[HN Gopher] Army tested 'germ warfare' on NYC subway (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Army tested 'germ warfare' on NYC subway (2015)
Author : hypatiasrevenge
Score : 145 points
Date : 2023-06-09 09:46 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| r721 wrote:
| (2015)
| boppo1 wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe it, but is there better documentation
| than the 'insider' family of websites?
| pookha wrote:
| My all time favorite is still when we tested chemo-like AIDs
| drugs on foster kids without guardians. Side-effects to include:
| "rashes, vomiting and sharp drops in infection-fighting blood
| cells as they tested antiretroviral drugs to suppress AIDS or
| other medicines to treat secondary infections."
| justinclift wrote:
| Hadn't heard of that before. Any more info about it you can
| link?
| George83728 wrote:
| I haven't heard of this before, but a web search brought up
| this: https://ahrp.org/a-national-scandal-aids-drug-
| experiments-on...
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Well, they couldn't exactly run realistic and viable computer
| models in the years of 1949-1969... so they took a harmless,
| commonly used model organism, and conducted tests.
|
| Something science teachers do as a simple experiment now (with
| various substances), something Mark Rober even did on his own
| channel with 'Glo Germ' powder
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5-dI74zxPg
| hypatiasrevenge wrote:
| "This test was one of at least 239 experiments conducted by the
| military in a 20-year "germ warfare testing program" that went on
| from 1949 to 1969. These experiments that used bacteria to
| simulate biological weapons were conducted on civilians without
| their knowledge or consent."
| troad wrote:
| [flagged]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Why do you have the need to come here and discuss the topic
| yourself, while you don't want to discuss nor even see
| discussed? Many of us find this fascinating and much more
| important than some minor geeky releases, I regularly learn
| some new horrible stuff that I didn't know before, and I
| thought I saw it all.
|
| Some form of OCD manipulating you, while you desperately try to
| ignore that entry and link to discussion?
| bluefishinit wrote:
| Horrific, yet sadly not the only time the US government has used
| bio weapons on their own population.
|
| The most well known examples are MKUltra:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
|
| And the Tuskegee Syphilis Study:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
|
| If you want to look at something slightly more speculative, I
| recommend Dr. Mary's Monkey: https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Marys-
| Monkey-Cancer-Causing-Assass...
|
| It talks about how the CIA worked with Dr. Mary Sherman and Dr.
| Alton Ochsner to develop a cancer causing bio-weapon intended to
| give Castro cancer, but ultimately became part of the plot to
| assassinate JFK when that fell through.
| Convolutional wrote:
| Regarding MKUltra - the only reason we know what we know about
| it, after the CIA director directed in 1973 that all documents
| on it be destroyed, is that some of the MKUltra documents were
| mislabeled and not destroyed. They were discovered in a 1977
| FOIA request.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Remember when the CIA spent six years putting together six
| thousand page report on the torture it conducted and then
| "lost" it right before it was to be delivered and then
| "found" it again once it was clear that they weren't going to
| get away with that lame excuse?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cia-torture/cia-
| says-...
| prottog wrote:
| I liked it better when the "Deep State" was just a
| conspiracy theory.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| The term deep state was first used popularly far after
| these things were made public.
| George83728 wrote:
| Use of the term dates back decades, and it's popularity
| accelerated through Bush the Younger's reign (for obvious
| reasons I think, Bush was widely perceived as an idiotic
| puppet, a theatrical figurehead for the real government
| (e.g. Cheney and co.))
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=deep+state&
| yea...
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| I think the takeaway is that the CIA doesn't do anything
| nefarious nowadays. After all those sizeable reforms and
| firings, the CIA is now a completely benign entity. After those
| famous reforms that they had. It is now for instance illegal
| for the CIA to have psyops propaganda campaigns targeting
| American civilians for instance. Thank god for all those
| reforms that they have had. Those good old CIA reformed fellas.
| badrabbit wrote:
| The CIA is not an independent organization. They are directed
| by the president and have congressional oversight. Keep in
| mind thar these "nefarious" programs, as far as I know were
| not hidden from congressional oversight. This stuff just
| isn't an election time issue.
| jacooper wrote:
| Im sure all the people who lived through CIA backed coups
| would agree
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'm guessing GP is sarcasm.
| hulitu wrote:
| You forgot the/s.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| /s Not needed for good reason.
| lucubratory wrote:
| I also agree that the CIA has been completely reformed and
| all wrongdoing was in the past; it really doesn't make any
| sense to examine their conduct too closely today, that just
| makes everyone's life worse. I would also like to note that
| myself and my family are not under duress but unfortunately
| cannot make physical appearances at the moment.
| colpabar wrote:
| > it really doesn't make any sense to examine their conduct
| too closely today
|
| I personally believe that anyone who has ever even thought
| of doing this is a far right extremist and honestly we
| should just put them in jail.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Horrific, yet sadly not the only time the US government has
| used bio weapons on their own population.
|
| Hyperbole. You are saying that the US government used
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_subtilis (the bacterium
| in question) to attack the US population, which is clearly an
| exaggeration on several fronts.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. Are you suggesting that the
| OP is false?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Yes, the army did not "test germ warfare" on the subway.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| They are saying that the bacteria discussed in the article
| probably shouldn't be called a "bio weapon" and/or that the
| the situation described in the article is meaningfully
| different from the other situations brought up.
|
| The wikipedia link talks about how this bacteria was known
| to be safe, even in the 50s (years before the test in the
| article) when it was understood to be found in large
| quantities in natto (the Japanese food).
| andsoitis wrote:
| Precisely
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Lets add https://www.deseret.com/2001/2/28/19781208/toxic-utah-
| a-land... too the list too.
|
| Thankfully, far less "let's test on people", but Dugway, Utah
| has quite a history of testing and mass animal slaughters from
| fallout clouds and such.
| klooney wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Big_Itch my
| favorite was the flea warfare testing
| dmix wrote:
| > E23s malfunctioned during testing and the fleas were
| released into the aircraft where they bit the pilot,
| bombardier and an observer.
|
| Lovely
| dundarious wrote:
| Jeff Kaye is doing great work digging through the archives
| about US Biological Weapons (BW) use during the Korean War (on
| the north and on China), and has made a few notable recent
| discoveries. I recommend reading his work.
|
| https://twitter.com/jeff_kaye/status/1657318979378225153
| lelandfe wrote:
| Also Sea-Spray: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-
| Spray
| [deleted]
| roywiggins wrote:
| > And the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
|
| This one did not involve deliberately infecting anyone, the
| subjects in the study already had syphilis.
|
| That doesn't make it better, but it isn't a good example of the
| government "using bio weapons."
| akira2501 wrote:
| They wanted to know the long term consequences of syphilis.
| At a time when we had a readily available cure for it. What
| do you suppose the value of this study was other than to
| learn how to weaponize a disease?
| l3mure wrote:
| Radiological testing on the now infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing
| complex:
|
| [1]
|
| > Pruitt-Igoe was not proof of a Cold War logic; it did not
| display the "inevitable" failures of planned housing. It was an
| organized sabotage--and a clandestine site for radiological
| weapons experimentation. These studies were conducted on
| innocent and unconsenting civilians, who were mostly poor,
| mostly Black, and mostly women and children.
|
| > Residents in some areas of [St. Louis] noticed unusual
| activity in the days and nights throughout 1953 and into 1954,"
| Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor writes in Behind the Fog, an
| examination of the United States's Cold War-era radiological
| weapons programs. "Large puffs of a billowy powder were sprayed
| into the air by strangers in passing vehicles affixed with
| spray devices. The luminous powder lingered in the air behind
| the slow-moving vehicles."
|
| [1] - https://proteanmag.com/2022/11/28/pruitt-igoe-a-black-
| commun...
| George83728 wrote:
| But what's the connection between radioactive contamination
| and the failure of Pruitt-Igoe? Wikipedia doesn't seem to
| mention any contamination issues, but says that deteriorating
| building maintenance and social conditions (crime, poverty,
| segregation, etc) were to blame. Radiation didn't vandalize
| the elevators or mug residents in the hallways.
| l3mure wrote:
| > Wikipedia doesn't seem to mention any contamination
| issues
|
| FTA:
|
| > St. Louis' baby teeth were, indeed, packed with
| radioactive metals. The study found that children who grew
| up at the height of the Cold War in 1963 had 50 times as
| much Strontium-90 in their teeth as children born in 1950.
|
| I'm sure we'd know a lot more should we ever be deemed
| worthy to know.
|
| > What is left in St. Louis are unanswered questions, and
| unknowns that extend further still. The Army's
| documentation alludes to "certain special tests," still
| unidentified. "Thus," Martino-Taylor writes, "an
| unidentified set of additional covert test in St. Louis was
| conducted by the Army Chemical Corps, SRI, and Ralph
| Parsons Company that rose to a classification level higher
| than 'Secret.'"
|
| > Ralph Parsons Company--now Parsons Corporation--is a
| defense, intelligence, security, and infrastructural
| engineering firm headquartered in Centreville, Virginia,
| down the street from the Central Intelligence Agency.
|
| > A lot of data from these studies has gone missing;
| discarded by the Army and other entities. Nothing you need
| to worry about. At one point in her research, Dr. Martino-
| Taylor traveled to California to put in a copy order for
| boxes of Philip Leighton's papers. She had hoped to find
| that his files contained more information on the St. Louis
| experiments. Instead, Stanford University pulled the
| collection the very next day. As of 2022, the materials
| remain in the possession of Stanford's general counsel,
| closed to the public.
|
| ---
|
| > Radiation didn't vandalize the elevators or mug residents
| in the hallways.
|
| Never mind that illegally, secretly, and non-consensually
| irradiating the residents is a wildly worse crime in
| itself, the social conditions you point out are part and
| parcel of the same mindset responsible for all it.
| perihelions wrote:
| They did something like this again in 2021, and wouldn't even
| disclose what the tracer substance was.
|
| https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/homeland-security-depl... (
| _" Non-Toxic Gas to Be Deployed in 100+ NYC Locations, Including
| Transit, In Bio-Attack Readiness Test"_)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889222 (5 comments)
| zby wrote:
| (edited)
|
| This is such a clickbait. Everybody reading that title imagines
| that they tested spreading of some contagious disease (and put it
| in the same category as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256831) - but what was
| tested was how the bacteria was moved by the air in the subway.
| They tried a common soil bacteria that they believed was harmless
| (and which wikipedia says "is thought to be a normal gut
| commensal in humans").
|
| """And while the people who conducted these experiments did so
| under the belief that the bacterial species they used were
| harmless, it has since been revealed that they can cause health
| problems."""
|
| This is such a weasel language, everything can cause health
| problems (is water harmless?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication).
|
| The bacteria used there was:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_subtilis "This species is
| commonly found in the upper layers of the soil and B. subtilis is
| thought to be a normal gut commensal in humans."
|
| We live surrounded by bacteria, an probably often by Bacillus
| subtilis - because it is a common bacteria found in soil.
| calmlynarczyk wrote:
| I think the more click-baitey aspect of the article title is
| that they didn't specify that this occurred 60-80 years ago;
| it's phrased as if this test recently happened. The US defense
| agencies today sure aren't perfect, but they certainly aren't
| this reckless anymore. The fear during the first few decades of
| the Cold War instigated a lot of poor moral decisions by the US
| Government that can't just be extrapolated to the organization
| today.
| activiation wrote:
| Yeah.. that's not something they should have done.
| numpad0 wrote:
| 1) is it okay to splash tap water on people as an "experiment"?
|
| 2-1) if 1) is not okay, how it becomes okay with bacteria, OR,
|
| 2-2) if 1) is okay, what?
| lesuorac wrote:
| 1) Yes.
|
| 2-2) It's ok to infect people with Covid so it's clearly ok
| to hit em with water.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study
| jahsome wrote:
| You're either endorsing literal battery/assault or perhaps
| overlooking some context.
|
| Challenge studies involve consenting individuals and the
| actual events in the article don't.
|
| I presume GP's example of splashing water would be on
| unsuspecting, non-consenting people going about their daily
| business, as was the case with the Subway in the article.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Then the question should've been "is it ok to perform
| experiments on uninformed participants" or "would it have
| been ok if they splashed water instead".
|
| The doesn't try to explicitly link their question to the
| article and instead its prose is a hypothetical.
|
| Instead, the guy ask if its ok to splash water. I can't
| think of any reason why splashing water would be the line
| at which its no longer ok to have an experiment. I
| certainly can see uninformedness being a reason not to
| have an experiment but that's a different question and so
| it would get a different answer.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| [flagged]
| munificent wrote:
| Your sentence would be more effective without the last
| four words.
| throwanem wrote:
| > and which wikipedia says "is thought to be a normal gut
| commensal in humans"
|
| So is E. coli.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| It's not clickbait. It's _completely_ unacceptable to perform
| biological experiments on people without their consent. It
| doesn 't matter if _you_ think the bacteria is harmless, it 's
| an extreme violation of human rights to test on a unknowing
| citizens.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Check out the Human Plutonium Injection Experiments
| crazydoggers wrote:
| But this wasn't a biological experiment on the citizens,
| which is the issue. It was an experiment to test the spread
| of material in a subway system.
|
| The article is claiming without support that this was
| pathogenic biological testing on people, which is not the
| case.
|
| Let's assume instead they used a harmless chemical tracer.
| Would that still count as a violation? What about releasing
| flour through ducts?
|
| The issue with the article that makes it click bait is they
| are making a claim of "germ warfare", insinuating that
| citizens were exposed to dangerous infectious agents which is
| simply untrue.
|
| If the article approaches the subject honestly, and then
| question wether such action was ethical, even using a
| harmless substance, that would be one thing. But as it's
| written, the article pushes misinformation, which is a shame,
| because it's clearly an important subject.
| njovin wrote:
| The gov't doesn't have a great track record when it comes
| to treating the citizenry as unwilling participants in
| their Bond villain-esque nonsense:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
| MarkMarine wrote:
| The did experiments on US citizens, they spread a bacteria
| in the SF fog to see if it would be spread to the citizens
| in SF. They picked a bacteria they thought was harmless,
| but showed up brightly on a stain for microscope slides.
| Turns out some people are actually harmed by this bacteria,
| but again, bio-warfare testing on an uninformed US
| civilians. A war crime. They actually killed someone:
|
| On October 11, 1950, eleven residents checked into Stanford
| Hospital in San Francisco with very rare, serious urinary
| tract infections. Although ten recovered, Edward J. Nevin,
| who had had recent prostate surgery, died three weeks later
| from a heart valve infection. The urinary tract outbreak
| was so unusual that the Stanford doctors wrote it up for a
| medical journal. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Well first you're talking about a different situation
| than the article.
|
| In addition, in the San Francisco case you link, it was
| not established that the bacteria caused the death you
| are referring to.
|
| > The lower court ruled against them primarily because
| the bacteria used in the test was unproven to be
| responsible for Nevin's death. The Nevin family appealed
| the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which
| declined to overturn lower court judgments
|
| Again, blankets statements rather than facts don't help
| discuss the issue. Nuance is best.
|
| I for one think they should not have done any of these
| tests, and that they crossed clear ethical boundaries.
| But I'm not going to create misinformation, "beg the
| question", appeal to emotion, or point to false cause to
| convince someone that it's a wrong and immoral thing to
| do.
|
| These types of arguments are why we had so much
| confusion, and lack of educated discussion around Covid
| and vaccines, the pros and cons of nuclear power, etc
| etc.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I'm responding directly to the parent comment, but I'd
| argue that spreading this same bacteria by smashing
| lightbulbs in a subway full of people, and spreading it
| in a fog in SF, a city full of people, then seeing if
| those people had the bacteria in their bodies is
| essentially the same type of situation as the article.
| What do you see as differences?
|
| So the US government didn't prove in a court of law that
| the US government killed someone with the US government's
| illegal experiment, that it didn't even admit was
| happening? This is the standard of proof here? If so, I'm
| going to guess the other atrocities the US has committed
| and not taking full and complete responsibility for can't
| be discussed either? When the system in power refuses to
| accept blame for it's actions, we just have to take its
| word or it's misinformation? Come on. Let's think about
| some other cases the highest court in the land got
| obviously wrong and then consider your argument.
|
| - Dread Scott v Sanford. held the U.S. Constitution did
| not extend American citizenship to people of black
| African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights
| and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American
| citizens. [0]
|
| - Buck v. Bell, is a decision of the United States
| Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
| Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute
| permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit,
| including the intellectually disabled, "for the
| protection and health of the state" did not violate the
| Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
| United States Constitution. [1]
|
| - Korematsu v. United States, decision by the Supreme
| Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of
| Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area
| during World War II. [2]
|
| - Plessy v. Ferguson, which the Court ruled that racial
| segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as
| long as the facilities for each race were equal in
| quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate
| but equal" [3]
|
| (Oh, and since I don't want to only talk about civil
| rights cases, since that might not carry much weight for
| you, how about property rights:) - Kelo v. City of New
| London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005),[1] was a landmark decision
| by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the
| Court held, 5-4, that the use of eminent domain to
| transfer land from one private owner to another private
| owner to further economic development does not violate
| the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. [4]
|
| I could go on but I don't feel like going through all
| these horrible cases. How will we ever square this
| perfect arbiter of truth, the Supreme Court's multiple
| fuckups with our examination of truth? I'd recommend
| using your eyeballs and sound judgement. How am I
| creating misinformation by quoting wikipedia and then
| linking to it so anyone can read the source material? To
| compare this with COVID misinformation is egregious.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I dislike the emphasis on the "US citizen" part. Would it
| have been any better if they had done it to us Canadian
| citizens instead? Or to any other nationality?
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-secretly-tested-
| car...
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Wasn't the test done on US citizens? If the test was done
| on Canadians, we would be talking about Canadian citizens
| and not US citizens.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I didn't mean anything nationalist by that phrasing.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I believe the point is that it's being done on US soil,
| which infringes on the rights of US citizens.
| COGlory wrote:
| >Let's assume instead they used a harmless chemical tracer.
| Would that still count as a violation? What about releasing
| flour through ducts?
|
| Would the IRB let me do those things to people without
| their informed consent?
|
| I very much doubt it.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I mean, this study was done in 1966. The IRB was
| established in 1974.
|
| I'm not saying we should celebrate this research, but ...
| we already learned the lesson about being careful with
| human experimentation? If there's a more recent study
| that circumvented the IRB or that the IRB okayed despite
| obvious problems, there's an interesting discussion to
| have there.
|
| But I'm more in the camp above, that this pre-IRB study
| wasn't particularly egregious, at least by the scale of
| atrocities of early 20th century research.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| That's not the issue at hand. The issue is an article
| claiming pathogenic material was tested on people.
|
| An article talking about the ins and outs of IRB process
| approval would be much more informative, or going into
| detail about what is and is not ethical.
|
| False or at best misleading statements of pathogenic
| biological tests on people bring us no nearer to actually
| talking intelligently about the issues or making better
| decisions.
| John23832 wrote:
| How does the bacteria spread amongst the subway? HUMANS.
| They are the substrate.
|
| " They wrote that clouds engulfed people as trains pulled
| away, but that they "brushed their clothing, looked up at
| the grating apron and walked on." No one was concerned.
|
| Army scientists concluded that it took between four and
| 13 minutes for train passengers to be exposed to the
| bacteria."
|
| If they put the bacteria in the system with no human
| interaction I'm sure the study would be much less
| valuable.
| the_doctah wrote:
| > But this wasn't a biological experiment on the citizens,
| which is the issue. It was an experiment to test the spread
| of material in a subway system.
|
| This is like saying I was just practicing throwing punches
| at thin air, it just happened to be inside a crowded
| elevator.
|
| Absolutely can't stand "well technically" disingenuous HN
| comments like this.
| dicytea wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are leaving out the fact that they also
| used _Serratia marcescens_ , which is considered pathogenic[1].
|
| As for the other bacteria, what they used was _not_ the
| "common soil bacteria" _Bacillus subtilis_ , but _Bacillus
| atrophaeus_ [2] which was known as _Bacillus globigii_ at the
| time. I think this is the only clear factual mistake I can find
| in the article.
|
| The article also claimed that _Bacillus globigii_ is now
| considered a pathogen, but I can 't find much information about
| it outside of the referenced book. I'll leave it to someone
| else to weigh in on this one.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serratia_marcescens#Pathogenic...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_atrophaeus
| [deleted]
| georgeg23 wrote:
| There were congressional hearings, so it's hard to call it
| clickbait.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Agree. Article contains misinformation and should be flagged.
| In fact the bacteria in question is often and readily consumed.
| Not to mention the fact that we are awash in bacteria all the
| time.
|
| The source stating that the bacteria are considered pathogens,
| is selling his book. The link to the National Academy of
| Sciences is also broken.
|
| Also most bacteria can be opportunistic pathogens, depending on
| the situation, even the ones in our gut.
|
| So while the ethics can be deemed questionable, the article
| presents the situation as if harm was certainly done, when in
| the most likely case not a single person was adversely
| effected.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| The common cold is also readily consumed and almost harmless,
| doesn't mean you get to spray it in schools for the banta
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I agree. But what does that have to do with an article that
| presents unjustified assertions? The issue is that if you
| call something pathogenic, and make the case that people
| were harmed, then the article should support that which it
| doesn't. Hence it's click bait.
|
| Let's say I want people to take the Covid vaccine. Should I
| write articles with appeals to emotion, quotes from people
| writing books, and circumstantial evidence?
|
| Or let's say I want to point out that Covid vaccines carry
| risks. Should I write articles with appeals to emotion,
| quotes from people writing books, and circumstantial
| evidence?
|
| Bad articles and bad science are not okay just because we
| agree with the assessment.
| ransackdev wrote:
| Great article. Just like the ones before it.
|
| I'm waiting for the articles where people are convicted of
| crimes...
|
| I won't hold my breath, for justice anyway, just for protection
| from my government experimenting on me without consent while
| policing themselves and accountable to nobody.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| It might seem quaint from today's perspectives, but the cold
| war was real with an actual and dangerous adversary.
| usrnm wrote:
| And how many Americans were hurt by that adversary in any way
| over the whole period of the cold war? As opposed to their
| own government
| RandomLensman wrote:
| How many were not hurt precisely because their government
| prepared and signaled preparedness to the USSR?
|
| Also, USSR support for North Korea and North Vietnam surely
| hurt a lot of Americans (and others) for real during those
| two wars.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Since the cold war ended it's now obvious that we both
| a)vastly overestimated Russia's capacity and b)pressured
| them into a lot of military spending simply because _they
| felt they had to do so because of how much we were
| spending and all our sabre-rattling._
|
| The only people who "won" were the very military-
| industrial complex Ike warned us about.
| George83728 wrote:
| > _b)pressured them into a lot of military spending
| simply because they felt they had to do so because of how
| much we were spending and all our sabre-rattling._
|
| Yes, that was the Soviet (Russian) perspective. They felt
| pressured to keep up with the US. But the flipside is
| that the inverse was also happening; America spent tons
| of money developing new weapons and capabilities because
| the Russians were doing the same. For instance, the F-15
| was developed into the air superiority fighter that it is
| because the Mig-25 was (mistakenly) believed to be
| similarly capable.
|
| Too often the "Soviets were afraid of America" narrative
| is used to suggest that America was an aggressor and the
| Soviets were hapless victims of this aggression, forced
| to spend by America. But the truth is that both sides
| were doing this to each other, and besides, the whole of
| it was arguably started by aggressive Soviet expansion
| before and after WW2, for instance the Molotov-Ribbentrop
| Pact in which the Soviet Union conspired with the Nazis
| to divide up Poland, Russia's subsequent refusal to allow
| Poland to become independent after the war, and the
| persistent Soviet threats to invade western Europe and
| incorporate France, the UK, etc into their "union". The
| "Soviet Union" was a farce of a union, a fig leaf over
| Russian imperialism.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| If it is about the cold war, that would have been the
| USSR, not Russia. And they did act against the West (WWII
| disagreements aside, starting with the blockade of West
| Berlin), they planned for attacks on Western Europe, etc.
| The idea that the USSR and Warsaw pact were somehow just
| reactive isn't true.
|
| Might the West have overestimated their capacity:
| probably yes (especially in later years), but the
| conflict was still very real.
| retrac wrote:
| Beyond quaint; I think a lot of people born after genuinely
| find it hard to comprehend the mindset. (Maybe we're just
| still in cultural shock from winning. If we won so handily it
| couldn't have been big of a deal, was it?)
|
| I encountered this with a friend when discussing MKUltra
| recently. He was hung-up on the _why_. But _why_? _Why_ did
| they do it? Well, despite the reputation for its
| straightlacedness slapped on the decade after the fact, the
| 1950s were actually a rather wonky time culturally in
| America. (Flying saucer madness... hm. Sounds familiar.) A
| time when a lot of rather sensible people were at least open
| to the possibility of far-out ideas like telepathy, extra-
| sensory perception, and brain reprogramming. And these same
| sensible people were lying awake at night in genuine terror
| that the Soviets would develop telepathic brainwashing agents
| before red-blooded Americans did. Their motivations, as
| bizarre as it seems to us today, were quite straightforward.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I always felt I lacked context on the why, since I'm not
| American and all.
|
| But now I get it. Over here, uncomfortably close to Russia,
| until 2022 people thought Russians have some scary stuff in
| store, considering they've spent an estimated $600bln on
| modernizing their military.
|
| They do not. But the thought was genuinely scary.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| They may still have some scary stuff in store. They just
| started with truly nasty attacks on the population by
| blowing up dams. Sure they don't have good troops or
| supply lines, but WMDs, and especially bio programs,
| don't need many trips or long supply lines. And are,
| compared to tanks and aircraft, both cheaper and easier
| to develop and maintain as part of a massive military
| expenditure.
|
| Right now, when they are getting more desperate, is
| getting closer to when Putin may feel compelled to push
| the red button.
| p1esk wrote:
| _a lot of people born after genuinely find it hard to
| comprehend the mindset_
|
| Are we not in the middle of a cold war with Russia
| currently?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Middle? It had just begun and will get worse before it
| gets better, but now world has 3 big players. Plus plenty
| of smaller ones with matching egos. Look what China is
| doing, very smart from longterm perspective
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not really, Russia so clearly lacks the resources to
| really keep up - unlike the USSR for quite a while.
| retrac wrote:
| Not in quite the same way with people's imaginations
| running away from them. Perhaps important to remember how
| opaque the USSR was at the time -- e.g. when Chernobyl
| blew up, no one outside the USSR knew until radiation
| drifted over the border, and large riots were often
| received as only vague word of mouth rumour in the West.
| In such an information void, your imagination fills in
| the details. Especially if you worry about their
| industrial capacity, and maybe even secretly wonder if
| they do have a better way of organizing society like they
| claim, in terms of pure brutal results. A closer analogy
| today would be with China, and how paranoid some people
| were with the offensive potential of a balloon.
| mablopoule wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| On that subject, I cannot recommend enough an episode of a
| Lawfare-related podcast (ChinaTalk) called "Hoover,
| Communism, and the FBI" [1], which explore the life of J.
| Edgar Hoover, the zeigeist of the early twentieth century,
| and an revisiting the "red scare" in light of the since
| declassified information of Russian spying networks on US
| soil.
|
| Related to this is the "Venona project" [2], where US agency
| could break the encryption of old soviet telegraph, and learn
| a great deal on soviet spy network.
|
| [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/chinatalk-hoover-communism-
| and-f...
|
| [2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-project-
| venona
| standardUser wrote:
| There was real and actual danger to the millions of people
| killed and maimed in the proxy wars between the US and USSR.
| But aside from a few acute crises, there was very little
| danger to civilian Americans or Russians living their day-to-
| day lives. Arguably, there is far more danger today due to
| gun violence, which has killed vastly more Americans than
| Russia ever did.
| vintermann wrote:
| Mmmhm. And an actual and dangerous ally/defender too.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > the cold war was real with an actual and dangerous
| adversary
|
| From the point of view of a lot of people, the US was that
| adversary. The USSR wasn't conducting biological warfare on
| the NYC subway. We have to do better than "two wrongs make a
| right".
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not sure how many people would have preferred the USSR to
| eventually win... Also, the US wasn't conducting
| "biological warfare in the NYC subway". They were trying to
| assess how pathogens might spread in the event of an actual
| attack.
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| ChatGTP wrote:
| [flagged]
| indigochill wrote:
| I also know people with this view, but I do judge them for it
| because its pragmatically nonsensical. It made sense back in
| the age of muskets when well-regulated colonial militias could
| enforce the will of the colony (and when colonies got together,
| they could even hold their own against a major European power,
| albeit one located across an ocean).
|
| These days, nothing individuals (or even groups of individuals)
| can acquire holds a candle to what governments (the US being a
| world leader in this regard) are equipped with, so there is no
| endgame for gun ownership as a means of defense against one's
| government.
| cuttysnark wrote:
| On one hand, I agree--on the other, the US military has had
| [historically] a really hard time with farmers in flip-flops.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We did not have a problem killing hundreds of thousands of
| them, and the US military would be significantly less
| "careful" suppressing an actual American rebellion.
| kbelder wrote:
| >US military would be significantly less "careful"
| suppressing an actual American rebellion.
|
| I think that's very wrong. The second point, is that
| around 44% of US households are armed. That's a couple
| hundred million. The _only_ hope the army would have of
| suppressing them is if half of the US households assisted
| the army.
|
| If it was an actual popular uprising, the army would be
| absolutely incapable of stopping it.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| I never argued it made practical sense. I was making a point
| that, when Biden goes on TV after a shooting and kind of
| hints at the idea people should give up their guns, they
| might if they felt like they could trust their government
| more than they currently do.
|
| It's a big ask for people who almost have a religious belief
| in the right to bear arms to give them away.
|
| Stories like this one, and countless others, including the
| poor treatment of whistleblowers are why we Americans can't
| have nice things.
| simoncion wrote:
| > These days, nothing individuals (or even groups of
| individuals) can acquire holds a candle to what governments
| (the US being a world leader in this regard) are equipped
| with, so there is no endgame for gun ownership as a means of
| defense against one's government.
|
| Even back in colonial times, your single musket was no match
| for the hundreds of muskets and handful of cannon that the
| government was equipped with. If the government wants to kill
| you -specifically- then it's going to do that.
|
| As a defense against tyranny, firearm ownership is effective
| in the same way that putting your valuables in a safe is
| effective. Neither are an absolute defense, but both raise
| the level of effort required from the attacker.
|
| For example, regardless of whether you think there actions
| were reasonably justifiable, the conflict between the Bundys
| and the BLM would have gone _very_ differently had the Bundys
| not been armed. They would have absolutely been quietly
| steamrolled by the government:
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff>
|
| FedGov _could_ have rolled in tanks, helicopters, or jets to
| eliminate the Bundys with zero friendly casualties, but that
| was a cost that they were entirely unwilling to pay.
|
| Again. If the USian government _really_ wants to get _you_ or
| your people, specifically, you cannot (and have never been
| able to) stop them. They 've more money and men and materiale
| than you could ever hope to accumulate. This has pretty much
| always been true.
| COGlory wrote:
| Yes, this is why Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were easily
| subdued and all resistance was quickly quelled.
| simoncion wrote:
| Yep. If the locals aren't armed, you can just sweep in
| and arrest.
|
| If the locals _are_ armed, you have to decide how much
| blood you're willing to spill.
| plagiarist wrote:
| You'd have a stronger case if Americans were opening fire on
| people in the government or military that were violating their
| rights instead of schoolchildren, the LGBT community, and
| minorities.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| And when the black panthers did arm themselves legally to
| defend their communities from the police, gun control laws
| were quickly introduced.
|
| Individual gun rights are just a culture war topic. It's
| collective gun rights for workers as a class that could
| actually make a difference.
| scintill76 wrote:
| Honest question: What would a law (or other manifestation)
| of collective rights look like, and how does it differ from
| individual rights?
| alistairSH wrote:
| In the context of the Founding Fathers, state militias
| armed well enough to stand-up to an overbearing federal
| government.
|
| In the context of the parent comment? No idea.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Trade unions and revolutionary parties have kept
| weaponry, trained members and organised resistance to
| state repression (for example against strikes). This
| tends to build into worker's councils (in some languages
| called soviets) under revolutionary conditions.
|
| Of course, it's unlikely the capitalist ruling class
| would willingly allow legalising such practices.
| alistairSH wrote:
| There was also the MOVE bombing in '85. And that wasn't
| even the army - the city PD dropped a bomb from a
| helicopter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
|
| [Note: MOVE had more than a few criminal members; I'm
| making no claim about the righteousness of their actions
| before or during the standoff]
| HaroldBolt78 wrote:
| [dead]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ruby ridge and Waco (though that is less clear) happened, and
| the only person to "revolt" about that used a farming
| material bomb.
|
| "We need guns to protect us from authoritarianism" has always
| been a fucking lie. No gun owners protested and started a
| rebellion after the patriot act.
|
| The few times gun owners HAVE "rebelled" it has been for
| incredibly stupid reasons like "I don't want to pay taxes for
| the land my cattle have grazed on"
| infamouscow wrote:
| The US fought a war over not wanting to pay taxes. This
| reductionist thinking is quite asinine.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Again and again it always comes back to "but muh
| revolutionary war!"
|
| An aberration. Great Britain was a little fuckin busy
| during that period, what with the existential threat of
| the hundred years war, and a largely inept King.
|
| Great Britain sent only about 50k troops during the
| entire affair.
|
| Had they not been so busy, it likely would have looked a
| lot more like all the times India tried to get uppity.
| infamouscow wrote:
| 40K Americans were able to beat the greatest empire at
| the time.
|
| In the last few decades, a rag-tag group of goat herders
| and farmers managed to kick out multiple empires using
| only basic fighting equipment. This is all despite having
| air supremacy, satellite imagery, night vision, tanks,
| body armor, and a 10:1 ratio of troops.
|
| The overwhelming majority of experienced combat veterans
| have been out of the US military for almost a decade. You
| can see this reflected it in how ineffective the current
| organization is.
|
| If tyranny does strike the US again, I wouldn't want to
| be on the side of the tyrants.
| krapp wrote:
| > 40K Americans were able to beat the greatest empire at
| the time.
|
| 40K Americans and lots of assistance from the French,
| including their navy.
|
| The American war for independence was a proxy war between
| empires in which the colonies were pawns, and if not for
| one of those empires the American insurgency would have
| been crushed, regardless of whatever the myth of American
| exceptionalism has probably taught you.
| smcl wrote:
| I am 100% in support of what you've said, but there is one
| case where someone surprisingly got away with armed
| resistance against the government: Cliven Bundy[0]. The guy
| just stopped paying the government to graze his cattle on
| common ground, the feds came to sieze his cattle as a form of
| payment and were confronted with hundreds of armed guys he
| managed to rally to his cause. They backed down and left.
|
| It's not quite the story of the little guy standing up for
| what's right against a tyrannical government though, just
| suggests that in some parts of the US if you show up with
| enough guns and outnumber someone you can intimidate them and
| get away with it.
|
| [0] - no that is not a typo, his name is "Cliven"
| techdmn wrote:
| White right-wing extremist escapes consequences for violent
| action, news at 11!
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| You mean that guy that wanted free grazing and used public
| (our) land without permission? or paying? Used those same
| guns to keep others off the ground? That selfish money-
| grubbing demagogue? Yeah that was a high point in US
| history for sure.
| smcl wrote:
| Yep that's the one, doesn't seem like a very nice guy as
| evidenced by his Wikipedia page having a special "Racist
| Comments" section. Reading that page a bit more suggests
| that he's actually pretty lucky to not be in prison after
| his confrontations with the government. Turns out the
| prosecution were inept and his trial got thrown out:
|
| > On January 8, 2018, Judge Gloria Navarro declared a
| mistrial and dismissed the charges because the federal
| government had withheld potentially exculpatory evidence
| jtbayly wrote:
| I haven't read about it, but that quote doesn't make it
| sound like the fed was inept but rather corrupt, which is
| where we started talking about why people want guns.
| smcl wrote:
| He got into this situation because they were waving their
| guns around, and got out of it through the courts. You're
| suggesting there should have been a threat of gun
| violence against the prosecutor and that this somehow
| would've helped his situation?
| jtbayly wrote:
| No. I'm suggesting that government corruption is a major
| reason people want guns.
| torstenvl wrote:
| As a minority in the LGBT community, I'd appreciate if you
| didn't go on pretending that disarming me is somehow
| magically going to lead to a better outcome for me.
|
| You are, obviously, free to have any opinion you like. But my
| existence is not a rhetorical device for you to exploit while
| trying to take away my rights.
| plagiarist wrote:
| On the contrary, I think you should arm yourself.
|
| I am trying to disabuse people of the idea that the right-
| wing "2A warrior" actually gives a fuck about anyone's
| rights. We should have seen them all out in protest for
| what happened to Daniel Shaver, where were they?
|
| Merely owning guns isn't going to stop the government from
| infringing rights, we need collective action that is not
| being taken by the people who claim they need guns to
| defend their rights. Meanwhile children are being murdered
| in numbers. So we get the worst of both sides of the
| argument.
| latchkey wrote:
| Saw a quote I liked the other day:
|
| "By creating a world in which anyone CAN own a gun, we've
| forced ourselves to live in a world in which everyone
| MUST carry a gun?"
| [deleted]
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I don't care about your viewpoints on guns. I'm not from the
| US, so for all I care you guys can have all the guns you want.
|
| But I always make a point to downvote people complaining of
| downvotes, even when I agree with their points of view.
|
| Man up and stop caring about internet points. They are
| meaningless.
| number6 wrote:
| I always downvote people complaining of people complaining of
| downvotes, even when I agree with their point of view.
|
| Man up and stop caring about people caring about internet
| points. They are just people with options
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I already don't care. You can make a bot that automatically
| downvote all my comments if it makes you happy.
|
| Poke me when internet points can be used to pay the
| mortgage.
| number6 wrote:
| You make a lot of fuzz for someone who doesn't care
| dgellow wrote:
| "It's becoming Reddit!"
|
| On HN downvoting a comment you don't like has always been part
| of the social contract.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Of course it's fine to down vote if you feel the need, it's
| just not constructive to use it for "unpopular" ideas.
|
| Do not fear. The popular ideas will rise to the top which is
| good for people looking for validation. The less popular
| ideas, but often more interesting stuff will slip down the
| list, and the downright atrocious stuff will be down voted
| and sent to the very bottom.
|
| I made the Reddit comment because I have notice that HN
| community is often voting for popular ideas over
| intellectually curios ones.
| rollcat wrote:
| I upvote comments I disagree with - if they make a good point
| in an argument. Using upvote/downvote as agree/disagree just
| creates an echo chamber.
| timerol wrote:
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
|
| This is so common that there is a point specifically about it
| in the HN guidelines
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bell-cot wrote:
| That's a great feel-good story for gun lovers - but you _might_
| want to check the actual history of civvies with guns trying to
| fight against armies which were determined to win.
|
| Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943?
|
| Semaine sanglante (Paris) in 1871?
|
| Edit:
|
| > Anyway don't support this view, I don't own guns. I'm just
| saying that blatant disregard for peoples safety is why...
|
| +1, but yes and no. These sort of "+5 sigma" clicky stories
| really push some people's buttons...but I think the real
| drivers of "don't trust the Government" are elsewhere. I'd
| point to the routine crap of American municipal government -
| which often resembles the daily drama of a bunch of low-
| functioning Junior High students. The whole "rich get richer,
| everyone else gets screwed" shift in the U.S. economy (and
| Democratic Party) over the past ~60 years. And the endless,
| strident screams of right-wing political edgelords.
| troad wrote:
| > you _might_ want to check the actual history
|
| I think the primary example that's going to come to mind for
| all Americans is the American Revolution, which was
| successful, if I recall correctly.
|
| I don't really like this tone of 'lecturing' people, as
| though they don't understand and you do. Well-informed people
| have legitimate differences of opinion on these questions.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| "going to come to mind", yes. But much of what Americans
| "know" about the American Revolution is popular myth. In
| actual history, it was one of the western theaters in the
| Anglo-French War - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-
| French_War_(1778%E2%80%9.... Spain was also fighting
| against Britain, and there was a serious threat of a
| combined French/Spanish invasion of England. Britain had to
| make some hard choices about priorities, and decided to
| focus its efforts in places that weren't the 13 Colonies.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I sure hope they don't. That's a terrible example.
|
| The British homeland was 1) an ocean away _in the 1700s_
| and 2) extremely distracted by numerous other conflicts and
| 3) had pretty much the same firepower that a civilian and
| privateers would have.
|
| None of those things apply now.
|
| IMO the Taliban is a much better analog. And you of course
| have to mix in the horror of a true civil war which in
| America's case pretty much everyone came out of thinking no
| one won.
| troad wrote:
| I honestly don't understand in which part of my comment
| you think I'm in favour of civil war.
|
| I'm merely pointing out that attempting to argue against
| guns from the perspective of 'popular resistance against
| tyranny never going to be successful' is far from the
| best way to argue against guns. It _has_ been successful
| before, and the country 's _entire foundation myth_ rests
| on one of those instances.
|
| There's many ways to argue against gun proliferation.
| This is a bad one. It's _particularly_ bad one to use on
| right-of-centre Americans. But people on the Internet
| disagree, love using it, and they 've been incredibly
| successful in using it to win over suppo- oh, wait.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I didn't suggest that you're in favor of it? Was not my
| intention so sorry if it came off that way!
|
| I agree with the overall thrust though: this is not a
| winning line of argument. But I'm not sure what is, to be
| honest, given that this issue has become quasi-religious.
| Eventually we'll have enough dead kids (and enough dead
| old people) to start questioning this religious
| conviction, but yeah, logic or history won't get us
| there.
| troad wrote:
| I appreciate your reply and I hear what you're saying.
|
| So much of life has become political, and so much of the
| political has become pseudo-religious. People no longer
| have positions on policies, they have articles of faith
| on politics. It's not a great basis for a dialogue,
| unfortunately.
| willcipriano wrote:
| War in Afghanistan (2001-2021) - Goat hearders defeat the
| most powerful military on earth
|
| Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) - Textile workers defeat the most
| powerful military on earth
|
| American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) - Pilgrims defeat the
| most powerful military on earth
|
| Also note Germany had strong gun laws after WW1 while France
| was limited to shotguns and hunting rifles.
| bell-cot wrote:
| That sounds cool...but Afghanistan and Vietnam were proxy
| wars, where the U.S. decided that holding onto a basket-
| case country was not worth the cost. And the actual
| military defeats occurred _after_ the U.S. forces were
| gone.
|
| American Revolution was not actually "Pilgrims against
| Britain", it was _one_ of the western theaters in the
| Anglo-French(-Spanish) War.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Very few wars in history end with defeating every single
| last enemy, ie in WWII style. Most come to same
| conclusion - 'its not worth fighting anymore'. That
| requires sane leader of course, or deposition of insane
| one.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > where the U.S. decided that holding onto a basket-case
| country was not worth the cost
|
| Yes. That's what they were going for.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare
|
| The British didn't think it was worth the cost either.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > That's what they were going for.
|
| Perhaps the U.S. pro-gun folks need to advertise more
| widely that their imagined "victory scenario" is "turn
| the U.S. into a smoking crater/basket case, which the
| U.S. Army won't think is worth holding onto"?
| willcipriano wrote:
| You'd give up your right to self defence to a government
| that would "turn the U.S. into a smoking crater" before
| they would return the power to the people?
| [deleted]
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Mujahideen equipped with small arms have been successfully
| fending off professional armies for decades, most recently
| the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Perhaps you're shooting yourself in the foot and getting
| downvoted for incorrectly using "it's" instead of "its" (the
| real ChatGPT would never make such a mistake), while at the
| same time complaining about downvotes, and also comparing HN to
| reddit. That's a hat trick of begging for downvotes.
|
| Then there's your logic: How effective are guns against
| bacteria or governments with nuclear weapons, anyway?
|
| #1:
|
| https://www.grammarly.com/blog/its-vs-its
|
| >The difference between its and it's
|
| >So what is the difference between its and it's? Distinguishing
| the two words comes down to determining which one is a
| possessive noun and which is a contraction. Once you've
| identified this, you can easily recognize which version you
| should be using and ensure you never mix up the two again.
|
| >Here's the rub: its (without an apostrophe) is a possessive
| pronoun, like his or her, for nouns that don't have a defined
| gender. In contrast, it's (with an apostrophe) is the shortened
| form, or contraction, of it is or it has.
|
| >If you can substitute either it is or it has for it's in a
| sentence, then you are on the right track. Otherwise, the
| correct word is its, as long as it signals ownership of
| whatever noun comes after it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| #2:
|
| >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| #3:
|
| >Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/footgun
|
| >footgun (plural footguns)
|
| >(programming slang, humorous, derogatory) Any feature whose
| addition to a product results in the user shooting themselves
| in the foot.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat-trick
|
| >A hat-trick or hat trick is the achievement of a generally
| positive feat three times in a match, or another achievement
| based on the number three.
| Tozen wrote:
| The deaths and the life altering consequences of unknown diseases
| on countless people appear to be the result of undisclosed secret
| experiments by their own government.
|
| No accountability, no payments to surviving family members nor
| those directly affected. Just "toys" to be played with and
| discarded at will. When people seek justice, just lots of
| gaslighting and bureaucracy in return.
| sesuximo wrote:
| I've recently been reading about MKUltra, and I wonder if the 60s
| was a crazy time or if the more recent "bad projects" are simply
| not yet declassified.
| DANmode wrote:
| Both.
| dokem wrote:
| It has to have gotten worse since the whole JFK thing.
| moose_man wrote:
| There has been a serious uptick in posts about US germ warfare
| from really weird sources like Medium and insider. Are the
| Russians planning some sort of biological attack and trying to
| create fertile environment?
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned Operation Sea-Spray:
|
| _Operation Sea-Spray was a 1950 U.S. Navy secret biological
| warfare experiment in which Serratia marcescens and Bacillus
| globigii bacteria were sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area in
| California, in order to determine how vulnerable a city like San
| Francisco may be to a bioweapon attack_
|
| People got sick and one person died, all from bacteria they
| thought to be harmless at the time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
| hoten wrote:
| It's been mentioned a few times here.
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