Di (amina046) said:

I actually do not care who spies on me. 

I care a great deal about who intercepts the electronic communications of myself and my neighbours.

Nowadays, a large portion of political discussion is online.   Someone who can identify dissenting opinions, and who has the power to penalise them, is in a position to leverage that power into tyrrany.

Even just being able to profile individual voters well enough to manipulate them via micro-targeted arguments is a game changer.

True, many people have voluntarily given such information to big companies such as Facebook.   And, as we've seen in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that's dangerous because even if Facebook don't have that sort of political ambition, those who do have it may be able to winkle the data away from Facebook.

But, even so, there's a big difference between that, and between spying happening at the hardware level where most people won't have the ability to opt-out of being listened into.

Di (amina046) said:

Thinking about it, I actually prefer the Chinese over the Americans.

Neither the Donald Trump administration nor the Xi Jinping administration have my best interests at heart.   They are both, first and foremost, pursuing their own national interest (or possibly just the interests of certain leaders and financial backers).

But, on average, over the last 50 years America has been for global trade, free markets, democracy and the rule of law.    While China has not.

So I'd say my interests coincide more closely with those of America than those of China.   If you're in doubt about that, you don't know enough about Tibet, or the Falun Gong.

AletheiaAtha said:  I'd say my interests coincide more closely with those of America than those of China.   

I'm rather reluctant to accept that. It could be wholly and definitely true - but only because I'm white and speak English. If I was brown and spoke some minority language and was under occupation, Chinese colonialisation might suit me better.

AletheiaAtha said:    If you're in doubt about that, you don't know enough about Tibet, or the Falun Gong.

I'm not sure that Tibetans are suffering worse than native Americans did.

While Falun Gong has twice as many members as the Communist Party of China - its a much, much bigger threat than American communists ever posed to the US government and social stability.

BerrySteph said:

I'm not sure that Tibetans are suffering worse than native Americans did.

That's a pretty low bar.

And, even so, I'd like to think that America today isn't the same as America 75 years ago (internment of ethnic Japanese American citizens) or America of 175 years ago.

AletheiaAtha said:

That's a pretty low bar. 

Well, yes, the native Americans were reduced by 90% or more, much of it by shootings. Their pathetic remainder is being wiped out by alcohol and opiates, as best I can tell. (Absolutely no Indian staff in "Indian" casinos). I doubt if Tibetans will suffer as badly.

No evidence that Chinese Muslims are likely to suffer as badly as native Americans.

And of course, China's complaint and concern is most likely 100% valid - the Uighuirs probably have been radicalised by fleeing Afghans and others.

AletheiaAtha said:   even so, I'd like to think that America today isn't the same as America 75 years ago (internment of ethnic Japanese American citizens) 

Only because they've found new and less obviously ghastly means to carry out genocide of communities and minorities.

Over and over again I hear how terribly antisemitic were the Germans (today in a discussion about WW1) - and yet Americans were and are much more brutal towards their own minorities - and much more antisemitic.

You know that the first chapters of Mein Kampf (1925) are plagiarised from "The International Jew" of 1920 by some bloke called Henry Ford? There was a newspaper full of the same stuff "The Dearborn Independent". Only stopped by BDS - a tactic that cannot be used by people outraged by kiddy-torturing and the coming Holocaust II and possibly WW3.

Oops, my talking like this upsets some people in this very forum - I hope you're more robust.

BerrySteph said:

Over and over again I hear how terribly antisemitic were the Germans

Oh, I agree, Germany was not the only country in which anti-Semitism was rife.   Have you ever read stories by John Buchan?   Apparently he was considered less anti-Semitic than average, for writers of that time.   It was just the done thing back then, to comment on races and generalise about them. :-(

AletheiaAtha said:

Oh, I agree, Germany was not the only country in which anti-Semitism was rife. 

I cannot find evidence that Germany was very antisemitic. (Did I post you about the first chapters of Mein Kampf being plagiarised from Henry Ford?)

In particular, I cannot find any evidence that the Nazis were brutalising the Jews - anywhere, ever, before Stephen Wise and others instigated the start of the "Germany will crack this winter" campaign. The one throw-away listing I found seems to have disappeared.

But get this - Stephen Wise was the Chairman of the "Joint Emergency Committee" and claims in his autobiography to have had "hundreds of word-of-mouth reports, courageous letters - some mere scraps of paper smuggled out of Germany - argued forcibly for the truth. One eloquent message delivered to Rabbi Wise said simply, "Do not believe the denials. Nor the Jewish denials."[Stephen Wise, "Challenging Years: the Autobiography of Stephen Wise" (New York: Putnam, 1949), 240-41.]

On that basis, Stephen Wise and the AJC and the JWV threatened Germany with a devastating economic boycott - and put it into operation (details if you want them from an unimpeachable source).

And yet, the correpondence Stephen Wise claimed to have from Germany in March 1933, critical to the accusations made against Hitler and the Nazis was never seen by anyone else. Anywhere, ever.

Under the circumstances, since we've seen letters begging for something completely different ("please, please, stop the boycott" - http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.652576 ), it seems likely the whole business was a fiction. Stephen Wise wanted the German Jews to be hated in their homeland and de-homed in order they populate and fund the ghastly (and at that time failing) colonialisation of Palestine.

There is more of this - but I'll stop there for the moment. Except to remind you that BM himself pointed me to an article that says the antisemitism of the Germans in the 1930s/ was seriously exaggerated.

Stuff like this gets Wizops to hate me and censor me.

TECHNOLOGY NEWS and the imbecile is off on Jews , Mein Kampf and the BDS

you need more examples of the idiot >?

One leap and we are away from the topic and into Zionism and Jews and Israel