manly tears

The article doesn't say anything about defacement, it actually says that journalists themselves were the targets. I assume being able to penetrate a journalist's work account is one of the first steps to either subsequently penetrating that journalist's personal accounts elsewhere, or to build a profile in order to create false identity elsewhere. The first could be used to reveal current sources, and the latter could be used to ensnare future sources.

Everyone is on high alert to stopping their own Snowden event, and I think that's a far simpler and more relevant explanation than "USA is trying to frame other countries by defacing its own news site"

Here's what usually goes down around /. (from my years of experience reading "+5 Insightful" comments)

- Republican caught in wrongdoing -> Republicans are wrong and bad
- Democrat caught in wrongdoing -> The System (TM) is wrong and bad

To make the Kosovo analogy work, you would need to establish that Ukraine acted against Crimean Russians in a way comparable to how Yugoslavia acted against Kosovan Albanians.

It happens every single time another country is in the negative spotlight.
They speak as if USA invented meddling.

You'd be hard-pressed to find these so-what-if-x-does-it-y-did-it-too arguments back in 2002 and 2003. I don't believe any of these people brought up Soviet/British invasion of Afghanistan to dismiss criticism of the US, so the only conclusion one can draw is that they are not actually concerned with morality, just with who is violating the morality.

Is this why you love the GOP over the Democrats? They're pretty honest in comparison, if recent history is any indication.

How many times will misinformed people trot out this crap? Scandinavian countries are, to the last one, all capitalist free market economies. Capitalism and the laws that protect private property enable those countries' people to generate the excess wealth with which to fund their social welfare programs.

Scandinavian countries are actually examples of "capitalism and philanthropy" being "better at addressing woes"

Assholes with power and a laundry list of excuses, religion among them, anti-religion too.

What does this have to do with Communism?

Sweden is a successful free market capitalist country, and has benefited greatly from advantageous geographic/demographic makeup which gives it abundant land and ocean resources for a low population, along with geographical isolation from both domineering regional players and low skilled immigration. It funnels a few more percentage points of GDP into social welfare than its contemporaries, but that inflow of wealth would not have been possible without the entrepreneurial spirit and private property laws which are antithetical to Communism.

I think those modding down cold fjord might be overlooking some things. There is the backroom persona for politicians and there is the press room persona. Indonesian politicians are not stupid, and being not stupid they should know, even without evidence, that countries whose interests intersect with theirs, whether supportive or adversarial, will conduct espionage. They also should know that their base of power comes from a fickle and often nationalistic public whose eyes are always on them.

If we assume that the act of espionage has chilled relations, then it actually speaks of Indonesian naivety and incompetence. It is difficult to believe that national leaders, whose careers are built on guile and exploiting opportunity, would not assume the very same characteristics in their counterparts. So, what this really says is that Indonesian government leaders, fully cognizant of espionage, are doing their best to cover their behinds domestically in light of media focus and to head off popular uproar on the issue. Rather than espionage chilling relations, it is the revelation of espionage has made career-wise politicians take up a tough facade and sooth a resentful public with feigned outrage.

Think back to the leaked embassy cables a few years ago. It revealed that the Yemeni government had great enthusiasm for US drone strikes inside their borders. They were enthused for a very practical reason -- it allowed someone else to fight internal radical opposition with little cost to themselves. But Yemeni politicians could not show that face to their public, else they would risk destabilization, and so what they said to the press and to the public had to be completely different from how they actually felt.

There is more than one layer to this onion.

than let people imagine the worst.

I'm pretty sure juries only decide guilt or non-guilt. Punishments are decided by legislators who write the laws and the governors who enact them. Sentencing is determined by the judge. If anything, the legislators and governor should pull the trigger. Even the entire voting public is collectively more culpable than the jury.

The American Slashdotters actually seem to me more objective than their European counterparts. If you would look at the history of political discussion on this site, self-criticism is far far more likely to come from an American than from a European. You will also find that whataboutism is heavily relied upon in comments to articles about non-US countries, especially concerning Europe, whereas for stories about the US that sort of excuse-making is hardly ever seen. It leaves the sense that Americans actually care, whereas Europeans are more fond of judging and deflecting.

The good behavior of Chinese government, as perceived by European Slashdotters for instance, is more a reflection of the current limits of China's geopolitical reach. If you were to ask people in Southeast Asia which country meddles more in their nation's affairs, China may very well edge out the USA. This is reflected by the enthusiasm in welcoming the US into ASEAN dialogue by China's neighbors. In fact, I'm quite sure if the question were posed to Filipinos, Singaporeans, Burmese, etc, you would find an answer that is just the opposite of johanw's.

The Presidential election goes by state, and is winner takes all, so only battleground states can tilt the election. Deeply blue or deeply red states will stay their colors with or without HUGE numbers of voters. Even if a million Democrats (~9% of 2012 turnout) in California voted 3rd party, that state would remain blue by a healthy margin and still go to the Democratic Presidential candidate. Likewise, even if 100k Republicans (~9% of 2012 turnout) in Kansas voted 3rd party, that state would remain red by a healthy margin and still go to the Republican Presidential candidate.

Consider that a 3rd party is empowered by federal funding and ballot access that is based on the aggregate popular vote -- which is entirely different from the way electoral votes are won -- and you will see that victory for a 3rd party is not synonymous with defeat for any mainstream party. And a 3rd party doesn't even need 9%+ of the popular vote in every state, it only needs to reach 5% to get funding and access. For the Libertarians, that's means another 4% average per state on top of what they have of the popular vote, for Greens it's another 4.5%. That's well within margin, especially for a country that is more and more composed of deeply blue and deeply red states.