[HN Gopher] The Incredibly Stupid One
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The Incredibly Stupid One
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-07-15 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lowellmilkencenter.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lowellmilkencenter.org)
| thriftwy wrote:
| [deleted]
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > And half of the stuff we read further is probably just his
| legend, i.e. not true.
|
| Do you have any evidence of this, or are you just saying this?
| And what stuff are you saying is untrue? None of this sounded
| unbelievable to me. This man is someone who helped save the
| lives of several other soldiers who were being tortured at the
| time. If you're insinuating that his efforts are all fabricated
| based on no evidence, then it just seems like a weird thing to
| insinuate imo.
|
| And here's something from 2005 with all the same details[0].
| Everything else I've found seems to tell the same story, so I'm
| not sure why they would all be wrong (unless you're trying to
| say this is all some weird conspiracy or propaganda, which
| doesn't seem likely).
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050825035929/http://www.usni.o...
| thriftwy wrote:
| gwbas1c wrote:
| For TLDR:
|
| >Rather than give up information to his captors, Douglas
| pretended to be an illiterate fool.
|
| > Using the nursery rhyme "Old McDonald Had a Farm" as a mnemonic
| device, he memorized over 250 prisoners' names.
|
| > His global impact came when he confronted the Vietnamese at the
| Paris Peace Talks in 1970. The information Douglas provided,
| including the locations and horrible conditions of the prison
| camps, as well as the torture practices used by the Vietnamese
| registeredcorn wrote:
| It would be worth including the final line
|
| >Exposing the Vietnamese this way led them to keep POWs alive
| until the war was over, saving hundreds of prisoners.
| [deleted]
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Somehow this reminds me of Jeremiah Denton, a POW in that same
| war who was interviewed on TV to explain that the prisoners were
| being treated humanely. As he gave the verbal answers his captors
| expected, he blinked his eyes in Morse Code: --
| -- -- -- * -- * -- * * -- * -- * * T O
| R T U R E
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rufnWLVQcKg
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Denton
| silentsea90 wrote:
| This is movie script material right here.
| franzsmith wrote:
| How would the Vietnamese' face be at Paris Peace Conference?
| After knowing he gave all the information.
| refurb wrote:
| Not sure it mattered much in terms of the big picture.
|
| The North had plenty of highly placed spies in the South. Both
| sides were running espionage operations throughout the war.
|
| And the North had a "fighting while talking" strategy which
| meant if they made advances on the battlefield they exploited
| them during negotiations and when they took loses they just
| delayed until better opportunities arose.
| smegsicle wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220715174007/https://www.lowel...
| tedheath123 wrote:
| Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out
| that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed
| at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother
| Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the
| cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to
| rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense.
| Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons
| though.
| HoraceSchemer wrote:
| I'm not religious, but a particular legend has stuck with me:
|
| > A philanthropist once came to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi
| to complain that he felt he was giving charity without
| sincerity. "Without sincerity? Nonsense!" replied the Rebbe.
| "There is plenty of sincerity. Perhaps you are not sincere in
| giving charity, but the poor are very sincere in receiving your
| charity. Even if you don't mean it, they do!"
|
| [source](https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1885183
| /jewis...)
| dvt wrote:
| I live in Santa Monica and often walk past the Lowell Milken
| Family Foundation (which is close to the posh downtown). I
| always kind of smile and think about the story of how the
| Milken Family completely reinvented itself. Michael Milken, for
| context, was paid the highest yearly salary in the history of
| the world (~250M in one of his highest years if I remember
| correctly). He served 2 years in prison, his fine was 600M and
| the guy is still a billionaire (he also got pardoned by Trump
| in 2020). He's a self-admitted crook and liar[1].
|
| How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by hustling
| junk bonds? Is that okay now that he is donating money to
| cancer research? Forbes and CNN certainly think so[2] (even in
| _2004_ , for that matter). William K. Black put it well: "the
| best way to rob a bank is to own one."
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220428215122/https://www.nytim...
|
| [2]
| https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004...
| phonon wrote:
| > How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by
| hustling junk bonds?
|
| Zero? What evidence do you have otherwise? None of his crimes
| were related to the issuance of high yield bonds. It's not
| like penny stocks being pushed from a boiler room...he helped
| create a market for higher risk, higher yield bonds.
| Historically, they have done pretty well in a portfolio.
| vba616 wrote:
| >How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by
| hustling junk bonds?
|
| I'm not familiar with the context of what Michael Milken did
| (although he's famous enough I know the name), but your
| (rhetorical?) question sounds very strange to me.
|
| An omniscient and omnipotent being that knew the right amount
| of junk bonds to issue could probably answer how many lives
| were destroyed or harmed by creating the wrong amount.
|
| But when a question like that is asked, you're asking human
| beings, not God, and it sounds rhetorical, which means that
| the answer is supposed to be obvious, I think.
|
| If you were asking about milk with melamine in it, then I
| would understand what you meant. But junk bonds aren't
| inherently useless or defective.
| dvt wrote:
| > and it sounds rhetorical
|
| It's rhetorical: the answer is, given how much money he
| made, a _lot_.
|
| > But junk bonds aren't inherently useless or defective
|
| This seems a bit disingenuous, as they have, by definition,
| a very high risk of defaulting. He also manipulated
| stocks[1], which, again, is _technically_ a victimless
| crime (but is it really?).
|
| [1] https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-09/s70809-4614.pdf
| vba616 wrote:
| >This seems a bit disingenuous, as they have, by
| definition, a very high risk of defaulting
|
| I'm aware junk bonds have a relatively high expected risk
| of default and I'm not being disingenuous.
|
| Please assume that I'm sincere, as it's required by the
| HN guidelines, and also, I am.
|
| I didn't say anything is a victimless crime or say
| victimless crimes are ok (or acts that have victims are
| always wrong). So let's not go on that tangent for now.
| Or talk about details about Milken, which are beyond the
| scope of my previous comment.
|
| So: I infer you think high risk loans are bad, like
| poisoned milk. I don't have a problem with that concept,
| really. But there must be a threshold, right? And I have
| never heard of anyone seriously putting that threshold
| precisely at the word "junk". As far as I know, "junk" is
| a term of art, that is opposed to "investment grade".
| dvt wrote:
| Okay, maybe we're just speaking past each other. My point
| is pretty simple, and you're right that I should not have
| brought up victimless crimes, etc.
|
| I'm just trying to say: here's some rich guy that did bad
| stuff, went to jail, and received the equivalent of a
| slap on the wrist, essentially rebranded his image, and
| is now back at the adults' table as a philanthropist,
| even though his wealth is funded by his past
| illegal/unethical endeavors. And to make things more
| bizarre, everyone is totally playing along. Isn't that
| kind of funny?
| RobRivera wrote:
| manipulation of stock is far from a victimless crime
| [deleted]
| vorpalhex wrote:
| At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in
| life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was
| applied equally.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| > At some point punishment has to end and you move forward
| in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if
| this was applied equally.
|
| I completely agree, but if I am reading your statement
| right, our conclusions are 180 degrees apart. It seems you
| are saying it is unfair that some people are forgiven and
| others aren't and that Milken is getting unjustly punished.
|
| My take is there are hundreds of thousands (if not
| millions) of people who served more than 2 years for petty
| offenses, things like selling dime bags of weed. Their
| convictions follow them for life and make future gainful
| employment extremely difficult. Yet a highly educated,
| white collar guy can steal hundreds of millions and serve
| two years in a luxury prison, and then coast the rest of
| his life on his ill-gotten gains. That is no justice at
| all, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for hoping that
| Milken's reputation never recovers.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That point has to be further away than the gain a person
| got from the crime.
| myko wrote:
| > Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons
| though.
|
| There was an interesting discussion around this yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094798 (TikTok'er doing
| random acts of kindness for clout upset someone he used for his
| videos)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Intent is everything.
| [deleted]
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| A brave soldier, doing right by his country, which was led into
| fighting villagers half way around the world in incredibly tough
| scenarios by asshole politicians.
| abraae wrote:
| The Vietnam war (or the American war as I was corrected in a
| bar in Hanoi) was the epitome of unintended escalation. One of
| the early escalators was JFK, who was simultaneously extremely
| wary of escalation, and is not someone who most people think of
| as an asshole politician. Your point has some heft but it's a
| simplistic take.
| refurb wrote:
| As a history nerd I've read a ton of books on the Vietnam war
| and pretty much this.
|
| There is a great book on LBJ's decision to escalate - I can't
| remember the title, but it's 300 pages long and only covers a
| few months in '65 when the decision to escalate was made.
|
| People like to think the decision was made in a vacuum but it
| was influenced by everything going on at the time and
| geopolitical risk going forward.
|
| LBJ made a decision (there were members of the inner circle
| who wanted to pull out) based on what he knew at the time. It
| turned out to be the wrong one.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The Errol Morris documentary "The Fog Of War" about Robert
| McNamara is amazing. Even though McNamara was in his 80s when
| it was filmed, his mind was still razor sharp. McNamara was
| highly self-reflective and was not someone to whitewash
| history, even his own.
|
| The documentary covers various phases of McNamara's career,
| including his contribution to the Tokyo firebombing raids in
| WWII, and a short bit about his work at Ford Motor Company
| between the wars, but the Vietnam war part was the biggest
| section.
| abraae wrote:
| It's amazing how brutally honest McNamara was about his own
| failings in bringing an MBA type approach to a foreign war.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| What a bay-of-pigheaded comment.
| adamrezich wrote:
| isn't it also a bit of a simplistic take to think that
| American Presidents truly have the "Commander-in-Chief" power
| w.r.t. war decisions that they have on paper?
| abraae wrote:
| From memory JFK was the prime mover in decisions on the
| number of Americans on the ground, their roles and even
| their uniforms.
| chasil wrote:
| I have often wondered if, had the Watergate break-in not been
| discovered or reported, South Vietnam might yet exist, and if
| they would rival South Korea in their technological
| accomplishments.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| South Vietnam never had a functioning government.
| pdonis wrote:
| You should also include high ranking military officers, many
| with political ambitions, who put their own aggrandizement or
| telling their civilian superiors what they wanted to hear ahead
| of their military duties. I recommend H. R. McMaster's book
| _Dereliction of Duty_ , which goes into this in great detail.
| [deleted]
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