple days once you've tripped the first wire. There's been many stories like this shared, you can see some of the effects [here](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=05c894fd792d1e12&rlz=1...), no tricks, no bias, just a search for "cbp detention" in Google news.
Some headlines: ‘Like a jail cell’: Family of six detained at Washington state border facility for more than three weeks, German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego-area immigrant detention facility, Green card holder from New Hampshire 'interrogated' at Logan Airport, detained, ‘Felt like a kidnapping’: Wrong turn leads to 5-day detention ordeal
"Every" thread? I can't say that matches with my experience, or is even remotely close. Most posts I see are properly titled and as a result don't have anyone complaining about it. Can you link to some recent examples? Or is a little stretching of the truth justified in comments as well?
I just had some otherwise nice-sounding recruiter pings from Palantir-adjacent companies. I couldn’t do it. I found another role that’s everything I wanted and I can look at myself in the mirror.
That’s a thing, to be sure, but there’s also the very strong possibility of becoming institutionalized and rationalizing the stuff you’re working on in the mean time.
So how did you make that determination of harm? Are you making the world worse being an accountant at palantir? What if the role was making systems safer and more secure?
I think that the time may come in the near future where "proper" white collar Americans will have an obligation to flagrantly violate new laws and be arrested on purpose in order to create a critical mass of people who both have experienced the excesses of the regime and also are motivated enough to do something about it. This would have to be paired with colossally well-funded lawsuits, as during the Civil Rights movement.
Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay. That leaves the various armed forces around the country staffed with individuals who feel very little opposition to rote authoritarianism, corruption, and rule-by-force. There are relatively few individuals working in day-to-day policing or intelligence work that spend a lot of time thinking about the duty of agents of the state to follow its laws.
> Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay.
I've been thinking a lot about this same thing. I've seen a marked rise in the number of complaints about how "everyone in law enforcement is MAGA" and the like, and can't help but think: "this is what you wanted, right?"
There have been a lot of people trying really hard to make law enforcement (and adjacent roles) entirely unpalatable, and it appears they've been largely successful! I think what they failed to take into account is that they were only making those roles unpalatable tothose who already think like them in other ways, and forgot that there are a lot of people out there with fundamentally different beliefs who are not dissuaded by ACAB-adjacent arguments. Or, worse yet, are actively attracted to the way the role is being portrayed!
So in the end, it seems like they achieved their goals, but perhaps overlooked how those goals might have some unintended consequences.
I never really understood the argument, either. If you think policing is rife with prejudice and abuse of power, why are you trying to demonize the whole job? Why wouldn't you be signing up for it, instead? After all, if you think it's being done wrong, the best way to right that wrong is by doing it yourself and setting a better example.
I think the fact that people prefer to publicly demonize an entire thing, instead of doing the hard work of making it right, is one of the most insidious features of modern social media.
Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
>just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties
Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral.
> Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
There are some people who not only believe this but can make very compelling cases that this is the case. It's a dead-end rhetorical argument; yes, it is actually possible for literally every precinct in the US to violate people's civil rights.
The difference is that some people, like (I suspect) the person you're responding to, seem to think that the position itself--armed law enforcement officer--is archetypically immoral and should not exist as a function or profession in a civilization. This is naive to to the point of absurdity and underwrites most of the idiocy that's widely abound in anti-policing movements. In one breath they claim that "police" are as a class immoral, and in the next they proclaim that their political opponents must be "brought to justice" by armed people following a set of written laws. It's absurd!
That strawman isn't particularly pretty, maybe you could put some effort in next time you make one?
To me civilisation isn't an inherently good term, and I'm not a believer in natural or god given hierarchies, or even the state as necessary. On the contrary, I consider the state to be a crime in itself, founded on the threat of violence and by necessity it destroys cooperative forms of social life as a survival tactic.
Using your principles, the only societies possible are pre-industrial, pre-legal societies residing in areas not desired by neighboring states or bands of raiding warriors.
>To me civilisation isn't an inherently good term, and I'm not a believer in natural or god given hierarchies, or even the state as necessary.
You're right. The universe doesn't need us to be living in cities, with indoor plumbing, modern medical care, and iPads, but most people would prefer that to living in the savannah without any of that and a life expectancy of 30 years.
>by necessity it destroys cooperative forms of social life as a survival tactic.
"Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?"
Yes. There is some variation but cops as an institution generally grew out of previous phenomena like state employed executioners and anti-union militias, and its purpose is to protect capital owners from the threat of popular mobilisation against injustice and inequality.
Functions like sometimes acting against entrism in the state or integration with insurance industry are kind of bolted on.
"Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral."
Yeah, sure, forced labour camps aren't a nice thing and you aren't a nice person if you participate in enabling them, even if they're populated with germans or gays or whatever.
>Yes. There is some variation but cops as an institution generally grew out of previous phenomena like state employed executioners and anti-union militias,
It really isn't, unless you're willing to ignore all the origins of policing prior to the founding of the US.
Moreover the idea that some institution "grew out of" something shameful, and therefore it's irredeemable to this day is absurd. The Nazis created the autobahn, and even though it's pretty benign today, at least part of the motivation for creating it was for military conquest. Does that mean it's immoral to be an autobahn maintenance worker, or that the institution is irredeemably evil today?
> and its purpose is to protect capital owners from the threat of popular mobilisation against injustice and inequality.
It seems to be doing a pretty poor job at that, given how stores and even trains can be looted with impunity. Moreover how do you objectively define what a "purpose" of an institution is? Some right-wingers might say the "purpose" of the education system is to indoctrinate kids with liberal ideology or whatever. What makes that your claim about cops more valid than right winger's claim about the education system?
>Yeah, sure, forced labour camps aren't a nice thing and you aren't a nice person if you participate in enabling them, even if they're populated with germans or gays or whatever.
No, you said "camps". Now you're trying to pull a motte and bailey and retreating to "forced labour camps". I don't see the problem with POW camps that abides by international law, for instance. Being confined to a POW camp isn't anyone's idea of a good time, but war is hell, and there's far worse things that can happen.
This guy thought deleting his posts would make a difference... but he's sure it's Palantir.
They've been doing this using all sorts of social media OSINT tools for a decade or more. Okay, he's annoyed but that's not a license to make stuff up.
The US is just following the European example of "responsibly" moderating speech [1], instead of blindly sticking to the 1st amendment, as they were so often called to [2].
Yes, I would expect the government to blindly stick to the founding document of the country. I would also expect the government to go through the amendment process to change that document if it was found wanting given changes in society over time.
It’s far easier to pay lip service to the document while doing whatever you want. This is common with authoritarian regimes. From the PRC’s constitution:
> Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Does that say Camus had his phone seized? He was denied being allowed to come and speak, not to visit as a journalist, which also strikes me a fairly different case (whatever you think of his positions, or whether they should be debated or silenced). It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
Complicated thing: had a certain Austrian who complained about the German government silencing him instead been deported and forbidden to return after his prison sentence, the world might have been a very different place.
Palantir's role or non-role aside, the idea that we're even looking into whether people wrote about a student protest is absurd. The "combating antisemitism" cover story for all of this is incredibly cynical.
They were looking in my spam folder and giving me a hard time for what they ‘found’ there, absolutely bonkers
Was this in customs? Are you an American? Just curious.
Based on a previous post of his, I believe he was traveling here from China.
While that may help explain the unproductive, unconstitutional behavior he experienced (now normalized at our borders), it does not excuse it.
I am European, traveling from Europe to New York. They picked me from the line. Then the guy got bitten by his own dog. [edit] I just realise this was 10 years ago, time flies :O
Cynical? No my friend, it's what authoritarian dictatorships such as Russia and the US have been doing for years, it's their default! [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_...
All it takes is a quick observation that the literal swastika swinging Nazis are all on Trump’s side to see the truth.
[flagged]
It’s terrifying that anyone would not only accept forbidding travel to critics, but also thinks it’s normal. From de Toqueville and Dickens to de Beauvoir to Žižek, the US used to welcome and embrace criticism.
Have we really become as thin-skinned as North Korea?
You're free to have an opinion but not from the consequences of that opinion. Sound familiar?
Nice! Such a great gotcha if you've never read the Constitution or spent 30 seconds thinking about how freedom of speech works.
You're free to have an opinion and be free from state-sanctioned consequences.
You are not guaranteed to be free from private parties choosing not to affiliate with you, calling you mean names, or banning you from their platforms... for the obvious reason that protecting that right would require that the state compel specific speech from private parties, which... See Step 1!
All of this should have been covered by about 8th grade. Were you paying attention?
Under a normal administration that actually would be unexpected, yes.
Well, I'm not from the US and am just observing it from quite a distance, but a good comeback to you would be that the normal administration you wish for was good at letting people in, yes.
The "normal administration" to which I'm referring would be almost any administration in US history other than the current one. Freedom of speech is — at least putatively — a bedrock principle of the US.
In fact, the same Secretary of State who deported this man from the US for his speech (amongst dozens of other such deportations[1]) has announced a policy meant to prevent other countries from doing the exact same thing.[2] "Free speech for me, but not for thee."
[1]: https://truthout.org/articles/rubio-brags-hes-championing-fr...
[2]: https://www.state.gov/announcement-of-a-visa-restriction-pol...
Fascists consider applying double standards that enable them to enjoy what they deny others, virtuous. Not a logical fallacy. The purpose is to dominate.
AFAIK, the speech is still free.
The denied person seems to be a foreign national and by all looks of it, an activist, taking part in university protests. It doesn't seem all that surprising that he got denied entry.
Man, if we can't agree that "freedom of speech" includes protection from legal consequences for something you say then there's really nowhere to go from here.
Well, he appears to have been a protester at Columbia University in 2024, and he is also not a citizen.
If you yourself are a citizen, I'm sure you can express your views and not be sent anywhere. You can also vote to get people in power who are more to your liking, or even attempt be one of those people yourself.
None of this is relevant to what you're trying to argue ("AFAIK, the speech is still free").
He can still express his opinion and he can still protest.
In your opinion, should anyone be able to travel to the US to protest? Would you set an upper limit to this process, or should any amount be allowed?
Reductio ad absurdum: corporal punishment for people who say things the government dislikes doesn't violate their freedom of speech. Sure, they might get beaten for it, but they can still express their opinion and they can still protest!
Yes, my opinion is that there should be no legal consequences for speech. And again, that is the US Secretary of State's opinion too — just only for US nationals traveling to foreign countries, not vice versa.
> In your opinion, should anyone be able to travel to the US to protest? Would you set an upper limit to this process, or should any amount be allowed?
The government shall not take action in response to his constitutionally protected rights because the laws to authorize that action shall not exist.
So no upper limit: any amount of foreigners should be allowed in at any amount?
(Corporal punishment is when it's physical pain. I don't think a sore bum from an airplane seat counts.)
They are not limiting foreigners (well, they are, but that's a separate issue). They are deporting people specifically in order to censor speech the government dislikes, irrespective of how many people are visiting the country.
I understand what corporal punishment is. My point is that the reductio ad absurdum of your definition of "free speech" does not preclude it.
The government can prevent people from entering the country for any number of reasons. The content of their speech is not one of them.
> If you yourself are a citizen, I'm sure you can express your views and not be sent anywhere.
Under the current regime US citizens have already been deported to countries they have never visited.
If you actually care about these concepts then reading about them will be faster than relying on Cunningham’s Law to iteratively eliminate all conceivable wrong answers.
I recommend starting with the US Constitution at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_S...
So you are saying that anyone in the world has the rights listed in the US constitution?
When they are under the jurisdiction of US law enforcement? Yes, they do.
So I guess the neat way for US to deny entry to people is somehow have the denying done by non-law-enforcement and also perhaps somehow outside of its soil (if that matters)?
Or they could change the constitution if they don't want to abide to it?
Yes, but isn't the current situation based on a technicality then? Assuming that reaching that when anyone reaches US law enforcement gets everything in the constitution applied to them and then must be let into the country because they only want freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I guess the workaround for this would be to have outposts in other countries where non-US law enforcement personnel is denying entry - this would be ok, as the constitution doesn't yet apply.
Or, I wonder if the the people for whom denying entry was wrong don't base their decision on a technicality, but would actually prefer foreign political activists to enter the country. I wonder if this is tied to the foreigner's specific agenda, or would they also like the opposing side to be let in. To me, this sounds either a way to get supporters for their own opinion, or, on the latter case, recipe to increase chaos.
What could the technicality possibly be? They explicitly said they deported him due to his speech! This is like the most egregious possible violation of the First Amendment. The police literally — in the fashion of a cartoon villain revealing their dastardly plot — copped to breaking the law.
What the police did here doesn't hold up to even the most stringent possible definition of "freedom of speech", and it's also obviously unconstitutional. And there are still people trying to defend it. I'm honestly a little flabbergasted.
As I read it, he was trying to enter the US from elsewhere and was denied entry at the border. Perhaps his student visa had been cancelled due to clearly getting involved with unrelated stuff.
We don't need to entertain "perhaps this happened because X Y and Z" fantasy scenarios, because we know why it happened. From the thread:
> They just came out and said it:
> “We both know why you’ve been detained…it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia”
https://bsky.app/profile/alistairkitchen.bsky.social/post/3l...
Yes, he basically overstepped his student visa. I'm not trying to keep it secret here :).
You want foreign protesters in your country?
You should stop wondering and start actually loading the words in front of your eyes into your brain.
I say "I wonder", "perhaps" etc to simply be polite, tease out the content of your argument, and also due to the person we are talking about not providing the legal reason given to him of why he was denied entry.
The person we are talking about literally did provide the reason given to him.
To reiterate: when reading, load the words in front of you into your brain.
> They just came out and said it:
> “We both know why you’ve been detained…it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia”
Remember, the far left uses terms like "assault" to describe speech they don't like. Maybe this is conservatives' chance to play "manipulate the meaning of words" and spin it as "denied entry in order to prevent assault" ?
Either way, they made certain forms of speech de facto illegal and we're not going to go all "free speech" a few years after people on the right were fired or kicked out of school for expressing wrongthink.
The far left is welcome to use those stupid terms. That is also their First Amendment protected speech.
Has anyone been charged with assault by the state for their speech? No.
Private schools and private employers are private entities (it’s in the name) ergo they do not have to respect the First Amendment. In fact they have First Amendment rights to kick out whoever they want, free of government compelling them otherwise.
Incredible eh?
Has any country ever functioned like that? The idea seems absurd. Of course you should be held legally accountable for what you say. You can see trivial examples in American culture with defamation law, laws against calling for violence, laws about when and where you're allowed to protest. Agree with it or not, we don't have a right to say what we want with no consequence. The devil as always is in the details. But people need to actually agree what sort of values we should have represented as a people to write those laws, and america has never figured out how to do that without either violence or a massive river of cash to distract us from each other.
For an instance of how bad free speech can get, look no further than the role RTLM played in the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994.
> You can see trivial examples in American culture with defamation law, laws against calling for violence, laws about when and where you're allowed to protest.
Defamation is extremely hard to stick in the US.
You also are allowed in general to call for violence in the US. Incitement is very specific and not merely "calling for violence."
> we don't have a right to say what we want with no consequence.
Yes, in the US you absolutely are allowed to say what you want with no state-sanctioned consequence. There are extremely, extremely narrow exceptions. Way, way narrower than most people on either side of the political aisle intuit.
For an instance of how great free speech can get, look no further than the role the 1st Amendment has played in creating a highly adaptive society that, despite the internal chaos, conquers most of its challenges.
I understand quibbling about specifics, but I'm still unconvinced "free speech" is a meaningful term or that it's necessary for industrialization with private investment. It's a bone given to morons to get them to not demand real rights. I would also not ever willingly live in a society with truly free speech.
> Yes, in the US you absolutely are allowed to say what you want with no state-sanctioned consequence.
When has this ever really benefited us? We complain endlessly but fix nothing. What value have unanswered complaints?
wat.
You're going to have to more fully flesh out whatever train of thought you just showed the caboose of.
Sorry, can you illustrate which point you were confused by or which aspects of my sentiments you felt weren't fleshed out? On rereading I think i'm perfectly clear. Do you feel like one of your points didn't get the attention it deserves? I'm happy to comply—if I didn't respond to a point, it's because I don't want to indicate disrespect, and as a result I have nothing left to say. But I would be overjoyed to tell you my actual thoughts if you can bear the social conflict.
If you don't want to or do not feel equipped to reply to my thoughts you can do just that—not reply.
Ah apologies, you edited to expand on an extremely cryptic comment.
> but I'm still unconvinced "free speech" is a meaningful term
It is demonstrably a meaningful term given that it has prevented the imprisonment of countless people who have been unfriendly towards the state or other powers that be at various times in our history. You can look for "landmark 1st Amendment cases" for an extremely partial list. In reality the bulk of the power is in the deterrent effect against the state pursuing action against private entities for expressing themselves, and the obverse effect that private parties aren't afraid of the state when expressing themselves.
> or that it's necessary for industrialization with private investment.
Not sure what you're getting at here, but it doesn't matter whether it's "necessary" for anything. It's in the Constitution. If you want to debate changing the Constitution you can go ahead and do that, but I won't spend my time engaging with it.
> When has this ever really benefited us?
Every day! It is literally benefiting you right now. You're aware that these very comments, in a regime with weaker protections, would put you at risk? And that even if the odds are remote, you would experience a chilling effect on sharing your thoughts with me here?
This all sounded pretty abstract to me too until I spent some time in a truly authoritarian country. I went on a date and casually asked the lady "so what's it like living under [ head of state ]?" What was a warm and friendly evening immediately turned as she glanced over her shoulder and completely clammed up, hurrying us onto a different topic. That reaction sent chills down my spine, and if you're an American and have zero concept of what any of this stuff means in the real world, it would've sent chills down yours too.
> It is demonstrably a meaningful term given that it has prevented the imprisonment of countless people who have been unfriendly towards the state or other powers that be at various times in our history.
You can just say "first amendment protections" rather than the disingenuous "free speech"
> Not sure what you're getting at here, but it doesn't matter whether it's "necessary" for anything. It's in the Constitution. If you want to debate changing the Constitution you can go ahead and do that, but I won't spend my time engaging with it.
You were the person that identified free speech as a reason for western dominance. I'm saying it doesn't appear to be related at all.
> is literally benefiting you right now. You're aware that these very comments, in a regime with weaker protections, would put you at risk
I don't give a damn. No amount of free speech will help the homeless, so fuck it. Let's get real rights in this country. All americans do is complain and complain and complain, so I see it as a marker of american complacency that they don't actually want anything to improve.
Okay!
It's the same thing a lot of the people on the right were complaining about ten years ago. Most people don't seem to understand these contradictions until it affects them.
Watching this happen twice has really killed the idea that polls are a useful way to determine mandates for government policy in my mind. Most of the population probably just shouldn't be involved.
What legal censorship were conservatives facing ten years ago? There is no real precedent for this that I can think of since maybe the Red Scare in the 50s.
Well there's all the fake censorship where private parties exercised their First Amendment rights to control which content they carried. According to modern "conservatives", private actors should be compelled by the state to carry certain kinds of speech (their kind, obviously).
They will claim the government pressured private platforms despite 1) the platforms never claiming coercion, 2) the moderation actions aligning with the platforms' own content policies, 3) the platforms routinely denying government requests for content moderation, 4) there being no evidence of an implicit or explicit government threat towards the platforms.
> Most people don't seem to understand these contradictions until it affects them.
And, by design, it won't affect most people. Except the people who have the chutzpah to speak out against israel, of course—good luck finding that on cable tv or the opinion column. That shit is only on social media.
If you can get deported for your speech, it is not free.
Constitutional rights aren't conditional on US citizenship unless explicitly stated. [0]
[0] https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Restating:
In your mind: Why do these qualifications move US Gov behavior - from the unacceptable column into the unsurprising column?The protesting and activism are the same. I think foreign students/citizens should refrain from doing either of these, as they are in the country for a specific reason (to study), and not to turn its government. You'll probably get away with it when you do it at a small scale, but as things get out of hand, you are unlikely to go unnoticed - as person in the topic apparently did.
There are no such considerations in the US Constitution.
As an American, I have a right to hear the speech of foreign students and citizens. The government does not have the power to prevent me from hearing what they have to say. Small or large scale does not matter.
Stanley v Georgia: "It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth is fundamental to our free society."
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/
Does your right to hear anyone's speach mean that any person you want to hear and is able to reach the US has to be allowed to remain in the country?
Does this mean physically hearing this person? Because if not, then the blog and the socials will continue to be there.
> Does your right to hear anyone's speach
The rights are that Gov shall make no law prohibiting speech and assembly.
By extension, Gov shall not perform actions in response to speech and assembly, because the laws to authorize those actions shall not exist.
Yes, but this person arrived from another country. Would you say freedom of speech and freedom of assembly means that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States?
> Yes, but this person arrived from another country.
Yes.
> Would you say freedom of speech and freedom of assembly means that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States?
I wouldn't say that because it isn't a well formed question. It conflates multiple, distinct activities. It unhelpfully presents them as if they were a single, constitutionally addressable action, which they are not.
But he was denied entry at the border, so it appears that, according to you, anyone from elsewhere in the world should be able to assemble in the US and express his free speech.
No, no one is saying that. This has been explained over and over.
No, it means that the government cannot take action against them on the basis of that speech.
> and am just observing it from quite a distance
You have remarkably strident opinions about a country, and its laws and norms, that you claim to be unfamiliar with and not a part of.
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I can't imagine how insecure and fragile a country must be to be afraid of checks notes opinions on substack.
He also partook in protests in Columbia University last year, so in that sense he's a little more than person writing on the internet.
> He also partook in protests in Columbia University last year,
You keep restating this like it means something important. What is the important thing it indicates?
He is disturbing normal order.
> He is disturbing normal order.
Okay. The disturbances you mentioned are protected by the Constitution. Delivering retribution for constitutionally protected actions is unacceptable.
You called US Gov's unacceptable actions - unsurprising. This seems to imply you don't think they are unacceptable.
Is that correct? If so, why do you think that?
Not for foreigners. Allowing foreigners to join political protests in your country is a trivially and obviously insane thing to advocate for.
> ... Allowing foreigners to join political protests in your country...
Protests are protected by the 1st Amendment. The constitution applies to everyone in US jurisdiction. Gov actions here are not appropriate or accepatble.
> ...obviously insane thing to advocate for.
Advocating for this individual's right to join a protest is not insane. Safeguarding constitutional rights is wise by default.
Does it make sense for me and a bunch of friends to go to Thailand and protest the way they run their country?
No! We'd be (appropriately) deported for that. Anyone would say that's insane. The same is true here. That obviously makes no sense.
> Does it make sense for me and a bunch of friends to go to Thailand and protest the way they run their country?
This topic concerns the actions of US Gov; it's about which actions are specifically limited by the Constitution. Enforcing those limits is how we protect our rights.
It makes sense to advocate for the constitutional rights of individuals.
Further, not advocating for others' constitutional rights - this is a factor in erosion of rights overall. I offer that the 100mi constitution-free zone adjacent to US borders is an example of that¹.
If Thailand's government is similarly bound by it's constitution, it is probably wise for Thai people to advocate for individual rights.
¹ ref:https://kagi.com/search?q=what+constitutional+rights+are+imp...
The people who we are debating with seem to have the opinion that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States. That indeed is an interesting take.
> The people who we are debating with seem to have the opinion that people from around the world have the right to assemble in the United States. That indeed is an interesting take.
Our opinion is that the US Constitution applies to the people within a US jurisdiction. In this, our opinion is correct.
As far as you disagree with that, your disagreement will be with the Constitution - which is your inalienable right.
Had he been denied entry at point of departure, would that have been ok?
> Had he been denied entry at point of departure, would that have been ok?
You are asking how I'd feel if a foreign government took some action against him at their border?
This question is fairly far afield; it would be a wholly different discussion.
So it does seem to me that this this person should be in the US due to a technicality?
It's ideological libertarinism taken to the absurd point of essentially anarchy.
> It's ideological libertarinism taken to the absurd point of essentially anarchy.
Constitutionalism is about the core restraints placed on Gov. Not violating the constitution is it's own thing. Because it defines order, it is the opposite of anarchy.
Does some ideology or some facet of libertarian overlap here? I have no idea. It isn't relevant tho.
This cannot be a serious comment, can it?
"Does it make sense for a place with a completely different governance structure, completely different laws, and completely different norms (notably lacking the US Constitution and its unique 1st Amendment protections) to behave differently?"
Uhhh yes. You would expect a different result in a different place. Here in America we have the laws that exist in America. In Thailand they have the laws that exist in Thailand.
He was denied entry at the border, so it sounds like he should be let in on a technicality.
The technicality being "to avoid violating the foundational laws of our country?"
Yeah, in the world of law you have to do stuff correctly and technically correctly. What country do you live in where this isn't the case, so I know never to go there?
He was trying to enter the country and was denied at the border (for a reason we don't know). The technicality being that he was on US soil. Had he been denied entry to the plane at point of departure, would that have been ok?
> The technicality being that he was on US soil.
This is not a technicality but an actuality. It is not minutiae; it is key.
As near as I can tell you have a strong feeling about this and are trying to find some sort of authority to justify it.
The challenge with that: The US Constitution is the law in play; nothing supersedes it.
The only possible discussion seems to be
How horrible, how unacceptable. He probably even advocates for ending the genocide in Gaza. Good thing we have freedom in this country, to send the boots after those pesky peaceful protesters.
Yes, but you are currently arguing because the person on your side of the argument. For me, the question is more of whether you should allow people enter the country who cause civil unrest. It doesn't sound reasonable to allow a free-for-all entry to anyone, both to me subjectively, but I would also assume to all people for whom the US is their home country.
> It doesn't sound reasonable to allow a free-for-all entry to anyone
You're being willfully obtuse if you think people are arguing for "a free-for-all entry to anyone."
If you can't deny entry, isn't it a free-for-all?
Nobody said you can't deny entry. There is an infinitely long list of reasons they can deny entry including "because we said so."
However, they cannot deny entry on the basis of protected speech.
You're the only one struggling with this.
Well, we don't know the legal reason he was denied entry. Given that this is a foreign student and a protester, it could be that his permission to enter the country was revoked due to exceeding his purpose to be in the US.
I'm not debating what the legal formulation was, I just don't get the people who think he should have been let in. Since as in computer programming and in law, you can't nail down any circumstance in existence - you sometimes need apply the "do what I mean" rather than "do what said". In this case it does seem that the government did what the population would have liked it to have done. Though, I guess if he would sue, then you would do well in being his lawyers.
Good fucking lord dude.
FTA
> “We both know why you’ve been detained…it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia”
I have no clue if this is actually true, but operating from the same set of facts that you have: we know exactly why he was detained, and assuming the facts we've been provided, we know for sure that it is unconstitutional
> it does seem that the government did what the population would have liked it to have done
You have no clue what "the population would have liked," and neither do I, and neither does the state. That's why we have the First Amendment, to preclude them from attempting such ridiculous assertions of omniscience.
But he was denied entry at the border. I guess it would have been better, if the person could have been not let on the plane in the first place - then it he would have not been needed to be "detained".
Freedom of assembly.
Sure, but with societal unrest don't you think there is a limit on how many foreigners you want in the country to be tilting the scales?
No. Freedom of expression is a human right, not a privilege of citizenship.
And he can continue to express himself, or can't he?
Sure, just like an American snatched off the street and sent to prison can still express himself in prison.
He is in nowhere like prison.
So? Your logic applies to prison just the same, obviously.
Being in prison and being free in your home country sound pretty different to me, in terms of free speech, or free anything really.
They're no different on the dimension that you identified as relevant: is he able to express himself or not?
I mean, you could put someone in solitary confinement and he'd be "able to express himself."
It's almost as if your heuristic is a bad one, which is why it is not the one established in the US Constitution or 250 years of case law.
Does anyone anywhere qualify in this if your understanding? What does it mean to live here and not have an effect on on US politics? Can we use this same rationale to deny folks with dual citizenship office if they seek it?
Freedom of speech is not a right bestowed on citizens but an encumbrance on the government. They cannot set policy based on protected speech.
Nor is there any definition of journalist that precludes having a point of view.
This person continues to be able to speak freely.
He also took part in the protests of Columbia University and by the looks of it wants to continue his political agenda in a foreign country. If this happened at scale then then foreigners could come (perhaps even be imported to the US, if this were a known-to-be-usable loophole) and steer the politics of a country in some other direction. It looks like the government is trying to avoid that and, if I were a citizen, it's what I would expect it to do.
That's a really bizarre take. You think it's acceptable to deny entry to someone based on your assessment of their political opinions? Given the very directly related context that Columbia students with visas and greencards are being detained and facing deportation explicitly for their political opinions, you can't conclude this is anything other anti-speech policy. There is absolutely no threat to life or property stemming from their speech. Meanwhile, expressly pro-genocide political figures with documented history of violent crimes like Ben-Gvir are freely admitted and allowed to rile up mobs.
I don't know the specific reason for denial for this particular person. I just generically don't understand why why would you want students like this in the country. The citizens, sure, vote, assemble, etc. to express your view.
> I just generically don't understand why why would you want students like this in the country.
You don't need to understand. Your understanding is irrelevant. That's why we put it in the Constitution!
This person was sent back from the border, so it sounds like a technicality, as they probably didn't have the info at point of departure to not let him on the plane. He's also a foreigner and an activist, so I assume that's why the assumed visa was cancelled.
You seem to argue that regardless of what the US as a country wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because he made it onto US soil. Sounds like a technicality.
This will be my last comment as you've proven yourself incapable of loading words into your brain.
> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US as a country wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because he made it onto US soil. Sounds like a technicality.
This should read:
> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US federal government wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because their provided justification for achieving what they want would violate the Constitution. Sounds like how Constitutions work.
Do you think journalists don't have sides and don't have effects on politics?
Riddle me this: why do you think journalism is protected in this country if it is definitionally politically inert?
This person is from another country and is rather an activist than a journalist, and he also can continue to express his views to this day.
Does it not make sense to you that a country (i.e, its citizens) don't actually want foreign activists to come and steer its politics? Sounds like a recipe for country take-over if done at scale.
My recommendation is that when you're inquiring about another country's laws or norms, you actually open your ears to what they're telling you instead of just repeatedly asserting your own (as you admit) completely ignorant perspective.
Anyone foreigner around the world has the right to assemble in the US? I don't think these are the laws that the US has.
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Does constitution have jurisdiction all over the world?
It has jurisdiction everywhere the United States does. Read the 14th Amendment, it's extremely clear.
The founders were proto-shitposters who ran a psyop on the public with the same technology used to print the daily paper. They knew what they were doing.
I agree with you, by the way. To a certain reading, this guy is creating a valuable resource in the attention economy: controversy. Give them a medal and a journalism grant.
It shows how quickly the far left abandons its charity cases once it finds greener pastures. Remember all the "end ___ hate" campaigns? Not when there's a new group to manipulate for votes.
I've responded now to several of your comments, but this is a common enough sign of miseducation among the terminally online that I'll respond again here:
The far left is within their First Amendment rights to create "all the 'end ___ hate' campaigns" they want. The far right is within their First Amendment rights to create all the "hate _____" campaigns they want.
Bystanders, commercial entities, private schools, your friends and family are allowed to be friendly with you or disown you per their own preference for which side you take. They're even allowed to call you mean names like "ignorant fascist incel" if they want. And you're allowed to call them mean names too!
The government is not allowed to utilize state power to suppress either side of the hate or not-hate debate. It is not allowed to utilize state power to compel the "end hate" crowd to be nice to, give jobs to, maintain platforms for, or educate the "hate" crowd, nor vice versa.
> this is a common enough sign of miseducation among the terminally online
"anyone who disagrees with you is obviously ill"
No, I said that you have a very elementary misunderstanding that's common among a specific group of people.
It's like saying, "the inability to add 1 + 1 is common among people who never attended an arithmetic class."
The title does not do the content justice. Since Snowden it's been known to the entire world, even outside of HN, that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
What has changed is that now they're actually using this to a degree that even China generally does not do. If a German had written a comment in support of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook at some point in time, they're extremely unlikely to get denied entry to China over this, despite them almost certainly having even stronger capabilities and databases to easily find this out.
> that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
This is an important point.
The Bush admin established systems to surveil ~everyone in the US (not suspected of a crime) in bulk. Bulk surveillance is the well known, core component of systems intended to harm people (in bulk).
This got a pass from Bush supporters (inc me at first). It got little-to-no strong pushback elsewhere.
The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone (excepting a period after the Edward Snowden revelations).
Not holding a reasonable PotUS accountable - this gifts power to the unreasonable ones that follow.
> The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone.
Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms. He also unequivocally condemned torture, promised to revise/sunset the Patriot Act, copperfasten Roe v Wade 'Day 1', etc...
But virtually all the Democrats I knew didn't give a single shit when he 180'd on all of that in his first few months. Still blows my mind a bit to this day; a marvel of mass brainwashing.
Now we're at the point where Democrats can arm and enable a literal holocaust inflicted on some of the world's poorest and most beautiful people, then get on a high horse when someone suggests voting for a non-genocidal party.
The ratchet effect is beyond extreme; and quite obvious for observant people with an outside perspective. Yet somehow Americans still seem to have hope that voting Dem hard enough will fix things. I wish I knew what it would take to inflict a sense of morality on the country.
> Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms
That's what I thought.
What I recall more clearly: He and Clinton both pausing their 2008 PotUS election campaigns to return to DC and vote in favor of granting retroactive immunity to AT&T.
Snowden showed that the tools were available to intelligence agencies operating under questionable rules. Now the coordination of those agencies is led by a Russian agent, and poorly trained keystone cops have access, courtesy of Palantir.
Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
> Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
The access was given to Palantir. Your statement is dismissive in a way that suggests this dangerous situation no longer exists.
Are you asserting that Palantir no longer has access to this data?
No, im suggesting that what Palantir is illegal, the IRS and Social Security staff bullied into allowing it are likely felonies on providing it to the company.
My statement was confusing. The employees who were responsible stewards of this data have either been fired or resigned in protest.
Palantir.
Valar Ventures.
Mithril Capital.
Lembas LLC.
It’s remarkable to me how someone like Thiel could be such a fan of Lord of the Rings, with its central themes of the corrupting influence of unchecked power and good triumphing over evil and evil’s will to control and dominate—then decide to become Gollum.
Mr. Thiel identifies as Sauron, thank you very much.
1000 points have been deducted from your Palantir AI Social Credit Score™
Let's constitute the fellowship of the ring :D
Hmm why not rather opportunistic Saruman? Serve whoever brings money, fuck the plebs and some naive higher principles
You know, I think you're right.
In all of these types of stories, "evil" rules for long enough that makes it appealing for those with the same views. Sometimes, it's generations before "good" overcomes. Plus, each one of the "evil" leaders feel like they are special and different. It's easy to understand why. You just need to be able to see it yourself.
There are no evil people, media (books, TV, movies) have plainly evil people so the story is easily digestible and appealing to the masses. But it is completely incorrect framing of how the world actually is.
In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place, and they are fighting "ignorant" people who are dragging society down by not conforming to their golden vision. And then "evil" becomes largely a function of who you ask. It's the opposition that labels them evil, not society on the whole.
There are very few leaders ever who are straight up storybook style evil. Almost all of them were/are deranged people who convinced enough people of their ostensibly good vision to begin executing it.
No one came to power because they wanted to turn society into burning rumble while they ate babies during daily random execution time. It's all nuance and complication.
> There are no evil people [....] In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place
I would have to disagree here...lots of historical examples of criminal gangs, privateers, etc seeking to simply do harm.
Who? I can only think of Nero who sought only to "simply do harm." This is such a reductive way to cast people
Thiel on the whole is just providing technology that can be used for good or evil. The decision to deport pro palestinian protesters is down to Trump who was chosen by the American voters.
Because it's only evil when your opposition/competition is doing it. You're always the hero in your own story and for you the actions are justified because you're doing it "for good". The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hitler was also a fan of works of art with themes of peace and harmony.
The world, at the highest levels of competition and leadership, doesn't run on morals, it runs on unscrupulous force, conquest and domination. See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who tried to maintain peace on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
> See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who ran on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
Fortunately not so; some time around 50-100kya, humans rapidly became a whole lot nicer to each other.
Kya? No idea what you mean.
Contextually clear that this is a stand in for “thousand years ago.”
Ah ok thanks, then that's false.
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Thiel and Karp have both said in various places that western civilization is worth saving and that it's better that we develop this power than enemies of the West, and I'm not going to lie, I'm inclined to agree with them.
Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khamenei are better stewards of the world than the West?
The West's introspective nature is good and all, but sometimes we unwittingly forget that there is actual evil in the world, and it's much worse than saying mean things on Twitter, or putting facts above feelings.
Students in Iran literally die protesting the regime, meanwhile students here who live a life of luxury and don't know what actual oppression is "protest"/simp for the Iranians (or one of their various proxies)...
And it is forgotten that people will do evil under the auspices of “western ideals” and power unchecked leads to an erosion of those ideals.
Reminder - Iran offered support after 9/11 but instead we rebuffed them and called them part of the axis of evil just because. Right at a time when they were really modernizing again but our jingoistic attitudes entrenched the autocrats further.
They agreed to a nuclear deal that we tore up just because.
We overthrew their government.
We have presidential candidates singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran” for fun.
The reason we have a bad relationship with Iran and a large reason why they have bad leaders is because the US has made it so.
So why does Iran have bad relations with most of their neighbours? Why does Iran support terrorism against countries that aren't the US?
Did the US make Iran oppress women and minorities? Everytime Iran executes people who oppose the regime, is it because the US made them do it?
I don't know the answer to your question, but it struck me that we can ask exactly the same question about the US today.
To be fair, nearly all superpowers and regional powers in the world currently have poor relations with their neighbors lol.
USA? Check (the new entrant). China? Check. Russia? Check. India? Check. Japan? Check (too few neighbors though) Iran? Check. Israel? Check. EU? Check. Saudi Arabia? An exception. Brazil? Another exception. UK? Check. (lol)
Because Iran is Shia and the rest of its neighbours are ruled by Sunnis. Some even have majority Shia populations that can be restive under a Sunni autocrat.
Even then, Iran still has strong ties with all of those neighbors. They trade actively, US sanctions be damned, and would pounce at the opportunity to invest in Iran if given the opportunity (Iran's industries are basically all owned by the Ayatollah and IRGC currently).
This is a very strange argument. I don’t have a problem in principle with a country developing a security apparatus. It’s how they use it, is the issue. The current US regime doesn’t feel like a particularly custodian of Western, liberal democracy
> The current US regime doesn’t feel like a particularly custodian of Western, liberal democracy
With it's middle finger to due process and courts, it clearly isn't. It's a particularly un-American administration.
Thiel has explicitly advocated for the abolition of democracy and is funding contemporary efforts to do so. What privileges our students enjoy only exist because he hasn’t succeeded yet. You pose a false choice between authoritarian regimes. Claiming that Iranian protesters have it worse so we shouldn’t protect the free speech rights of our students is similarly disingenuous. It divides people using guilt around relative privilege rather than directing our efforts to solidarity in fighting the ruling class, of which Thiel is a part.
> free speech rights of our students
Based on the article, a foreigner is being denied entry to the US. Every country has the right to do this for whatever reason they see fit. Most countries don't allow foreigners to protest, see Egypt and the March to Gaza a few days ago...
Free speech is a human right not a right of citizens. You conflate several issues here under the notion of national rights: legitimate border concerns, deportation of students as retaliation of free speech (under your umbrella term foreign protest), increasing authoritarianism in the US (which this is clearly evidence of). Nor should we take cues from governments suppressing protests against genocide. Genocide is something all people and all countries should unite against. It is a crime against humanity.
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>> Theil is spearheading a campaign of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
> Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
Intelligence is needed to bring harm to adversaries. Determine the intel, determine the adversary.
So where's the "untold suffering to minorities and poor people"?
Database of migrants, you do know that it's normal for governments to keep track of who's in their country, right? It's why passports have your name, picture, DOB, etc... on them...
By omitting the qualifying part of the grandparent's statement, which is this...
the quoted part in this... ...unhelpfully misstates the GP's assertion.That assertion is that Theil is leadership within a campaign.
The assertion is the campaign is intended to harm the vulnerable.
Funding an election to gain access to the data needed to build new datasets that specifically target a vulnerable segment of the population - this is evidence of who the campaign is targeting.
Thiel himself is part of a "protected class". If I was a standard consumer/ believer of leftist news publications wouldn't it be the time to defend him and say the reason he's being attacked is because he's a homosexual? If not, why should I believe it any other time they toss that accusation around?
Maybe you should consider this evidence that gay people aren't a "protected class" in the first place.
Maybe there were never any such classes to begin with? And the party that sold them to us was lying?
"Leftist", "Rightist", and much "news" in general rots your brain by promulgating broken paradigms. This applies regardless of whether you think of yourself as supporting or opposing any given narrative.
You're twisting your thinking in knots acting like the authority claimed by some news, then contradicting itself, creates authority to the contrary. Really you're just helping spread brain rot.
Absurd. It's literally impossible, by definition, for gay white males to enact racist policy or otherwise act in ways harmful to minorities. "Gay" and "racist" are mutually exclusive terms, again by definition.
I categorically do not wish to live in a West perverted by Thiel and Karp’s grotesque ideology.
So far, the signs are that Trump is likely a worse steward than Xi. He just hasn't had the ability to properly fulfill his wishes.
Its funny how trump is actually helping China long term to become top superpower. He either can't see long term consequences of his emotional tantrums or simply doesn't care in the name of ego polishing games.
That's a bit of a strawman argument, no? The options are not only become a tyrant or let Putin rule the world. There's many and more clever options. I think we can demand much better from the people in power.
Also, that rhetoric of The West vs the world is a bit lazy. Things are more complex, even recent events prove The West is not a unified block where everyone thinks the same way.
What power, specifically? Overwhelming surveillance of citizens? Whining that people attending universities in the US protested things?
Why on earth would anyone think Khomeini (who, of course, has been dead for 24 years) would ever have any say over the West?
You’re deeply afraid of a very strange bogeyman. It seems odd to pretend that Peter Thiel also fears dead men in politically/economically/socially irrelevant countries.
...Khamenei is not Khomeini
Parent had Khomeini when I replied.
Khameini, of course, also has absolutely nothing to do with anything and is a nonsensical bogeyman. He just happens to still be alive.
> Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khomeini are better stewards of the world than the West?
I'm sure they're saying the same things about the West.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/355/607/670
Of course they say the same things about the West. Especially North Korea, which is the epitome of human achievement.
Saying it doesn't make it true though.
>North Korea
Maybe try addressing a more serious version of my argument rather than the weakest thing you can strawman.
Help me make sense of this as an old timer because I’m lost
Everything described in the thread has been going on since the Patriot Act was signed in 2001.
As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton and see all links to other IMEI/SI collected worldwide.
By 2013 I could query those in Palantir on a Secret or SCI level depending on who held the data which would also aggregate and provide to me OSINT, LE reports or other data associated with those id
What’s new here?
Is it just that more people know about it now?
All the stuff I described above was public information as to both “capabilities” and used as casus belli for warrants (US) or kinetic actions (OCONUS).
They've had these authoritarian toys for a while, but they've been careful to use them more subtly in the past.
This administration is, as with everything else, discarding the "norms" based restraint that previously applied to their use.
Fully disagree. This was entirely what snowden was trying to make public and he was a broken record on precisely what I described above.
Everything I wrote can be validated that it was available for the world to see by 2013.
From my point of view, wheter this is new or not is secondary. What happened is very bad and it is important to talk about it.
Nothing has changed except the standard for denial of entry has been broadened here. There's a long history of denying entry to people for what their views are, this isn't new at all. You can just do a search and find examples of white supremacists, and imams and Islamic scholars, as well as probably other groups being denied entry to not only the US but it happens in Europe too and it goes back across administrations. So in other words, it's not just under the current administration where your political views could get you denied entry to the US.
> As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton
Did you mean PRISM? When I think of Proton, I think of a genuine effort to assist people in maintaining security.
No, this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISSCROSS/PROTON
What's new is they've started using all of that more aggressively to detain people who objectively, without the shadow of a doubt, have done nothing wrong but somehow displease the party.
Retrieval and association is orders of magnitude better
“Lost in the noise” no more
Generally, in my lifetime (at 37 years old now), wide political awareness starting around 2004, Patriot Act / mass government data conversation was more about "This can be abused!", the most concrete story I had ever even close to the topic was by my junior year english teacher (17 years old) relaying that someone told her someone googled "how do terrorists make a bomb" and the FBI paid them a visit. Here, I'm a bit stunned to see we're investing in screening and detaining visitors if they seem to hold an opinion that doesn't imply any sort of violent threat.
Unlikely, but the person may have looked into it further. Agriculture stores that sell stuff like ammonium nitrate are all participants in counter terror programs.
The real danger isn't the capability or even them collecting the information.
The danger is when the fascists take charge and start abusing it.
And the new thing here is just that.
What's new here is that Peter Thiel is a libertarian who wants to destroy democracies because he's a christian lunatic who believes in armageddon and the anti-christ and sees democracies and multi-national organizations like the UN and the EU as tsaid anti-christ. This is not a joke, even though I wish it was because it sounds so ridiculous. Palantir is not our friend. And they probably WILL read my comment.
> he's a lunatic
ftfy
A thought experiment I have been having asks if we should instead open it up to the public.
For some reason I have been fixated on license plate readers (probably not a bad parallel to Palantir?). Plenty of people on HN justifiably decry license plate readers due to their violation of our privacy (to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds).
But if license plate readers are already a reality (we know they are), why should only private actors have that data? This would make sense if we completely trusted those private actors, of course.
The opposite could be a public, open-source license plate reader that caught on (people using dash cams + open software) — the data sent to a collective, public database. (Perhaps the software strips out personal license plates — only logging tags of official or government vehicles?).
My first reaction is the degree to which that could be abused by ... stalkers? Truly a bad thing. But then I ask myself to what degree the private license plate readers are perhaps "being abused" (or will be more and more) and we don't even know about it.
As I say, a thought experiment that I find myself seeing merits both for and against.
I once had a firepit conversation with the Floc coordinator of a small US city's PD. A big part of the value he saw in Floc was being able to query the data within some window (maybe 30 days?) then no longer being responsible for it. If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data. Not only would that be an administrative cost, but it would also show the public how invasive the mass surveillance is. He clearly was not concerned about civil rights, he just wanted the convictions.
He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.
> If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data.
Respond to, yes. Disclose, not necessarily. I believe ALPR data are exempt from disclosure in some - perhaps many, and maybe even most - states.
> why should only private actors have that data?
I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?
I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.
So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."
I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".
It is a crime to stalk people. When we catch people doing it, we should stop them.
I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.
When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.
When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.
When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.
They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.
Agree, I would prefer this were not even a thing.
> to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds
I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_priv...
That's a good point. I am only going on the "expectation of privacy" clause — but perhaps that's only applied to (audible) conversations.
Open what up? This event isn't about finding some needle in a hackstack, but about power structures using unaccountable "AI" to create chilling effects on the freedom of speech. The public having a go-to list of journalists who committed wrongspeak about Israel wouldn't particularly change much, beyond facilitating the extension of this authoritarian dynamic into the corporate world in a uniform way.
see the novel kiln people and the transparent society essays by David Brin
Biggest abuse would be home burglars. Pick a juicy target, wait till all vehicles are away and strike.
What's with the title? It says "Journalists ..." (plural) when so far as I can tell it's the story of one journalist. While I'm sure there's at least one other journalist wary of traveling to the US, that's not the story at hand, and HN guidelines prohibit editorializing of titles.
I am not actually sure they are a journalist, but more a blogger? Happy to be proven wrong
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"Blogger" and "activist" both being euphemisms for "journalist who says things I don't like".
I think with blogger the GP meant that he is not a professional journalist; an activist is somebody who is politically engaged, as clearly this person is. Does it appear to you that he is an actual journalist?
He makes money from journalism, does he not? Journalists are by definition politically engaged, so defining "activist" as a separate category like that makes no sense.
I've no idea how he makes his money, and no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side, and also is acting upon it by protesting.
> no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
> Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side
That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
> and also is acting upon it by protesting.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
I don't think few if any journalist I've read have taken part in protests.
Also, most journalists just investigate and present stories by assembling what they found. And then they go and investigate another topic. But this person has just one topic.
I'd say people who consistently protest and consistently write about the topic are activists, yes. Do you need an even stronger definition?
Having beliefs and advocating for them does not preclude one from doing journalism, and I would argue that undoubtedly any written account of occurrences on the ground during protests are journalism, regardless of the slant.
You really don't want to get into categorizing speech as protected or not based on content.
I agree the government shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping what being a "journalist" means, but I think we can all agree there's there's clearly a category difference between a BBC reporter objectively covering the protests, and someone involved with the protests giving a one-sided account.
>Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
"politically engaged" in this case refers to participating in the protests itself, or even taking a particular side. It's the opposite of being "objective", back when that was an ideal to strive for. Nowadays "objectivity" is being dropped in favor of "moral clarity".
>That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
No. Writing about resturants in New York is a "beat". Writing pieces consistently favoring one side is being an activist.
>Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
Yes? Are you going to gatekeep "actvist" to people who are card carrying DSA members or something?
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Every thread getting littered with these hall monitor complaints about titles is worse than clickbait could ever be.
If anything, I think the title severely understates what happened here. It's not journalists "wary" of traveling to the US, it's a journalist literally getting deported for writing about a protest movement.
I just started looking but I can’t find any supporting evidence for this story. The part where someone says “we both know why you’re here” just sounded like a cheesy movie line. The journalist mentioned that while being detained he met a woman who was on day 4 of detention… what exactly are the logistics of how they were handling detention?
It all just sounded so implausible. It reads like someone trying to spin a story to convince others of what they already wanted to believe, or maybe that kid in grade school who tells stories he read or saw, but swaps himself for the main character.
Why should I believe this person more than any random internet crank?
I'm sorry to write at length, I just feel so deeply in this moment. I've never seen such a stark denial of reality that has been reported widely recently, that also relies on a sweeping idea that we can't trust anyone ever, i.e. we cannot discern the difference between a random internet crank and a not-crank, and given that, there's no reason to ever explore anything we haven't accepted ourselves.
I don't think I'll be able to bridge the gap by lecturing or pointing things out or huffing about journalism. But I have no choice but to try something, because I care for you and for us.
I guess what I'd say is, to keep from lecturing, it's very normal to be in detention for multiple days once you've tripped the first wire. There's been many stories like this shared, you can see some of the effects [here](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=05c894fd792d1e12&rlz=1...), no tricks, no bias, just a search for "cbp detention" in Google news.
Some headlines: ‘Like a jail cell’: Family of six detained at Washington state border facility for more than three weeks, German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego-area immigrant detention facility, Green card holder from New Hampshire 'interrogated' at Logan Airport, detained, ‘Felt like a kidnapping’: Wrong turn leads to 5-day detention ordeal
"Every" thread? I can't say that matches with my experience, or is even remotely close. Most posts I see are properly titled and as a result don't have anyone complaining about it. Can you link to some recent examples? Or is a little stretching of the truth justified in comments as well?
I just had some otherwise nice-sounding recruiter pings from Palantir-adjacent companies. I couldn’t do it. I found another role that’s everything I wanted and I can look at myself in the mirror.
On the other hand, you could aim for becoming a mole or whistleblower.
That’s a thing, to be sure, but there’s also the very strong possibility of becoming institutionalized and rationalizing the stuff you’re working on in the mean time.
You mean you are worried about personally causing harm in that job? Or you are worried about saving face?
The former. I don’t want to work on things that make the world worse in ways I care about.
So how did you make that determination of harm? Are you making the world worse being an accountant at palantir? What if the role was making systems safer and more secure?
You may safely assume that I had enough information available to me that I was able to make an educated decision.
I think that the time may come in the near future where "proper" white collar Americans will have an obligation to flagrantly violate new laws and be arrested on purpose in order to create a critical mass of people who both have experienced the excesses of the regime and also are motivated enough to do something about it. This would have to be paired with colossally well-funded lawsuits, as during the Civil Rights movement.
Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay. That leaves the various armed forces around the country staffed with individuals who feel very little opposition to rote authoritarianism, corruption, and rule-by-force. There are relatively few individuals working in day-to-day policing or intelligence work that spend a lot of time thinking about the duty of agents of the state to follow its laws.
> Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay.
I've been thinking a lot about this same thing. I've seen a marked rise in the number of complaints about how "everyone in law enforcement is MAGA" and the like, and can't help but think: "this is what you wanted, right?"
There have been a lot of people trying really hard to make law enforcement (and adjacent roles) entirely unpalatable, and it appears they've been largely successful! I think what they failed to take into account is that they were only making those roles unpalatable tothose who already think like them in other ways, and forgot that there are a lot of people out there with fundamentally different beliefs who are not dissuaded by ACAB-adjacent arguments. Or, worse yet, are actively attracted to the way the role is being portrayed!
So in the end, it seems like they achieved their goals, but perhaps overlooked how those goals might have some unintended consequences.
I never really understood the argument, either. If you think policing is rife with prejudice and abuse of power, why are you trying to demonize the whole job? Why wouldn't you be signing up for it, instead? After all, if you think it's being done wrong, the best way to right that wrong is by doing it yourself and setting a better example.
I think the fact that people prefer to publicly demonize an entire thing, instead of doing the hard work of making it right, is one of the most insidious features of modern social media.
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>And yes, it's immoral to become a cop
Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
>just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties
Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral.
> Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
There are some people who not only believe this but can make very compelling cases that this is the case. It's a dead-end rhetorical argument; yes, it is actually possible for literally every precinct in the US to violate people's civil rights.
The difference is that some people, like (I suspect) the person you're responding to, seem to think that the position itself--armed law enforcement officer--is archetypically immoral and should not exist as a function or profession in a civilization. This is naive to to the point of absurdity and underwrites most of the idiocy that's widely abound in anti-policing movements. In one breath they claim that "police" are as a class immoral, and in the next they proclaim that their political opponents must be "brought to justice" by armed people following a set of written laws. It's absurd!
That strawman isn't particularly pretty, maybe you could put some effort in next time you make one?
To me civilisation isn't an inherently good term, and I'm not a believer in natural or god given hierarchies, or even the state as necessary. On the contrary, I consider the state to be a crime in itself, founded on the threat of violence and by necessity it destroys cooperative forms of social life as a survival tactic.
Using your principles, the only societies possible are pre-industrial, pre-legal societies residing in areas not desired by neighboring states or bands of raiding warriors.
>To me civilisation isn't an inherently good term, and I'm not a believer in natural or god given hierarchies, or even the state as necessary.
You're right. The universe doesn't need us to be living in cities, with indoor plumbing, modern medical care, and iPads, but most people would prefer that to living in the savannah without any of that and a life expectancy of 30 years.
>by necessity it destroys cooperative forms of social life as a survival tactic.
???
"Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?"
Yes. There is some variation but cops as an institution generally grew out of previous phenomena like state employed executioners and anti-union militias, and its purpose is to protect capital owners from the threat of popular mobilisation against injustice and inequality.
Functions like sometimes acting against entrism in the state or integration with insurance industry are kind of bolted on.
"Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral."
Yeah, sure, forced labour camps aren't a nice thing and you aren't a nice person if you participate in enabling them, even if they're populated with germans or gays or whatever.
>Yes. There is some variation but cops as an institution generally grew out of previous phenomena like state employed executioners and anti-union militias,
It really isn't, unless you're willing to ignore all the origins of policing prior to the founding of the US.
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
Moreover the idea that some institution "grew out of" something shameful, and therefore it's irredeemable to this day is absurd. The Nazis created the autobahn, and even though it's pretty benign today, at least part of the motivation for creating it was for military conquest. Does that mean it's immoral to be an autobahn maintenance worker, or that the institution is irredeemably evil today?
> and its purpose is to protect capital owners from the threat of popular mobilisation against injustice and inequality.
It seems to be doing a pretty poor job at that, given how stores and even trains can be looted with impunity. Moreover how do you objectively define what a "purpose" of an institution is? Some right-wingers might say the "purpose" of the education system is to indoctrinate kids with liberal ideology or whatever. What makes that your claim about cops more valid than right winger's claim about the education system?
>Yeah, sure, forced labour camps aren't a nice thing and you aren't a nice person if you participate in enabling them, even if they're populated with germans or gays or whatever.
No, you said "camps". Now you're trying to pull a motte and bailey and retreating to "forced labour camps". I don't see the problem with POW camps that abides by international law, for instance. Being confined to a POW camp isn't anyone's idea of a good time, but war is hell, and there's far worse things that can happen.
This guy thought deleting his posts would make a difference... but he's sure it's Palantir.
They've been doing this using all sorts of social media OSINT tools for a decade or more. Okay, he's annoyed but that's not a license to make stuff up.
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The US is just following the European example of "responsibly" moderating speech [1], instead of blindly sticking to the 1st amendment, as they were so often called to [2].
[1] https://www.gbnews.com/news/renaud-camus-banned-migration-vi...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-eu...
Yes, I would expect the government to blindly stick to the founding document of the country. I would also expect the government to go through the amendment process to change that document if it was found wanting given changes in society over time.
It’s far easier to pay lip service to the document while doing whatever you want. This is common with authoritarian regimes. From the PRC’s constitution:
> Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Does that say Camus had his phone seized? He was denied being allowed to come and speak, not to visit as a journalist, which also strikes me a fairly different case (whatever you think of his positions, or whether they should be debated or silenced). It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
> Does that say Camus had his phone seized?
I'm confused where this question is coming from. Do cases have to be exactly the same to draw parallels?
> It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
Germany is a bad example, as they're deporting and planning to even revoke citizenship based on speech:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/14/germany-orders-depo...
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/31/germany-gaza-protesters-...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-withdraw-citizenship-due...
Complicated thing: had a certain Austrian who complained about the German government silencing him instead been deported and forbidden to return after his prison sentence, the world might have been a very different place.