(Saddam had incentive to pretend he had WMD. He certainly didn't want Iran to know he didn't. He obviously didn't want inspectors inside his government buildings. But Bush and his team used Saddam's behavior as evidence he was hiding WMD, rather than the fact that he was hiding the lack of WMD.)
Once the CIA realized that war was inevitable, it went into cover-your-ass-mode and said Saddam might have chemical weapons so that US soldiers wouldn't go into Iraq with insufficient protection in-case there were chemical weapons after all.
Bush was unwilling to listen to counter-naratives. If Condi Rice or, more likely, Colin Powell had been willing to say "I don't think war is such a good idea" maybe it wouldn't have happened. But Bush surrounded himself with yes men. If Powell hadn't supported the war, likely he and his entire staff would have had to resign. If that had happened, Bush would have lost Tony Blair's support and with that, any international support. Bush probably would have at least thought twice about going to Iraq alone.
So in this case, it wasn't so much that the institutions weren't trustworthy, it's that they fell in line with pressure that started from Bush. It doesn't do any good to have experts at your disposal if you're not going to listen to any of them.
Source: Robert Draper's exhaustively researched book on how Iraq happened:
https://www.amazon.com/Start-War-Bush-Administration-America...
Interview with the author:
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21417224/why-did-america-invade...
(Also, the U.S. media didn't do its job. The cynical side of me says there's money to be made in covering war. But probably, it was just incompetence. I still haven't forgiven the NYT though.)
How does falling into line with pressure that started from Bush make them trustworthy? That is exactly the kind of failure which makes them untrustworthy.
So were the intelligence institutions trustworthy to provide good information? Yes.
Bush did an end-run around them.
Were they able to stop the U.S. from going to war? No. But that was Congress’s (and maybe the US media’s) job and certainly _those_ institutions failed.
I'm sticking with the 007 analysis that UK intel is golden and the US contact is about as cowboy as a spy can get but won't stand injustice.
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-phishing-email-that-hacked-...
That said, considering the context of the election, Trumps close ties with Russia and Russian agents, and the broad and multifaceted attempts at hacking the election attributed to Russia (disinformation farms, hacking state election networks), it is very likely that Russia was also behind the DNC hack. These weak attempts at casting doubt on Russia's involvement are transparent.
You, directly above that: Assange's denials about Russia's involvement aren't credible on its face.
Yeah, I'm confused. This is all beside the point. It is lawful to publish true information about candidates that is of interest to the public.
Actually it's an established fact. They were being watched live on their computers and security cameras as they were doing the hacking.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
Is there some connection between State Dept in 2014 and DNC in 2016?
Imaging burning a source so valuable for the sake of the U.S., only to have us elect Trump anyways and four years later pretend like its still an open question whether Russia was involved.
Yes, I guess it's a report. But it contains just assertions, so it's only meaningful if you trust the institution making it. I've read reports that actually contained the process the core conclusion were arrived at, like various opensource investigations from Bellingcat, etc. And these were indeed more convincing.
Not sure why hacker should just go by blind trust to institutions, lol.
"According to Crowdstrike..."
That's it. No one else did any investigation, just Crowdstrike. The same underhanded, dishonest company that LulzSec and Anonymous felt the needs to expose time and time again for their fraudulent ways. People who have no problem lying or framing people.
Honestly, I think "our supposed higher IQ's" (or more precisely: a self-image as being much smarter than average) can actually be a handicap when dealing with areas outside of one's specialty. It can very easily lead to overconfidence.
They go into other fields, declare that the field is just so easy, try to model things as 1m radius spheres of water, see that the four interstitial cell layers of the bovine second stomach are hyper-complex and noisy when saline levels change 2% (or things to that effect), declare that the field still needs to change, write a paper up that is simplistic and help no one in the field, get a bit of press coverage, assuage their damaged egos, and then try out landscape painting or Ethiopian cooking.
This phenomenon of overconfident and un-humble emeritus Physicists is not restricted to just them, I'm afraid, but all people.
Humility is a virtue.
I'm guessing it's a generalization from a relatively common great respect for academic science as an institution. However, even that's far from universal, which the pandemic has shown.
I do agree with you. I think there's at least as much overconfident mistrust of institutions than respect for them there.
Same old biological biases embedded within.
For example, how this forum often lauds certain non-gods and ignores the math that luck of time and place, not inherent abilities, are what bring people wealth.
Ignoring all the alternatives and historical evidence of high taxation’s value to a society, this forum likes to cling to celebrity worship of economists and tech elites who can only be elite given a tilted economic reward system tilted by biological indoctrination that’s proven in experiment....
Or how in a democracy we seem to end up in a pretty tilted political power structure.
But here they are anyway ignoring science because of biological contentment.
Western culture is as irredeemable as any other. Logistical capabilities are what matters, not ideology. Humans can’t escape their own ego though.
The more popular a site is, the more enticing it becomes to those who are interested in marketing/manipulation/etc. To give credit where it's due, I think HN is far more resilient to these kinds of attacks than most other sites. But it's still important to keep in mind that these malicious actors do exist, and are attempting to influence your opinions.
Tech culture is changing. The generation that was primarily brought up around CS and engineering in academia and influenced by the counterculture of the 70s, Free Software and anarchism is being replaced by a tech culture raised by Silicon Valley techo-libertarianism, Reddit and 4chan. The Unabomber manifesto is far more influential on the politics of modern tech culture than the Hacker Manifesto. We've gone from hackers building the web to liberate the world from the gatekeepers of information and communication to hackers wanting to burn the web down because it's too mainstream.
That's a cultural schism that Hacker News hasn't been able to deal with.
It's correlated with the recent rise in Trump's polling. Left wingers who oppose lockdowns, cancel culture and the riots are being pushed towards the right.
https://apnews.com/ef3b036949174a9b98d785129a93428b/Report:-...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
I don't believe anything the state says and so far every leak Asange has provided has been proven to be true. At this time he has more credibility than the government.
And the question here isn't if his leaks were true, it's if they were coordinated with Russia to disseminate information stolen in an attack targeted to influence one side of America's election. It has been proven in court that Assange was working the Trump campaign via Roger Stone. There is an abundance of evidence the hacker alias who procured the emails was a front for GRU. There is an abundance of evidence that GRU was actively working to support Donald Trump. Trump openly supported their help. The email leak came out immediately after the Access Hollywood tape revealed Trump's penchant for sexual assault.
What happened to the time that the people actually were wise enough to see those with suspicion?
The "convincing evidence" has been of the kind "let's prosecute this guy involved in big politics selectively for stuff that everybody else has been doing on the side for decades, and pretend like he is some rare exception, and hope that people wont see that it doesn't really prove anything about our greater point". Or the kind "yeah, our guys totally have seen these people attacking that system, and they can't be anything but X, would we ever lie? Here's a report".
It’s like a detective saying “I think he’s guilty, so there’s no need to get a statement.”
The lack of thoroughness here has always bothered me.
Assuming Assange is telling the truth, how would he even know who the ultimate source was?
I mean, Russia might be sophisticated enough to not pass on information like this using someone with an obvious connection to them. It's not like their agents are required to have an accent out of a Bond movie and wear a KGB/FSB uniform all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...
If he received the emails from someone with direct access to them - e.g. someone who worked for the DNC - Occam's Razor would suggest a lack of Russian involvement.
(Not saying this is the case, just pointing out one possibility.)
Edit - as the original post I was responding to has been removed I have edited out my response to it delving into more information.
He has no way of knowing if where he got them from was hired by Russia.
So Russia, aswell as any of every other organization, state or individual on the planet, might indirectly have handed the info over.
1. Assange really will choose to say who is or isn't a source (that carries its own risks in so many directions...).
2. Assange actually wants to tell the truth about the source...
3. Assange actually KNOWS the nature of the source? If Bob comes to him and says he's from Brazil (random country selected) and he got the info from Australia (another rando country) ... how sure can Assange be?
I'm not sure I find Assange to be a reliable narrator. The nature of wikileaks has for a while felt like it wants to craft its own narrative rather than just release information. Even as far back as when they were on Facebook (not sure if they still are) any question that seemed to even be distantly critical was deleted. They'd announce a big upcoming leak and nothing would happen ... if you asked anything about it your post was deleted.
I felt like they were playing their own game(s).
But even if that isn't the case, I don't trust that Assange can be as sure as he sounds about where information comes from. If he just up and trusts what his source tells him or just assumes he has the resources to be sure, that's kinda naive...
That said, Wikileaks was very proud of its "reporting" track record, methods, and sources. Their minimal exposition was journalistic cover for their original sources that was typically so thin that it would be difficult to contain errors.
Based on that track record and lengths Assange has gone through to maintain that integrity, I tend to believe who he says his source wasn't, that he would not intentionally reveal a source - living or dead, and that their are likely intermediaries or collaborators that would be compromised even if the original source would no longer be affected. That chain of trust is how they help ensure other leakers come to them first, and it seems their opsec is good enough to keep those sources secret even when the organization is significantly compromised.
I completely agree that they often oversold their releases. There were often claims of a deadman switch as well. If that hasn't triggered after all that's happened, was it a bluff? did it fail? was it compromised? did it contain information about the wrong target?
FWIW, sometimes my posts get significantly downvoted at first, and within a few hours end up with a lot more upvotes. I try to not care in the first place, but sometimes this makes me feel better.
>ASSANGE: Yes.
>HANNITY: ... or anybody associated with Russia?
>ASSANGE: We -- we can say and we have said repeatedly...
>HANNITY: Right.
>ASSANGE: ... over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.
He's basically saying that Vlad didn't call him up one day and say "Russia wants to give you some files." No shit.
-----
> Researchers from the Atlanta-based cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks reported that the emails had been obtained through a data theft carried out by the hacker group Fancy Bear, a group of Russian intelligence-linked hackers that were also responsible for cyberattacks that targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), resulting in WikiLeaks publishing emails from those hacks.
> On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded that the Russian government was behind the hack and gave to WikiLeaks a collection of hacked emails from John Podesta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails#Data_theft
> "The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions," Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the panel, said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-affirms-u-s-intel...
> Following a comprehensive investigation that CrowdStrike detailed publicly, the company concluded in May 2016 that two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries breached the DNC network.
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
> We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
etc, etc, etc.
I thought this was pretty well accepted at this point.
These groups are either working explicitly with governments, or their leadership has been approached by domestic police forces and are strong-armed into focusing their attention on specific organizations.
Yes, this is splitting-hairs, but the Russian Federation isn't anything like North Korea - nor remotely Communist.
It's not just a case of believing what the CIA say, they and other independent cyber security teams who have also investigated this, have also presented evidence to back up their investigations to show why they think this. There are also other cases of known proven Russian hacking. Assange has provided nothing. So let's not pretend this is a symmetric case of word versus word.
I would not consider him CIA material, let's say. :)
Yeah, I remember that: even with the bold and explicit lies put forward by the White House and political leadership at DoD, particularly, and some other agencies, the actual releases from the intelligence agencies were quite guarded and reserved.
The intelligence community is in the business of lying to it's targets, sure, but also of protecting it's credibility to decision makers, both within the executive branch and outside of it, including even the American public. The political leadership, OTOH, is often more shortsighted.
The CIA spied on the Senate, the director lied to them about it, and nothing happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-di...
The CIA would be no good to anyone if they were in the business of lying.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.ht...
This is exactly what I said.
> Hanyok further argues that Agency officials had "mishandled" SIGINT concerning the events of August 4 and provided top level officials with "skewed" intelligence supporting claims of an August 4 attack. "The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack occurred." Key pieces of evidence are missing from the Agency's archives, such as the original decrypted Vietnamese text of a document that played an important role in the White House's case. Hanyok has not found a "smoking gun" to demonstrate a cover-up but believes that the evidence suggests "an active effort to make SIGINT fit the claim of what happened during the evening of 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin." Senior officials at the Agency, the Pentagon, and the White House were none the wiser about the gaps in the intelligence. Hanyok's conclusions have sparked controversy among old Agency hands but his research confirms the insight of journalist I.F. Stone, who questioned the second attack only weeks after the events. Hanyok's article is part of a larger study on the National Security Agency and the Vietnam War, "Spartans in Darkness," which is the subject of a pending FOIA request by the National Security Archive.
To figure out who the liars are we need to know who engaged in a cover-up. Who manipulated, withheld information, or lied. You already know my opinion: I don't think it was the NSA.
For example "The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack occurred" suggests that the NSA's information was, in fact, good. It just was ignored, manipulated, omitted, etc.
I don't find that you mention NSA ITT before my comment. Parent comment did mention them, and your response was the off-topic (for Tonkin, anyway) "CIA doesn't lie!"
Neither supposed "attack" occurred! NSA reports were used to claim that they did occur! You don't think NSA has and is currently withholding information? Why don't you read what you pasted above? "Key pieces of evidence are missing"? If only the TLAs had the technology to preserve the information they gather... this is not credible.
Even if NSA reports had said "there was definitely no Vietnamese attack", those reports were used by the executive branch to ramp up the war. The authors of those reports, and every superior of those authors up the chain to the president, would have had a duty to contradict the false claims. Of course this is fantasy. NSA doesn't oppose war, and its reports reflect this.
I think the lying occurs higher up in the command structure where some intelligence is omitted from consideration because it doesn't fit the narrative the higher-ups are pursuing. I suppose there's a question here about who, exactly, is involved in this process of filtering out inconvenient information. Are those people part of the intelligence agency or not? This is a tricky question but, even if they are part of the intelligence agency, the pressure to omit comes from the executive branch. The NSA/CIA/etc aren't pursuing a pro-War policy...the executive branch is.
For example, imagine someone in the CIA is asked to provide a report about the likelihood of Iraq having radioactive material that could be weaponized. This person performs diligent research and produces, to the best of their abilities, a factual report. The executive branch presents this report as a "slam dunk" which shows that Iraq has radioactive material. Who lied?
Toward the end of your post, you blur the distinction between "lying" and "having a duty to contradict false claims". I'm only talking about lying although I agree that people do have an imperfect duty to contradict false claims.
In every press conference announcing some fresh horrific stupid war, there are spooks present and they do receive direct questions. It would be better for humanity if they didn't lie when answering.
Claims that CIA aren't pro-war and must be corrupted by evil presidents are pure fantasy. CIA have fought wars, by themselves, without telling the president. [0]
[EDIT:] If you've reached the point that you're imagining that honest secret reports are overruled by the public statements and actions of dishonest elected officials, could you accept that the whole idea of government secrecy is mistaken? Why not have these conversations in the open? Surely we'd make better decisions?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Personally I'm pro-regime change, especially in Cold War Latin America, but that doesn't change anything.
Why does the military industrial complex together with intelligence agencies fabricate lies to keep us embroiled forever in these evil endless wars? Every time we try and pull out there's a new BS story from these groups that everyone laps up: "Bounties on US soldiers! War is good! War is peace! War forever!"
The CIA is entrusted with protecting US interests, much like every other intelligence service in the world. They do a range of things, much of them boring. It's government.
They have outlets to disseminate disinformation just like Russia does. We're just arguing about where and how it's happening.
I think this is increasingly protecting the interest of the super rich (those with vested interests in large corps). Not "the people".
I'm not claiming other govts are better. Just saying they've shown they cannot be trusted.
I agree with you but I think using terms like this can hurt credibility.
As I understand it the DoD is just the department these agencies fall under (unless it's the DHS). The actual agencies you've just about covered, surely? CIA, NSA, ICE being the most problematic, then FBI and, what else?
I mean yea they suck but I don't think it's necessarily a hydra.
> "The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions," Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the panel, said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-affirms-u-s-intel...
Trump lies like he breathes, but that doesn't mean we have to believe obvious fantasy that obviously supports the continued stupid wars of the military-industrial complex. In general, the most likely possibility is that both the president and the TLAs are lying.
Also recent reports indicate that their is no evidence to support that story:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-comma...
Saddam's non-existent WMDs? Reported by the CIA under an presidential administration that was clutching for any reason to go to war with Iraq.
Gulf of Tonkin? Again, the CIA reporting on something that buttressed the case for war. Again, aligned with the then-presdential administration's desire to escalate things in Vietnam.
The DNC hack is reported by the CIA to be Russia. The current presidential administration has full-throated in their bias toward Russia and against any supposed pro-Trump Russian interference in the 2016 election. And the CIA still says a highly-damaging (to the Democrats' electoral chances) email dump was orchestrated by Russia.
One of these things isn't like the other.
President Obama signed off the operation, however it was a CIA creation & execution, with the help of Arab intelligence.
CIA does way more than lying and propaganda. They create wars too.
No one is saying they don't create wars. Look into the School of Americas for all the death and destruction the CIA caused in Latin and South America. The CIA was also first on the ground in both Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11. But that's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about a CIA report on a subject of importance to the president. The CIA isn't going to release that report without sign-off from the top brass, all of whom serve at the pleasure of the president.
The CIA trying to overthrow Assad is good though, the humanitarian disaster is his fault, and Putin's.
None of it is "propaganda".
> They can and they have. Let's not pretend we live in fantasy land.
He didn't say they're incapable of lying to Congress, just that it's illegal for them to lie Congress. By the GP's statement, if they lied then they also broke the law.
Not this claim, but a recent example of the CIA lying to Congress with impunity.
p. 38 and beyond. Also check out the table of contents; it will point you to other technical specifics.
I guess they're all part of the deep state cabal too?
He won't elaborate on the DNC hack because he says he has no original reporting. Does that mean no one on the forums or in the subculture talks about it?
He said:
"Based on what I’ve learned over the past decade studying Russian language, culture and hacking communities, my sense is that if the Russians were responsible and wanted to hide that fact — they’d have left a trail leading back to some other country’s door."
And note, the founders of phishing in the early 90s were mostly teenage kids, maybe 14-16. It doesn't take a state actor to 'spear phish'.
It's like religion, you think your news source is right while all the other ones are wrong (Fox news watchers don't think theirs is propaganda, while MSNBC/CNN viewers clearly see Fox News as propaganda. But MSNBC/CNN does as much propaganda as Fox News).
Anyways, if you're interested in non-corporate news, where if you watch it over many months, thing start to become obvious to the point where you can't unsee it anymore, I recommend Jimmy Dore. He's a comedien. Kind of like a modern day court jester who can tell the truth. Of course, make your own decisions, he may be totally wrong as well, but I've found it to be an insightful source.
Here is one on Crowdstrike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoTGlQ4JMA
My comment links to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NBC News, the WSJ quoting Republican leadership, and CrowdStrike's own account. They're all collaborating on some elaborate lie and Jimmy Dore has dug up the truth? Give me a break.
I don't know if you're mostly joking; if so, I'll admit it's over my head.
Jimmy Dore isn't the only one, there are lots of other great commentators such as Kyle Kulinski, Rising With The Hill's Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti (this one may be more your style, Krystal is left-leaning and comes from MSNBC and Saagar is right-leaning. They don't agree with everything but they cut through the BS pretty well).
I would just say be open-minded and simply start watching one of these sources, it's good to be skeptical. You probably won't agree with them much in the beginning, but when you start seeing how things play out over months, it starts to make a lot more sense, then eventually it becomes obvious.
Note: I am not a conspiracy person AT ALL! Having been captivated by Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World over 20 years ago, I'm actually a big skeptic. Huge James Randi fan, etc. So, don't think that I'm some conspiracy hack, quite the opposite.
I don't own a TV or watch cable news; I get most of my news from feeds like AP or Reuters, then try to decide for myself what I think before reading some commentary/analysis.
It's a little worrying to hear things like "[...], if you watch sources like Jimmy Dore over a period of months, it starts to become obvious." This is exactly how conspiracy theories and other quackery work. People get fed up with the mainstream and seek out alternative narratives about how the world _really_ works, then over time cede so much factual ground that their frame of reference becomes broken. This is exactly how people get into flat earth, 9/11 was an inside job, etc.
A slightly better "alternative" might be a news org like The Intercept or a writer like Matt Taibbi. Both are highly ideological but fairly constrained by the facts.
Another symptom of the illness that ails us. It's the job of comedians to make us laugh, not to tell the truth. If a lie is funny enough, some comedians will tell it for that reason alone.
>> Kind of like a modern day court jester who can tell the truth
Responding to the GP: I think that's a misunderstanding of the myth of court jesters. It wasn't that they were the only ones that could tell the truth, it was that they were the only ones that could hint at uncomfortable truths to the king if they wrapped it up in enough humor. Other people could tell the truth amongst themselves, but they had to flatter the king because of his power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...
Why take it from a comedian? There is a much more reliable source that knows all[0], sees all and reads a lot.
More details[1].
#WWG1WGA
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904237192/journalist-enters-t...
All I'm saying is, start watching the commentators I'm suggesting over a period of time, and you will see they are not conspiracy theorists.
This is the world we live in now. And tbh, this is the problem.
You can disbelieve what Assange says if you don't believe him. Discounting what Assange says, explicitly, clearly and deliberately because Hannity is interviewing him is foolish. It was a friendly interview. So what.
Weird how I didn't mention any of these in my comment. The problem is that the interview is not designed to elicit credible testimony. It's designed to put on a show. Thus, I discount it heavily.
Not to mention the way the questions were worded allowed Assange to answer without answering. Did the Russian government directly give Assange that data? No, and that would be hilariously inept for Russia. The way Hannity phrases all his questions allows Assange to easily answer "no." Just a terrible interview.
This "interview" is why Hannity is not, and should not be considered, a journalist.
Though they are still both very partisan.
> It's a point of information, not an endorsement.
Please follow the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), specifically: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
Conclusion: Assange is not a Russian asset.
Narratives matter to most people far, far, far more than facts.
15 years ago I might have agreed with you... Not so much anymore.
How many open Trump supporters do you interact with a week? Or would you feel comfortable telling your coworkers you plan to vote for Trump? He very well may win this election.
If the bubble is just Democrats and Republicans and other Americans, then it's still a fairly small bubble with a narrow view on the world.
It's a huge world, and there's a lot more perspectives on it than is likely to be _easily_ encountered during water cooler conversations at the office.
What's the point of claiming that a tech bubble is a "cancer" and a "drain on the progression of ideas"? There's definitely a "valley paradigm" of sorts, but there are multiple technology centers around the world. I do think it is important to be aware of paradigms and try to reach out from them, mind you, but this seems more like a generalized accusation.
And I'm not sure where Trump comes into this. I do have Trump supporters within my extended family; I have plenty of non-Trump supporters in my circle too. While the information is still incomplete, it is still more information than I have about, say, (random example) National vs. Labour voters of New Zealand (or one of the many other smaller political parties in that country), since I have no one who I directly talk to from there.
The one nugget that I know from the limited experience I have is that generalizations of cultural blocs must be taken as the simplification that it is. It is an unfortunate necessity to generalize complexity, of course, so while they tend to be "incorrect" in the details, I tend to have no problems with non-malicious generalizations, as long as the generalization tries to be as accurate as one can and tries to be thoughtful instead of relying on tired tropes. However, I do tend to look heavily down on any malicious, inflammatory generalization of a culture -- I mean, even the ordinary generalizations often are wrong at some level, right? People who use wrong information to inflame and anger receive poor marks from me, and if they are doing this in spite of knowing better, even more so.
As I said, about 5-8 depending on how active my group chats are.
Why would I tell my coworkers I'm voting for Trump? I'm not going to. So yes I would feel uncomfortable lying.
I don't think this is the same as bush era politics. How can I exist with coworkers while we do anti racist book clubs, and then announce support for the man who calls black protesters thugs? We don't have room for racism at my company. That's only a political issue because the republican party nominated a racist - I don't see how that's our problem.
Want some help?
How can I exist with co-workers who think every point of inequality is systemic racism and white supremacy, Trump supporter's are all trailer park hicks, 97% of the protests are peaceful, believe that just because of your skin color you shouldn't be called a thug for looting, believe Trump colluded with the Russians despite 0 evidence, think Flynn deserves to be in prison, think Trump isn't helping the black community...
Uhhh isn't palmer luckey a Trump supporter? And Kanye west? Plus a bunch of rich old folks back home. Lol obviously not all Trump supporters are trailer park (do you mean poor?), My experience at protests in LA alone would make it absurd to believe that.
Thug is a racist dog whistle. Is property damage an improper response to murder? Yet conservatives defend a kid that committed murder after traveling to protests to "protect property," so I guess murder is an appropriate response to property damage.
Are you not reading reports from yesterday wherein intelligence community members are warning congress about russian influence in the upcoming election? You make me suspect the only "evidence" you'll accept is Putin being caught with his fingers literally in the guts of a voting machine.
Trump passed a couple democrat written prison reform bills that vaguely helped the black community, but his DOJ is specifically targeting those early release people for reconviction, so it's moot.
I don't really care about Flynn.
I guess I don't fit into the clean little Other that Rupert murdoch defined for you?
Maybe property damage might be a proper response to murder, _if it was the property of the murderer_ (the police), as opposed to random small business nearby, many owned by minorities.
Have you not seen the videos of "peaceful protestors" literally smashing and burning down buildings? Committing indiscriminate property destruction and arson makes people thugs, regardless of the colour of their skin.
I saw a couple videos of burning buildings, sure. I had trouble caring though, because the only places that happened in are the ones where soldier cops got insanely abusive with peaceful protesters. The onus is on the state to back down, not the people.
Did you see video of out of state proud boys driving in armed caravans to protest areas, paintballing and pepper spraying indiscriminately?
Really? I'm a native English speaker, albeit not American, and I've never heard thug implied to have racist connotations. The original word comes from a Hindi word for criminal, which was also used for a violent cult: "Devotees of the goddess Kali, the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims, usually travellers, in a ritually prescribed manner. They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s."
>I had trouble caring though, because the only places that happened in are the ones where soldier cops got insanely abusive with peaceful protesters.
How does the police being abusive make it okay for the rioters to burn down random buildings?
It doesn't absolve any responsibility, but if you take a step back - the police behavior was the indirect and sometimes direct cause of the other symptom.
E.g. on NPR you hear talking heads speak about “staunch conservatives” like Bill Barr. This term is now a dog whistle on the left that means ‘white nationalist’
Like you did in this comment, to the word "dog whistle?" Let me guess, SJWs are the enemy of the people?
What shall we call it when a white supremacist waggles his eyebrows and says "those people" then? Willful ignorance is painful to witness.
Maybe if staunch conservatives stop being white nationalists, or stopped catering to white nationalists so overtly, or actually spoke out against their white nationalist base (instead of "both sides"ing them), people wouldn't associate staunch conservatism with white nationalism? Just a thought.
The non-GTP-3 agent above was surprised to learn that the word ‘Thug’ now means something else. It’s like the rug was pulled out from under them.
Great! Then, the protesters are acting in self defense as well, as the bar is apparently quite low for self defense.
Well, you have to realize when you link Fox News, most people wouldn't call that a "point of information".. If one links any obviously biased news site, then it is perceived more of an endorsement than just putting a 'fact' out there.
Secondly, about your second point, many people will downvote you simply for complaining about downvotes. Next time, just wait. Votes eventually land where they should be, and complaining about votes adds nothing to the conversation.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/julian-assange-our-source...
Edit: oh wow, to -2 in less than 2 minutes.
It's a point of information, not an endorsement.
Double-edit: Ha, ok, colour me shocked. The discussion thread is excellent and I thank everyone involved for remaining civil.