[HN Gopher] Media blackout after key witness against Assange adm...
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Media blackout after key witness against Assange admits lying
Author : k1m
Score : 824 points
Date : 2021-07-02 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.medialens.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.medialens.org)
| bumbada wrote:
| In the article they talk about right wing propaganda but after
| admitting the huge amount of resources Obama used to catch
| Assange, using nefarious means.
|
| It is not the right, it is not the left, it is power. Power
| (anybody in power) does not like anybody criticizing them. In the
| US, in China or everywhere in the world.
|
| The US has a big War industry and infrastructure, that is a power
| on their own. It tells presidents what to do and not the other
| way.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Witch-hunt by the powerful backed by party of money.
|
| It maybe a partisan issue at the grassroots, but it's not really
| such in government where the majority of politicians are in the
| same bubble of silencing dissidents and whistleblowers using any
| means to the end.
|
| The whole fiasco is a "This is what happens to you... reporters,
| publishers, and snitches.. when you threaten to expose our lies
| and our crimes. We invent crimes and murder you slowly."
|
| The only way to prevent this from happening again is to overthrow
| the powers-that-be because it will keep happening.
| lettergram wrote:
| I actually recommend
|
| https://ground.news/
|
| You can see topics trending in right media (this was) and compare
| to the left media. I tend to send friends of either affinity
| topics from the other, my own effort to bring people together...
| or at least understand each other (have the same facts).
| pydry wrote:
| Their left/right categories are kind of a joke.
|
| The daily mail owned metro is described as "left media" while
| RT is shoved in the same category as fox news.
|
| They should really categorize by more fine grained biases and
| allegiances. E.g. WaPo to the US military industrial complex,
| RT to putin, CNBC to the DNC, Fox to RNC/Rupert Murdoch, BBC to
| the tories, Metro to lord rothermere.
| stevehawk wrote:
| Even that would be contested though. Fox/FoxNews isn't
| actually considered all that Republican right now because
| they aren't fullstop on Trump.
|
| And these categorizations could probably vary wildly. This is
| the first time I've ever heard of the WaPo being aligned with
| the US military industrial complex and I was part of that
| complex for twenty years. I'm guessing this new title is
| because it's owned by Bezos and he provides a lot of AWS
| tech?
| will4274 wrote:
| > This is the first time I've ever heard of the WaPo being
| aligned with the US military industrial complex
|
| Did you not hear about the US 2003 invasion of Iraq? WaPo
| news stories in the lead up were certainly aligned with the
| US military industrial complex. In my memory, the NYT and
| WaPo (the most important two "liberal" newspapers) both
| being in support of a republican president invading a third
| world country is one of the most notable evidences that the
| MSM is complicit with the government.
| vmladenov wrote:
| CNBC to the DNC is a fabrication, and a recent one at that.
| As an outlet focused on US economic news, their traditional
| bias has always been towards low-tax, low-regulation free
| market capitalism.
| pydry wrote:
| Was probably just a coincidence that Brian L Roberts was a
| golfing buddy of Obama and big Democrat donor.
| tremon wrote:
| Any black/white distinction is a joke, for that matter.
| There's never just two sides to any complex issue, but
| framing it like that is one of the most powerful ruses in the
| media (and in politics).
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Casually thrown into the article is this rather startling claim:
|
| > _Meanwhile, the FBI were allegedly complicit in DDoS
| (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on the websites of
| several Iceland government institutions. The FBI had then
| approached Icelandic authorities, promising to assist them in
| preventing any future such attacks._
|
| Is these any evidence backing up this claim of what would
| essentially be an act of (cyber)war against a NATO ally?
| jrsj wrote:
| The U.S. does sort of have a habit of treating NATO allies as
| such publicly while privately violating their sovereignty and
| treating them as vassal states or something so I wouldn't
| really be surprised. There are regularly stories of us getting
| caught spying on allies etc
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Not a popular opinion but I think most countries at this time
| are vassal states of the US, China or Russia. That power is
| wielded in different ways by each and with different levels
| of openness but I think its true.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Many countries position themselves in between and the play
| the three against each other. It's the only way to maintain
| a semblance of sovereignty.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Problem - reaction - solution
| ianhawes wrote:
| FWIW, some DDoS attacks against political targets, you could
| argue, are the 21st century equivalent of a protest sit-in.
| prepend wrote:
| Not when done by the FBI. Unless we think it's ok for
| government employees to be paid to sit in for a political
| protest.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Every large-enough political protest in USA since the
| creation of FBI has been well-attended either by FBI agents
| themselves or by CIs in their employ. Infiltration of
| groups who posed a "threat" to the status quo was one of
| JEH's priorities.
|
| Of course you're right, though. This isn't OK, and on
| balance FBI is like any other federal TLA. The average
| citizen will be better off on the day they are disbanded.
| prepend wrote:
| > The average citizen will be better off on the day they
| are disbanded.
|
| I'm not sure about this. Can you provide some more info?
| The FBI isn't perfect but I don't think they are a net
| negative. The FBI does lots of good stuff like
| investigate Ferguson, MO and other corrupt local police
| departments.
| leephillips wrote:
| Reformed, yes. But disbanded? Who's going to go after
| child traffickers crossing state lines? Bank robbers?
| jessaustin wrote:
| This reminds me of the arguments for bank bailouts. There
| are lots of capable police and investigators in USA. Most
| of them don't work for FBI. Some of them who do work for
| FBI would do better work in a better organization. FBI
| isn't the only authority focused on crime. Other
| authorities could take over more duties, or new
| authorities could be created. It's fine for things to
| change occasionally, especially when toxic organizations
| are replaced by something better.
|
| And please, it's not as though FBI really focuses on the
| two concerns you highlighted.
| Joeri wrote:
| DDoS is the least of it. The US regularly commits cyber warfare
| against NATO allies, because they know they can without major
| consequences.
|
| They injected malware into belgium's core telecommunication
| infrastructure: https://theintercept.com/2014/12/13/belgacom-
| hack-gchq-insid...
|
| They spied on angela merkel's calls and texts:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-us-reportedly-spied...
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| That article says Britain injected malware in Belgium, not
| the US
| pinko wrote:
| When it comes to Five Eyes, which one of the five actually
| executes an action is somewhat secondary. They plan and
| share the intel together, formally or informally (depending
| on legality).
| alwayseasy wrote:
| For a website that links to it's sources a few times and talks
| about ethics in media, it's quite surprising they don't back
| this accusation.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's in the Stundin article they link to.
| freshhawk wrote:
| The Stundin article they are quoting has the source, it's
| Ogmundur Jonasson, who was Iceland's minister of interior at
| the time.
|
| Also ... maybe there is a problem with censored news in the US.
| Because outside the US mainstream media reporting on the latest
| "US intelligence caught spying on everyone again" is as common
| as the latest "Russia caught mistreating dissident artist"
| story.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Spying is one thing, DDOSing government websites of a
| notionally allied country is another.
| darig wrote:
| Living in a country that expects us to use guns to
| overthrow corrupt leaders is one thing, being cowards is
| another.
| zionic wrote:
| They'll do this to companies on our own soil, why wouldn't
| they do it to "allies"?
| Dah00n wrote:
| Yes. Spying is way worse but they still do so.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Not really, if you can cloak it in plausible deniability.
| tootie wrote:
| It's hard to believe. DDoS is script kiddie vandalism. It
| wouldn't yield any intel.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Nah, that's well within the normal range. This is the
| Federal Bureau of oops-that-terrorist-actually-was-an-
| informant-of-ours after all.
|
| It really does seem like you all aren't aware of the
| (deserved) reputation of the FBI outside the US.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Nobody who pays attention in the US holds the FBI in high
| regard, trust me.
| sixothree wrote:
| I think we're all pretty aware of their poor reputation
| inside the states. But externally, not as much.
|
| What news sources do you follow?
| newacct583 wrote:
| I can't find that. Here's what I think you're citing as the
| relevant passage from Stundin:
|
| > _Thus, when Thordarson continued his previous pattern of
| requesting attacks on Icelandic interests, the FBI knew and
| saw an opportunity to implicate Julian Assange._
|
| > _Later that month a DDoS attack was performed against the
| websites of several government institutions._
|
| > _That deed was done under the watchful eyes of the FBI who
| must have authorized the attack or even initiated it, as Sabu
| was at that point their man. What followed was an episode
| where it seems obvious that Icelandic authorities were fooled
| into cooperation under false pretenses._
|
| That's not saying the FBI attacked Iceland at all, it's
| saying THORDARSON was "asking" for attacks (From... other
| wikileaks-affiliated folks? That isn't clear to me). And it's
| just inferring without other evidence that the FBI must have
| known because they were working both Thordarson and Sabu as
| sources.
|
| I mean, maybe the FBI did know. But it's not substantiated
| that they did, at all. And it's _certainly_ not substantiated
| that they were "complicit" in those attacks as Media Lens
| reports.
|
| Gotta say, that one word makes me question a ton more about
| this article. That's just not a minor mistake, someone is
| spinning hard here. What else is spun?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Sabu should have been detained and on trial at that point,
| the FBI is thus complicit in any illegal acts he does as
| they are the reason he had the opportunity. Even if the FBI
| was not aware of the action, their agent was responsible
| for it happening.
| gadders wrote:
| Craig Murray's write up on the same event:
| https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/06/fbi-fabricat...
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I don't understand this claim that left-leaning media is biased
| against Assagne. Pretty much all the left and center-left outlets
| I know say he should _not_ be prosecuted:
|
| Vox: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-
| politics/2019/4/...
|
| The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-
| columnists/the-indictment...
|
| Washington Post:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/traditional-j...
|
| The Atlantic:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-ass...
|
| NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/opinion/julian-assange-
| wi...
|
| Where is this impression that "the media wants Assagne in jail"
| coming from? It doesn't seem supported by any evidence beyond
| people disliking other people's tweets.
| iammisc wrote:
| These are mostly opinion pieces in 'left leaning' media. All of
| these are known for once in a while publishing dissenting
| voices. I mean NYT regularly publishes Ross Douthat and David
| Frum.
|
| I'm guessing the sentiment though comes from talking with the
| base. In a strange reversal, many democrat _voters_ (or at
| least the ones that appear on online forums) seem okay with
| locking Assange up, while it 's a common sentiment on thedonald
| and such 'right wing' forums that Assange ought to be free.
| That's what I'd guess.
|
| Personally, I don't see this is a left/right issue.
| jugg1es wrote:
| The source that this article cites is stundin.is. That article
| does not have any links or citations for what it's saying. It
| just refers to 'court documents'. It also cites other evidence
| obtained by stundin directly, but does not link to it or quote
| from it directly. How do we know if this claim is even true?
| okamiueru wrote:
| The article is nothing but filled with citations. Are we
| looking at the same thing? All those quotes, and who said it,
| _are_ the citations. And all of them are traced to its
| respective sources.
| uniqueid wrote:
| If you have no proof of a 'media blackout' maybe you should shut
| your populist pie-hole until you do!
|
| Look at this garbage: But in a sane world,
| Stundin's revelations about a key Assange witness - that
| Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution - would
| have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage
| on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page
| stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more. The
| silence is quite extraordinary; and disturbing.
|
| Jesus.
| jrsj wrote:
| So you're saying unless there's evidence that someone is
| explicitly telling them not to talk about it, it doesn't
| matter? They pushed the narrative that he was guilty in the
| first place! They have a responsibility to make a correction
| and instead they say nothing.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I'm saying the author(s) of this piece shouldn't pass off
| their speculation, correct or not, as fact.
|
| Heck, my speculation is that the reason this article _does_
| overstate the case is to work readers up for more donations,
| but that 's different than knowing so as a fact.
| jrsj wrote:
| Personally I think the silence speaks for itself. If this
| wasn't a story they had previously covered (very
| aggressively) it would be different, but it's basically
| impossible that the media just doesn't know about this.
|
| Plus, they've all been pumping out anti-Assange propaganda
| at pretty much every opportunity. I don't think standards
| of absolute factual correctness really apply when you're
| criticizing organizations which regularly frame facts in a
| way which is deliberately misleading.
|
| And even if it were true that they are exaggerating to try
| to get donations...that's a lot less sinister than doing
| the bidding of the intelligence agencies in persecuting an
| innocent man for years. Regardless nobody is stopping you
| from making that claim, it's up to others to decide whether
| or not it's plausible.
| greesil wrote:
| But is it a blackout if it gets to the front page of HN?
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| HN isn't a media outlet. It doesn't have an editor, any
| journalists, or even news readers.
|
| Have you ever seen any original reporting here?
| greesil wrote:
| It's more a question about the visibility of information, and
| HN increases visibility. HN originating content is
| irrelevant.
|
| News about Assange is niche, that niche is here. Lack of
| mainstream reporting might not be a vast conspiracy. So I
| would say that this news has been surfaced appropriately to
| the correct audience, and not actually suppressed.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| If you want to be pedantic, HN also does not fact check its
| articles or comments. Nothing else supports HN being a
| media outlet or rebut this as a media blackout.
|
| There have been 20 articles in print and on the web
| mentioning Assange in the NY Times since 2021 began, avidly
| covering the details of his trial and extradition, but now
| nothing. If their search features are any indication, CNN
| doesn't believe you should seek out news as much as
| passively accept it-same pattern and then no recent
| mention.
|
| Reuters' latest article from 25 June in a break from the
| style of their previous coverage leaves out mention of the
| trial details entirely in favor of a human element story
| petitioning Biden free Assange "to show the US has
| changed". This narrative does little to exculpate Assange
| or share why the trial may be over for good while
| preempting any credit for what follows to the mercy and
| wisdom of Biden. Whether Biden ignores or denies, well,
| them's the laws, you know.
|
| If the whole rest of the town doesn't have power and you
| refuse to call it a blackout because you can see some
| people have working generators, you don't understand what a
| blackout is.
| greesil wrote:
| Your literal blackout analogy falls apart pretty quickly
| when you consider that this story lives in the attention
| economy, a seething ocean of information all vying for
| our eyeballs. It's more like there's a town (with power)
| and somewhere there a light that's blue and nobody can
| see it from the air, and you think everyone in an
| airplane should be able to see it. Maybe there is a vast
| conspiracy, but just because this one story didn't show
| up in in the mainstream news, reputable or otherwise,
| doesn't mean there's a conspiracy against blue lights.
| some_hacker wrote:
| It absolutely has an editor. The editor himself has
| repeatedly stated that the comments are "curated", which is a
| fancy word for heavily edited.
| some_hacker2 wrote:
| It absolutely has an editor. The editor himself has stated HN
| is "curated", which is a fancy word for heavily edited.
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| It's obvious the media are not unbiased.
|
| They'll go full throttle on something like WMDs, border crisis,
| lab leak cover ups, etc., but also be complicit in burying things
| like the new border crisis (which appear worse than Trumps) this
| witness recanting, etc., when it doesn't fit a narrative.
|
| It's concerning because there has to be some agenda somewhere for
| things to switch on and off like this.
|
| Russia is the biggest threat, no, China is the biggest threat.
| Oh, no Trump said that, they're not. But now they're the biggest
| again.
|
| It's not "pelosi" it's not the Congress, it's most likely what
| people derisively call the deep state. Unelected bureaucrats with
| inertial agendas that filter down to the media.
|
| I can't imagine the media running with this 24x7 to make up for
| their previous bias and asking for forgiveness and demanding the
| government come correct.
| jessaustin wrote:
| USA news media has always been biased. They used to be biased
| toward what would sell more papers, e.g. "Remember the Maine!"
| They still have that bias to some degree, but the overriding
| bias now that ownership rules have been scrapped is to report
| the interests of the five or six rich assholes who own most of
| our media. Since allied rich assholes control the military-
| industrial complex, we're constantly told to fear and murder
| brown people on the other side of the globe. Anyone, like
| Assange, who offers rational alternatives to that racist fear
| is sure to be the continual victim of biased reporting.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Anyone who says they're "unbiased" is lying.
|
| Everyone has biases.
|
| Is whether someone has the integrity to recognize and air them,
| while reporting matters of import that go against their own
| views/agenda.
| Clubber wrote:
| I'm not sure the media is complicit more-so than they are being
| manipulated by what they like / need: money; just as US
| corporations and through them the US government is being
| manipulated by what they need by China.
|
| We'll let you sell in our market as long as you sign away all
| your IP is the same as we'll let you in on presidential press
| meetings as long as you'll say nice things.
|
| Also, all those "anonymous" sources from "intelligence
| agencies" are information / propaganda plants. The CIA doesn't
| leak very often unintentionally, when it does, people get
| tortured (Manning / Assange) and/or exiled (Snowden).
| Dah00n wrote:
| >We'll let you sell in our market as long as you sign away
| all your IP is the same as we'll let you in on presidential
| press meetings as long as you'll say nice things.
|
| Those are not comparable at all though. One is a law that the
| US seem to believe is A Good Thing to try to enforce
| everywhere, but that doesn't make it universally true, while
| the other is preferential treatment (or corruption, abuse of
| power). One can be bad (it's not in this example IMO) while
| the other is always bad.
| Clubber wrote:
| They are both an example of short term gain at the expense
| of long term viability based on poor judgement influenced
| by money.
|
| _" The idea behind the trap is that you drill a hole in a
| log and drop a small shiny object in the hole, then you
| drive nails into the shaft. The raccoon will see the shiny
| object at the bottom and want it, so they reach into the
| hole and grab it, but once they grab it they can't pull
| their hand out because the of the nails that make the hole
| too small for their closed fist to get back through.
|
| It is simple to seek the hole in this plan, why can't the
| raccoon just let go of the object and pull their hand out?
| Billy's grandpa explains that the strange thing about
| raccoon are that they are too stubborn to let go of the
| shiny thing. Once a raccoon decides that it wants something
| it becomes so determined to have it that it will not stop
| until it get the thing. So the raccoon will sit there
| forever until it ether pulls it's fist out (which it
| won't,) or the hunter comes along. Another interesting
| thing is that raccoons are not the only animals that do
| this human do this as well."_
| sudosysgen wrote:
| IP is not a natural law. If a country doesn't want to enforce
| literal state control over your intellectual process or wants
| to enforce it in a more lax way, there is nothing wrong with
| that.
| exabrial wrote:
| Keep in mind this is just my opinion, not a statement of fact, as
| I do not have any inside details.
|
| The notion of neutral or unbiased media is a little strange IMHO;
| they're a for profit corporation, for one. The media has an
| agenda and it's usually to please the particular political party
| they favor.
|
| In this specific scenario, I don't think it's too hard to
| identify. Assange embarrassed key members of a certain American
| political party and likely cost them an entire election. It's one
| of those scenarios where if you don't conform you will be
| silenced.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| Who's a for-profit corporation? All of the media? There's
| thousands of sources. Many of which are actually non-profit.
|
| And speaking of bias, it's clear from leaked messages that
| Assange was targeting Dems and timed his releases to support
| Trump.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Assange embarrassed key members of a certain American
| political party and likely cost them an entire election
|
| Other people embarrass the GOP on a daily basis and they have
| daily nightly TV news shows.
|
| If you mean the other political party - they have a habit of
| losing elections _because_ they don 't fight dirty..., so I
| just don't see how that's a coherent argument.
|
| Now, if you're referring to _the establishment_, that's
| different - and it's not a political party _per se_.
| jrsj wrote:
| They literally fabricated an entire narrative about Russian
| collusion out of thin air and pushed it for years despite
| having little to no evidence. I wouldn't say they don't play
| dirty just because they've lost more than they've won since
| 1980
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| Not out of thin air. A Russian funded group leaked
| confidential information after a presidential candidate
| requested them to at a rally. It's worth investigating.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If you're being consistent, you must believe that the
| (Republican-led) Senate Intelligence Committee also
| fabricated a narrative when they wrote in their report:
|
| "It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the
| Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services'
| assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral
| process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in
| and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of
| the single most grave counterintelligence threats to
| American national security in the modern era."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee
| _...
| jrsj wrote:
| Yeah they pretty much did. The idea that purchasing
| Facebook ads & social media bots represents "one of the
| single most grave counterintelligence threats to American
| national security" is absurd.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Maybe there was more going on than "purchasing Facebook
| ads & social media bots", as evidenced by the fact that
| multiple members of Trump's campaign and (separately)
| Russian intelligence agents were indicted for conspiracy
| in 2017 and 2018.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the
| _20...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the
| _20...
| jrsj wrote:
| Papadopoulos fucked up and lied to the FBI which by
| itself is a felony. That's all he got caught up in,
| because nothing else he did was illegal. Manafort was
| arrested for unrelated financial crimes in an attempt to
| get him to cooperate in their investigation, which
| apparently led them nowhere. That's not much of evidence
| of anything. Then yes there were indictments of some
| Russian nationals & organizations, most of which were
| quickly dropped bc it was just political theater. The
| stuff that wasn't was really just unsubstantiated
| allegations that GRU was responsible for hacking the DNC.
|
| But now, let's look at what was done with the Steele
| Dossier before the election was even over. That was
| itself based largely on "Russian disinformation" and was
| used to obtain a FISA warrant and spy on the Trump
| campaign. It was obviously a garbage document from day 1,
| but they used it to "legally" spy on their political
| opponents anyways. That is imo far worse than anything
| that happened between Trump & Russia.
|
| For the record I'm not a Trump supporter either and I am
| generally left leaning, but it's clear to me that media &
| intelligence agencies really cannot be trusted as a
| result of the blatant lies they have pushed over the last
| few years. Just because I want universal healthcare etc
| doesn't mean I need to repeat "2 + 2 = 5" because some
| jerk off on TV told me to.
| swebs wrote:
| Well most outlets aren't really secretive of who they're
| rooting for.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...
| m1117 wrote:
| I wish Assange escaped to Russia and continued his venture.
| ineedasername wrote:
| From what I can tell from the article, this witness testified
| about hacking MP's. Was this the same witness that said Assange
| was-- at least attempting-- to provide support to Chelsea Manning
| hacking passwords?
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| The impact of media organizations discrediting and completely
| debasing themselves over Assange, but also Snowden and a host of
| other U.S. false issues related to the law enforcement and
| intelligence community and its contagion into social platforms is
| what has really cleaved the culture. These are bad people
| exploiting bad people to ensure that worse people can keep doing
| terrible things. It's capital-E evil.
|
| Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet
| infiltration of the university education system around the world
| in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has produced
| multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained to seek
| power for its own sake, and now they occupy our institutions at
| all levels and have used them to destroy the foundations of the
| culture and seize its means of production, while subordinating
| them to a global regime. All without firing a shot. The reason
| these people believe what they're doing is ok is because someone
| taught them that the ends justify the means.
|
| The Assange affair is just a symptom of a much more terrible
| disease, and this witness and the media compliance around him are
| about par for the course in all of this.
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure you have to keep pointing to the boogie man of
| soviet infiltrators to explain power hungry bureaucrats. Those
| have existed in literally every society since at least the
| early bronze age.
| evv555 wrote:
| True but what's different is the groupthink and "ends justify
| the means" mentality. There's a qualitative difference
| monocasa wrote:
| No, those features have also been intrinsic to bureaucrat
| classes as a whole since the dawn of organized society.
|
| Bueracrats are sort of like neurons in the organism of
| society. They don't have a lot individual intrisic power,
| but gain power by moving to common (albeit very complex)
| beat, and commanding the other types of cells according to
| the machinations of that emergent beat. That manifests as
| both groupthink as they attempt to play their part in the
| neural system as a whole, and "ends justify the means"
| mentality as they look at the rest of us as other
| specialized cells that exist to serve the societal organism
| as a whole.
|
| I guarantee you that on average a 15th century BCE Egyptian
| bureaucrat trended the same way, as it's core to the space.
| evv555 wrote:
| Devil is in the details and I also guarantee you there
| are important differences between how western bureaucrats
| operate and how they operate in USSR/elsewhere despite
| any commonalities that can be drawn.
| monocasa wrote:
| I've never said there weren't differences. Only that the
| specific aspects being pointed out in this thread as
| signs of continuing soviet corruption of American values
| are actually aspects of bureaucracy as a whole older than
| recorded history.
| evv555 wrote:
| There's a difference between operating within the
| constructs of power and having a reductionist worldview
| of power. The 2nd one is more like a self-fulfilling
| prophecy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's Russians all the way down, trying to impurify our
| precious bodily fluids.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I'm not sure you have to keep pointing to the boogie man of
| soviet infiltrators to explain power hungry bureaucrats.
| Those have existed in literally every society since at least
| the early bronze age.
|
| No, I'd say power hunger is one thing, but what you face now
| is unique to this poisonous "Soviet Culture." A very special,
| aggressive brand of social nihilism at the apex of civil
| society, characteristic of one party/social class
| governments.
|
| Putin put his own spin on the timeless demoralisation tactic
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA ,) an even more
| aggressive targeting of both the new elites, and the
| establishment (see Biden Jr. adventures with in Ukraine.) Or
| plainly speaking playing both sides.
| dandersh wrote:
| "No, I'd say power hunger is one thing, but what you face
| now is unique to this poisonous "Soviet Culture." A very
| special, aggressive brand of social nihilism at the apex of
| civil society, characteristic of one party/social class
| governments"
|
| What you're describing is late stage capitalism.
|
| ""Did we aggressively fight against some of the science?
| Yes," Keith McCoy, the Exxon (XOM) lobbyist, said during a
| covertly filmed job interview recorded by Greenpeace's UK
| investigative platform.
|
| "Did we join some shadow groups to work against some of the
| early efforts? Yes, that's true," McCoy said in the video,
| which was published Wednesday by the UK's Channel 4. "But
| there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for
| our investments. we were looking out for our shareholders."
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/01/business/exxon-tape-video-
| kei...
|
| The reframing of a company's purpose to "generate
| shareholder's wealth" is a relatively recent development
| (1970's) that came on the heels of right wing economic
| ideas gaining widespread adoption in American universities
| (Chicago School, etc). This is one of the reasons companies
| use to justify destruction of society and the planet in the
| pursuit of more, wealth, power, status, etc.
|
| There is nothing "Soviet Culture" about this or myriad
| other examples such as the tobacco industry or
| pharmaceutical companies and the opioid epidemic.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There is nothing "Soviet Culture" about this or myriad
| other examples such as the tobacco industry or
| pharmaceutical companies and the opioid epidemic.
|
| Exactly this is a very good example of it being Randist,
| and Soviet.
|
| They believed in extreme social darwinism, in kratocracy,
| in moral legitimacy of their economic parasitism to feed
| off "weak bourgeois, civil society idiots, and lumpen-
| proletarian serfs"
|
| I other words, you have to feed fat communist bastards
| because of their self-proclaimed "class superiority."
| monocasa wrote:
| Putin's tactics are postmodern, a philosophy that at it's
| core (despite right wing propaganda around the terms) is
| intrinsically anti Marxist.
|
| Seeing the ghosts of soviets in every dark corner is
| something that these very elites we're talking about use to
| control you and your perceptions of reality.
| evv555 wrote:
| >Putin's tactics are postmodern, a philosophy that at
| it's core (despite right wing propaganda around the
| terms) is intrinsically anti Marxist.
|
| That's not true. Postmodernism and Frankfurt School of
| Marxism are synonymous in todays culture. However I agree
| that late stage postmodernism is almost indistinguishable
| from Real Politik. End result is the same if your
| worldview reduces everything to power plays between
| collectives.
| monocasa wrote:
| Postmodernism was a reaction to movements like Frankfurt
| School which is pretty much peak Modern. You can see that
| in how pretty much the only consistent part of
| postmodernism is rejecting cognitive structures and
| abstractions for interpreting society like the example
| you gave of "reduc[ing] everything to power plays between
| collectives."
| evv555 wrote:
| A reaction that builds upon and encapsulates Marxist
| meta-narratives. Yes in theory postmodernism can point to
| a diverse set of perspectives but in practice it's
| homogenous groupthink within a Marxist meta-narrative.
| End result is people operating in worldviews consisting
| of moral relativism and variations of "Marxist
| struggles". It's a worldview that has conflict intrinsic
| to it.
| monocasa wrote:
| Postmodernism is literally founded on the idea of
| rejecting meta-narratives.
|
| Lyotard in fact defines postmodernism as "incredulity to
| meta-narratives".
| evv555 wrote:
| Exactly... Postmodernism isn't a logically consistent
| worldview, almost by definition.
|
| It's full of performative contradictions in practice.
|
| Hence the need for "safe spaces". It doesn't stand up to
| logical discourse when its application is confronted.
| monocasa wrote:
| The rejection of meta-narratives is the underlying theme
| of postmodernism, and is common throughout it.
|
| I would suggest you dig deeper into these concepts, as
| you seem to have basic misunderstandings about what they
| mean.
|
| And there's nothing wrong with safe spaces. You're not
| owed "logical discourse" on your terms. People sometimes
| just want to occasionally not be bothered by every bro
| who thinks that because they've watched a lot of Jordan
| Peterson videos that they're suddenly on the pinnacle of
| philosophical thought. It's tiring in a way orthogonal to
| the validity of any points being made. Additionally safe
| spaces aren't typically where instruction is held, and,
| despite the propaganda, not an effective way to avoid
| topics completely by design.
| evv555 wrote:
| >The rejection of meta-narratives is the underlying theme
| of postmodernism, and is common throughout it.
|
| Sure that's the theme. A theme that's intertwined with
| Marxist meta-narratives. Like I said, performative
| contradiction.
|
| >I would suggest you dig deeper into these concepts, as
| you seem to have basic misunderstandings about what they
| mean.
|
| Internet stranger trying to appeal to his own authority.
| Great argument
|
| >And there's nothing wrong with safe spaces. You're not
| owed "logical discourse" on your terms.
|
| There's nothing wrong with it. It's in the context of
| Marxist meta-narratives that it becomes toxic.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Putin's tactics are postmodern, a philosophy that at
| it's core (despite right wing propaganda around the
| terms) is intrinsically anti Marxist.
|
| This is what they want the West to believe. They want you
| to lower your guard, they want you to start working with
| them, and put thoughts like "hey, maybe those guys are a
| lesser evil than communists" into your head.
|
| They rely on people who they call "useful idiots"
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) in
| communist lingo to perpetuate, and spread such ideas to
| the West.
| monocasa wrote:
| > This is what they want the West to believe. They want
| you to lower your guard, they want you to start working
| with them, and put thoughts like "hey, maybe those guys
| are a lesser evil than communists" into your head.
|
| They're doing a terrible job then. They've somehow
| created an even worse society for Russians as far as I
| can tell.
|
| > They rely on people who they call "useful idiots"
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) in
| communist lingo to perpetuate, and spread such ideas to
| the West.
|
| You realize that your citation of Useful Idiot literally
| points out that there's no record of the term actually
| being used by the soviets, but instead appears to have
| been first used by the New York Times?
| 46756e wrote:
| Agreed, I think better explanation is much more simple:
|
| Those that will do anything for power have an advantage over
| others, ergo people at high level positions are
| disproportionately those types of people.
| jl2718 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/12733011644199526
| 4...
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Those that will do anything for power have an advantage
| over others, ergo people at high level positions are
| disproportionately those types of people.
|
| One thought is that we could try to fix that problem with
| some type of screening, but that would be another system to
| game or corrupt. Also, those kind of people (high ambition
| and drive) can be really useful in those positions so long
| as they don't go off the rails.
| m12k wrote:
| I like the solution from Hitchhiker's Guide to the
| Galaxy: Elect some random person as president of the
| galaxy, but don't tell him about it. Just have
| conversations with him to find out what he thinks about
| things, but don't let him know that you actually run the
| galaxy based on these conversations. If power corrupts,
| make it impossible to seek power, and don't let the
| person that wields it know that they have it.
| pram wrote:
| This isn't correct iirc. Zaphod definitely knew he was
| president. The government didn't consult him about
| anything, he was just a distraction.
| m12k wrote:
| I wasn't talking about Zaphod.
| https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Ruler_of_the_Universe
| justinclift wrote:
| That could go seriously badly if the random person
| happened to have extreme views. :/
| 46756e wrote:
| Also it just moves the problem one person down the line.
|
| So the new most powerful position is the person that
| knows who runs the galaxy and talks to her/him. That
| person can make up things or sway the ruler.
|
| If you have many people, you now just have an oligarchy.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This is pretty much how the Shogunate in Japan worked.
|
| Once a single war lord controls the "security" of the
| Emperor, they then wield power and justify all of there
| actions based on sole access to the Emperor.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This reminds me of the "Goldilocks" strategy the DoD
| supposedly uses when presenting a President with a menu
| of military options:
|
| 1. Very extreme militaristic response that will surely
| cause many deaths. Clearly unacceptable.
|
| 2. Very weak bordering on non-existent response. Clearly
| unacceptable.
|
| 3. What pentagon has already decided to do. Clearly the
| "only" viable option.
| kylestlb wrote:
| Seize the means of production...? That has an actual meaning
| and I don't think that's what you're describing. I assure you
| that hasn't happened in the US yet. The means of production
| have generally been controlled by the ruling elite since the
| founding of the nation.
| evv555 wrote:
| Bureaucracies aren't "means or production"? It's the rough
| equivalent of Lenin capturing railroads and other key
| infrastructure.
| kylestlb wrote:
| According to whom? There is a pretty strict definition of
| means of production, as it was labeled by Marx & Engels,
| and 'bureaucracy' as a concept isn't it.
|
| Adding on to this: there is no rough equivalent to Lenin
| capturing the railroads in the USA, at all. The bourgeoise
| have controlled the means of production from 1776 til now.
|
| Who owns amazon fulfillment centers? Who owns media
| companies? Who owns airlines? If it ain't the workers, then
| nobody has seized the means of production.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Bureaucracies are not the means of production. Actually,
| Marx specifically sees bureaucracy as the polar opposite of
| the means of production, and a large part of Marxism is
| that the bureaucracy and other state apparatus molds itself
| to the owners of the means of production.
|
| Railroads and infrastructure are the means of production
| because they're the material things that are required to
| produce other material things.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Dr Robert Malone got censored for speaking out about some of
| the research being done on Covid Vaccines, including having his
| name wiped from the Wikipedia article about the invention of
| mRNA tech and having his premium LinkedIn account deleted.
| Enough to make a person suspicious...
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Over the last 50 years capitalism has gotten everything it
| wanted - extremely free trade with minimal tariffs,
| international agreements on IP and corporate law, and the
| freedom to offshore production to any number of less-than-
| democratic states where labor is cheap. And you're saying that
| this capitalist utopia is the result of _soviet_ infiltration?
| That 's a little hard to believe.
|
| All of the media organizations discrediting and debasing
| themselves are private companies who prioritize ROI above
| anything else. They're not run by bureaucrats, but by amoral
| capitalists. The universities themselves are also increasingly
| run "like a business".
|
| It takes some serious blinders to look at the consequence of 50
| years of free market maximalism and say: "This is the work of
| the communists".
| user764743 wrote:
| Blaming another country for your own corruption is just another
| form of propaganda.
| simonh wrote:
| Indeed. Some citizens in your country having common beliefs
| or interests as people in another country is their own
| business. We all have allies and like minded people abroad.
| Maligning fellow citizens as foreign dupes is a common and
| despicable tactic. If you find actual evidence of specific
| crimes, prosecute them, otherwise it's just dirt flinging.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Good analysis - the key thing is that Marxism is corrosive to
| the truth. Everything it touches turns to evil.
|
| The ultimate example of that is forced organ harvesting in
| China, used to fund their national hospital sysem for CCP
| members, which illustrates how immoral Marxism can get.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet
| infiltration of the university education system
|
| What, not into our precious bodily fluids[1]?
|
| This is a facile explanation. America's politics and culture
| over the last 80 years have first and foremost been a
| _reaction_ to the perceived threat of the Soviets. There's no
| particular reason, _especially_ as the United States remains
| remarkably conservative for a developed nation, to blame things
| on a country that's been gone for over 30 years.
|
| [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
| baybal2 wrote:
| > There's no particular reason, especially as the United
| States remains remarkably conservative for a developed
| nation, to blame things on a country that's been gone for
| over 30 years.
|
| The USSR is gone, but the CPSU is alive, and kicking under a
| new brand, more determined, aggressive leader, and as a
| highly distilled, more pure mafia than it was before, without
| even a pretence of behaving like statesmen.
| plankers wrote:
| The CPSU was banned in Russia 29 years ago.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The CPSU was banned in Russia 29 years ago.
|
| And then then it instantly reassembled itself under a new
| name.
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| I think this needs clarified, are you be referring to the
| communist party or United Russia. The communist party has
| practical no influence outside of Russia and like most
| opposition parties, little internally either. United
| Russia is absolutely not Communist, statist yes,
| communist no.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > United Russia is absolutely not Communist, statist yes,
| communist no.
|
| At some point they were 90%+ ex-CPSU members, and somehow
| they are still not communist?
|
| 90% communist, and still not communist? Well, lets call
| them 10% non-communists then, if you want.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The CPSU was were anyone that sought power went.
|
| There were people that literally read Friedman and
| wholeheartedly agreed that were in the CPSU.
|
| Hell, Yeltsin was the 7th most powerful man in the CPSU.
| He wasn't much of a communist.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > At some point they were 90%+ ex-CPSU members, and
| somehow they are still not communist?
|
| So? China's actual Communist party isn't exactly very
| communist anymore.
|
| I'd say the CPSU is dead, but some of its members who
| liked power shifted with the political winds.
|
| I'm not as familiar with Russia, but it wouldn't surprise
| me if Putin's ideology is power-for-its-own-sake and
| nationalism, in that order.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I'd say the CPSU is dead, but some of its members who
| liked power more than communism shifted with the
| political winds.
|
| What is communism? Peace in the world, and utopia for
| workers?
|
| Or more like mafia-serfdom-militarist system, where
| actual proletariat are put lowest of the low, and abused
| by everybody on the party ladder, and what USSR actually
| was for most of its history?
|
| The CPSU never, ever cared for one, and even lowest tiers
| in the party were fully aware of this.
|
| In this, it's true that the communist party of the soviet
| union never ever been the dictionary definition of
| communism (which they themselve defined) It was a cynical
| kratocratic cult without any morals.
| tablespoon wrote:
| I guess the point is "communism" was just a flag of
| convenience for those people, so it doesn't make sense to
| call them by that if they don't use that flag anymore,
| and especially if that flag is now used by others.
| fsloth wrote:
| According to the excellent book "Putin's people" by
| Catherine Belton the people who are running the show now
| were more aligned with the KGB rather than the party.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > more aligned with the KGB rather than the party.
|
| What was "the party?" The party itself been the puppet
| of:
|
| 1. KGB
|
| 2. Interior ministry
|
| 3. Military
|
| Which were the real power behind it, and essentially were
| the source of CPSU policy, with ordinary low rank members
| being mere "shesterkas" errand boys.
|
| So now what was the actual political force running the
| CPSU is now having an even more direct control of Russia,
| and without military, and MVD competing with them for
| power.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The CPSU was never even remotely the puppet of the KGB.
| The KGB had so little influence in the party that they
| weren't able to influence it without coups. All of which
| failed.
|
| The Politburo was always the head of the party.
| woodruffw wrote:
| What does one of Russia's opposition parties have to do
| with the state of the media in the US?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Opposition? The true CPSU successor has recently won an
| election there, scoring up to 146% of the vote in some
| regions.
| woodruffw wrote:
| My understanding (which, again, is completely irrelevant
| to this thread) is that Putin and his party are still in
| complete control of Russia, at least in all ways that
| matter. But again, I fail to see what Russia's myriad
| dysfunctionalities have to do with the topic at hand.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I fail to see what Russia's myriad dysfunctionalities
| have to do with the topic at hand.
|
| I'll explain. See, the thread starter says that US now
| reaps the consequences from letting people subverted by
| soviet idiological subversion into the circles of power.
|
| Then people say its all irrelevant as USSR is no more.
|
| Then, I come here and tell to people to open snap out of
| this. The former CPSU is not only still around, but is
| even more aggressive, and concerted at idiological
| subversion.
|
| Now, they are putting an even bigger priority on melding
| themselves into American political elites, and
| bureaucracy.
|
| How many more Hunter Bidens are there waiting to join
| American political establishment? Hundreds? Thousands?
| Tens of thousands?
| jessaustin wrote:
| _Tens of thousands?_
|
| I didn't realize that USA national politicians were so
| _virile_.
| jrsj wrote:
| Our own officials, agencies, etc are involved in this stuff &
| media cooperated with them. The CIA has been using both foreign
| and domestic "journalism" as a weapon for pretty much as long
| as it's existed. If anything, our own practices got worse
| because of our reaction to Soviet infiltration not as a direct
| result of the thing itself.
| simonh wrote:
| That's interesting, and I know from the Bezmenov video and
| commentary on it Barak Obama is supposed to be the prime
| example of a Marxist infiltrator promoting the rot from the
| inside.
|
| Except - Obama chose not to prosecute Assange because of
| potential collateral damage to independent journalism, a well
| known major concern of Soviet infiltrators (er...). It's only
| after Trump came to power that his administration got the ball
| rolling on prosecution and offering Thordarson an immunity
| deal. It's all in the article.
|
| So what's the contention, that Trump's administration was the
| result of a Marxist inspired Russian plot to subvert the
| universities in the 60s? Well, that's a new one.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Ah yes, it must have been the virus of communism that caused
| this. Red-blooded Americans who are pure of heart are not
| tempted by the siren songs of careerism, cronyism, nationalism,
| or corruption.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet
| infiltration of the university education system around the
| world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has
| produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained
| to seek power for its own sake, and now they occupy our
| institutions at all levels and have used them to destroy the
| foundations of the culture and seize its means of production
|
| ...
|
| ...what?
| [deleted]
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I'm sorry, but pinning this on soviet infiltration is hilarious
| and is ironically the result of the exact debasement and
| exploitation you decry.
|
| In reality, this kind of thing has been going on in the US
| since the late 19th century. It's a 100% normal thing and there
| is absolutely no need for an ebil gommunist boogeyman for it.
|
| What you're seeing is those precious institutions operating as
| intended and as they always did. Just like they do pretty much
| everywhere.
| [deleted]
| antman wrote:
| If it wasn't for you I would not have figured out that the
| Russians are behind this too. But surely the Chinese must have
| also played some part?
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| How convenient that all that ails us is always the work of
| our Enemies.
|
| Never responsible, never accountable, and most importantly,
| never wrong.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I sort of think you and antman might actually be in
| agreement here.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, yeah pretty sure that was sarcasm.
| antman wrote:
| OK I will admit I am not convinced, but you know what, if
| compelling arbitrary assumptions against the chinese come
| up I might make my mind, openmindedness and all.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| You left out Iran.
| simonh wrote:
| And the Venezuelan communists that rigged the election.
| jancsika wrote:
| I've never read a first paragraph more fully undermined by the
| rank speculation of your second paragraph.
|
| I'm imagining a teacher giving eloquent explanation of discrete
| Fourier transform to students, then going on claim that the
| whole purpose is compute horoscopes for cats.
| roody15 wrote:
| " the ends justify the means."
|
| I do agree that this sentiment now extends to almost all power
| and influence institutions.
|
| News outlets produce stories solely as a commodity to influence
| behavior on behalf of large corporations (paid) or government
| entities. Journalism integrity is at a all time low in the US
| and honestly doesn't look good moving into the future.
|
| Really kind of dystopian :/
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > News outlets produce stories solely as a commodity to
| influence behavior on behalf of large corporations (paid) or
| government entities.
|
| That would be a big story if true.
| jessaustin wrote:
| This is common knowledge [0], but the common person has
| come to this conclusion on her own without the help of
| media. That this would never be "a story" of any size is
| the point of this discussion.
|
| [0] https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/us-ranks-
| last-amon...
| usefulcat wrote:
| "The impact of media organizations discrediting and completely
| debasing themselves... is what has really cleaved the culture."
|
| Really, that's what did it? I'd wager that a majority of
| Americans don't even know who Assange or Snowden are, much less
| care about them. I think constantly living in self-selected
| information bubbles might be just a tad more significant..
| cudgy wrote:
| Having a hard time thinking of any self-selected bubbles that
| are not aware of Assange or Snowden given that the two big
| political bubbles have been both assisted (and embarrassed)
| by Wikileaks.
| pessimizer wrote:
| According to HN, people only care about privacy on HN.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Personally I think we could probably trace it back to soviet
| infiltration of the university education system around the
| world in the 60's and 70's
|
| The Soviet Union is over, you can't keep relying on the Red
| Scare any more.
|
| I mean, there definitely _are_ problems with US media -
| concentrated ownership and a reliance on hyperbole, as well as
| pundits who retreat behind the "it's entertainment, no
| reasonable person would have taken what I said seriously"
| defense when sued over their lies. But wheeling out McCarthyism
| again is ridiculous.
| evv555 wrote:
| I'm from the USSR and I don't think it's a red scare this
| time. There's legitimate concern.
| xnyan wrote:
| >soviet infiltration of the university education system around
| the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has
| produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Source
| please?
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov who speaks at
| length about the strategy.
|
| https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA
| jessaustin wrote:
| Posting this _twice_ in the same subthread would have been
| enough. [EDIT:] Thanks for deleting the other references!
| kylestlb wrote:
| Pretty sure the user is making sock puppet accounts
| because I also see this link elsewhere on this thread...
| wish I had the power to report it.
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| babybal2 is another user, it's just that this video is a
| rather effective piece of propaganda.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| OP here. Not sure about other people posting it but it's
| a pretty well known interview. What makes it propaganda?
| Do you have a better source for what the IC communities
| of other countries are doing to weaken our institutions
| than a defector from a rival country? What do you think
| our very own CIA does with the opaque budget we provide
| it with every year?
|
| The same thing. They do the same thing. Don't turn a
| blind eye to it.
|
| Also the Assange case is near and dear to a lot of
| people. It's evil what's happening to him. And the only
| reason it continues to happen is because of the silent
| consent of people who really probably have no idea what
| our intelligence agencies are doing and because of the
| cultivated ineptitude at some of our important
| institutions.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Yes, CIA does all sorts of horrible things. (On January 6
| I remarked that events in Washington reminded me of
| similar events in Latin American capitals. Bad thoughts!)
| I'm sure KGB did as well, while it still existed. I'm
| even prepared to consider that USA college professors
| have done some bad things. Some professors may even have
| implied that communism _isn 't_ the most terrible
| invention of humanity.
|
| All of that is true without doubt. But why listen to this
| guy? "Bezmenov" literally translates to "nameless". [0]
| He claims in this video to be a propagandist with a
| history of producing propaganda. His specific claims
| (e.g. the 15%/85% thing) are totally unverifiable. (And
| by the way, that does the 15%/85% thing imply about CIA,
| FBI, etc? Whose opinion do they really want to
| influence?) Listening to him reminds me mostly of the
| "incubator babies" girl. If you already believe what he's
| saying, maybe it's reassuring. If you don't, it won't
| convince you.
|
| I still don't understand why this character fascinates
| you so. I honestly wish that more of my schoolmates had
| been convinced of the benefits of communism. I wasn't,
| but I would appreciate a modicum of ideological variety.
| Clearly the way we're doing things in this country is
| fucked up, and there is very little public discussion of
| that fact that doesn't boil down to red-blue distraction.
| Let's try _anything_ else. Ghosts of the Cold War might
| imply something _not_ to do, but they aren 't the
| solution to our problems.
|
| [0] https://translate.google.com/?sl=sk&tl=en&text=Bezmen
| ov&op=t...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| That this was attempted is true. To what degree it succeeded
| is a matter of argument.
|
| Directly from a KGB defector lecture on this topic.
|
| Yuri Bezmenov - Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of
| Western Society Complete Lecture
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwDdJsdYM3g
| monocasa wrote:
| Defectors nearly always parrot prevailing scare tactics of
| a society, regardless of the veracity of those statements.
| You can see that today with North Korean defectors. Is
| North Korea an awful country with mind boggling human
| rights violations? Absolutely. Are North Korean defectors
| heavily incentived to come up with increasingly out there
| stories, even stories that are contradicted by their
| previous stories because they're shunned by ROK society at
| large and have trouble finding other sources of income than
| selling tales to the media that won't be fact checked? Also
| true.
| mahogany wrote:
| Why do you believe this man is who he says he is? Why do
| you take what he says to be true at face value?
|
| I find it amusing how people bring up Soviet propaganda in
| schools and always link this same video to this _one_
| person (who criticizes the inability to assess true
| information), while simultaneously not questioning whether
| or not they are consuming propaganda themselves. Wouldn 't
| it be funny if this guy is a CIA plant repeating neocon
| talking points from the 80s?
|
| When I traced back any of the sources that "confirmed" his
| past, they always dead-ended at his own writing in papers.
| I'd be interested if you have something else that confirms
| that this is a "KGB defector".
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| He has a wikipedia page, with more information on him.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov
|
| As someone that grew up in a totalitarian communist
| government. What Yuri speaks is consistent with my lived
| experience of how the communists acted to maintain power,
| in a country they occupied.
| mahogany wrote:
| The sources used in that article that mention his Soviet
| life are this very Youtube video(!), his own writings
| (sometimes under a pseudonym), a single newspaper
| obituary with no sources except quotes from people that
| knew him, or the CIA. I don't find any of that
| particularly convincing, especially when the topic is
| "propaganda".
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Circular Wikipedia quotes are an amazing propaganda tool
| in that its a sure fire way to invent evidence for the
| status quo.
| scandox wrote:
| Bezmenov is great fun but he's hardly trustworthy. His
| whole professional life was in propaganda. It's like the
| scorpion crossing the river on the foxes back. He just has
| to sting.
| donthateme wrote:
| > soviet infiltration of the university education system around
| the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has
| produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained
| to seek power for its own sake
|
| _buckles seatbelt_
|
| More like produced generations of social warriors who push
| critical theory and oppressor/oppressed dynamics wherever they
| can to disrupt society much like what has been happening
| visibly in the US for the past 15 years.
|
| The globalist media corps of today are literally doing this to
| a T with their viewership in lock step with Alinsky's "Rules
| for Radicals", wedging and destroying any semblance of unified
| culture in the US in the name of ...social justice? Does anyone
| here really think these multinationals or their political
| operatives give a single f*ck about whether we have due
| oversight into our secretive branches of govt or tangible
| social equity and mobility in the US?
|
| Soviet infiltration is a boogeyman, but if anyone wants to read
| about actual university infiltration, much of it can be
| credited to academics from the Frankfurt School who immigrated
| post-WW2 - Marcuse, Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno - individuals
| that set and grew awareness of an ideological framework that is
| actively dismantling cultures and societies all over the
| Western world.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I think you are letting your imagination come up with elaborate
| explanations when very simple ones are available. Soviet
| infiltration? Come on dude. Seeking power for it's own sake is
| not uniquely soviet and predates any imagined university
| infiltration.
| agency wrote:
| Yeah this is some John Birch Society level shit. The Soviets
| invented being power hungry? The US has used its own brand of
| Realpolitik to maintain its empire since long before it was
| "infiltrated by the Soviets," and has nearly always been co-
| signed by the media apparatus.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Seeking power is the goal. But the way to achieve it is
| through consensus building. So you need ideas and an ideology
| to rally people around you. Like for example these two
| intellectuals that overtly had the goal of subverting
| society. They came up with an actual plan how to go about
| doing it.
|
| Antonio Gramsci https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdsSIWh_VkQ
|
| Theodor Adorno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw
|
| That intellectual subversion, and propaganda is and was a
| political tool is fairly obvious to anyone that has lived
| under a totalitarian government.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > soviet infiltration of the university education system around
| the world in the 60's and 70's, which within a lifetime has
| produced multiple generations of nihilistic bureaucrats trained
| to seek power for its own sake
|
| It is only a small cookie in comparison to what people in USSR
| had to deal daily. Regular bureaucrats being bastards was a
| given, the only difference being how much. From customary "f__k
| off attitude," to ones laughing, and spitting you in the face
| while waving their party member card.
|
| I don't have many ideas how to build a system to keep non-
| appointed government workers in line. Any kind of promotion
| system can get corrupted in its own way. There is no magic
| bullet.
|
| What the West got right in general about bureaucracy were
| these:
|
| 1. Less government officers as such
|
| 2. Them being given less duties
|
| 3. Good distance in between them (this is what is getting
| eroded lately, with government service becoming a monolith with
| rich law schools)
|
| Bad things, and bad class culture perpetuate faster than good
| ones, and is in generally more resilient against deliberate
| campaigns for cleansing institutions.
|
| Taking the example of Georgia (a country of,) it was proven to
| be much easier to oust small time habitual bribe takers,
| nihilists, or poor performing bureaucrats, than "talented
| villains" who are both more hardcore in their ill, and are
| better at hiding their crimes, bad ideological stances, or
| underperformance.
|
| If you kick out those half-corrupted people, but pass a few
| completely rotten ones, you often empower the later. They can
| quickly recruit more co-conspirators from new bloods, and
| corrupt their surroundings more completely. Paradoxically,
| half-hearted purges in state institutes can often exacerbate
| the problem by "distilling the poison."
|
| It takes generations, or an extreme shock therapy to disrupt
| such institutional nihilism.
| throwaway1203as wrote:
| Throwaway because I do not want to be ostracized.
|
| Thank you for pointing out the Soviet angle in this.
|
| Others criticize this angle, saying either that the Soviet
| Union doesn't exist or that America has always been this way.
| The first point is not a good argument, because while the
| Soviet Union as a political entity does not exist, the ideas it
| created and the culture it spread still do. The second point is
| more difficult to refute because we can only rely on historical
| sources, which may sway one way or the other, depending on
| what's deemed "right" by the current culture in academia. So my
| refutation, even though weak, is this: short of the North vs
| the South, the US has not been divided into two clean camps the
| way it is now.
|
| > The reason these people believe what they're doing is ok is
| because someone taught them that the ends justify the means.
|
| This is an important point to keep in mind. Look, we don't even
| expect the media or politicians to say anything that has any
| attachment to reality. Because the ends justify the means, it's
| ok to warp reality just to score points for your team.
|
| For example, check out this piece about the lab leak theory by
| Yglesias, formerly of Vox: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-
| medias-lab-leak-fiasco
|
| It clearly shows that the media was interested in the actual
| state of reality for maybe a few hours, then the issue got
| divided into camps, and then everything written about this
| issue was _complete fiction_ where the only goal was to show
| either CHINA BAD or RED TRIBE BAD.
|
| For another take on this, I recommend reading Politics is for
| Power (2020) by Eitan Hersh. He doesn't point out the problem
| I'm talking about explicitly. Instead, he describes it as 2
| groups so focused on gaming the system to get votes that they
| don't actually do anything else -- it's all canvassing,
| donating, calling, etc. but no actually talking with voters,
| making plans, figuring out compromises.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that
| support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue
| purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political
| party.
|
| It's hard to put a finger on just how much the current form of
| western democracy differs from the 18th century ideal of western
| democracy. Let this concretize it: Global western "democracy"
| conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the
| past decade in jail indefinitely on fictitious charges and
| virtually nobody cares. Where are the protests? Where is the
| outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is?
|
| "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit
| overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most
| people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based
| entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe
| that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about
| if it's not 'party firmly over principle'?
| jude- wrote:
| > Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most
| Americans even know who Julian Assange is?
|
| Why should anyone trust Julian Assange in the first place?
| Specifically, why should anyone trust that Julian Assange dumps
| _all_ the data Wikileaks receives, _when_ it receives it,
| instead of selectively disclosing whatever Julian wants
| whenever it suits him? The latter behavior, which has borne
| out, constitutes the actions of someone with a hidden agenda
| who should _not_ be trusted.
|
| Like, what has Julian done to earn our trust, and demonstrate
| that he is being completely forthright and transparent?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Assange maintained that he was fine in the UK, but worried
| about Sweden because it would be easier for the US to extradite
| from Sweden.
|
| That's quite simply a load of bollocks. The UK has been pally
| with the US, was involved in Iraq with the US, and willing to
| extradite far more than Sweden in the past.
| monocasa wrote:
| Sweden has previously been happy to circumvent their own
| legal process and simply assist CIA operatives in kidnapping
| Swedish residents right off of the street in the middle of
| the night. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahme
| d_Agiza_an...
|
| The UK doesn't even typically allow rendition flights to even
| refuel, and absolutely requires all extraditions to go
| through the strict legal process. I think it's mainly a pride
| thing about not rolling over and letting a former colony run
| amok extrajudicially in your homeland.
|
| I can see why he didn't want to step on Swedish soil if he
| got a hint of US led shenanigans.
| tikiman163 wrote:
| It's quite interesting you should mention political affiliation
| and facism. Did you know that when the DNC emails were hacked
| and released via WikiLeaks as if they were exposing a major
| scandal that the RNC had also been hacked by the same people,
| yet no emails were released at the time? Considering just how
| much information about Republicans meeting with corporate
| donors and just how directly that results in Republican
| legislation, it's quite hard to believe the DNC emails which
| exposed essentially nothing were the only thing worth exposing.
| Assange facilitated this partisan assault on the American
| political system.
|
| Do you have any idea how much Assange and WikiLeaks has
| cooperated/collaborated with Russian agents? The US 2016
| elections were a shit show in no small part due to WikiLeaks
| releasing only the Democrats emails. Zero Republican emails
| were leaked, and the most damning part of this is that the
| released Democrat emails were completely innocuous, but when a
| website called WikiLeaks releases a huge bulk of emails they've
| labeled as suspicious or scandalous, stupid people jump to
| unsupported conclusions and you end up with unqualified
| politicians undermining democracy, and we're not the only
| country this happened to. Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of
| participating in Russian attempts to spread disinformation in
| support of the Russian's agenda at a bare minimum.
|
| Assange might not be guilty of being the kind of traitor we
| traditionally think of, but he's still a dangerous individual
| that will help overthrow legitimate governments by
| misrepresenting illegal activities as exposing scandals, none
| of which actually exist.
|
| So tell me again, how exactly is Julian Assange the single most
| hard hitting journalist of the last decade? Very little of what
| he claimed turned out to be accurate, and he participated in
| withholding information from the public which actually did have
| a chance of exposing serious political corruption. I might also
| remind you that despite essentially being a partisan shill for
| the Republicans (greatly helping them win in 2014 and 2016),
| they attempted to put him in jail as well.
|
| The problem isn't that a lot of Democrat rank and file want to
| see Assange in jail, it's that way to many Republican rank and
| file haven't seen him for the liar and yellow journalist he
| his.
| pacifist wrote:
| Context is needed: Assange was the darling of the Dems until
| they won the presidency and started getting hit with leaks
| via Wikileaks too. So yeah, political affiliation does count,
| on the part of the Dems. And no, this stuff doesn't happen in
| a vacuum.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Neo from the Matrix shows up with actual information in
| real life, and thousands of Agent Smiths fall all over
| themselves trying to explain to each other why they have
| just cause to murder him.
| pacifist wrote:
| Unfortunately analogies to The Matrix abound in the US
| these days. Most people get their information from 6
| mainstream media corporations that were left(down from
| 50) after the 1996 Telecommunications Act eliminated
| restrictions on monopolies in media. That's 6
| billionaires determining what everyone gets as news. So
| yeah, welcome to the matrix: red pill or blue?
| isoskeles wrote:
| > Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of participating in
| Russian attempts to spread disinformation in support of the
| Russian's agenda at a bare minimum.
|
| What disinformation? They were hacked emails, the contents of
| which were authentic. Any disinformation involved would be
| intentional misinterpretation of the emails, which trolls on
| 4chan did, not Julian Assange or WikiLeaks afaik. Trolls on
| 4chan should never be taken seriously.
|
| Also, is there any evidence that WikiLeaks had access to GOP
| hacked emails? You seem to imply it in your comment, but I
| have not found any sources claiming this is the case from
| brief Googling.
|
| The biggest, real story exposed in those hacked emails was
| simply that the DNC was not a neutral party. They were
| helping Hillary Clinton get nominated, specifically in the
| case of sharing debate questions with her. Is there a reason
| this should not have been an important story at the time? I
| think it actually got a bit drowned out in comparison to all
| the trolling over Pizzagate. My base assumption is the people
| who even paid much attention to that story were the subset of
| Democrats who wanted Bernie to win the nomination.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| >released Democrat emails were completely innocuous
|
| I was under the impression people lost their jobs due to the
| contents of some of the emails and that they definitely
| weren't completely innocuous.
| jandrese wrote:
| Debbie Wasserman Schultz quit along with her staff because
| some of the emails showed the DNC was purposely hostile to
| Bernie Sanders in the primary.
| bsder wrote:
| Huh? DWS got _forced out_ because she was a shit DNC
| chairman who couldn 't keep her foot out of her mouth and
| then started chewing.
|
| And, personally, I don't give a damn if the DNC was
| hostile to an avowed independent. Bernie was a
| carpetbagger. I like Bernie, but the Democrats treated
| him far better than I expected.
|
| Assange wasn't relevant.
| the_optimist wrote:
| So if I understand correctly, you're among a group of people
| who are really angry at losing, and partisan, and therefore
| demand to forgo press freedom for your perceived political
| enemies. In addition, you're willing to write long, factually
| incorrect soliloquies to achieve that end. This is probably
| the most fascistic thing I have ever read on the internet.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| It wasn't just the leaks that was used.. Wikileaks had them
| timed up to be used by other operations pushing PizzaGate and
| Seth Rich, along with other similar conspiracies. It is clear
| that the leaks were done in conjunction to influence the
| election.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Sorry they exposed corruption in your favorite political
| party. But would you not think of the Panama Papers as
| substantial?
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit
| overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most
| people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based
| entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to
| believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is
| fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'?
|
| The "it's a private company they can do what they want"
| argument often thrown by those who claims to "fight fascism" is
| just plainly ignorant of how fascism and Nazism got and stayed
| into power in the first place.
|
| There were other news websites talking about this but they are
| algorithmically supplanted by "mainstream" news sites. For
| example it has gotten so bad that searching for the SpaceX's
| stream on YouTube yielded an entire page or results from
| "mainstream" outlets before the actual stream, even if the
| keywords were explicitly just about SpaceX.
|
| Censorship never yielded net positive results.
| iammisc wrote:
| > Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most
| Americans even know who Julian Assange is?
|
| Unfortunately, in general, the republican base is not going to
| protest anything, preferring to settle things legally and in
| court. The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to
| believe is apparently worse than the civil war. And yes, the
| sentiment to free assange is currently very common on the
| right.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to
| believe is apparently worse than the civil war.
|
| I've only seen that claim made in _very_ narrow contexts
| (e.g., insurrectionists actually occupying the Capitol), in
| which it was central to the context of the comparison with
| the Civil War on the narrow dimension that it was universally
| understood that the Civil War was _generally_ worse.
|
| Also seen some "not since the Civil War" comparisons (e.g.,
| billeting troops in the Capitol for its security), but those
| aren't even narrow-dimension "worse than" comparisons.
| iammisc wrote:
| I'd say the bombing of the capitol by certain domestic
| terror groups was way worse than Jan 6.
|
| Jan 6 is about as bad as the Bundy nonsense in Oregon.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The Capitol is a _bit_ more important than a BLM facility
| in Nowhere, Oregon...
| mullingitover wrote:
| > The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to
| believe is apparently worse than the civil war.
|
| _Taught_? We don 't need anyone to _teach_ what happened, it
| was on national television. We have perfectly good eyes and
| ears.
|
| The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the
| darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the
| Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Yes, but what you've seen is a sampling of the hours and
| hours of video from that day that has not been released. So
| you don't really know what's on the rest of that video and
| why it has not been released. What we do know that some of
| the main participants and organizers have not been charged,
| while some of the 500 others that had very minor roles are
| facing harsh charges, and were denied bail.
|
| It makes sense not to charge the main characters, only if
| some of those people most combative and leading the charge,
| were in fact FBI informants, as has been alleged on the
| house floor. Subversion of a political movement, to
| discredit the movement by the government is a common
| tactic. Just hasn't been seen in the US before, other than
| maybe during the civil right movement.
|
| Louie Gohmert making the allegation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCHL2GEO9hw
|
| Agent provocateur
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Louie Gohmert making the allegation
|
| Weird how this person making these allegations would vote
| _against_ the creation of a _bipartisan commission_ to
| investigate the very claims he 's making.
|
| Not weird at all though if he were making the allegations
| in bad faith.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| That's possible, he is a politician after all. However,
| here's a civil rights lawyer's take on it and seems to
| echo this: https://youtu.be/1Ozbqjv0xw4?t=937
| rjbwork wrote:
| Nor fly a traitorous flag in its halls.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the
| darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the
| Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol.
|
| The _one_ person who died violently in the "sack" was one
| of the rioters, an unarmed woman who was shot by Capitol
| Police. Four other rioters died of natural causes around
| the time of the riot.
|
| >Taught? We don't need anyone to teach what happened, it
| was on national television. We have perfectly good eyes and
| ears.
|
| Let me guess: You "saw" a police officer being hit by a
| fire extinguisher, right?
|
| Officer Sicknick did not die from being hit by a fire
| extinguisher because that never happened
| (<https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-
| exting...>). He died of a stroke which the autopsy found no
| connection with the riot
| (<https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/19/brian-
| sickn...>).)
|
| The _one_ difference between what happened at the Capitol
| that day and the attempted assault on the White House
| during the George Floyd riots (serious enough for the
| Secret Service to take Trump to a secure bunker) was that
| the former was allowed to enter its target.
| iammisc wrote:
| Why are you being downvoted. You are correct.
|
| The New York Times retracted its story on officer
| sicknick. They agreed with the autopsy. He died of
| natural causes.
|
| The capitol is broken into quite often, for example,
| during Kavanaugh's confirmation.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Because the poster is doing a textbook strawman argument,
| probably.
|
| Original point: _even in the darkest hours of the civil
| war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to
| sack the US capitol._
|
| Response (paraphrased): _So?_ , only one person died
| violently, [various unrelated distraction arguments
| attacking claims not made]
|
| This poster also advances the controversial (I'd call it
| a howler) claim that 'the former was _allowed_ to enter
| its target ' as if the Capitol Police intended for a sack
| of the Capitol to happen. Most people find these
| arguments downright offensive.
| iammisc wrote:
| > as if the Capitol Police intended for a sack of the
| Capitol to happen
|
| For the past year, I've been hearing about how police
| often times help right-wing protestors. Now I'm being
| told they never do and such a suggestion is offensive.
| Which is it?
|
| Anyway, if this is about sacking the Capitol, then why
| bring up the Civil War. In that case, Jan 6 would be the
| worst thing since the War of 1812, not the Civil War.
| Since apparently simply protesting in unauthorized areas
| of capitol buildings (like has happened countless times
| before Jan 6 since 2016 and before[1]) is basically
| equivalent to sacking DC. This is why I think there's
| hyperbole.
|
| [1] and there have been several bombings as well,
| orchestrated by people who are now well-accepted as
| political pundits in the mainstream, such as Bill Ayers
| and Susan Rosenberg. In fact, the current DA of San
| Francisco is the adopted son of Bill Ayers and the bio
| son of a convicted terrorist and doesn't believe his bio
| dad did anything wrong. We accept such terrorism as
| completely mainstream. Any attempt to question is met
| with accusations of racism or hyperbole. This is
| ridiculous. It seems as if only one capitol riot is ever
| seen as meriting such strong condemnation, despite the
| constant barrage of attacks on the capitol for many years
| that have occured with impunity [2] [3].
|
| [2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kavanaugh-protests-
| escalate-... -- unlawfully entered the capitol rotunda.
| Entered the office of a senator without permission.
|
| [3] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/arrests-violence-
| flares-part... -- definitely people storming the area
| around the capitol in an attempt to apparently overthrow
| an election. They just weren't very good at it I guess
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Original point: even in the darkest hours of the civil
| war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to
| sack the US capitol.
|
| I was unaware that the Capitol had been torched after
| being emptied of its treasures and nubile women, as
| opposed to being invaded by morons who were more focused
| on taking selfies than sacking.
|
| >Response (paraphrased): So?, only one person died
| violently, [various unrelated distraction arguments
| attacking claims not made]
|
| You and I both know that the media has done a very good
| job of convincing the public that multiple police
| officers were killed during the "sack", when (as I said)
| the only person who died violently was an unarmed rioter.
|
| >This poster also advances the controversial (I'd call it
| a howler) claim that 'the former was allowed to enter its
| target' as if the Capitol Police intended for a sack of
| the Capitol to happen. Most people find these arguments
| downright offensive.
|
| What else would you call a fully armed force not using
| armed force to prevent rioters (all but a handful
| unarmed) from entering a prohibited area? Remember, said
| rioter who died was killed after force was finally used
| (better late than never). If the Capitol Police had
| chosen/been allowed to do so, no rioter would have ever
| entered the building.
|
| Let me repeat: The only difference between what happened
| at the Capitol and what almost happened at the White
| House the preceding June is that the rioters did not get
| inside in the latter case.
| iammisc wrote:
| I'm not justifying Jan 6. I'm merely pointing out that it
| was an expression of frustration and that it's not anywhere
| close to the civil war, as some politicians have put it.
|
| I think the same is true of other domestic terror violence
| we've seen. The Civil War is still the worst domestic
| insurrection in history. The two are not even comparable.
| That this comparison is even humored shows a major problem.
|
| > The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the
| darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the
| Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol.
|
| I'm sorry you're being ridiculous. The US capitol has been
| bombed and parts destroyed by domestic terror groups in
| living memory. Those attacks were way worse than this.
|
| US congressmen have been shot at by radicalized domestic
| terrorists as well.
|
| Considering (1) Jan 6 resulted in minimal property
| destruction (certainly no structural damage) and (2) no
| politician killed (the only person dying directly as a
| result being Ashli Babbett, a rioter), it's safe to say
| that the bombings were worse (due to worse property
| destruction) and the shootings were worse (due to imminent
| potential of death to the victims)
|
| Perhaps you have some learning to do.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Jan 6 had _worse_ intent than the Civil War -- the
| Confederacy only wanted to secede while the Jan 6ers
| wanted to install an illegitimate government with
| jurisdiction over the entire country.
|
| Just because they were hapless and unsuccessful doesn't
| mean they aren't guilty of an attempted murder of
| American constitutional democracy.
| iammisc wrote:
| Oh my goodness. this is simply something else. This is
| why the country is so divided.
|
| Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like
| seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a
| government [1] for a few days before American forces
| reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe
| that it was in any way an actual threat to American
| sovereignty.
|
| Or when protestors broke into the Supreme Court to
| overturn the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, no one
| compared it to the civil war. How hyperbolic can we get?
|
| And yet, hyperbole like yours is not only tolerated by
| mainstream news sources, it is parroted by elected
| officials, other news outlets, and regular people. It's
| absolutely insane.
|
| [1] By all measures, Raz the warlord's occupation of chaz
| qualifies as having been, for a few days, the sovereign
| government of that area. They enforced a law, punished
| criminals, taxed people, and provided safety, all the
| while preventing other forces from doing the very same.
| This meets any reasonable definition of sovereignty.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Did the Chaz idiots have 147 of 435 House members vote to
| certify their independence from the US?
| iammisc wrote:
| I'm afraid I don't understand what you're referencing
| exactly.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like
| seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a
| government [1] for a few days before American forces
| reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe
| that it was in any way an actual threat to American
| sovereignty.
|
| Right, it was a (trivial, both in scale and plausible
| durability) threat to territorial integrity, not
| sovereignty or Constitutional order.
|
| Unlike Jan. 6, which sought to _enforce the President 's
| stated desire_ to overturn his electoral defeat, a desire
| in which the insurrectionists were joined by a
| substantial number of lawmakers, and sought to coerce or
| remove key opponents (most critically the Vice President
| acting as President of the Senate, under a theory that
| electoral votes could be arbitrarily discarded by whoever
| was serving in that position, which the President and his
| allies endorsed and advocated but the VP had publicly
| rejected.)
| iammisc wrote:
| > Right, it was a (trivial, both in scale and plausible
| durability) threat to territorial integrity, not
| sovereignty or Constitutional order.
|
| Okay but five people died because the American government
| did nothing.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > This is why the country is so divided.
|
| Bad faith false equivalencies like yours? Couldn't agree
| more!
|
| Protestors disrupted Kavanaugh's hearing, they didn't try
| to overturn his confirmation after the fact. And even had
| they attempted to (not even sure what this looks like
| since GOP controlled the presidency and the Senate), that
| is _far cry_ from attempting to overthrow the
| democratically-elected leader of our country with tacit
| and explicit support from government officials, weapons,
| and much malicious intent.
|
| And comparing Jan. 6 to CHAZ is honestly a total joke not
| even worth acknowledging further.
| iammisc wrote:
| I guess, I don't really get it. I'm happy to denounce Jan
| 6 as terrible. I just don't understand the hyperbole, and
| because I don't denounce it _enough_ that 's seen as many
| as bad faith.
|
| On the other hand, God forbid you express concerns over
| the summer of violence we saw in 2020, because then
| you're just exagerating.
|
| I am frankly exasperated at continuously having to keep
| track of not only what I ought to feel but also what
| level of passion I need to express my thoughts with in
| order to be taken in good faith.
|
| I am willing to take it in good faith that you honestly
| believe Jan 6 is basically the worst thing to happen
| since the civil war. I don't really get how you can say
| that, but I don't think you're being disingenuous, or
| even malicious, in your statement of equivalence.
|
| Unfortunately, since I don't see it the same way and
| don't feel Jan 6 is as bad as you make it out to be, I am
| apparently not only misguided or hyperbolic (what I
| believe you are) but -- as you've claimed -- a government
| abolitionist who lacks integrity.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Minimize it all you want, the facts remain: if the
| attackers had succeeded in their aims to overturn a
| legitimate and fair election, that would've been the end
| of the United States as a constitutional republic. Their
| motivations and 'frustration' are irrelevant -
| frustration with the outcome of an election is not a free
| pass to tear up the Constitution.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > if the attackers had succeeded in their aims to
| overturn a legitimate and fair election, that would've
| been the end of the United States as a constitutional
| republic.
|
| Hyperbole to the Nth.
|
| Do we really want to go down the path of judging and
| punishing people for what they'd have been able to
| accomplish if they hypothetically had unlimited resources
| they really wouldn't ever have access to?
|
| Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all instances
| of just about anything.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all
| instances of just about anything.
|
| Now _that 's_ hyperbole to Nth degree. That's the
| slippery-slope fallacy all the way down to the most
| extreme conclusion.
|
| Let's instead stick to what we know:
|
| 1) Many of the rioters had an _intent_ to de facto
| overthrow the government. They had guns, nooses, there
| were chat logs, etc. This is not conjecture.
|
| 2) Many of the rioters had the resources to do what they
| intended: they easily outmatched the Capitol Police
| forces, and backup forces were slow to respond. The
| physical barriers rioters encountered were not sufficient
| to the task.
|
| 3) What they they lacked was the knowledge of where to go
| to accomplish their aims. They were too slow to the
| chambers, and couldn't locate their targets. When they
| got close, those at the front lacked conviction after
| seeing their friend justifiably shot.
|
| I'm think it's quite appropriate to consider January 6th
| a "near miss" for our country as we know it, but given
| comments like yours and the revisionism happening before
| our eyes it doesn't quite seem we're out of danger. It is
| very appropriate to me to punish people for their
| actions, and sometimes for their intended actions.
| "Attempted Murder" is a crime for a reason, just because
| they failed to complete their task doesn't de facto
| exonerate them of wrong doing!
| iammisc wrote:
| Honestly, I'm at the point where I hope you get your way.
| It'll hopefully lead to a proper secession of states so
| that the increasingly obvious fact that the country has
| split into two irreconcilable societies can be made a
| reality and we can all live in peace. Let's hope that the
| separation happens peacefully.
| mullingitover wrote:
| "I shouldn't be be held accountable for this bad thing I
| didn't even succeed at doing" is certainly an argument
| many current inmates have made.
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| The rioters had no coherent "aim", they basically treated
| like a tourist trap, and were practically let in by the
| police.
| mullingitover wrote:
| No coherent aim, people just coincidentally had human
| restraint-grade zip ties with them at a peaceful protest?
|
| Nope, don't try to whitewash this. Thirty seconds of
| google searches easily puts these efforts to lie.
|
| > In the weeks before supporters of then-President Donald
| Trump assaulted the U.S. Capitol, TheDonald.win forum
| commenters debated how best to build a gallows for
| hanging -- or simply terrifying -- members of Congress
| deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber? What kind of rope?
| And how many nooses?
|
| > "The website, TheDonald, played a far more central role
| in the January 6th Capitol insurrection than was
| previously known," he said. "There are thousands of posts
| -- with tens of thousands of comments -- detailing plans
| to travel to Washington and engage in violence against
| the U.S. Capitol. The ultimate end goal of this violence
| was, on behalf of Trump, disrupt the Congress and
| overturn the presidential election."
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/
| thedona...
| remarkEon wrote:
| >human restraint-grade zip ties
|
| Which were found on a table, not brought in to the
| "insurrection". Anyway, the entire narrative of the
| "insurrection" is a useful tool for the larger state
| security apparatus to justify ever increasing and
| intrusive technological surveillance - this time on US
| Citizens ("domestic war on terror" anyone? [0]). Which
| explains why the lie about the death of the Capital
| Police officer[1] was so useful that it wasn't corrected,
| even though it was verifiably false the entire time. I'm
| not aware of a single person who's been charged with
| "insurrection" in this alleged "insurrection" that took
| place. Happy to be proven wrong here. Lots of
| trespassing, assaulting a peace officer, and felony
| rioting though. The point I'm trying to make is that the
| technology a lot of us work on allows violent lies to
| spread with unprecedented ease, but there isn't a real
| way for them to be walked back after they're out in the
| open.
|
| >Nope, don't try to whitewash this.
|
| There's also some historical context that everyone seems
| to be forgetting. Puerto Rican nationalists shooting
| congressmen from the House balcony in the 50s (Carter
| pardoned them), the Kennedys, all the Weather Underground
| bombings in DC in the 70s, more actual assassination
| attempts in the 80s, various far-right and far-left
| terrorism here and there. This is to say that events like
| this are not exactly unique, and it's been really weird
| for me since I spent most of my early 20s studying this
| kind of thing (history, terrorism both here and abroad)
| when I was in the Army. It's like I'm watching everyone
| collectively want to LARP that this is the "worst thing
| ever" so that they can be a part of history.
| "Insurrection", for me at least, carries a very specific
| definition, and what happened on 6JAN2020, while awful,
| certainly doesn't fit into that category. Felony riot,
| absolutely. It surely isn't the worst thing ever, yes you
| are a part of history (however you want to define that),
| and the Republic is carrying on just fine.
|
| [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/06/Nation...
|
| [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-
| repeatedly-a...
| iammisc wrote:
| > TheDonald.win forum commenters debated how best to
| build a gallows for hanging -- or simply terrifying --
| members of Congress deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber?
| What kind of rope? And how many nooses?
|
| And wallstreetbets debates how to please your wife's
| boyfriend. That is to say both /r/thedonald and
| /r/wallstreetbets (who has also harmed people via their
| encouragement of gambling the markets) have similar
| cultures of irreverence, hyperbole, trolling, and joking
| with the intent of setting people off. They find it funny
| when taken out of context and used to terrify people. For
| example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan jokingly
| made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand sign, thus
| causing a moral panic.
|
| I'm not saying one way or the other as to whether the
| comments here are right. But you're dealing with a forum
| that trolls people by posting cartoon frogs, mocking the
| OK sign, and calling each other centipedes.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > For example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan
| jokingly made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand
| sign, thus causing a moral panic.
|
| A lot of the 4chan dynamic involves people starting with
| something edgy as a dumb joke, and then the site's large
| subset of actual idiot racists taking it seriously. The
| OK sign was a great example of that - some people started
| it as a dumb joke and then actual racists
| enthusiastically embraced it. Hell, 4chan's racism in
| general started as a dumb joke and ended up with 51
| people being murdered in Christchurch.
|
| So I wouldn't use the fact that some subset of people
| have an edgy sense of humor as a license to hand-wave
| away other violent idiots who were serious as a heart
| attack with their planning.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I would encourage you to watch these two videos and then
| re-assess whether they were "practically let in":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZvp-Dv0gg (crush inside
| the building)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGthdTzedk (mob trying
| to break in, and beating officers with flagpole and other
| objects)
| anders_p wrote:
| > The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to
| believe is apparently worse than the civil war.
|
| People died. The insurgents erected gallows and carried
| plastic handcuff-strips.
|
| They were flying the Confederate flag INSIDE the US Capitol.
| That didn't even happen during the Civil War.
|
| They tried to interfere with the appointment of the
| president.
|
| And worst of all, the response by the national guard was
| delayed, and the Capitol police force's equipment was
| limited, by order of the DOJ Barr, who is appointed by the
| losing president.
|
| This WAS the worst incident, since the Civil War, not
| perpetrated by foreigners.
|
| No need 'to teach' anyone that fact. It was apparent and
| visible to everyone who isn't a part of the Trump cult.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit
| overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most
| people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based
| entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to
| believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is
| fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'?
|
| I'd say that the focus on party loyalty is more a feature of
| authoritarian parties in general and not fascism specifically.
|
| If there's any single tenet that can be called central to
| fascism (a debatable premise), it's probably the idea that "the
| nation" can reattain its former glory by forcefully purging
| various forms of "degeneracy" and thereby becoming "pure".
| wnevets wrote:
| > One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is
| that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan
| issue purely because they exposed corruption
|
| No, they became a partisan issue because Putin's intelligence
| apparatus took control of WikiLeaks
| wavefunction wrote:
| I'm just curious why Assange and Wikileaks have failed to
| release the GOP emails. Despite the lofty rhetoric about being
| journalists they seem to have "picked a side" in terms of their
| stance towards the US Government. That's my criticism of both
| Assange and Wikileaks, they seem to have an agenda beyond their
| stated one.
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| I think you are mischaracterizing why Julian Assange has lost
| support. He has not lost support because of exposing corruption
| in any political parties, he's lost support because its become
| clear he works with Russian intelligence services.
|
| People have leaked data on Russian corruption to WikiLeaks,
| which went unpublished. His leaks coincide with what is
| politically favorable to Russia, not with making all
| information free to the world.
|
| To the downvoters:
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
|
| https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia...
|
| Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you
| disagree with me?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You're upset that wikileaks didn't report on a leak that was
| known for 2 years by major western media organizations, and
| was later forwarded to them? Despite their longstanding
| policy to not report on leaks that have already been reported
| on elsewhere?
| Lammy wrote:
| Scary reds! Be afraid!! Russia needs America and China to be
| able to scare their own populace into giving up more and more
| of their own personal freedoms, just like America needs China
| and Russia to do the same. No one country could "rule the
| world" in a way that wouldn't immediately galvanize worldwide
| opposition. Capital claims no nationality, so nationality is
| one of the ways the very rich divide and conquer the populace
| at large. It's a fake idea in an age of global instant
| communication when people have literally bought citizenships.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get
| accused of being agents of Russia.
|
| It's a ridiculously and simplistically too convenient
| argument and therefore attractive to anyone with the
| slightest bias against 'information I don't like' (or a
| tendency towards being a 'shoot the messenger' type of
| person).
|
| That Assange / Wikileaks don't follow the same bias as the
| local US media, doesn't mean he's / they're an enemy agent.
| Thinking of the world in black and white like that is
| dangerously reductive.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get
| accused of being agents of Russia.
|
| I've never seen that about Snowden except in regard to
| activities _after_ taking io residence in Russia, and even
| then its usually more "Snowden is subject to influence by
| Russia" more than "...an agent of Russia".
|
| Assange is a different story, but the both the
| uncontroversial facts and the controversial detailed claims
| on which a conclusion about being a Russian agent might
| rest about Assange are different.
| ecshafer wrote:
| If what he says is true, why does it matter that its
| politically favorable to Russia? As a liberal democracy we
| should strive to be more moral and upstanding, hiding those
| things for politics is the opposite of that.
| BeKindAndLearn wrote:
| 2 people run for office, both committed a crime. 1 of them
| supports Russia in their ongoing aggression. So Russia has
| WikiLeaks post only the information on the candidate they
| don't like, securing the election for a politically
| favorable but perhaps even more corrupt person.
|
| How and what information is being presented is an
| incredibly important part of "the truth" as a whole.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > 2 people run for office, both committed a crime. 1 of
| them supports Russia in their ongoing aggression.
|
| This is simply not supported by the policies enacted
| during by the Trump Administration:
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-
| chaos/2018/09/25/o...
|
| > So Russia has WikiLeaks post only the information on
| the candidate they don't like, securing the election for
| a politically favorable but perhaps even more corrupt
| person.
|
| There are three answers for that: If Wikileaks has a bias
| than it can easily explained by the fact that Assange's
| woes were caused by the Obama admistration. And even if
| they didn't have a bias, most of their staff at Wikileaks
| do not speak Russian and they try to verify every piece
| they publish; as opposed to making claims based on
| partisan funded opposition research. It's also far harder
| to leak from Russia and other authoritarian/mafious
| states and also because their intelligence agencies use
| mechanical typewriters.
| [deleted]
| xgb84j wrote:
| There are 4 things he could have done: 1. Don't reveal
| any secrets. 2A Reveal secrets that harm candidate A. 2B
| Reveal secrets that harm candidate B. 3. Reveal all
| secrets that harm candidate A and candidate B.
|
| I don't think anybody on HN argues that option 3 is
| preferable over all the other options. You seem to think
| option 1 is preferable to both options 2A and 2B. GP and
| I seem to think the opposite.
|
| I can understand your argument that half the truth can be
| worse than no truth at all. But as there are very few
| sources for information like WikiLeaks I think in cases
| like this, half the truth might be all the public can get
| and it at least gives you a basic idea of what is
| happening when nobody is looking.
| leephillips wrote:
| "I don't think anybody on HN argues that option 3 is
| preferable over all the other options."
|
| Really? I think that's probably the most popular option.
| Why do you say that?
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Agreed. The journalistic options here are 1 and 3. 2A and
| B are what propagandists do.
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| Because he specifically refuses to leak information about
| Russia. He doesn't care about making society more moral or
| upstanding. He is a pawn of the Russian government to
| damage their opponents.
| lajamerr wrote:
| Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a
| country make it more resilient in the future against
| bigger attacks? So even if he is helping Russia spread
| their propaganda isn't it making us stronger to find this
| out and plan against it instead of an all out information
| war? How does Russia win here.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a
| country make it more resilient in the future against
| bigger attacks?
|
| Not necessarily, obviously. For instance: if someone
| leaks information to an enemy about a fatal flaw in their
| nation's military equipment, and the enemy nation attacks
| and exploits that flaw to victory; all the leak did was
| make their country weaker and more vulnerable.
|
| I'm not aware of any improvements in the resiliency of
| the US in response to Assange's leaks, except that the
| Democratic party has better opsec now (e.g. uses 2FA and
| has anti-phishing drills). They may have locked down
| their secret-level networks in response to Manning's
| activities, but that could arguably make the US less
| resilient.
| yariik wrote:
| Have you considered any other possible explanation for
| this besides that he "refuses" to publish stuff about
| Russia? And why do you just assume that there is anything
| at all to publish about Russia, anyway? Russia bad,
| right? You're a brainwashed russophobic bigot.
| SXX wrote:
| Disclaimer: I dont have much of an opinion on the topic
| of Assange himself since years after in his "embassy
| prison" he certainly went nuts in a way. It's not the
| same person you could talk with on IRC years ago. He was
| also pretty much okay back in 2011 durign his iterview
| with Eric Schmidt.
|
| Yet here is the idea for your mind: all around the world
| including Russia political leaders of authoritarian
| countries trying to sell bullshit like every single
| problem their regime has is caused by some US conspiracy.
| They'll of course tell you that all independent
| journalist and activists work for US and spread only
| lies.
|
| Does Snowden going for asylum in Russia make what he
| exposed unimportant? What if famous Iraq civilians
| killing video would be provided not by someone from US,
| but Russian FSB or Islaeli Mossad? Will it make people
| less dead?
|
| So obviously any whistleblower or journalist can be
| biased and some country will benefit more than other.
| There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for
| whom - only facts are important.
| pphysch wrote:
| > all around the world including Russia political leaders
| of authoritarian countries trying to sell bullshit like
| every single problem their regime has is caused by some
| US conspiracy.
|
| This "bullshit" has a Pentagon-sized kernel of truth to
| it.
|
| Washington is the only regime with hundreds of foreign
| military bases.
|
| Washington is the only regime that directly funnels
| hundreds of millions of dollars in resources to foreign
| rebel groups through channels such as NED, DRL.
|
| Washington is the only regime capable of unilaterally
| blockading entire economies through crushing sanctions.
|
| So yes, it does _really_ matter to 90%+ of the world
| population if the "journalists" they trust are actually
| paid couriers of Washington's foreign agendas.
| jollybean wrote:
| "There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for
| whom - only facts are important."
|
| I don't think so.
|
| There's generally no such thing as 'individual blocks of
| truth' as independent things. The truth is always
| contextual.
|
| New Orgs have biases that exhibit themselves in all sorts
| of ways, and they matter.
|
| I'm not fully sure if either of these things are fully
| true but if 1) Assange was actively trying to help people
| steal sensitive information form the US and 2) has some
| kind of implied relationship with an American adversary
| whereupon they support him politically or with
| information - and whereby he returns the favour by
| suppressing leaks on their behalf - then what does this
| look like? This person basically becomes a foreign agent,
| intent on discrediting one party over another. The
| 'facts' released are ultimately selective. It'd be
| 'journalism' in the same way that Putin could use his
| powers to 'uncover' information and then frame and leak
| the information selectively. Again: I don't know if 1 and
| 2 are true.
|
| I'm also not fully on board with the notion that
| information about Assange is suppressed in the
| conspiratorial sense it'd be interesting to see more
| behind the scenes mechanics of how that might work.
| andi999 wrote:
| The truth might be sometimes contextual but not most of
| the time.
| SXX wrote:
| I think it's would make sense to take into account who
| specific person working for in situation when we have
| proven facts about them. Unfortunately it's almost always
| impossible to get those unbiased facts since there is so
| much of misinformation everywhere.
|
| And even if you knew for sure that Assange knowingly
| working for Russia you will never know why he doing it.
| After all US wants to get him on US soil and to put him
| in prison (for 300 years) to make him an example of US
| power and "justice".
|
| And on other hand Putin's regime can just threat to kill
| his friends and family since they totally capable of
| doing it, no defending against it in UK court.
|
| Oh, looks like i posted some funny conspiracy here.
| Conclusion: when we try to dig into information about
| specific people we end up with conspiracy mess. That
| information impossible to check and it doesn't prove
| anything.
|
| On other side when activists or journalists publish
| stories about something like war crime, PRISM or Panama
| Papers facts can usually be verified because when it's
| leaked it's too big to hide.
| ben_w wrote:
| > There's generally no such thing as 'individual blocks
| of truth' as independent things. The truth is always
| contextual.
|
| On the one hand, I absolutely agree with this statement
| in isolation. On the other, I don't need _him_ to be
| unbiased, as he isn't the only journalist in the world --
| if he wants (or needs) to keep Russia happy, so long as
| he has a counterpart that doesn't, between them the
| public is informed.
| giardini wrote:
| Yes. And why is the USA trying to take him into custody?
| While _in the USA for a US citizen_ to work as a foreign
| agent is illegal, I fail to see why Assange, who is a
| citizen of Australia and mostly has resided in other
| countries, should be arrested by yet another country and
| shipped to the USA. Did Assange commit a crime in the
| USA? Wasn 't it Manning who got the supposed "classified"
| info and gave it to Assange?
|
| How about a little goddamn proof? How about a valid legal
| case that follows the laws of the USA? This whole Assange
| thing is just a streaming shit-show of nonsense and a
| shameful attempt to drive one man to ruin and worse.
|
| Both Democrats and Republicans have other problems to
| worry about every day b/c they don't have their acts
| together. All this trouble comes b/c a cabal of jerks
| somewhere (probably the intelligence community) has a
| hard-on to fuck Assange over and is somehow tolerated.
|
| Just for comparison: would it be ethical for the USA to
| bushwhack and extradite a street vendor in Egypt who
| cries "Kill the USA!" and burns Uncle Sam in effigy? Hell
| No! This stuff happens all the time. The USA bureaucracy
| is like an information sieve. If you wanna fix it, find a
| better way to work.
|
| Give Assange his freedom. Drag into the sunlight those
| fools who are perpetuating this nonsense and terminate
| their employment. Brand their foreheads with a giant
| letter "A" so they're identifiable forever. Anything
| Assange has revealed is by now "water under the bridge".
| To use another metaphor, "the genie is out of the bottle"
| and you can't put it back. Grow up!
| ohashi wrote:
| Water under the bridge or not, they don't want people
| doing it again or supporting Russia. It could be as much
| as a message to the next potential Assange - don't even
| try. If you believe he's an enemy of your interests and
| working with your enemy to hurt you, I have a hard time
| seeing a calculation they would make that says leave him
| alone since what's done is done. They are going to make
| his life miserable forever and hope it's a deterrent.
| That's the realpolitik of the situation - morals ignored.
| ben_w wrote:
| > How about a little goddamn proof? How about a valid
| legal case that follows the laws of the USA?
|
| In theory, that'd be the job of the court case he's
| fighting an extradition to _not_ face.
|
| And, to be clear where I stand, in the (unlikely) event
| that _anyone's_ secret services care what I think, they'd
| have to be a lot more open and honest about their
| mistakes for me to trust them when they say "we need X
| secret, trust us" -- almost everything that people like
| me get to hear about them are their mistakes, and a whole
| lot of hubris to go with those mistakes; while I like to
| assume they can't all be that bad, the fact is I can only
| form opinions by what I learn, and whatever good any of
| them might do is kept secret (or so vague it might as
| well be) and is unlearnable, while the bad stuff is writ
| large.
|
| (None of this is relevant to the judicial systems in any
| country or Assange).
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| This is a fair take. I appreciate your input.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Your first post should not have been removed, it did not
| violate any rules
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| He knows Russia will kill him for airing dirty laundry.
| He's biased in favor of preserving his life.
| the_optimist wrote:
| The link says they didn't want to republish already public
| information. That makes sense. Why would they publish public
| information?
| tomp wrote:
| What's the point of leaking "Russian corruption"? It's not
| like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia is even a
| semi-democracy.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > It's not like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia
| is even a semi-democracy.
|
| There's a reason they still conduct elections in Russia, to
| give the appearance of democracy. Yes, people still think
| it's a democracy... as long as their favourite leader is in
| power.
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| The hope that the Russian people can free themselves of
| Putin's tyranny?
| yariik wrote:
| This blaming Russia thing is way beyond ridiculous now. WHAT
| "Russian corruption" are you talking about? Is it the same as
| the "Russian interference in the US elections," i.e.
| something that has never existed in reality and was just
| invented by the US mass media for their purposes?
| leephillips wrote:
| Hard hitting journalist, or reckless narcissist who is either
| duped by or working for the Russians, and who thinks the Jews
| are out to get him?
| the_optimist wrote:
| Seems like you have a lot invested in personal smears. What
| motivates you?
| tootie wrote:
| It's absolutely his own doing though. He targeted Hillary in
| the 2016 election and supported Trump. Then told everyone the
| DNC leak came from Seth Rich. He is absolutely not a good
| person or an ethical journalist regardless of whether or not
| he's guilty of any crimes.
| api wrote:
| > they exposed corruption in your favorite political party.
|
| No, that would have been fine. The problem is that Assange
| himself is clearly partisan. I doubt they would have leaked
| anything damaging to Trump. There are chat logs attesting to
| the fact that they timed the leaks to influence the election.
|
| Murky secretive organizations can't be trusted, period. It
| doesn't matter what they are or whether they are "alternative"
| or "mainstream." I don't see why I should trust Wikileaks any
| more than I trust the CIA or the FSB. There's no transparency.
| I have no way of knowing if Assange has an agenda or what that
| agenda might be.
|
| We need an entirely algorithmic / protocol driven leaker
| platform that verifiably removes human beings from the loop or
| at least chains their hands when it comes to when to leak
| things and whether to leak them.
|
| (For the record I am not a fan of either of the 2016
| candidates. They were both awful, but Trump was worse largely
| because of the ideological fascists that surrounded and backed
| him. Trump himself is not ideological, just a power hungry
| narcissist who will ride whatever horse will take him further.)
| [deleted]
| the_optimist wrote:
| Obviously publishing cryptographically verified source data
| is not what intel agencies do. Wikileaks did that.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > "[...] support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a
| partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your
| favorite political party"
|
| Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a
| timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign of
| one party, and in concordance with the other party.
|
| Wikileaks became partisan, not the public.
| slg wrote:
| Assange has also stated that he had documents related to the
| Trump campaign that he wouldn't publish because they were no
| "more controversial... than what comes out of Donald Trump's
| mouth every second day"[1]. Meanwhile they posted thousands
| of totally mundane emails from Democrats that included things
| like office lunch orders and automatic out of office replies
| that were not controversial and served no public good.
| Wikileaks clearly had a different standard for publishing
| documents that hurt Democrats and documents that hurt
| Republicans.
|
| [1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-
| races/2934...
| the_optimist wrote:
| We saw this same idea earlier as though it merits analysis.
| It doesn't. You being right or not has no bearing on the
| story at hand.
| propogandist wrote:
| are you suggesting that corruption should have been ignored
| and such people should be in power?
|
| Wikileaks did the right thing, else imagine what they would
| be doing now.
|
| Also, who killed Epstein?
| pugets wrote:
| The public is partisan if it dislikes damnatory but true
| information when the timing of it is inconvenient to a
| political party.
|
| It's sort of similar to the Brett Kavanaugh ordeal. Going
| from memory, the first accuser told her story in private to a
| Congresswoman in the summer of 2018, I believe it was in
| July. That politician sat on the information for the rest of
| July, the entirety of August, and the first few weeks of
| September. Only when it was closer to the midterm elections
| and the confirmation process did the Democrats launch their
| attack against Kavanaugh's character. They urged Congress to
| delay the vote until after the midterms, which they were
| hoping to win in a landslide, so that they could deny
| Kavanaugh a seat.
|
| In either case, we have politically-minded people
| deliberately timing the release of information. As regular
| voters, we have to decide what's more important: what the
| information reveals, or how it is being weaponized.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > we have to decide what's more important: what the
| information reveals, or how it is being weaponized.
|
| False choice. They are both important -- you don't have to
| choose. Selective and timed use of facts is often a way to
| hide behind "truth" while being completely biased.
| dTal wrote:
| The point is that journalists are not supposed to be
| "politically minded", especially when they're leaking
| damaging confidential information. Revealing information
| that hurts one party, but deliberately withholding
| information that hurts the other, is lying by omission and
| downgrades you from "brave whistleblower who needs
| protection" to "low-life partisan information warrior who
| deserves to have the book thrown at them".
| jessaustin wrote:
| I've read lots about the charges filed against Assange,
| and "timing his release" was not among them. If you want
| that to be a law, contact your legislators.
| afthonos wrote:
| The first comment on this thread was lamenting that the
| issue became partisan. The rest explained why. The
| partisanship is precisely what makes discussing the
| fairness of the charges and laws difficult.
|
| In other words, he isn't on trial for the timing. But
| he's friendless because of it.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Thanks for explaining this distinction. Of course Assange
| isn't "friendless" in general, but I would agree that he
| is with respect to the sorts of people who have any
| effect on who does and who does not face USA federal
| charges. That indicts the entire federal judicial system.
| As if we needed additional proofs of their evil.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I have no sympathy for Assange. There are legitimate
| avenues for whistleblowers. Trying to hack into protected
| government systems in order to leak information to the
| public while pushing conspiracies about Seth Rich in
| conjunction with Kim Dotcom is not one of them.
| dTal wrote:
| Far be it from me to defend the nature of the charges
| against Assange. The US government has some pretty wildly
| unconstitutional tools, and in this instance it chose to
| wield them. That should not stop us from having a
| reasoned discussion about the merits of the actions that
| drew such negative attention.
|
| Also, I didn't say anything about timing. Selective and
| partisan release alone is highly dubious, timing
| notwithstanding.
| candiodari wrote:
| I don't think anyone's alleging it's against the law to
| time news releases. But both countries (both US and UK)
| have violated their own laws time and again in the
| persecution of Julian Assange. They have thrown all
| pretense of due process (e.g. access to attorney) and
| human rights (denial of medical care) out the window,
| just to punish him.
|
| There were 10+ violations that would have been more than
| enough to let a murderer go free.
|
| The problem, in other words, with Assange is that he
| didn't really commit a crime, or more to the point,
| that's not why the US is after him. And clearly, as a
| country, the US is perfectly willing to violate it's own
| constitution to punish this person. The allegation is
| that this is, among other things, due to the timing of
| the releases. And because of the danger that it would
| make Hillary Clinton lose the election.
|
| It would be funny if it wasn't both such a sad, sad
| failure for the US state _and_ an enormous crime,
| committed by the state.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Releasing information about a political candidate during an
| election is exactly the right time to release it. People
| should have as much information as possible when trying to
| make an informed decision when voting. Trying to make this
| into a partisan issue is just shifting the goal posts.
| leto_ii wrote:
| I think it's fair to imagine that had Wikileaks not published
| the emails they would have been accused of favoring the
| democrats. In a highly ideologically polarized climate you
| can't win.
| 8note wrote:
| Considering they had and did not publish Republican emails,
| I'm not sure that would apply.
|
| Then, they'd be treating both republicans and Democrats
| equally. Bad for the libertarians or the greens though
| easterncalculus wrote:
| This is the same problem that Comey had after writing the
| letter to Congress on October 28th. Like it or not it would
| have looked a LOT worse if either of them had waited until
| after the election.
| tikiman163 wrote:
| The RNC was also hacked by the same people as the DNC, yet
| we're supposed to believe the Democrats emails which
| ultimately proved to contain nothing of major importance
| were the ones that needed releasing? Come wasn't writing a
| press release, he has doing his job and keeping Congress
| informed and a Republican congressman then chose to
| misrepresent the content and meaning of Comey's letter for
| the political gain of his own party.
|
| These two situations are only the same in that they both
| benefitted the Republican party by misrepresenting the
| facts in order to make the public think the Democrats were
| guilty of a major political scandal.
|
| The difference is that Comey didn't know that Congressman
| would do what he did, where as there is convincing evidence
| that Assange knew about the RNC hack and emails, possibly
| even had access to them and said nothing. Comey got used,
| but Assange knowingly helped Russians spread
| disinformation.
| jessaustin wrote:
| If Republicans had done anything like the DNC's
| kneecapping of Bernie during the 2016 campaign, it would
| have come out by now, emails or not.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a
| timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign
| of one party
|
| Do you mean the emails concerning attempts to steal/fix the
| Democrats primary? Why would wikileaks sit on those emails?
| Would you prefer they waited to release them until the
| primary was over?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If journalists that timed their articles for maximum effect
| or didn't willingly impact both parties the same way are to
| be thrown at the lions, I think we'll all end in a bad place.
|
| A way to look at this is that we should have more Assange and
| Wikileaks, and get leaks of problematic facts from all over
| the boards. If you feel Wikileaks was biased, it means we
| need different shades of it, and to get there we first need
| at least one shade of it. And currently we're not even there.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The rape allegations managed to flip a lot of people. Turned
| out to be shaky and manipulated but the reputation damage was
| done.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Those rape accusations have soured me on "official" rape
| narratives. As in, I believe women, but I don't believe
| anyone speaking on behalf of women. When I heard about Matt
| Gaetz's thing, my first question was "what did he do recently
| to piss off the war pigs?"
| lonelysnake wrote:
| 18th century ideal of western democracy was exclusionary,
| genocidal, pro slavery, misogynist, etc. We've come a long way.
| tunesmith wrote:
| > exposed corruption in your favorite political party
|
| Yeah, if this is intended to mean the democrats, I'm going to
| need an unbiased source on that. If there was actual corruption
| in the Democratic Party uncovered in these leaks, I don't
| remember hearing anything about it. I remember hearing a lot of
| partisan and daffy trash about pizza parlors and a DNC
| conspiracy against Sanders, though.
| [deleted]
| pacifist wrote:
| 4 or 5 of the top people in the DNC including DWS resigned
| because of revelations of corruption in the emails. How did
| you miss that?
| mancerayder wrote:
| > One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is
| that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan
| issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite
| political party.
|
| There are many instances of this, and the corporate media does
| this on both sides of the aisle. Of course, there's one
| dominant one at the moment. There's a heavy-handed corporate
| media attempt to squeeze out compliance - from biased stories
| (that are later proven false) from mainstream outlets as the
| most serious, to the cover of Vogue as the most silly.
|
| What's disturbing is that if you point this out to people, what
| happens? Ah hah, they discovered someone on the other side of
| the political aisle. Their enemies. Again, this is true for
| both parties.
|
| Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary,
| categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as
| something with its own set of properties to explore.
| archsurface wrote:
| "Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary" - not
| just Americans, but that aside, isn't that inevitable when
| parties compete for power - allegiances form to gain numbers,
| and mergers take places until there are only two competitors
| left with no groups left to merge with. The inevitable
| strategic optimum.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I think that is only inevitable when the rules of democracy
| have been set up to give overwhelming power to a single
| winner.
|
| Here in the Netherlands, the number of parties represented
| in parlement has been rising for decades - there are
| currently 18 parties. And yes, that causes different kinds
| of problems.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Hard to avoid. Some issues have little to no middle ground.
|
| Woman's rights vs killing unborn children does not leave
| much moral middle ground.
| jhayward wrote:
| Of course there is middle ground.
|
| For instance, there are plenty of practical approaches
| that greatly reduce the number of abortions while still
| supporting women's rights.
|
| But, for some reason, one side of the issue would rather
| not reduce abortion while still permitting women's choice
| because that would take away the 'wedge' issue as a
| partisan political hammer. So they insist on ever more
| draconian, misogynistic laws to force the wedge deeper
| and deeper. That's not because it's an unreconcilable
| issue. Its because they _want_ the issue.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >But, for some reason, one side of the issue would rather
| not reduce abortion while still permitting women's choice
| because that would take away the 'wedge' issue as a
| partisan political hammer. So they insist on ever more
| draconian, misogynistic laws to force the wedge deeper
| and deeper. That's not because it's an unreconcilable
| issue. Its because they want the issue.
|
| Except terminations in the US are at their lowest
| levels[0] since they became legal in 1973.
|
| One side says: Abortion should be safe,
| legal and rare.
|
| Another side says: Abortion is *literal*
| murder and women who have them, as well as the
| doctors who perform them should be imprisoned
| and/or executed.
|
| There is (as I mentioned in another comment on this
| topic) a significant amount of nuance for _most_
| Americans. With a sizable majority supporting safe, legal
| abortions, but with significant disagreement as to the
| timing and mechanism(s) of such terminations.
|
| Personally, I believe that women (and men, for that
| matter) should have control over their bodies. Full stop.
|
| As for the termination of a pregnancy, that should be up
| to the individual who is pregnant -- likely (but not
| necessarily) with input from the other potential parent
| and/or medical professionals.
|
| To put a _really_ fine point on it: If you don 't have a
| functional uterus, shut the fuck up -- it's none of your
| business.
|
| [0] https://apnews.com/article/health-united-states-ap-
| top-news-...
| Stupulous wrote:
| >To put a really fine point on it: If you don't have a
| functional uterus, shut the fuck up -- it's none of your
| business.
|
| I don't really have a position on abortion, but I don't
| like this point at all. It says too much, I think.
|
| Imagine there's a genocide in North Korea. I'm not North
| Korean, I'm not friends with anyone from North Korea.
| Does accepting this point mean that I have to accept that
| genocide in North Korea is none of my business and is
| above my criticism? And, if not, what distinguishes the
| two?
|
| Should Biden not sign a pro-choice bill because he lacks
| a uterus and therefore is forbidden from taking a side?
| austinheap wrote:
| Your stats were really eye opening for me. I'm stunned
| men still opine on this conversation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I agree, but the other side does the same. Why do pro-
| choice groups oppose holding abortion clinics to the same
| medical standards as other medical facilities? Because
| "access" is their political hammer, and they want to keep
| using the issue.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why do pro-choice groups oppose holding abortion
| clinics to the same medical standards as other medical
| facilities?
|
| They don't, in general.
|
| They do oppose creating "generally-applicable" standards
| that have the principal effect of preventing access to
| abortion services, though.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Well when framed like that they are.
|
| Ironically I think you've hit the nail on the head, but
| not for the reasons that are obvious: each side
| specifically frames the issue in a rigid fashion so it
| certainly appears _obvious_ that they are morally in the
| right.
|
| Hence the binary nature of the conversations.
|
| I take the approach that one should be able to
| CONVINCINGLY argue the opposite side before having a
| meaningful opinion on the issue. If you can't do that
| because you view the other side as insane or fully
| incorrect, then it might be you that's insane. I'm not
| talking about the-Earth-is-flat type issues, but issues
| of the day (whatever that day is over the course of
| time).
| mikem170 wrote:
| Respecting the fact that other reasonable people have
| different opinions would go a long way, also.
| saurik wrote:
| While I agree with what you are going for, I also
| struggle to figure out how to describe it, as the whole
| problem here is that people (and I am including everyone)
| can't obviously tell the difference between something
| that is simply falsifiable and something which is murky;
| like, the entire premise in some sense of these rigid
| framings is that "if you can't see how" [ "murdering a
| child that you might even be complicit in causing to
| exist" / "forcing a woman to carry to term a baby at
| great cost to her health and destruction of her
| livelihood that might literally have been forced upon her
| by rape or coercion"] (and I am sorry if I accidentally
| sound sided here _in either direction_ as my goal is
| merely to provide two arguments people make strongly on
| the topic as it got mentioned in this thread: I am not
| trying to carefully balance an actual debate on this
| topic) "is wrong then you probably also believe the
| Earth is flat". We can't push for the premise that "you
| absolutely need to be able to convincingly argue the
| opposite side of of an issue to have a meaningful opinion
| on it" and then make exceptions for "the-Earth-is-flat
| type issues" (which I can like, provide an attempt to
| defend but it comes out sarcastic as it essentially
| involves knowingly working with limited data and
| constantly stating as such... it just sounds like "well
| without knowing I am stupid, I might think X").
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary,
| categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue
| as something with its own set of properties to explore.
|
| Perhaps that's true of some (perhaps many) Americans, but
| certainly not all. Please don't paint 330 million individuals
| with the same broad brush. If for no other reason than you're
| doing exactly what (taking a binary, categorical view of a
| gigantic group instead of treating individuals as
| individuals) you're complaining about.
|
| For me (as well as many other Americans), I recognize that
| context and nuance are important when considering most
| issues.
|
| Assuming that tweets or political slogans represent the views
| of all (or even many) Americans is shallow indeed.
|
| The devil (as well as the solutions) is always in the
| details, whether it be the minimum wage, broadband
| competition, healthcare or dozens of other issues.
|
| Many people (myself included) are ignorant of the details
| surrounding a variety of issues unless it directly affects
| them.
|
| However, many (if not most) have a nuanced understanding of
| issues (at all levels of government) that impact them.
|
| The nationalization of party politics (helped along quite a
| bit by the decline and disappearance of much of the local
| journalism in the US) creates least-common-denominator
| messaging that ignores any nuance or context whatsoever.
|
| As for Assange, it's not a left/right dichotomy _at all_.
|
| In fact, many who generally vote (D) are among Assange's
| biggest supporters, and many who generally vote (R) are among
| his biggest detractors.
|
| IMNSHO, it has much more to do with whether or not you
| believe that Assange can get a fair trial in a US _Federal_
| court.
|
| There are dozens (50 state court systems, many more
| municipal/county/territorial court systems) of other courts
| in the US, but the Federal court system is _generally_ among
| the fairest of US court systems. Especially if there 's a lot
| of publicity surrounding a particular case -- as there is
| here.
|
| And Assange will be tried in Federal court.
|
| The man himself doesn't think so, or he wouldn't have
| cloistered himself in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years.
|
| Given that no _journalist_ has _ever_ been convicted under
| the 1917 Espionage Act[0], under which the really serious
| charges against Assange was indicted, it seems unlikely in
| the extreme that he 'd be convicted of those charges.
|
| The charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act[1] do not
| carry heavy sentences, nor (at least as I understand it) is
| the evidence of violations of that law very strong.
|
| As such, it's quite likely that if Assange hadn't jumped bail
| and hidden out in the Ecuadorian embassy, all this would have
| been over and he'd have been banging Swedish girls again for
| at least a few years.
|
| As someone who generally votes (D), I'd like to see Assange
| acquitted and let him move on.
|
| His credibility has suffered mightily, but most of that
| (IMHO) was a result of his own actions and statements (Seth
| Rich? Really?).
|
| Regardless, you're flat wrong about Americans as mindless
| morons parroting their particular party line. Sure there are
| some who do so, but certainly not all (or even most).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
|
| Edit: Added referenced links.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Please don't paint 330 million individuals with the same
| broad brush
|
| Small note: about 150m people voted for D or R. Out of
| almost 230m eligible voter pool, the rest just didn't vote.
|
| I think it's fair to say that US Politics is framed as a
| binary choice (regardless of how you justify it) because
| that's the party system that is in place...along with the
| common winner-takes-all systems.
| illusivesaint wrote:
| >Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary,
| categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue
| as something with its own set of properties to explore.
|
| I would slightly disagree. Americans are typically very
| moderate and I believe made to not understand the concepts of
| politics, when there's capitalism and liberalism involved
| it's just too complex to understand. The biggest and
| obviously evidence of this is the apathy toward voting, why
| even be engaged in something that isn't felt to be a
| democratic system? How many feel marginalized and the kinds
| of communities that say so. As impacftul Assange's work may
| be, the shakers and movers of the world are doing a good job
| at damage control sounds like.
| tw04 wrote:
| > One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is
| that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan
| issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite
| political party.
|
| It became political when it became obvious that Assange was
| working with Russia. One party seems to care more about Russian
| money than their own country.
|
| https://dearmrputin.substack.com/p/wikileaks-russian-ties-ju...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-...
| [deleted]
| the_optimist wrote:
| The only "evidence" of Russia working with Wikileaks is the
| wholehearted assurance of the FBI/CIA. You're serious in
| crackpot land, or you're intentionally posting
| disinformation.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| "Obvious" is in the eye of the beholder.
|
| Can you describe why THIS smear campaign is valid while the
| others are crumbling?
|
| If you were a dystopic too-powerful media/state isn't this
| exactly how you would discredit your dissenters?
| tw04 wrote:
| I guess you'd need to provide something more than a blanket
| "that's a smear Campaign" in response to a 4 page article
| with citations of all the connections to Russia and their
| intelligence agencies.
| the_optimist wrote:
| You're going to need to provide some actual evidence
| rather than a bunch of rambling babble from conspiracy
| theorists.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > "Fascism"
|
| You're not allowed to mention that ideology here. Except in a
| distant historical context.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is
| that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan
| issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite
| political party._
|
| This is because Wikileaks _is_ objectively partisan. Do you
| recall the leaked conversations between Trump Jr and Wikileaks
| where they suggest coordinating a controlled "leak" of Trump's
| tax returns in order to bolster their own credibility?
|
| In wikileak's own words: "if we publish them it will
| dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality".
|
| This doesn't invalidate the content of the leaked e-mails, but
| it does demonstrate that their goals were partisan in nature.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Not buying your bullshit.
| stonogo wrote:
| There are a lot of us who don't consider Assange a journalist,
| but some foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing
| secrets to injure the enemies of Russia. To call him "the most
| hard-hitting journalist of the past decade" is frankly
| laughable.
|
| I'm not sure how you can claim the charges are fictitious
| unless you haven't read them. The charging document for the
| superseding indictment is fairly straightforward and relatively
| short. What problems do you have with it?
| ben_w wrote:
| As it is possible to be biased and misleading while still
| only saying true things, I think it's possible to be _both_
| "the most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade"[0]
| _and_ "foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing
| secrets to injure the enemies of Russia".
|
| Likewise, I am _of the opinion_ that the attempted
| extradition and prosecution for the sex offences would not
| have happened if he hadn't upset the wrong people, while also
| being _of the opinion_ that he did the crimes.
|
| [0] That's said, I wouldn't describe him that way. Plenty of
| other journalists doing fine work.
| Tycho wrote:
| Is it really a surprise though: the mainstream media is totally
| permeated with "former" intelligence operatives turned pundits,
| run major stories based on "anonymous sources" within the
| intelligence community, etc.
|
| They are telling people what to think and it is working.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most
| Americans even know who Julian Assange is_
|
| Most American's probably don't actually know much about him.
| They may have encountered a few stories over the years-- in
| many cases just the headlines.
|
| There wouldn't be outrage & protests for a few reasons:
|
| 1) The news stories people have read would frequently have been
| about him helping hack US computers, often with the added
| context of his rape prosecution, so there wouldn't be a lot of
| automatic sympathy.
|
| 2) The testimony retraction is only a few days old, so not much
| time to get upset especially without greater media coverage.
|
| 3) The story is basically "Witness lies to FBI". People aren't
| going to take to the streets over that. If the DoJ still go
| after Assange, that would be worse, but I still don't think
| we'd see much protesting for 1 more main reason:
|
| 4) Americans have more than enough sources of outrage much
| closer to home. If something is going to overcome Americans'
| "outrage fatique", it isn't going to be recanted testimony in
| the prosecution of a supposed co-conspirator for an incident
| that occurred over 10 years ago. It's not even an issue of
| partisan politics: Whether you're to the right or the left, you
| probably have more immediate things to be angry about than
| this.
| f1refly wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the FBI were allegedly complicit in DDoS
| (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on the websites of
| several Iceland government institutions. The FBI had then
| approached Icelandic authorities, promising to assist them in
| preventing any future such attacks. In reality, the approach was
| a ruse to fool Iceland into cooperation in an attempt to entrap
| Assange.
|
| The FBI is a criminal organisation.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Wait until you read about the FBI did to Black civil rights
| leaders.
| tpoacher wrote:
| "When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
|
| ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko
| raziel2p wrote:
| a simpler explanation would be that many people simply don't care
| that much about the Assange case at the moment, and this is just
| a development or such, nothing conclusive. were the case to be
| completely dropped in court due to this, I think it would make
| the news.
| tootie wrote:
| Also he testified to one thing, waited for the case to be
| closed, then said something else to the media. His media
| statements could easily be self serving (I have no idea what
| his motivations are) as they are not under oath they have no
| bearing on the case. The case which was already adjudicated in
| Assange's favor. It's entirely moot.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Isn't that arguing that MSM report what people want to know as
| opposed to people knowing what the MSM report? It's hard to
| know about something MSM doesn't report.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Isn't that arguing that MSM report what people want to know
| as opposed to people knowing what the MSM report?
|
| What's particularly interesting about the Assange case at
| this point? He's a guy in an extradition hearing, probably
| like thousands of others. If the end result is the
| extradition is rejected because of this detail, then it will
| more than likely be reported as part of that larger story.
|
| Assange has a small but vocal fan base, but fans don't make
| the minutiae of these court proceedings interesting or
| relevant to non-fans.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| I'd add that if and when Assange is actually extradited to
| the US, _that_ will be news.
|
| And if and when Assange goes on trial in a US Federal
| court, _that_ will be covered ad inifinitum, ad nauseam by
| the US press.
| jrsj wrote:
| Nobody cared until the media made them care in the first place,
| to build anti-Wikileaks and anti-Assange sentiment. Awful
| convenient that they stop talking about him the moment there's
| concrete evidence that the whole thing was a setup.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Why is the media unwilling to publish information which
| contravenes the malfeasance of the intelligence agencies?
| sadmann1 wrote:
| In the end be it democracy or totalitarianism there's always a
| small elite controlling discourse. And I'm starting to think
| china's is managing their country better than ours
| eplanit wrote:
| The CCP has grown to be so effective that they're managing
| ours, too.
| [deleted]
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Yeah to everyone who says "communism is fundamentally flawed" I
| just point to China. Sure, they had some growing pains early on
| but the scale of what they were trying to do was unprecedented.
|
| And yes, the Uyghur situation is awful and should be condemned.
| But let's not blame that on communism because the US and plenty
| of its capitalist allies have done as bad or worse (see also
| the residential schools in Canada or the incarceration rates of
| black men in the US).
| slothtrop wrote:
| They're an Authoritarian Capitalist state.
| [deleted]
| xtracto wrote:
| Exactly! One should not confound their economic model
| (communism, capitalist, socialist) with their governing
| model (authoritarian, democratic).
|
| Their decisions to massacre people are purely
| authoritarian, while their economic policies look very
| capitalist.
|
| Sure, they have some socialist policies, but so do Norway,
| Germany and Mexico.
| edoceo wrote:
| Who's they? USA or China or ...?
| danuker wrote:
| Check out this story.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/social-injustice/
|
| TL;DR: a thought experiment: for an exam, take the average of
| every student's grade, and give it to all students.
|
| By, say, the 3rd exam, all of the class will fail.
| jtbayly wrote:
| In ninth grade my biology teacher took a vote about whether
| to do this for one test. I voted against it (in the
| minority). It didn't take three tests to see the effect.
| Immediately people stopped studying for the test. We
| failed. The teacher cheated and gave us all a C.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| What does an apocryphal story about a highly simplified and
| disingenuous demonstration of socialism have to do with
| anything?
| bordercases wrote:
| The logic generalizes fairly well to the problems you
| have with all collective goods. Unless everyone acts
| optimally from the goodness of their hearts, which no one
| does, to shunt the load of producing the collective good,
| you need coercion, since at that point there is no
| individual incentive to contribute to a collective good
| if others are doing so.
|
| This is true for unions and undergrad experiments, as it
| is for centralized planning states, which unsurprisingly
| are often oppressive dictatorships. If you want to
| eliminate the need for coercion (which bears long-running
| costs onto the state), you need to appeal to individual
| selfishness, which implies competition. As markets have
| their own problems, you ultimately need a mixed-economy
| state, something China has become despite its communist
| roots, and ditto the USA despite its uber-capitalism.
|
| The economist Mancur Olson goes into this dynamic of
| collective action for Western states and beyond. He
| attempts to explain the general case of the rise and fall
| of efficiency in capitalist nations, as well as the
| outlier performance of some communist nations (all short-
| run) despite this model.
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation-
| Rigid... https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0465051952
|
| Cultural upbringing can make up some of the difference,
| but only in small scales or when the groups are tight-
| knit. Even in China, where on the surface Confucian
| culture totalizes the individual to the collective, there
| is also a culture of skillful deception and intrigue in
| Chinese politics that has flourished domestically and
| abroad in the 21st century.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Ok, cool. Despite Snopes saying that never happened, China
| doesn't do that; in fact they have more billionaires than
| the US. It's almost like they learned from the failures of
| other communist states and adapted their system.
|
| What they have done is create a base standard of living
| that is dependent on location. They can't move every rural
| farmer to urban population centers all at once, so they've
| been doing it gradually over time. Do a lot of Chinese live
| in poverty? Yeah, but they've been living in poverty for a
| few hundred years. A lot fewer live in poverty in 2021 than
| in 1990.
| dangerface wrote:
| Why would you want to move farmers to cities where they
| cant farm? who would do the farming then? why not just
| pay farmers what you would pay a factory worker in the
| city?
|
| Trying to force this doesn't make sense to me.
| monocasa wrote:
| Because agricultural modernization universally requires
| at least an order of magnitude less labor, and society is
| then better served by those workers being in urban
| centers where they can work first in factories then
| transition to a service economy for the ones who'll work
| unskilled labor, and concentrate access to quality
| education for the ones that can contribute
| intellectually.
|
| Those "ghost cities" that the media pearl clutched for a
| while there have for the most part been slowly filled in
| with previously agrarian workers making the urban
| transition.
| bordercases wrote:
| China is deficit in arable land for food. If those
| farmers aren't reskilling (or even if the labor pool on a
| whole isn't reskilling, presuming your intellectual
| contributions don't mean farming) then it's an overall
| waste of labour.
| nipponese wrote:
| It should not be ignored that "growing pains" means ~10
| million dead from state-caused famines and imprisoned for
| thought crimes.
| Fricken wrote:
| Yes, the transition to modernity was almost as much of a
| shock for China as it was for the west. Nonetheless, the
| net effect is raising about 800 million people out of
| poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that
| has no historical precedent.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Sure, but that only happened after they abandoned the
| communist economic system.
|
| Under Mao, it was constant famine, genocides, and wars.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million
| people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an
| achievement that has no historical precedent.
|
| Taiwan, Singapore and Korea started from around the same
| starting point as China after World War Two, and all
| became developed countries much faster (compare their GDP
| per capita now to China's). You could say "their
| populations aren't as big as China", but in that case
| wouldn't the ideal solution have been to split China up
| into a bunch of smaller countries that could grow just as
| fast as Korea etc?
| simion314 wrote:
| Din't US dump tons of money in South Koreea?
| Fricken wrote:
| What? What sort of mental gymnastics is this?
| logicchains wrote:
| All the "East Asian Tiger" countries achieved much faster
| economic development in terms of GDP per capita (per
| head) than China did: search for China, Hong Kong,
| Singapore and Korea on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List
| _of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi....
|
| There's no theoretical reason a political region should
| develop slower if the population is larger, if anything
| economic theory suggests the opposite (a common argument
| for why America's GDP is higher than Europe's is that it
| has a larger homogenous internal market). So China's size
| can't be used as an excuse for its slower development.
| jessaustin wrote:
| You reject population as a factor in modernization (along
| with, apparently, initial development level, initial
| education level, initial infrastructure, etc.) and you
| offer instead... longitude? Why are you comparing China
| to Singapore?
| woah wrote:
| China developed more slowly than its neighbors,
| unsurprising given the communist party's crushing of free
| communication and enterprise and the killing of tens of
| millions of people. You've gotta be playing really dumb
| to pretend there's anything complicated about that.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Neighbors"? Singapore is 2000km from the _closest_ part
| of China! I 'm not "playing" dumb; in this entire thread
| you have given us _no_ reason to expect Singapore and
| China to have similar modernization performance. Less
| charitable people than myself might suspect that your
| personal reason is one you can 't mention in polite
| company.
| logicchains wrote:
| >"Neighbors"? Singapore is 2000km from the closest part
| of China! I'm not "playing" dumb; in this entire thread
| you have given us no reason to expect Singapore and China
| to have similar modernization performance.
|
| Sorry, what does relevance geographic proximity have to
| economic growth? The point is that those countries all
| have similar cultural and racial backgrounds to China,
| yet developed much faster.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Obviously, relative proximity has very little to do with
| economic growth. No one ITT ever mentioned any other
| unifying factor, so I was being charitable by suggesting
| it. You seem less sophisticated than 'woah, in that
| you've openly stated the racial assumption that 'woah
| left unsaid.
| woah wrote:
| Are you seriously calling people racist for comparing
| China with the islands and peninsulas surrounding it? Is
| it racist to compare Germany with England?
| jessaustin wrote:
| If you invoked race as an explanation for e.g. why South
| Korea and Taiwan had similar modernization experiences,
| that would be weird but maybe not obviously _wrong_.
| Among the dozens of other similarities between these two
| nations, race as perceived by white Americans is one
| similarity. It 's not the most salient similarity to
| reasonable people, but there's no inherent contradiction
| involved.
|
| That's not what's going on ITT. China has had a different
| modernization experience from the other nations discussed
| above, which is entirely understandable given their very
| different histories, assets, infrastructures,
| populations, demographics, educations, etc. Your racism
| is that you ignore all those obvious differences in favor
| of one trivial, contingent aspect in which to an
| ineducable white American they might seem similar.
| woah wrote:
| In an effort to silence legitimate criticism of a
| totalitarian regime, you are making the assertion that
| comparing a country to its neighbors is racist. Amazing.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Huh? China literally slowed its pace of development
| intentionally so they _didn't_ kill millions more. They
| learned that the Great Leap Forward was too fast so they
| slowed it down and made it a multi-decade project.
| Interior China was largely subsistence farming 50 years
| ago and now boasts some of the largest cities in the
| world. They have industrialized incredibly quickly given
| the scale of the challenge. You can't bootstrap enough
| industry to modernize 1.6 billion people overnight; it
| takes decades to build.
|
| They haven't gone faster because a country like Singapore
| can buy enough industrial output from Japan or the US to
| bootstrap their industry. Nobody has enough spare
| capacity to build at the scale of China, so the Chinese
| had to cultivate industry over a period of decades. Given
| that most of the worlds manufacturing is done there now,
| I'd say they've been quite successful.
| monocasa wrote:
| China didn't really attempt to start the process of
| increasing until the late 70s to early 80s. Their
| cultural revolution was focused on rooting out hidden
| vestiges of the old power structures before attempting to
| modernize. Since that point their growth rate has been
| quicker, they just got started later.
| logicchains wrote:
| > Since that point their growth rate has been quicker,
| they just got started later.
|
| That's not true. You can see the historical growth rates
| for China and Korea here: https://data.worldbank.org/indi
| cator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2... . China's growth rate at
| no point in time was greater than Korea's was in the
| 1970s and 1980s.
| monocasa wrote:
| What? The highest points on that graph are Chinese. And
| there are similar Chinese bursts to the Korean one you're
| talking about, followed by China sustaining higher
| growth.
|
| Are we looking at the same graph?
| logicchains wrote:
| The highest single point is China, followed by a very low
| point the following year. If you average the growth rate
| over 3-5 year period their maximum rates are similar.
| monocasa wrote:
| Well, the highest four points on the graph are Chinese.
| Yes you can cherry pick a three year period that makes
| Korea look good, but you can do the same with China.
| alkonaut wrote:
| So what we are saying is that the dropping of socialism
| and adoption of capitalism lifted 800 million people out
| of poverty in a generation? I don't think that's a bad
| review of capitalism at all.
| logicchains wrote:
| Even by official Chinese numbers ~10 million is a pretty
| low estimate.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Wikipedia
| has it as "between 15 and 55 million" deaths just to the
| Great Leap Forward alone.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Yeah, that's what happens when you try to undo 200 years of
| colonial rule. It's actually a surprisingly low number as a
| percentage of population when compared to Russia or Eastern
| Europe.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah just like those American mass famines after the
| revolutionary war. Completely inevitable.
| logicchains wrote:
| That's ridiculous. Most of the deaths were due to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward; how
| could any part of that be justified as "undoing 200 years
| of colonial rule"? That wasn't even a justification used
| by the Commmunist Party at the time.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| There's no playbook for undoing colonial rule at mass
| scale. Said colonial rule prevented China from
| participating in the industrial revolution, so converting
| an agrarian economy to an industrial one is in fact
| undoing colonial rule.
|
| So yeah, they made mistakes and a lot of people died. I'm
| not going to glorify Mao but you can't argue with
| results. The Great Leap Forward largely succeeded, they
| just realized it needed to be rolled out at a smaller
| scale over a longer period of time.
| logicchains wrote:
| By what metric did it succeed? China's GDP per capita is
| still around a quarter of comparable countries like
| Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
| janeroe wrote:
| Well, when the youth wing of Lumumbians started
| practicing a nutritionary democracy (that is, murdered
| and had a nurse from the West for dinner) this was
| exactly the justification used by the socialists. "They
| are undoing the colonial rule", -- they said. That's even
| more ridiculous and yet they find this theory convincing.
| So, I don't think it can be helped.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| China got lifted out of poverty after they abandoned
| communism and transitioned to a mixed economy with respect
| for private property rights. So I'm not sure what your point
| is.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| This comment reads like dialogue from a character in a Philip
| K. Dick novel.
| bordercases wrote:
| They eventually moved to a capitalist economic system with
| totalitarian tendencies, no different than the mafia if the
| mafia were technocrats.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| >Yeah to everyone who says "communism is fundamentally
| flawed" I just point to China.
|
| As your proof it's flawed, right? Right?
| QuizzicalCarbon wrote:
| By this logic, the USA (a much younger country) is also
| simply experiencing growing pains, nullifying your point.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| That's disingenuous. The government of China, People's
| Republic of China, has only been around since 1949 and even
| if you include the ROC's mainland tenure that only extends
| it back to 1912.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| It matters WHICH elite are in charge though, and this batch of
| Western power elite have no actually loyalty to any given
| country. China differs from the Soviets in that it's
| Nationalistic Communism (although perhaps National Socialism is
| a better term now). What international communism and global
| capitalism have in common is the destruction of any sense of
| national sovereignty. If the people of the world are to avoid
| neo feudal slavery in the coming century, then somewhat
| paradoxically we need to realize that we all do better, when we
| realize that we are not all in this together all the time, and
| that local and regional power structures are better at
| responding to the actual needs of their people.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The promise was that we would bring democracy to China. I think
| the opposite happened to a large extent. It's like doing
| business with the cartel, you're bound to get corrupted.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| I don't think Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson is a "key witness" in the
| claims against Assange. He might be A witness, but I very much
| doubt the charges rely on his testimony. As far as the media
| goes, most people don't care about Assange as much as the
| conspiracy crowd. And some of the comments here are verging on
| very conspiratorial.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yes, and someone who's followed the case pretty closely agrees
| with you:
|
| > Except, Siggi retracts nothing substantive that is alleged in
| the indictment, so this drama is instead a demand that you
| accept the word of a liar rather than read the documents to
| show that the liar's claims are irrelevant to the charges
| against Assange.
|
| https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/06/27/wikileaks-and-edward-s...
|
| (I really don't know anything about the case so I don't have an
| opinion, other than to be reflexively skeptical of sweeping
| claims of conspiracy)
| the_optimist wrote:
| This analysis fails to make the case that having a witness
| recant is irrelevant. It is also full of nonsense hyperbole,
| as though it were written by a very passionate person who
| does not command faculties of reasoning.
| colordrops wrote:
| Your comment is content-free and verging on ad hominem.
| freshhawk wrote:
| A key witness in the current extradition case is my
| understanding.
|
| The claim about Assange guiding Manning that Thordarson is
| testifying too is definitely a major piece of most of the
| related court cases.
| k1m wrote:
| What makes you say that? He was used to strengthen the US case
| late into the proceedings. The UK judge, while refusing
| extradition on humantiarian grounds, sided with the US based in
| part on his testimony:
|
| > The Stundin article continued:
|
| > 'With regards to the actual accusations made in the
| indictment Baraitser sided with the arguments of the American
| legal team, including citing the specific samples from Iceland
| which are now seriously called into question.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| The main charges are related to Chelsea Manning. This was a
| charge for hacking in Iceland completely unrelated to that.
| That charge could be completely removed from the case and he
| would still be on trial for the other charges.
| k1m wrote:
| > That charge could be completely removed from the case and
| he would still be on trial for the other charges.
|
| That charge _was_ completely absent from the case until the
| US decided it needed to strengthen its case and added it
| last-minute. So clearly they disagree with you, otherwise
| they would have kept it out (knowing the background of the
| individual involved). And again, why would the judge refer
| to it specifically in siding with the US if it were so
| unimportant?
| 0e9333fa-97ed wrote:
| >Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, who
| admitted that he had made false allegations against Assange
| after being recruited by US authorities. Thordarson, who has
| several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and financial
| fraud, began working with the US Department of Justice and the
| FBI after receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution. He
| even admitted to continuing his crime spree while working with
| the US authorities.
|
| That he is in any way involved with the case on the US govt
| side is extremely unsettling. Especially if he were given
| immunity child rape for _any_ testimony.
| TheTester wrote:
| Outside of the united states you are not part ot the
| "conspiracy crowd" for distrusting imperialist institutions
| that attacked their own allies, at least fro most informed
| Europeans this was a freedom of the press issue and saying that
| "comments here are verging on very conspiratorial" seems like
| an overt hyperbole when as far as I have seen they are pretty
| much citing articles, no Alex Jones style comments so far, to
| the dismay of those who still hate Assange for some reason/
| esens wrote:
| If this happened to Trump it would be on all of the right wing
| news channels for a full news cycle and used to discredit all
| investigations/charges against him.
|
| Different people have different levels of access to ensuring
| media coverage, in part because of biases in those media
| outlets.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I agree, coverage of the Assange case is more sporadic now but
| a quick search of the NYT website shows they wrote about this
| indictment June 12th. It's no secret. If there's something to
| this new claim it may be in their next article about it, they
| seem to get back to Assange once a month or so.
|
| The title for this link is exaggerated at least.
| k1m wrote:
| > the NYT website shows they wrote about this indictment June
| 12th. It's no secret.
|
| That's not about this news story.
|
| "These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article
| published on 26 June in Stundin."
|
| Has the NYT covered them?
|
| Here's an NYT search showing everything they published with
| the term "Assange" in the last month: https://www.nytimes.com
| /search?dropmab=false&endDate=2021070...
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> the NYT website shows they wrote about this indictment
| June 12th. It's no secret.
|
| > "These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive
| article published on 26 June in Stundin."
|
| > Has the NYT covered them?
|
| I think the point is that the Assange story isn't that
| important or interesting anymore, so they don't
| breathlessly cover every development like some corners of
| the internet want to (and sometimes interpret the lack of
| breathless coverage as some kind of conspiracy).
| 34679 wrote:
| >the Assange story isn't that important
|
| Do you realize that it's not hyperbole to say press
| freedom in the United States hinges on this case?
| American journalists have always been protected from
| prosecution for publishing factual information. If
| Assange is convicted, he will be the first. That would
| fundamentally change freedom of the press in the US.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Assange isn't a US citizen. He's not charged with
| publishing the information but soliciting and attempting
| to assist in the exfiltration of the information.
|
| What Manning did was illegal whether you agree with her
| motivations or not. Soliciting someone with clearance to
| leak information and assisting them in the process is
| also illegal. It doesn't matter if Assange's assistance
| was effective or not.
|
| If all Assange did was publish information Manning
| brought to him, there would likely be no charges and
| they'd be easily dismissed otherwise. He'd have been
| clearly acting in the role as a journalist. But that's
| not what happened.
|
| Assange wants to be considered a journalist (with its
| protections) while at the same time playing spymaster and
| hacker.
| 34679 wrote:
| >He's not charged with publishing the information but
| soliciting and attempting to assist in the exfiltration
| of the information.
|
| He's charged with both.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-
| assa...
|
| Criminal No. 1:18-cr-l 11 (CMH)Count 1: 18 U.S.C.SS
| 793(g)Conspiracy To Receive National DefenseInformation
|
| Counts 2-4:18 U.S.C. SS 793(b) and 2Obtaining National
| Defense Information
|
| Counts 5-8: 18 U.S.C. SS 793(c) and 2Obtaining National
| Defense Information
|
| Counts 9-11: 18 U.S.C. SS 793(d) and 2Disclosure of
| National Defense Information
|
| Counts 12-14: 18 U.S.C. SS 793(e) and 2Disclosure of
| National Defense Information
|
| Counts 15-17: 18 U.S.C. SS 793(e)Disclosure of National
| Defense Information
|
| Count 18: 18 U.S.C. SSSS 371 and 1030Conspiracy To Commit
| Computer Intrusion
| giantrobot wrote:
| Sorry but you're not correct. Here's [0] the law he's
| being charged of violating. You'll notice that _intent_
| is the crux of the disclosure subsections he 's being
| charged under. He's being charged with publishing the
| information he received with the _intent_ to do harm to
| the US. That 's what the prosecution will argue and his
| defense for those charges will be entirely about intent.
|
| Independently intent would be a difficult thing to prove
| but his public actions and the conspiracy charges with
| will be used to establish intent. Like I said, he wants
| to claim all of the protections of journalism while he's
| acting as a spymaster.
|
| I don't really think it's possible to claim (objectively)
| any of Assange's actions with Wikileaks could be
| considered journalism. Besides not really practicing
| anything that might be considered journalism he also
| exercised a lot of editorial control in what Wikileaks
| didn't or wouldn't publish.
|
| [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
| 34679 wrote:
| You previously claimed he's charged with "soliciting and
| attempting to assist in the exfiltration of the
| information", "not with publishing". I fail to see how
| arguing intent invalidates one without the other. I
| copied and pasted the charges from the indictment, which
| can be found at the bottom of the page I linked.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| It's okay when CIA convinces some non-US citizen to
| become an agent and provide secrets from their
| government. All governments do this. Somehow it's
| different in Assange's case because he is not government
| entity.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's okay when CIA convinces some non-US citizen to
| become an agent and provide secrets from their
| government. All governments do this. Somehow it's
| different in Assange's case because he is not government
| entity.
|
| It's pretty standard to be friendly to people who spy for
| you, and hostile to those who spy against you. If the FBI
| catches a Russian spy who doesn't have diplomatic cover,
| that person is going to get prosecuted (and if they do
| have cover they'll become persona non grata and
| expelled); ditto if the Russians catch an American spy.
| giantrobot wrote:
| All governments do that but those agents are persecuted
| when they're caught by the targeted government. If the
| spymaster is also caught they'll also be persecuted under
| the target country's laws unless they have some sort of
| diplomatic cover from their own government.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Do you realize that it's not hyperbole to say press
| freedom in the United States hinges on this case?
|
| If that were actually the case, I'd expect the kind of
| breathless coverage from the rest of the press that
| Assange's fans are clamoring for. So it's either...
|
| 1. there's a conspiracy afoot, and the press (as a whole)
| is deliberately coordinating amongst themselves to
| suppress this significant development, because they're
| all in the pocket of... etc., etc.;
|
| 2. the mainstream press are all dumbasses who don't know
| the difference between their head and a hole in the
| ground; or...
|
| 3. it _is_ hyperbole to say press freedom in the United
| States hinges on this case.
|
| My bet is with the latter. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems
| like the far safer bet.
| 34679 wrote:
| Personally, I've long since stopped expecting breathless
| coverage of important events from a press that
| collectively prefers covering who Miley Cyrus most
| recently flashed her crotch to. You'll need to go beyond
| CNN, MSNBC, or FOX.
|
| "For the first time in the history of our country, the
| government has brought criminal charges against a
| publisher for the publication of truthful information.
| This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump
| administration's attacks on journalism, and a direct
| assault on the First Amendment. It establishes a
| dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news
| organizations that hold the government accountable by
| publishing its secrets. And it is equally dangerous for
| U.S. journalists who uncover the secrets of other
| nations. If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for
| violating our secrecy laws, there's nothing preventing
| China, or Russia, from doing the same."
|
| https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-julian-
| assa...
|
| "Don't let the misdirection around "blown informants"
| fool you--this case is nothing less than the first time
| in American history that the US government has sought to
| prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something
| that national security reporters do with some
| regularity."
|
| https://www.cjr.org/opinion/assange-extradition-
| espionage-ac...
|
| "For the sake of press freedom, Julian Assange must be
| defended"
|
| https://cpj.org/2019/12/press-freedom-julian-assange-
| wikilea...
|
| "The most dangerous press freedom issue of 2020 is
| Trump's prosecution of Julian Assange"
|
| https://freedom.press/news/the-most-dangerous-press-
| freedom-...
|
| "The US should never have brought the case against the
| WikiLeaks founder. This attack on press freedom must be
| rejected"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/18/the
| -gu...
|
| "The U.S. Government's Indictment of Julian Assange Poses
| Grave Threats to Press Freedom. The Trump DOJ is
| exploiting animosity toward Assange to launch a thinly
| disguised effort to criminalize core functions of
| investigative journalism."
|
| https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-
| indi...
| jrumbut wrote:
| That was the point of my post, they aren't covering the
| proceedings minute by minute. They sum it up occasionally.
|
| There's a lot going on in the world, not everything can be
| covered urgently in a general interest publication. They
| don't have unlimited reporters.
| k1m wrote:
| You're implying this is a minor development. It's really
| not.
|
| Edward Snowden said: "This is the end of the case against
| Julian Assange."
|
| https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1408847450656415751
|
| I find it hard to believe the media would be silent if
| similar revelations came to light about anyone else.
|
| I agree with Media Lens:
|
| > in a sane world, Stundin's revelations about a key
| Assange witness - that Thordarson lied in exchange for
| immunity from prosecution - would have been headline news
| everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at
| Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories
| in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more. The
| silence is quite extraordinary; and disturbing.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You're implying this is a minor development. It's
| really not.
|
| > Edward Snowden said: "This is the end of the case
| against Julian Assange."
|
| What does Snowden know? He's not a lawyer of any sort.
|
| You're treating him like he's some generic authority,
| who's pronouncements on any subject carry weight. That's
| weird.
| xbar wrote:
| He is broadly considered a generic authority based on his
| long, deep thinking and publications about leaks and
| legal consequences.
|
| I think your response is not weird but disingenuous.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> Edward Snowden said: "This is the end of the case
| against Julian Assange."
|
| >> What does Snowden know? He's not a lawyer of any sort.
|
| > He is broadly considered a generic authority based on
| his long, deep thinking and publications about leaks and
| legal consequences.
|
| Maybe so, but I wouldn't hire him as my lawyer or rely on
| his judgements about when a legal case will fail.
|
| It's the difference between thinking about the
| consequences of a technology and building/operating that
| technology. For instance, someone might be an expert on
| the pernicious social effects of Facebook, but would
| flame out if they actually worked as a developer there.
| Snowden more than likely doesn't have the technical
| knowledge of the British legal system for him to reliably
| tell the difference between a major and minor
| development, let alone make trustworthy prediction about
| the future outcome of the whole thing.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack. Disingenuous is
| a fancy way of saying liar, which implies intent to
| deceive. That's not a legit move in forum discussions
| where you can't know the other person's intent. Please
| make your substantive points without that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Assange was an interesting story with him trapped in the
| embassy and his cat pooping but now it consists of more
| mundane legal proceedings. One is a made for TV spy
| thriller. The other is discussion of paperwork.
| peter422 wrote:
| You are implying this is a major story... it isn't. If
| Assange were actually standing trial, that's interesting.
| Hearing more random court proceedings of a very bizarre
| 10 year fiasco is not.
|
| Everybody is a critic of what the MSM is covering. They
| cover what is interesting. It isn't a giant conspiracy to
| explain their behavior.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| man you are nuts. cant say it differently
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It
| poisons the ecosystem here, and it discredits your view.
| The latter is especially pernicious if your view happens
| to be the right one, because then you're also
| discrediting the truth, which harms everybody (https://hn
| .algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
|
| Edit: yikes, you've been breaking the site guidelines a
| ton lately. When accounts are primarily using HN for
| ideological or political battle, we ban them; also when
| they're mostly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait
| comments; and you've been doing both of these things.
| That's not cool. We've also had to warn you several times
| about this in the past. I don't want to ban you because
| you've posted good and relevant comments in the past, but
| if you don't stop this pattern, we're definitely going to
| have to. Please stop this pattern.
| cudgy wrote:
| Interesting is relative. In fact, many might find main
| stream media to be the opposite of interesting.
| peter422 wrote:
| MSM is by definition targeting the mainstream audience.
| Watch mainstream primetime television... It's the same
| audience.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >If Assange were actually standing trial, that's
| interesting
|
| His extradition hearing to see if this charge can be
| tried is currently facing an appeal, and he is still in
| prison partially for this charge.
| peter422 wrote:
| Not in an American court, for a non-American citizen, for
| something that happened 10 years ago. It just isn't as
| interesting as you think it is.
|
| And it is getting coverage! It just isn't front page
| news.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Yes in an American court, they are the ones charging him
| with these crimes.
|
| And it isn't getting any major oublisher coverage,
| searching "Julian Assange" on both DDG and Google news
| shows only Democracy Now covering the story.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yes in an American court, they are the ones charging
| him with these crimes.
|
| Yes, the USA is charging him. It would be very odd for
| extradition hearings on US federal charges to be heard in
| a US court, and, in fact, these are not. Assange is not
| on trial, and the process he is currently undergoing in
| is not in an American court, though there are charges
| pending that he would face in a US court if that process
| completes as the US prefers.
|
| I can see you arguing that that's not important, but
| falsely denying the assertion that its not in a US court
| is...I mean, what's even the point?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Assange is set to face trial in a US court, and that is
| the only reason he is facing extradition.
|
| > I can see you arguing that that's not important, but
| falsely denying the assertion that its not in a US court
| is...I mean, what's even the point?
|
| I am arguing that it is important and view the
| extradition hearing as part of his larger US trial. His
| trial for skipping bail in the UK is long over, the only
| trial left is the US one.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I am arguing that it is important and view the
| extradition hearing as part of his larger US trial.
|
| The extradition hearing is factually not part of his US
| trial.
|
| > the only trial left is the US one.
|
| The US charges are the only ones that he is currently
| known to be facing a potential future trial for, sure.
| But "potential future" and "actual current" are not the
| same thing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The first step of the trial was for charges to be filed.
| The next part was using those charges to request his
| extradition. At this point you could say the extradition
| hearing is not a part of his trial, but it is only
| happening because of the trial and the US is the reason
| he is in prison currently.
|
| I'd write this off as weird pedantry but you're accusing
| me of lying for some reason.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The first step of the trial was for charges to be filed
|
| No, that's neither the first step of the process (even
| the formal legal process) nor any step of the trial.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This entire conversation would be much more productive if
| you did more than just say I'm wrong or lying.
|
| All of this seems like parts of the pretrial layed out by
| the US constitutional criminal procedure. I guess you
| could distinguish trial from pretrial, but if that was
| your point you really could have just stated that right
| away.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Jesus christ stop this.
|
| It doesn't matter whether it's the "first" step or an
| "early" step. It doesn't matter if the entire process is
| being summed up as "trial", even though parts of the
| process are not technically part of the trail.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by
| omission.
|
| I've recognized this happening but I have never had a word for it
| until now.
| mancerayder wrote:
| It's discussed quite a bit in Manufacturing Consent, with many
| many examples given - in those days, the U.S. war with Iraq
| featuring prominently in examples of how broadcast and print
| media behaved.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Thanks for the downvote.
| skinkestek wrote:
| There are actually at least two persons who downvoted you
| because I upvoted the comment above and I see you are still
| in grey :-D
|
| Complaining about downvotes is however not OK here
| according to the rules.
|
| Sometimes when I am really confused I ask politely why
| something I wrote was downvoted, but more importantly I got
| used to it and get over it. In fact I wonder if I have
| collected most downvotes (and later upvotes) on my most
| important comments :-)
| mancerayder wrote:
| It's strange - I'm OK being downvoted if I have a poor
| argument, am mean (and I'm not), or make a factual
| mistake.
|
| People vote based on whether they agree or disagree with
| a political opinion (and is mentioning Manufacturing
| Consent so partisan in the first place?). I tend to
| upvote or downvote based on argument strength even if I
| disagree or agree with the generalized point of view.
|
| That's my philosophy. So it makes me slightly bitter when
| people downvote 'just because.'
| skinkestek wrote:
| > So it makes me slightly bitter when people downvote
| 'just because.'
|
| Don't get bitter. It only hurts you.
|
| I'm actually serious here.
| maverick-iceman wrote:
| The burden of the proof is always on the person trying to emerge.
|
| Both Assange and Snowden wanted to emerge to notoriety, and
| projected their own mind frame onto others, thinking they had
| some sort of royal flush, and as soon as they'd sign off and
| reveal the information they had , they'd have been acclaimed and
| an immediate rise to stardom would have ensued.
|
| In reality the military is the most popular Federal agency, they
| should have focused their efforts on George W. Bush who ended his
| mandate with a 19% approval rating
| canada_dry wrote:
| > the FBI were allegedly complicit in DDoS (distributed denial-
| of-service) attacks on the websites of several Iceland government
| institutions. The FBI had then approached Icelandic authorities,
| promising to assist them in preventing any future such attacks
|
| What's really stunning that this statement does _not_ seem like
| just a wildly crazy accusation.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I'm a Canadian and the CIA has literally kidnapped innocent
| people off the streets of my city and tortured them to
| insanity, it's far from the worst that could happen.
| eloff wrote:
| I'm not aware of that incident, what are you referring to?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| MKULTRA's work in collaboration with a McGill researcher,
| in which they put psychiatry patients into a coma against
| their consents and tortured them :
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
| [deleted]
| roenxi wrote:
| The really startling thing is ... considering how effective this
| technique is _with_ the internet it must have been nearly
| flawless prior to about 2015 when most of the world didn 't have
| access to the internet.
|
| What we're seeing isn't so much an elite group controlling the
| narrative as an elite group who used to be able to control the
| narrative and now can't patch over the rough spots.
| [deleted]
| Dah00n wrote:
| 2015? In the big picture there's hardly any difference in
| active internet users in the countries involved compared to
| today. In Scandinavia in 2015 it was already at around 96% and
| I'm guessing UK and US wasn't that far behind.
|
| Edit: Looked it up. UK was close to those numbers in 2015 too.
| The US was far behind though. But that hasn't changed much
| since so it doesn't really matter in this context.
| a0-prw wrote:
| Yes. They are struggling to regain control.
| Clubber wrote:
| Let's hope the toothpaste has already left the tube and can't
| go back in again.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Whatever the future has in store for us - instability -
| upheaval - is rarely good for quality of life in the short
| term.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > prior to about 2015 when most of the world didn't have access
| to the internet.
|
| I can't tell if you're being facetious or not...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Actually, the internet hit 50% worldwide penetration right
| around 2015 :
| https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm
| Dah00n wrote:
| But this is in the UK where active users were around 95% in
| 2015.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/internet
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| I mean, it's not incorrect. In the developed world the
| percentage was reaching around 75-80%, but worldwide it was
| still <50% in 2015.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yes, it has been known for a long time. Hence for example
| Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Let's not kid ourselves, outside of a vanishingly small
| minority of people who consume independent or leftist media
| this is not a story. The rough spots are still only rough at a
| microscopic scale.
| plutonorm wrote:
| It's not an elite group, it's a character in the collective
| unconscious. Or to put it another way it's a stable set of
| interacting memes that tilt the conversation based upon their
| preferences.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| that is a very nice analysis. thanks will copy that
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Assuming that the Internet only became significantly effective
| in media when _direct_ acceess to it exceeded 50% of the
| _global_ population ... makes little sense. It needen 't even
| be considered where 50% of, say, advanced media markets have
| Internet access.
|
| What's necessary is for Internet connectivity to be high enough
| that _other_ media gatekeepers are ineffective, and that 's a
| threshold which was all but certainly crossed somewhere between
| the 1990s and early 2000s. With other nontraditional media
| channels (samizdat printing presses, pirate radio, 'Zine
| culture, and the like), there were pretty big holes in the
| mainstream media monopoly even earlier, though perhaps not
| quite at mass media level.
|
| (Interestingly, if you go further back, there was enough
| _diversity_ in mainstream media that a single unitary media
| culture _didn 't_ exist. It's helpful to realise that this
| mass-media culture was a largely novel development of the
| 1950s, much commented on at the time.)
|
| That said: media control, expressed as the ability to promote
| and suppress specific narratives, is as old as speech. Methods
| exist and have varied, but distraction, taboo, blacklisting,
| and access control (that is, denying personal access to
| reporters or publications which don't toe the official or
| blessed line) are key mechanisms.
|
| In today's mobile social Internet age, distraction, trust
| attacks, firehose, and that old classic, the Big Lie, are still
| effective methods of media control.
| [deleted]
| Sr_developer wrote:
| This OK, if you dont like it go and create your own newspaper,
| news agency or media conglomerate. This is the world we live in
| right now.
| iammisc wrote:
| Except, the current media outlets will use their monopoly power
| to suppress you, and the government will do jack diddly squat
| to stop them. Just look what happened with parler and Gab. Both
| sought to get around Facebook and Twitter and Reddit's bans on
| right-wing speech by building their own facebook and twitter.
|
| In response, companies like Amazon banned them from their
| platform. And Gab, for example, cannot distribute their apps on
| either the google play or apple app store.
|
| So no. In a normal society with a government-protected free
| market, you'd be right. But we currently live in what is quite
| obviously a corporatocracy, even if no one wants to admit it.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| I was being sarcastic (it dismays me a little to have to
| explain it). I agree with you, I was only parodying the
| majority position on this site any time someone they dont
| like is suppressed.
| iammisc wrote:
| Oh haha... it's hard to tell what's satire these days.
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