He Gave a Cryptocurrency Talk In North Korea. The US Arrested Him. (nytimes.com) 244
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: He was a former hacker from Alabama who styled himself a "disruptive technologist" and believed that he was using his data-mining expertise as a force for good. But then, in April, Virgil Griffith traveled to North Korea with a visa he had obtained from a diplomatic mission in New York City, going through China to circumvent an American travel ban. He gave a talk at a conference in Pyongyang about how to use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to launder money, according to federal investigators. Now Mr. Griffith, 36, faces federal charges that he violated international sanctions. He was arrested on Thursday as he landed at Los Angeles International Airport.
Mr. Griffith, an American citizen who lives in Singapore and works for the Ethereum Foundation, is accused of conspiring with North Korea since August 2018. He appeared in federal court in Los Angeles last week and will eventually be brought to New York. He faces up to 20 years in prison. Though the United States government had denied Mr. Griffith permission to go to North Korea, he traveled there anyway in April and spoke at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday. During his speech and in discussions afterward, he provided information about how North Korea could use cryptocurrency to "achieve independence from the global banking system," the complaint said. He also later made plans "to facilitate the exchange" of a digital currency between North and South Korea. "We cannot allow anyone to evade sanctions, because the consequences of North Korea obtaining funding, technology, and information to further its desire to build nuclear weapons put the world at risk," said William F. Sweeney Jr., an assistant director-in-charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "It's even more egregious that a U.S. citizen allegedly chose to aid our adversary."
Hacker magazine, 2600, where Mr. Griffith was a contributing writer, said on Twitter that what Mr. Griffith had done -- explaining the concept of cryptocurrency -- was not a crime. The magazine's editor, Emmanual Goldstein, said Mr. Griffith was incapable of doing what federal investigators have accused him of. "He would not help a murderous dictator," he said. "He's a typical hacker who loves technology and adventure."
Mr. Griffith, an American citizen who lives in Singapore and works for the Ethereum Foundation, is accused of conspiring with North Korea since August 2018. He appeared in federal court in Los Angeles last week and will eventually be brought to New York. He faces up to 20 years in prison. Though the United States government had denied Mr. Griffith permission to go to North Korea, he traveled there anyway in April and spoke at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday. During his speech and in discussions afterward, he provided information about how North Korea could use cryptocurrency to "achieve independence from the global banking system," the complaint said. He also later made plans "to facilitate the exchange" of a digital currency between North and South Korea. "We cannot allow anyone to evade sanctions, because the consequences of North Korea obtaining funding, technology, and information to further its desire to build nuclear weapons put the world at risk," said William F. Sweeney Jr., an assistant director-in-charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "It's even more egregious that a U.S. citizen allegedly chose to aid our adversary."
Hacker magazine, 2600, where Mr. Griffith was a contributing writer, said on Twitter that what Mr. Griffith had done -- explaining the concept of cryptocurrency -- was not a crime. The magazine's editor, Emmanual Goldstein, said Mr. Griffith was incapable of doing what federal investigators have accused him of. "He would not help a murderous dictator," he said. "He's a typical hacker who loves technology and adventure."
Misleading headline (Score:5, Interesting)
He Gave a Cryptocurrency Talk In North Korea. Leading up to it he was asked, "Doesn't this violate international sanctions?" and he answered, "Yes", indicating that he knew he was doing something totally illegal in the US and numerous other countries. When he returned to the US like a dumbass, nobody was surprised that The US Arrested Him.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be like an American giving a cryptography lecture in Germany... In 1943
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be like an American giving a cryptography lecture in Germany... In 1943
Only if it was a talk about the Pigpen Cipher.
Does anybody seriously think the Koreans don't know anything about blockchains (or maybe needed it explaining to them by a genetically superior round-eye)?
Re:Misleading headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Saifedean Ammous: "Under hard money, governments fought till they ran out of their own money. Under easy money, governments can fight until they completely consume the value of all the money held by their people. This is why the century of central banking was the century of total war."
Bitcoin is the continuation of the Gold Standard soundness using technology.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely you jest. Bitcoin is absolutely devoid of human value. It isn't food and isn't entertaining and can't be used to make anything. It has less inherent value than even paper money, which can be used as kindling or shredded to make insulation or papier-mâché.
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Why would the Korean government need to launder money?
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Who suggested that he was bringing them up from zero ("don't know anything")? Turn your question around: Why would they pay for him to come give a talk unless they expected to learn something useful from it?
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This is North Korea we're talking about. They'd gladly pay an American to come give a talk on evading US sanctions even if it had zero new useful content, simply for the propaganda value.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be like an American giving a cryptography lecture in Germany... In 1943
Unless you worked for IBM or Brown Brothers Harriman
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Or like a giant U.S. computer manufacturer helping Germany automate it's ambitions ... in 1937
interesting article/interview https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/1... [hbr.org]
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Why? You would be dead by now. That was 77 years ago.
No shit. You would have likely been executed at the time.
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Yeah, that too.
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Wartime crimes are worse than peace-time, so yeah, but given that this is peace-time, probably no. Then again, given the Espionage Act of 1917's loose wording, pretty much just farting the wrong direction is a felony. All crypto-currencies are toeing the line with the Constitution in the US, IMO, which says "No state shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." They are basically representing themselves as a stock but identifying as a currency, and I'm surprised there hasn't
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
With regard to North Korea, it is not peacetime. The Korean Conflict is still ongoing, there was an armistice in 1953, but no peace treaty, and there is regular cross border violence and infiltration.
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All that clause of the constitution says is that states can't accept bitcoin as tax payments.
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Not even that. States can accept Bitcoin for taxes if they want; what they can't do is force others to accept an offer of Bitcoin as payment for a debt when the debt wasn't originally denominated in Bitcoin. The point of this clause was to prevent states that happened to be rich in a particular commodity from giving themselves an advantage by making that commodity legal tender. However, a good doesn't need to be declared legal tender to legally be used in trade. Whether a good is legal tender or not is irre
Re:Misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Misleading headline (Score:4, Informative)
Information about cryptocurrencies is widely found on the internet.
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Yeah, it's like running slaves: you'll get busted for it, but you're still a hero (although in this case, cryptocurrency is still garbage).
Economic sanctions are just war crimes. That governments have declared them not changes nothing.
Governments have declared human beings property, and all examination shows a human being can never be the property of another human being. A government exists to protect rights from private infringement, and if a person is property they have no recourse in court for red
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Economic sanctions are just war crimes. That governments have declared them not changes nothing.
Except that North Korea actually is a totalitarian dictatorship that keeps control by brutality.
Helping them does not make you "a hero." It makes you complicit.
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And is still officially in a state of war with both South Korea and the US, the really hot war many decades ago was only stopped with an armistice. The one thing major thing Trump has unambiguously stopped in his diplomatic efforts with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is their regular murders of their enemies. Hopefully also stopped the kidnappings, necessary for various types of espionage si
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Economic sanctions target first and foremost the poor and weak. They do approximately nothing to the political structure, and often make it stronger (look, it's AMERICA'S fault these people are starving--what a wonderful tool for the Taliban and Kim Jong-Il to keep their people focused on an external enemy!).
It isn't functionally different from releasing plague-bearing fleas and rats into schools and hospitals to knock down their labor force and hobble their economies. Your target is the young, the eld
Umm Regarding pardoning war criminals.... (Score:2)
Every President has done it. The Indian wars, the civil war, WW2 all had war crimes.
Heck we even pardoned German war criminals and put them to work at NASA.
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yes, but I don't recall the USA ever pardoning it's own military people found guilty from WW2 onward. the past I could kinda think that they might have been misguided but after WW2 I am more in line to think that the military justice system is fair and balanced.
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You haven't been paying attention. I can hardly blame you.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
21 November 2019
A US Navy Seal who was accused of war crimes is expected be ousted from the elite force, despite being cleared last week by President Donald Trump.
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Medical supplies, never, if anything that's one thing they had in abundance. Modern standards no, but by 2000's standards yes.
I recall a documentary showing that American tourists would get first-world medical facilities, while Cuban nationals were left to rot. North Korea has a similar thing going on, with a nice display for tourists so you don't realize their nation is one big shithole.
Iraq wartime 2002 till now
August 6, 1990: the day the sanctions began.
Your narrative is false.
North Korea is evil (Score:5, Insightful)
If he actually did give a talk the point of which was to try to help North Korea use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to evade money laundering laws-- he both broke the law, and also did his best to support a dictatorship.
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North Korea's evil depends on the people remaining in desperate poverty and isolation from the world. It has been prolonged by sanctions. If you have any interest in making North Korea less evil, you should want it to integrate into global trade and rise out of poverty. And hey, if it doesn't work after 20 years, you'll finally have some actual leverage by threatening a modern economy with sanctions that could send it back to where North Korea is today -- whereas today sanctions can't really do anything (no
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In which fantasy universe do you live where free trade with the DPRK government will lead to bettering the lives of its civilians?
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
He gave a demonstration where he actually transferred crypto into and out of NK. That's a lot more that violating a travel ban.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
Accounting handles the location. If you use an international bank and have one account for domestic and one account for international, the money resides in an single "location" (counting the bank as one location) but your books indicate that some is located in the US and some is located in another country. Cryptocurrency works the same way. It's an accounting mechanism that defines where something exists based on the wallet. If you move something into a wallet (essentially an account) that is in North Korea, or in the possession of a North Korean national, then by the accounting standard and under the law, it's been illegally transferred. It doesn't matter if you do it for demonstration purposes and the net result is zero or even negative to NK.
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"Who knew that Mathematicswould be illegal!"
Mathematics used to launder money has been illegal for a long time.
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I was wondering who would bring that up. because that is the first thing I thought of too.
People are consistently building better mouse traps. the problem is, if you have never seen how I build or design my mouse trap, you might not be able to break that wall, by teaching someone how to break that wall, it becomes a crime.
Most American people have not traveled too much out of the USA and have no clue how well we have it, so therefore think others have the same things. No, we have limited class structure. mo
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I love how this idea that in the U.S. "papers" aren't needed, but in countries like Russia and China you must have "papers".
We have plenty of required "papers" here in the U.S. it's just that we don't think of them as "papers" in this context.
Drivers licence
Auto Insurance card
Vehicle registration
passport
Medical Insurance card.
Etc.
Get pulled over and don't have your "papers"? especially your drivers licence , and they will take you in.
Get caught doing work on your home without the proper permits ("papers") a
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Interesting)
He violated a travel ban. He did not provide North Korea with technology. Big difference.
Information about cryptocurrencies is widely found on the internet.
And information about how to build a bomb is available on the internet. But if a US physicist goes to NK and gives a lecture on the operation of nuclear bombs he's probably going to be arrested when he gets back.
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Delivering Technology is Communication of a process. Here is how you can use this set of tools to create this outcome, is Delivering Technology.
For this case. Here is how to use Cryptocurrency to transfer money.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
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Laws are a human construct. Nazi.
Nazis are a human construct. Dumbass.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Interesting)
The Korean War in America is called the Forgotten War, because it was overshadowed by the end of WWII and The Vietnam War. However for North Korea it had never ended. So North Korea is still at war with the US. And the US still considers North Korea an enemy.
To make things worse North Korea will tend to use what ever funds it gets and puts most of it towards military strength. Vs towards supporting their population.
These factors makes it politically easy to support sanctions against North Korea because we can justify that little if any money pushed into that country will not be used to help humanitarian problems and only make them more of a threat to the world.
So if you are going to be stupid enough to show an Enemy country how to work around sanctions then you are going to jail, if captured.
The United States isn't a saint. But in terms of North Korea it seems that it is on the right side of history. China tolerates North Korea just because it is a buffer zone between South Korea and Japan, strong Democratic Capitalist economies.
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For purposes of this person, he violated US law because he's a US national. Most countries have sanctions against North Korea. If he were a British national, the UK could have arrested him for violating UK and EU sanctions. If he transferred between North Korea and a non-US sanctions country, he could theoretically be tried in the US (which gets dibs because they arrested him first) and then extradited to face trial in the other country, depending on extradition treaty terms.
Play stupid games... (Score:5, Insightful)
"He's a typical hacker who loves technology and adventure."
Apparently, he's also an idiot.
m
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
...Win stupid prizes.
"He's a typical hacker who loves technology and adventure."
Apparently, he's also an idiot. m
Let's not be too harsh here, he's being accused by the government of the county that clamed there were WMDs in Iraq, set the entire Middle East on fire over it (but never foudn any WMDs) and whose current president believes vaccines give you autism, wind turbines give you cancer, Obama is not a US citizen, four million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election and nobody noticed, the Ukraine is be hiding a server with Hillary Clinton's missing emails on it, the the Clintons framed and killed Jeffrey Ep
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Let's not be too harsh here, he's being accused by the government of the county that clamed there were WMDs in Iraq, set the entire Middle East on fire over it (but never foudn any WMDs) and whose current president believes vaccines give you autism, wind turbines give you cancer, Obama is not a US citizen, four million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election and nobody noticed, the Ukraine is be hiding a server with Hillary Clinton's missing emails on it, the the Clintons framed and killed Jeffrey Epstein, climate change is a Chinese hoax ...
And absolutely none of that is relevant to this case.
The US can be a bad actor, and this guy can be an idiot. They are not mutually exclusive.
Plus this isn't a "trust the US" thing. There's plenty of independent documentation that he did indeed violate the travel ban, including his own admission.
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Let's not be too harsh here, he's being accused by the government of the county that clamed there were WMDs in Iraq, set the entire Middle East on fire over it (but never foudn any WMDs) and whose current president believes vaccines give you autism, wind turbines give you cancer, Obama is not a US citizen, four million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election and nobody noticed, the Ukraine is be hiding a server with Hillary Clinton's missing emails on it, the the Clintons framed and killed Jeffrey Epstein, climate change is a Chinese hoax ...
And absolutely none of that is relevant to this case.
Really? The government whose leaders are morons who believe that crap are charging this guy for giving a talk about crypto currency. Who’s the biggest moron in this situation? Hint: it’s the Trump admin.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"The Trump Derangement Syndrome runs strong with this one." That's not TDS. TDS is the ability to believe Trump.
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TDS is both. It's the guy who goes berserk whenever he hears Darth Cheeto speak no matter the topic or the objective merit, and it's the guy that thinks that Darth Cheeto is totally believable despite numerous examples proving that if his lips are moving, there's a really good chance that what is coming out of it is not especially congruent with reality.
Re: (Score:3)
I've never heard anyone go berserk over anything Trump said that was truthful and smart.
Usually he says something in complete odds with actual demonstrable fact,and people just believer him, That
s what drives people berserk.
If when he lied(demonstrably), everyone called him out, it would be far lass of an issue.
Re:Play stupid games... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the weapons that were found were old caches from the early '90s that were literally buried in the sand and forgotten. It was covered by numerous news organizations around the world. The Bush Administration even admitted as much. It's unclear if the burial was an attempt at high levels to evade the ban or if it was the work of low-level soldiers who didn't want to deal with it and just got rid of them in the most expedient way possible. They were almost all highly degraded and useless for realistic battle scenarios, and while some were used in IEDs, most of those building the bombs thought they were just artillery shells. A friend got caught near a blast and, over a few hours, began to develop symptoms similar to nerve agent exposure. He's not sure what happened because he blacked out and they never told him for sure, but he was by far not the only one.
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They were almost all highly degraded and useless for realistic battle scenarios,
Which we knew because we kept the receipts.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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We are at war with N. Korea. Many have concluded N. Korea to be just a vessel state of China playing the role of "Bad COP" to further the geopolitical ambitions of China.
Sure. Which is why the policy of engagement with North Korea and bringing them into the market economy is the only approach that doesn't worsen the safety of Americans.
The John Bolton / FBI / Deep State approach of Imperialism towards North Korea endangers
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
WOW you still believe the whole lets expose them to market economy approach.
Its ONLY utterly failed for 50 years in China! Just look at Hong Kong right now; the PRC might embrase capitalism in some ways but they have in NO WAY embrace small-L-liberalism. They are not exactly seeking to join hands and sing with us in terms of mutual interests either. China's economic policies go beyond "China First" many of them are clearly designed to harm American interests sometimes at the expense of China's own (short te
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"Its ONLY utterly failed for 50 years in China!"
China is still a dictatorship but it's vastly improved compared to 50 years ago, when the Cultural Revolution was in full swing. And a lot of that relaxing is due to the rise of a middle class, which was itself driven by international trade.
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Note that "a cease fire" can't exist without "a war". Who describes our relations with Canada as "a cease fire"?
Yes, technically, the Korean War continues.
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Only between North and South. No other combatants declared war.
And it's an armistice, not just a ceasefire. The latter is typically semi-formal at most, while the former is a formal document intended to stop hostilities, often pending working out a peace treaty. An armistice doesn't necessarily end the war, but it is supposed to end actual combat.
Re: Play stupid games... (Score:3)
wrong headline (Score:5, Informative)
He's a typical hacker who loves ... adventure (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like he's going to get about 20 years of adventure.
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It's all in how you frame it (Score:4, Interesting)
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Who is "the enemy"? How do you define that term? Historically it has meant countries we are in conflict with.
Fixed that for you. You don't have to be in an outright war to be enemies. The biggest enemy for the West from roughly 1950-1990 was the USSR, yet we never engaged them in a single open conflict or battle. Now, of course we and/or our proxies regularly fought them/their proxies (and Soviet pilots are known to have flown combat missions in the Korean War) but never the 2 main players in open, acknowledged conflict. Trade wars have enemies as well.
Or are you going to try and argue al-Qaeda or ISIS weren't
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No one was ever charged with, let alone convicted of, treason for assisting the USSR. It wasn't allowed under treason law because we were not, as you say, in open conflict with them. There were convictions for violations of the Espionage Act (e.g., the Rosenbergs, who were executed), but not treason. Trade war opponents do not count as as enemies for purposes of treason, because a trade war is not an actual war.
Adam Gadahn was charged with treason in 2006, though never arrested or tried on it, having remain
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The biggest enemy for the West from roughly 1950-1990 was the USSR, yet we never engaged them in a single open conflict or battle.
Well, apart from the unprovoked invasion of 1919 whose aim was to snuff out Communism before it could even get started.
https://russia-insider.com/en/... [russia-insider.com]
https://consortiumnews.com/201... [consortiumnews.com]
You may not know about this:
https://www.rbth.com/history/3... [rbth.com]
Stop with clickbait headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's a lot to ask but can we not have clickbait headlines?
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Re: Stop with clickbait headlines (Score:2)
Just a lawyer's argument (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just a lawyer's argument (Score:4, Insightful)
And the argument that the information was available online means nothing as well. Recently a flight sim dev was arrested for purchasing an F-16 manual on ebay. The manual is available to the public and selling it on eBay way legal. What made it illegal is that its only legal in NATO member nations. The developer and his employer are Russian. It also didn't help that while the devs were working on modeling the F-16 for the game, this guy wasn't part of that team and was operating on his own initiative.
So it;s very much a case of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. NK is under a lot of sanctions and there is probably very little if any business an American citizen can do with them legally. Seems to me that this guy possesses the same roguish arrogance that is sadly too common in infosec. Clearly his programming skill means he knows best about all things. Sanctions are stupid and telling NK how to circumvent them via crypto is a good idea. /s
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Yeah because North Korea isn't capable of figuring out cryptocurrency...moron...
This story has nothing to do with the capabilities of NK, but is instead about the doofus knowlingly breaking laws the of country that he is a citizen of.
Re: Just a lawyer's argument (Score:2)
Already posted on Slashdot Friday November 29 (Score:2)
If the US had any sense... (Score:2, Funny)
... they would have done, in the open, what they did, but under cover they would have honored him for grossly misdirecting North Korea by pretending that cryptocurrency was money.
Re:If the US had any sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
The massive amount of successful money laundering as well as trading of illegal goods and services that cryptocurrency is responsible for shows that yes, you're absolutely right, calling it "money" is a joke. It's far better than money, and far more useful than money to North Korea.
So your joke aside, no they will not be honoring him ,.... waterboarding maybe, but not honoring.
He was even warned (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Awful lot of CIA trolls on slashdot today. Ironic considering its libertarian bent...
Tu quoque Re:What a "Nazi collaborator" looks like (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like the United States arming and provide logistical support to Saudi Arabia with their genocidal war with Yemen.
Tu quoque... [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Saudi Arabia with their genocidal war with Yemen.
Right Iran, which is busying killing conducting mass execution of domestic protestors has nothing to do with the conflicts in Yemen.
Can we all just admin there are exactly no-good-guys in the middle east. The Islamic regimes are fundamentally incompatible with Western Values and I don't mean the specifically judeo-christian ones, I mean the secular humanist enlightenment ones. Really we need to disengage from that entire swamp until it sorts itself out.
Banking system (Score:2)
"achieve independence from the global banking system"
It sounds like his arrest had a reason and an excuse. I think the above independence is the reason.
Re: Banking system (Score:2)
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a) no you aren't
b) it's not treason
Meanwhile ... (Score:2)
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What is the US Government going to do with the european politicians? Arrest all of them? (yes please)
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Er, why would a european politician be subject to US laws the same way a US citizen is?
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I really want to see your argument that European governments are subject to US laws.
Laws (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Laws (Score:4)
The solutions I can think of are (1) requiring a better civics education that teaches students early on the basics of how the law works and enables them to figure out the applicable laws to a particular situation and (2) simplifying the legal code so that it's not a byzantine web of statutes, precedents, and jurisdictions that requires specialized higher education to competently interact with. I think a bit of both would go a long way, though the question of how to accomplish the second would have to be handled carefully.
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I think our government likes things just the way they are.
"Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
- Lavrentiy Beria
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Shame on All of Us (Score:2)
Yeah we're talking about N Korea, the worst possible Freedom Of Speech test case, a shit-hole nation led by a totalitarian asshole and a cadre of power-seeking psychophants, all who deserve to die in a firing squad of 20mm anti-aircraft guns.
Yet we should be PISSED that the US State Department, or any government or agency, seems to believe it is has the authority to direct who's allowed to learn about and who's allowed to talk blockchain. After all: This is slashdot, a community only made possible through o
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" believe it is has the authority to direct who's allowed to learn about and who's allowed to talk blockchain"
no, it believe it can arrest people for violating sanctions; which it can.
blockchain is a red herring bandied about by the idiots at 2600 it deflect from that actual crime.
Set this man free. (Score:2)
Typical 2600 (Score:2)
trying to change the truth.
He wasn't arrested for talking about crypto-currency, he was arrested for sanction violations.
This is like saying a bank robber was arrested for wearing a mask.
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Isn't America a free country?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
No, seriously ..
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
(finally got my breath back)
Oh grasshopper you have much to learn. With no-fly-lists even people *inside* the US have their travel privileges curtailed. And that isn't even touching things like ITAR
Re: Libertarian or alt roght (Score:2)
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With libertarianism, it depends on how far down the rabbit hole we go. Extreme libertarians and ancaps would likely say the state has no business telling its citizens where they can go and who they can talk to, but then they'd also prob
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These two countries are not at war time
Technically, the US and North Korea are still at war. There was no peace treaty after the cease fire that ended the fighting in the Korean war.
Had Wernher von Braun ever returned to Germany after coming to America he would have been killed or jailed as well.
Considering you're talking about after WWII, it is doubtful von Braun would have been jailed by the West German government. East German probably would have, mostly to keep him from leaving again.