You'll have to be more specific. It isn't clear if you are talking about Europe, the US, or Israel for closing its borders and so on.
You should be clear that the US will defend itself when attacked, such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both made on US soil. The war in Iraq was an outgrowth of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
You left out the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin, which Saddam had in quantity, and VX nerve gas, which he secretly disposed of by dumping large amounts of it in the dessert. You also left out biological weapons which Saddam also developed.
The Bush administration was NOT adamant that "Saddam had a bomb." They were adamant that he not GET a bomb.
The West didn't sell Saddam chemical agents, Iraq manufactured them by itself. Any state that can produce modern insecticides can produce nerve gas. Mustard gas is less demanding, if a country has a chemical industry it can make it.
Below is a link to the text of Powell speech. He seems to mention chemical weapons a lot, with some mention of biological, and of nuclear program information.
Powell wasn't setup, at least not deliberately. Most intelligence agencies thought Saddam had WMDs, but not everyone thought it was worth going after him. It was very unfortunate in many ways that the Bush administration didn't make the information public. At the end of the day Powell was not responsible for the information he presented, that was the responsibility of the intelligence agencies. His job as the US chief diplomat was to make the US case.
I've checked the news report and it still says the same thing. If you want to alter events in this universe you might have to try calling me different names, or stand on your head or something..... either that or reality doesn't work the way you think it does. It happened and you're stuck with it and even denial isn't going to change what happened. But I don't have a heart of stone so I'll throw you a bone:
I think, it’s because personal contact with Iraqis over time has disproved the conspiracy theories about how we’re supposedly here to steal oil and women.”
Half the world seems to believe Americans invaded Iraq for the oil. I hadn’t heard about Americans supposedly invading Iraq to steal women, but it makes sense now that I’ve heard it. Many Iraqis compare the American invasion of Iraq, fairly or not, to the far nastier Mongol invasion of Iraq in the 13th Century. That was the chief point of reference for many of the nation’s Arabs (but not Kurds) when the Americans first showed up.
Other strange conspiracy theories abound. I never saw an American wearing a red beret, but apparently some Iraqis believe red berets are dyed in human blood. Perhaps the most amusing theory, which I know many Iraqis believe to this day, is that American Soldiers and Marines have what they call “cold pills” so they can’t feel the blistering heat of the summer.
“I demand cold pills!” an Iraqi officer said when he barged into the office of Colonel John Steele at Camp Taji.
“Listen,” the colonel said to the Iraqi and pointed at his own forehead. “You see these beads of sweat on my forehead that are running down toward my nose? That’s because I feel just as hot as you do.”
One American soldier told me about a time he was having tea in a friendly Iraqi civilian’s house.
“It’s hot today,” said the Iraqi, “but at least you have your air conditioner on.”
“What do you mean?” said the Soldier.
“Your air conditioner,” the Iraqi said and pointed at the Soldier’s bulky body armor.
The Soldier laughed out loud.
“That’s body armor,” he said. “Not an air conditioner!”
“Come on,” the Iraqi said. “We all know those are air conditioners.”
The Soldier took off his body armor and handed it to the Iraqi. “Here,” he said. “Put it on and see for yourself.”
The Iraqi donned the armor and suddenly felt even hotter.
“Hmm,” he said. “It is pretty hot. But I’m sure it will get cold after a while.”
“'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,” said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present when more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets were found in a single compound in 2006.
Jarrod Taylor, a former Army sergeant who witnessed the disposal of mustard shells that burned two members of his company, told the Times the public has been misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.”
I suppose I can agree with you that the case you link to is also likely to become yet another example of lies and fabrications against Israel once it is looked into in detail.
On another topic, do you have any insights into why Mein Kampf continues to be popular in the Arab and Muslim worlds?
When one considers the $8 billion we taxpayers are forced to hand over to the apartheid state of Israel each year, combined with technology stolen by traitors such as Jonathan Pollard, it's not as if we didn't have a right to the images.
The figures I've seen suggest the US aid is Israel is only about half that, and much of that is military aid that is used for purchases of US built equipment.
Israel cooperatively develops technology with the US military, including missile defense technology.
The USS Liberty incident occurred during active hostilities among multiple belligerents in the area almost 50 years ago. Has there been some kind of repeat problem that would cause you to bring that up now? Do you think Israel has been patiently biding their time for 50 years to lull the US into a false sense of security? When do you think the actual attack might be? At 75 years? 100 years?
Israel isn't an apartheid state. It is slander to claim that.
I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison.
I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid.
The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all. . . .
How does that compare with the old South Africa? Under apartheid, every detail of life was subject to discrimination by law. Black South Africans did not have the vote. Skin colour determined where you were born and lived, your job, your school, which bus, train, taxi and ambulance you used, which park bench, lavatory and beach, whom you could marry, and in which cemetery you were buried. Advertisement
Israel is not remotely like that. Everything is open to change in a tangled society in which lots of people have grievances, including Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East) or Jews of Ethiopian origin. So anyone who equates Israel and apartheid is not telling the truth.
The Israeli spy agencies have a huge reputation in the spy game for skill, guile and ruthlessness.
And war crimes.
A great body of which are fabrications and deceptions.
Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander Richard Goldstone, the formerly respected South African jurist who disgraced himself by lending his name to a sinister and libelous U.N. report condemning Israel for war crimes, has now issued a very public retraction. “If I had known then what I know now,” he wrote in the Washington Post, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” New information has persuaded him, he said, “that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel.
The United Nations issued a cautious report today dismissing as unsubstantiated Palestinian claims that 500 people were killed when Israeli forces invaded a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin in April.
A BBC report has found that many of the photographs used to illustrate the situation in Gaza are from years ago, and even from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
CNN isn’t the only Old Media outlet that falls for fake Palestinian videos. There is a famous video that caused a contentious court case in France back in 2008. It was a fake video supposedly showing a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura being shot at by Israel’s Defense Forces. At first, the video caused international outrage, but in time it was proven to be just Palestinian street theater. No Muhammad al-Dura was ever shot.
B) rely only on open source software with crypto stacks the government (NIST or NSA) doesn't have a hand in or if you do, those that have been mathematically proven for longer than a few years.
Feel free. You might find out a couple of decades later that you've been vulnerable the whole time by your own choice.
Some of the suspicions about hidden weaknesses in the S-boxes were allayed in 1990, with the independent discovery and open publication by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir of differential cryptanalysis, a general method for breaking block ciphers. The S-boxes of DES were much more resistant to the attack than if they had been chosen at random . . . Bruce Schneier observed that "It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 'tweaks' actually improved the security of DES."[13]
Guerra, of North Tonawanda, outside Buffalo, was facing up to a year in jail after pleading guilty to an aggravated assault charge for allegedly hitting a woman who came between him and his girlfriend during a domestic dispute, said Niagara County District Attorney Matthew Murphy.
When Guerra’s attorney told the judge in the case that his client wanted to join the military, the judge gave Guerra a choice, Murphy said.
“The judge said, ‘Well, I’ll give you a conditional discharge: the condition is you join the military,’ ” Murphy said.
But Army regulations say that people facing pending charges are ineligible to enlist, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty.
“Army policy reflected in Army Regulation 601-210, paragraph 4-32a states ‘waiver is not authorized if a criminal or juvenile court charge is pending or if such a charge was dismissed or dropped at any stage of the court proceedings on condition that the offender enlists in a military service,’ ” Hilferty said in an e-mail response to questions.
Army recruiters are also banned from helping someone get out of pending charges by joining the Army, Hilferty said.
“It isn’t a new regulation. Not taking jailbirds has been our policy for decades,” he said.
Only 20 percent of Americans are qualified to be in the Army under standards of health, behavior, and intelligence. Seamands said recruiting still remains a challenge.
"We are very selective because we know what's at stake," Seamands said. "What's at stake is having a professional force that's capable of fighting and winning our nation's battles."
I both read and understood what you wrote. I'm telling you that you are wrong. Fifty years ago that was a thing, but not so much any more.
The choice of "join the army or go to jail" pretty much went away a long time ago. And don't forget that they would still have an arrest record to disclose.
Unlike during the draft and the Vietnam war period the standards for enlistment are no longer "hear thunder, see lightning" while drawing breath. You pretty much need a high school diploma, good health, be drug free, and not a troublemaker. The US military is no longer draftee based, it is a professional force with higher standards. The army isn't a substitute for prison, and it turns out things work better that way.
Some types of criminals are offered military service instead of incarceration. Sounds more like slavery than volunteerism to me.
Maybe in the '50s & '60s with the draft, but not any more. The volunteer military has higher standards and a criminal record can easily keep you out, as will lacking a High School diploma, various health problems, and a minimal level of fitness (that will be improved on).
So what is to stop them from sending 14 or 15 year old nudes that look a little older so they can tip some Russian officials off about child porn sitting on a computer that gets tracked down to Snowden. He then losses his sanctuary and gets swept up by the feds and is a positive notch in Obama's legacy (killed Bin Laden and captured Snowden )
Snowden is being guarded by the Russian security services, the successors of the KGB. Even if you assume that Snowden is an American patriot the simple fact is that he has bequeathed the intelligence agencies of the world a priceless cache of the innermost American government intelligence agency secrets. There is no way they are going to hand him over even if (speaking hypothetically from the above post) Snowden really was a pedophile (and there isn't any evidence of that). If anything the FSB would use KGB style tactics if that was true and use that for leverage over Snowden.
Besides, nobody would believe it. Even in the incredibly unlikely event that he would get mixed up with something like that everyone would point to some conspiracy theory even if the facts were crystal clear. I don't think there is much of anything that would convince Snowden's fans that he did something wrong in the past, present, or future.
I ask this in good faith -- why is there open source ransomware?
The short answer is that some people have bad values. If you want to dive deeper you could consider the OpenBSD licensing philosophy as a proxy for the Open Source or Free Software movement. The software and its code become an end in itself, What is "good" is defined in terms of working code that complies with the license. The ultimate purpose of the code is practically irrelevant. From time to time there are controversies that arise in regard to some proposed change in the license of some software. I seem to recall several for the GPL. These generally seem to be aimed at harming US national defense, or some sector of the economy. You can probably chalk aspects of this to the nihilism of orur present age.
Slashdot Mirror
"Clutching at straws"? That's funny! :D
You'll have to be more specific. It isn't clear if you are talking about Europe, the US, or Israel for closing its borders and so on.
You should be clear that the US will defend itself when attacked, such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both made on US soil. The war in Iraq was an outgrowth of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
You left out the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin, which Saddam had in quantity, and VX nerve gas, which he secretly disposed of by dumping large amounts of it in the dessert. You also left out biological weapons which Saddam also developed.
Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Bush administration was NOT adamant that "Saddam had a bomb." They were adamant that he not GET a bomb.
The West didn't sell Saddam chemical agents, Iraq manufactured them by itself. Any state that can produce modern insecticides can produce nerve gas. Mustard gas is less demanding, if a country has a chemical industry it can make it.
Below is a link to the text of Powell speech. He seems to mention chemical weapons a lot, with some mention of biological, and of nuclear program information.
Full text of Colin Powell's speech
Powell wasn't setup, at least not deliberately. Most intelligence agencies thought Saddam had WMDs, but not everyone thought it was worth going after him. It was very unfortunate in many ways that the Bush administration didn't make the information public. At the end of the day Powell was not responsible for the information he presented, that was the responsibility of the intelligence agencies. His job as the US chief diplomat was to make the US case.
You're nuts. And an idiot.
I've checked the news report and it still says the same thing. If you want to alter events in this universe you might have to try calling me different names, or stand on your head or something ..... either that or reality doesn't work the way you think it does. It happened and you're stuck with it and even denial isn't going to change what happened. But I don't have a heart of stone so I'll throw you a bone:
Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD
It isn't just Israel that is targeted, the US and Americans have seen it too.
Anbar Awakens Part II: Hell is Over
I think, it’s because personal contact with Iraqis over time has disproved the conspiracy theories about how we’re supposedly here to steal oil and women.”
Half the world seems to believe Americans invaded Iraq for the oil. I hadn’t heard about Americans supposedly invading Iraq to steal women, but it makes sense now that I’ve heard it. Many Iraqis compare the American invasion of Iraq, fairly or not, to the far nastier Mongol invasion of Iraq in the 13th Century. That was the chief point of reference for many of the nation’s Arabs (but not Kurds) when the Americans first showed up.
Other strange conspiracy theories abound. I never saw an American wearing a red beret, but apparently some Iraqis believe red berets are dyed in human blood. Perhaps the most amusing theory, which I know many Iraqis believe to this day, is that American Soldiers and Marines have what they call “cold pills” so they can’t feel the blistering heat of the summer.
“I demand cold pills!” an Iraqi officer said when he barged into the office of Colonel John Steele at Camp Taji.
“Listen,” the colonel said to the Iraqi and pointed at his own forehead. “You see these beads of sweat on my forehead that are running down toward my nose? That’s because I feel just as hot as you do.”
One American soldier told me about a time he was having tea in a friendly Iraqi civilian’s house.
“It’s hot today,” said the Iraqi, “but at least you have your air conditioner on.”
“What do you mean?” said the Soldier.
“Your air conditioner,” the Iraqi said and pointed at the Soldier’s bulky body armor.
The Soldier laughed out loud.
“That’s body armor,” he said. “Not an air conditioner!”
“Come on,” the Iraqi said. “We all know those are air conditioners.”
The Soldier took off his body armor and handed it to the Iraqi. “Here,” he said. “Put it on and see for yourself.”
The Iraqi donned the armor and suddenly felt even hotter.
“Hmm,” he said. “It is pretty hot. But I’m sure it will get cold after a while.”
*COUGH!* Boy, that line of yours just never gets old, does it?
Iraq's 'hidden' chemical weapons: US 'covered up' discovery of chemical weapons after 2003 invasion – with many are now in Isis’s hands
“'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,” said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present when more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets were found in a single compound in 2006.
Jarrod Taylor, a former Army sergeant who witnessed the disposal of mustard shells that burned two members of his company, told the Times the public has been misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.”
I suppose I can agree with you that the case you link to is also likely to become yet another example of lies and fabrications against Israel once it is looked into in detail.
On another topic, do you have any insights into why Mein Kampf continues to be popular in the Arab and Muslim worlds?
When one considers the $8 billion we taxpayers are forced to hand over to the apartheid state of Israel each year, combined with technology stolen by traitors such as Jonathan Pollard, it's not as if we didn't have a right to the images.
The figures I've seen suggest the US aid is Israel is only about half that, and much of that is military aid that is used for purchases of US built equipment.
Israel cooperatively develops technology with the US military, including missile defense technology.
The USS Liberty incident occurred during active hostilities among multiple belligerents in the area almost 50 years ago. Has there been some kind of repeat problem that would cause you to bring that up now? Do you think Israel has been patiently biding their time for 50 years to lull the US into a false sense of security? When do you think the actual attack might be? At 75 years? 100 years?
Israel isn't an apartheid state. It is slander to claim that.
Israel has many injustices. But it is not an apartheid state
In South Africa, I saw real apartheid up close. These claims against Israel are a distraction from the battle for justice for Palestinians
I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison.
I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid.
The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all. . . .
How does that compare with the old South Africa? Under apartheid, every detail of life was subject to discrimination by law. Black South Africans did not have the vote. Skin colour determined where you were born and lived, your job, your school, which bus, train, taxi and ambulance you used, which park bench, lavatory and beach, whom you could marry, and in which cemetery you were buried.
Advertisement
Israel is not remotely like that. Everything is open to change in a tangled society in which lots of people have grievances, including Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East) or Jews of Ethiopian origin. So anyone who equates Israel and apartheid is not telling the truth.
And war crimes.
A great body of which are fabrications and deceptions.
Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Richard Goldstone, the formerly respected South African jurist who disgraced himself by lending his name to a sinister and libelous U.N. report condemning Israel for war crimes, has now issued a very public retraction. “If I had known then what I know now,” he wrote in the Washington Post, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” New information has persuaded him, he said, “that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel.
U.N. Report Rejects Claims of a Massacre of Refugees
The United Nations issued a cautious report today dismissing as unsubstantiated Palestinian claims that 500 people were killed when Israeli forces invaded a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin in April.
As Israel strikes back, fake Gaza images dominate social media
A BBC report has found that many of the photographs used to illustrate the situation in Gaza are from years ago, and even from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
CNN Uses Faked Palestinian 'Casualty' Video in Coverage
CNN isn’t the only Old Media outlet that falls for fake Palestinian videos. There is a famous video that caused a contentious court case in France back in 2008. It was a fake video supposedly showing a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura being shot at by Israel’s Defense Forces. At first, the video caused international outrage, but in time it was proven to be just Palestinian street theater. No Muhammad al-Dura was ever shot.
Explosives Found in Palestinian Ambulance
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
B) rely only on open source software with crypto stacks the government (NIST or NSA) doesn't have a hand in or if you do, those that have been mathematically proven for longer than a few years.
Feel free. You might find out a couple of decades later that you've been vulnerable the whole time by your own choice.
Data Encryption Standard
Some of the suspicions about hidden weaknesses in the S-boxes were allayed in 1990, with the independent discovery and open publication by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir of differential cryptanalysis, a general method for breaking block ciphers. The S-boxes of DES were much more resistant to the attack than if they had been chosen at random . . . Bruce Schneier observed that "It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 'tweaks' actually improved the security of DES."[13]
Hmmm ... disingenuous or ignorant, disingenuous or ignorant . . .
The correct answer is neither, although I understand those are both big clubs.
Judge said Army or jail, but military doesn’t want him - Army: ‘Not taking jailbirds has been our policy for decades’
Guerra, of North Tonawanda, outside Buffalo, was facing up to a year in jail after pleading guilty to an aggravated assault charge for allegedly hitting a woman who came between him and his girlfriend during a domestic dispute, said Niagara County District Attorney Matthew Murphy.
When Guerra’s attorney told the judge in the case that his client wanted to join the military, the judge gave Guerra a choice, Murphy said.
“The judge said, ‘Well, I’ll give you a conditional discharge: the condition is you join the military,’ ” Murphy said.
But Army regulations say that people facing pending charges are ineligible to enlist, said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty.
“Army policy reflected in Army Regulation 601-210, paragraph 4-32a states ‘waiver is not authorized if a criminal or juvenile court charge is pending or if such a charge was dismissed or dropped at any stage of the court proceedings on condition that the offender enlists in a military service,’ ” Hilferty said in an e-mail response to questions.
Army recruiters are also banned from helping someone get out of pending charges by joining the Army, Hilferty said.
“It isn’t a new regulation. Not taking jailbirds has been our policy for decades,” he said.
July marks 40th anniversary of all-volunteer Army
Only 20 percent of Americans are qualified to be in the Army under standards of health, behavior, and intelligence. Seamands said recruiting still remains a challenge.
"We are very selective because we know what's at stake," Seamands said. "What's at stake is having a professional force that's capable of fighting and winning our nation's battles."
It isn't 1969 any more.
I both read and understood what you wrote. I'm telling you that you are wrong. Fifty years ago that was a thing, but not so much any more.
The choice of "join the army or go to jail" pretty much went away a long time ago. And don't forget that they would still have an arrest record to disclose.
Unlike during the draft and the Vietnam war period the standards for enlistment are no longer "hear thunder, see lightning" while drawing breath. You pretty much need a high school diploma, good health, be drug free, and not a troublemaker. The US military is no longer draftee based, it is a professional force with higher standards. The army isn't a substitute for prison, and it turns out things work better that way.
There is always the French Foreign Legion.
So the refugee crisis in your country isn't going well? No surprise. It seems to be a big problem across Europe.
It seems the native Europeans don't take well to their women being sexually assaulted by the dozens or hundreds at a time.
They seem to be engaged in journalism.
Washington Times journalists win 10 Dateline Awards
Times staffers collect 21 local journalism awards
Some types of criminals are offered military service instead of incarceration. Sounds more like slavery than volunteerism to me.
Maybe in the '50s & '60s with the draft, but not any more. The volunteer military has higher standards and a criminal record can easily keep you out, as will lacking a High School diploma, various health problems, and a minimal level of fitness (that will be improved on).
You only get to volunteer to join. You don't get a say as to which conflicts they send you.
Yeah, especially since he retired.
I can understand. Ron Paul and his supporters left me tired and retired again long ago. ;D
Claiming that there aren't two parties in the US with different policy preferences is obtuse.
The votes to pass Obamacare were Democrat votes, not Republican votes.
You should visit the US some time, it might help you move beyond the cartoon view of it.
Yes, there are actual voters that care about the email issue. The number isn't all of them, but it is probably closer to all of them than to zero.
The race baiting is tedious and misguided. In the US the Left is the faction that cares about race and racial politics. Do you think they will object?
Bring it back.
Have you ever tried key reassignment or macros?
QED
So what is to stop them from sending 14 or 15 year old nudes that look a little older so they can tip some Russian officials off about child porn sitting on a computer that gets tracked down to Snowden. He then losses his sanctuary and gets swept up by the feds and is a positive notch in Obama's legacy (killed Bin Laden and captured Snowden )
Snowden is being guarded by the Russian security services, the successors of the KGB. Even if you assume that Snowden is an American patriot the simple fact is that he has bequeathed the intelligence agencies of the world a priceless cache of the innermost American government intelligence agency secrets. There is no way they are going to hand him over even if (speaking hypothetically from the above post) Snowden really was a pedophile (and there isn't any evidence of that). If anything the FSB would use KGB style tactics if that was true and use that for leverage over Snowden.
Besides, nobody would believe it. Even in the incredibly unlikely event that he would get mixed up with something like that everyone would point to some conspiracy theory even if the facts were crystal clear. I don't think there is much of anything that would convince Snowden's fans that he did something wrong in the past, present, or future.
I ask this in good faith -- why is there open source ransomware?
The short answer is that some people have bad values. If you want to dive deeper you could consider the OpenBSD licensing philosophy as a proxy for the Open Source or Free Software movement. The software and its code become an end in itself, What is "good" is defined in terms of working code that complies with the license. The ultimate purpose of the code is practically irrelevant. From time to time there are controversies that arise in regard to some proposed change in the license of some software. I seem to recall several for the GPL. These generally seem to be aimed at harming US national defense, or some sector of the economy. You can probably chalk aspects of this to the nihilism of orur present age.
IIRC the last person flogged in the US as sentenced by a court was in the 1950s. It may be time to rethink that for some offenses.