[brymaster]

Yes it does matter. The right thing to do is transparency and that's what's happening here. If Bad Person & Associates are doing evil, they're not going to get a break just because their messages also contain personal love letters.

[sliverstorm]

What great evil, exactly, has been done?

[ak217]

See post by kid0m4n below. It's the worst kind of evil: warmongering.

I had a much better opinion of Stratfor until now. They were plotting how to best sell misinformation. Misinformation that could start a war in which millions could die. They thought they could get away with this shit.

[refurb]

That's not how I read that email. I read that as a joke, kinda like a bunch of doctors talking about a disease epidemic and joking that it'll help put their kids through college.

[jonnybgood]

Good point. We don't know the context of these emails. Are they being serious? Are they joking? Are we to assume every email in the 500k is to be taken seriously?

I'm sure many HNers have sent joking emails concerning their work to fellow coworkers. It happens in almost every office. I'm not saying that's the case here, but you never know.

[legutierr]

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone but affect the whole world.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from the other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

[pekk]

Does Stratfor have the capability of initiating wars?

[legutierr]

I think this quote is worth thinking about, which is why I put it here. A bit of a non sequitur, perhaps.