Yes, yes you are the hateful one. You are claiming that Americans are monsters and responsible for all the problems in the middle east and most of the world. I claimed that a man that hacked into the FBI to expose all the personal details of employees of the FBI should be captured and killed. To clarify, I meant killed by being sentenced to death for treason. The VAST majority of the FBI works to do things such as stop the spread of child pornography, kidnapping, and other criminal behaviors and posting all the personal information on those people so that the criminals that they helped put away can potentially seek retribution against them and/or their families is a very serious crime in my opinion. I found it (and still do) quite disgusting that so many people were applauding such reckless and criminal behavior.
In the effort of full disclosure, I also wish the death on anyone who thinks it is fine to murder innocent people through acts of terrorism such as 9/11, San Bernadino, Paris, Brussels, etc. Note that I didn't say every Muslim or everyone from the Middle East or any other broad stroke like you used.
That may be true in Silicon Valley, but I got news for you there are tons of programming jobs outside of Silicon Valley or even the west coast. In the DC area, defense contractors are the highest paid folks due to the enormous expenses in both money and time involved with getting someone a clearance.
- "Defense contractors are infamous for treating employees somewhat lousily"
Where do you get this information? I worked as a government contractor for 15 years and never saw programmers get laid off. Sure the big contracting companies (Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.) have layoffs occasionally when there is a downturn in government funding, but they aren't typically laying off the folks that are their technical bread and butter, but rather folks who are pure overhead (HR, accounting, marketing, etc).
- "In fact, I would seriously bat an eye at someone who, with offer letters from both, chose to take a job at a defense contractor rather than Apple."
This seems to be a rather biased statement. Given the choice to work on software for controlling a satellite, software for data mining social network data to discover members of terror networks, software used for analyzing IED fragments, etc. versus software for sharing vacation pictures, dealing with spreadsheets, playing MP3s, etc. I will take the former most of the time because it is a much more interesting problem space. I also very much enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that my work may have helped save the lives of many people by preventing terrorist attacks.
- "The main thing the defense contractor job has going for it is the working hours are likely to be standard 9-5 with little or no overtime (as that gets billed to a government contract, so you're generally not allowed to work overtime without special approval). At high-profile places like Apple, unpaid overtime is generally expected to some degree."
This is also only partially true. If you are just a low level programmer, sure you work your 8 hours that are billed to the government and then go home. As soon as you are mid-level and above, that is no longer the case. All time spent doing reviews, interviews, internal software for the company, proposal support, etc. is above and beyond your 8 hours billed to the government. None of that time can be billed to the government and you are expected to bill 40 hours per week to contract so the rest of that work gets done above the 40 hours you bill.
You are clearly filled to the brim with hate and vitriol.
Am I proud that my government has done everything it has done in all of our history? No. Am I proud of the vast majority of our actions around the world? You're damn right I am. We have done a hell of a lot more good around the world in our relatively short history than bad.
Regarding Japan in WW2, your little article fails to mention the reason that the US was conducting economic warfare against Japan. Those sanctions were in response to the atrocities and naked aggressions being committed by the Japanese in China since the begin of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. They aren't much different than the sanctions that the world is imposing on North Korea, Iran, etc. for their flaunting of international treaties. I am sure the Chinese who were being slaughtered wholesale by the Japanese are pretty happy we put a stop to their little empire building experiment.
As for Europe in WW2, yes the USSR (not Russia) did take Berlin, but they alone didn't beat Germany. Could they have done it if the US had never gotten involved? Maybe. If so it certainly would have been a hell of a lot more costly in human lives among other things for them. I suspect if the US had just stayed out of Europe completely and let the Germans and USSR beat the hell out of each other we would have never had the cold war because there would have only been one world power at that point, the USA. I have a sneaking suspicion that the VAST majority of Western Europeans are very happy that the US did get involved. You don't hear very many stories of people trying to escape West Germany for the utopia of East Germany and the Soviet Bloc for a reason.
As for Korea, I'd love to know what leads you to believe that the Kim Dynasty would be gone had the US not stopped the North. Maybe you've been to the North Korean unicorn lair (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/30/unicorn-lair-di...) for your source?
As for the Middle East, you are forgetting the fact that there has been almost non-stop conflict there since biblical times and the US didn't exist then. It wasn't the US that started the Israel/Palestine conflict either (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Middle%20East%20The%20...). Palestine was a British territory and the British decided that the Jews displaced by all the hate they received in Europe (by way more entities than just the Nazis) before and during WW2 should have a nation in Palestine. It never fails to amaze me how everyone always talks about the "atrocities" committed by Israel against the Palestinians. I find it appalling that what they have done to protect themselves from their Arab neighbors who have attacked them multiple times and from Palestinian terrorists are "atrocities" while the things done against them are not called the same thing. Strapping a bomb to yourself, walking into a cafe and blowing up a bunch of innocent women and children is not and never will be equivalent to using a missile to kill a known terrorist and killing a few innocent civilians accidentally in the process. The intent of the first case is to target innocents whereas the intent of the second is to target a killer.
I don't even know why I bothered to respond to this ridiculous, hate filled post of yours because one can't have a calm, rational, productive discussion with someone as blinded by hate and anger as you are. I have never nor will I ever claim that America is a perfect place free from flaw, but I am damn proud to be an American and I am proud of all the good that we have brought to the world. If you are too blinded by your hate to see the good that comes out of America, well, I'm sorry for you.
Who gets to decide where the US's nose belongs? I am with you that we should never support these knuckleheads like Bin Laden (which we are doing a-freaking-gain with the Syrian resistance), but it certainly has felt a lot like damned if you do, damned if you don't with the US. We get involved in some way and everyone yells that we shouldn't be and if we don't get involved everyone yells that we aren't helping.
Saying that "America's disastrous history of foreign intervention IS THE CAUSE OF ALL OUR PROBLEMS TO DATE" is pretty silly. I bet most of Asia and Europe are pretty darn happy that we intervened during WWI and WWII and I'd be willing to bet that most South Koreans are pretty happy that we intervened during the Korean War lest they be subjects of that little, fat megalomanic Kim Jong Un. Do you disagree with those interventions? If so well then I guess we are done here because we will never agree on anything. If not, then what is the deciding factor on when to get involved and when not to get involved?
The fact of the matter is that we rely on oil from the middle east and we are always going to get involved there because it is in our national interests. Until we have zero reliance on foreign oil that isn't going to change. It would certainly be wonderful if everyone just kept to themselves and we didn't get involved with anything, but that isn't practical. The problems in that area of the world really have very little to do with the US. They have been fighting in the middle east for all of recorded history. Certainly longer than the US has been a nation. Our involvement hasn't helped anything, but I am increasingly of the opinion that nothing will help things over there.
Good point. The question is how do we deal with this extremism. The people that are involved in this clearly don't value any human life (even their own) and it seems clear that certain governments use this fanaticism to their advantage (e.g. Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.). As of this moment, a lot of "military" funding goes toward trying to answer this question. It isn't all about building bombs and other weapons, but also in detecting those involved in terrorist activities and putting a stop to it before they can carry out their plans. I will never support cutting funding to such research.
So do tell, how would you have dealt with the terrorists that were responsible for 9/11? Just like every good liberal you have said I am wrong without offering an alternative.
Why would you be interested? Why debate anything? Just jump in and make a comment and then leave because that is the way it should be. I mean that is how all things accomplished right?
The point is that believing that all problems can be solved in non-violent ways is unrealistic. The terrorists who will gladly murder any man, woman, or child to further whatever the hell it is that they are trying to further have never and will never just stop being violent to negotiate. The only way to deal with people who are that radical is through violent means.
Oh and maybe you should get your facts straight. America did not attack Iraq in retaliation for 9/11. America attacked Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in retaliation. America attacked Iraq because in theory there were WMDs there (I will not argue the legitimacy of that because clearly that wasn't the case and in hindsight that was an awful move).
Couldn't a very good argument be made that military research has actually prevented a LOT of conflicts? Think of what may have happened if the Soviet Union and US didn't both have large nuclear arsenals. There is a very real possibility that there would have been a WW3 between NATO and the Soviet Bloc without M.A.D.
Too bad the Islamic terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, Paris attacks, Brussels attacks, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc don't follow the same belief system. Good luck negotiating with them.
This guy should be captured and killed. Most FBI agents are very dedicated to trying to protect people and doing something like this should be an act of espionage and dealt with accordingly.
Very true. I did DoD/IC contracting for 16 years before finally getting fed up and going into the "real" world last year. There are some very talented and intelligent people working as govies and as contractors, but for every very good person there are at least 4 turds.
>> Of course, they claimed it was the result of a "sophisticated" attack, which is government fail-speak for "We left your data on a bus, and a hobo took it".
No it isn't. The hack of OPM was very well publicized. It was a long time project of the Chinese government to break into OPM's computers. I don't believe everything I read, but in this case I know is exactly what happened.
In the effort of full disclosure, I also wish the death on anyone who thinks it is fine to murder innocent people through acts of terrorism such as 9/11, San Bernadino, Paris, Brussels, etc. Note that I didn't say every Muslim or everyone from the Middle East or any other broad stroke like you used.