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.
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.
In other words, he isn’t on trial for the timing. But he’s friendless because of it.
The FBI knew it and gave him protection from prosecution for a lot of his crimes if he witnessed to the alleged hacking. He continued committing crimes without stopping afterwards. They are still protecting him to this day.
[1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...
The false "witness" alleging Assange hacked, "Siggi the Hacker" was a pedophile, con-man and thief, not Assange. That guy is Icelandic, while Assange is Australian. "Siggi" has just been interviewed in Studin.is saying he invented everything, FBI knew, still gave him immunity, etc. Here are the sources [1] [2]
As for rape charge, you fell prey to propaganda. There was no "condom stealthing" accusation, full stop. There was no rape accusation, full stop. It is all a proven lie, fabricated by the police and prosecutor, which were caught red-handed later on, and documented in a subsequent judicial procedure.
Here's my own TLDR here to somebody else a couple days ago [3]. If you got 20 minute, I suggest the full, sordid story, as told in excruciating detail by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. He gave a long form interview giving all the details of the fabrication, showing the documents, outlining all of lies and judicial misdeeds of both Sweden and the UK [4].
[1] https://stundin.is/grein/13627/key-witness-in-assange-case-a...
[2] https://grapevine.is/news/2020/06/25/wikileaks-doj-witness-i...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653029
[4] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
Anyways, "FREE ASSANGE" !
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.
Also, I didn't say anything about timing. Selective and partisan release alone is highly dubious, timing notwithstanding.
Telling the truth doesn't become partisan simply because the truth hurts one party.
Where are you finding journalists that aren’t politically minded?
Also, you don't necessarily have to be partisan to want to release a story at time that's inconvenient to a party. It's natural for a journalist to want to break a big story, and it's also more beneficial if an important story reaches more people. If you want some important information to be shared widely, one of the best times to drop it is when it will cause a nation-wide sensation.
Kant's test implicitly relies on the idea of some sort of deviation from the norm. If the norm is that everyone punches each other in the face, and I decide to merely slap you, that's an improvement; if everyone did that it would be a net good. But if the norm is a polite handshake, then a slap is worse. Kant's test is always relative to expectations.
Expectations are what distinguish "honest whistleblower with a love for truth" and "propaganda merchant". Leaking information hurts people. The ethical defense of it is "public interest" - that it's a net good when truth is more widely known. If you're prepared to leak information, I expect you to leak all of it. When you selectively release information, you cannot expect me to believe that public interest is really the principle you are abiding by, and any beliefs about the world derived from that information come under suspicion, as they have been engineered.
Kant objected pretty strongly to lies, and so do I - even lies by omission.
The email leak was exposing corruption in the DNC handling of Bernie Sanders' campaign. Particularly when the corruption being exposed was related to an ongoing election, it is easy to believe Wikileaks just released what they had ASAP without waiting for any particular time.
The emails didn't exist before the election and waiting until later is, from a neutral leakers point of view, kinda silly. It is not at all obvious Wikileaks acted partisanly.
The accusation of partisan hack from anyone supporting either party of the US rings a bit hollow to be honest. To a degree also because they are just unlikable. As if the info uncovered would make them victims. Perhaps they are, they pretty much look like it.
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.
Well, but that was also when Kavanaugh became a supreme court nominee. He wasn't a nominee in the summer of 2018.
And getting nominated to the Supreme Court is what made the accuser want to go public. She didn't want to initially, which makes it hard to do anything with the information.
Unless the source of the information is a foreign government, trying to wreak havoc in an enemy country and profit from it, possibly putting some poor folk's life in grave danger.
Journalists shouldn't side with dictators and/or agitprop, IMO, no matter what. They shouldn't also meddle with a country they are not citizens of national security.
that's what secret services are for.
[0] https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endg...
I have noticed that the people who support Assange never want to talk about how Assange implied that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source which resulted in repeated harassment of the family of a murder victim. Assange knew Rich wasn't the source of the DNC leaks because Assange was still in contact with the source after Rich was murdered. There is no journalistic justification for that behavior.
"Simple people talk about people. Common people talk about events. Highly intelligent people talk about ideas."
Government transparency is necessary to prevent a never-ending dark age of fascism and suffering. Organizations like Wikileaks support democracy and thereby support human progress.
Assange is not a nice person and that doesn't matter. Julian Assange started and ran Wikileaks, and thereby contributed massively to the welfare of humanity.
The Collateral Damage leaks greatly reduced the credibility of the US military as a worldwide humanist agent.
The alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was used as a justification for a full blown invasion of Syria; yet the political push back was too strong and the attacks were reduced to air strikes. Thank you Wikileaks for publishing the cables showing how US had plans in motion to topple Assad since a very long time.
But more importantly people are beginning to question their government and that is a good thing.
I agree with some of what you said, directionally - some people are more aware of their privacy. Some people have also tuned out the arguments because they appear to be noise. It’s also hard to judge something when we don’t know effect size, or even if it was causal, however.
Many of your points are good examples and I appreciate you posting them.
From day one, Wikileaks had a stated policy of trying to achieve "maximum impact" for their publications. For instance, the same claim is also made at the release of the Afghan War logs in 2011: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wikileaks-file...
Then, they'd be treating both republicans and Democrats equally. Bad for the libertarians or the greens though
Not sure what type of equality you need == or ===
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?
They did sit on them, until a timed moment.
I looked it up, and apprently this could be true, assuming that wikileaks were given the emails ahead of time. Some of those emails were first posted to a DCLeaks website, then Wikileaks announced they'd be posting some, then DCLeaks posted more a few weeks later, then Wikileaks posted some, then Wikileaks posted more just before the election.
It makes sense to time these things for impact, assuming you want to punish corruption, and that's the motivation behind these kinds of leaks, right? People seem to focus on the part Assange and the Russians played in this instead of the actual corruption - how Bernie Sanders and millions of his supporters were screwed by Clinton and the DNC.
I don't think it's partisan to expose the truth. To do otherwise serves those in power at the expense of the general public.
It is true. One of the findings from the Mueller report identified the very day that the emails were sent from Russian intelligence to WikiLeaks
It was a smear campaign targeted at democrats, nothing more.
This is textbook whataboutism. "Stealing a hundred thousand confidential emails from political rivals is fine because look at all the bad things they said about Bernie Sanders"
Look at the even more outrageous event of Trump magically getting the laptop of his rival's son and parading it around in 2020. It's organized crime trying to corrupt politics that you're rooting for. The kind of thing that happens in Russia or deeply corrupt banana republics
There was more than just a DNC dislike of Bernie Sanders. There were financial, policy, and hiring decisions involved, arranged between Clinton and the DNC, contrary to a free and fair election. From wikipedia [0]:
> The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership's publicly stated neutrality, as several DNC operatives seemed to deride Sanders' campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions. The revelations prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email" that did not reflect the DNC's "steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process." After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.
I'm rooting for the exposure of political corruption on all sides. I think it is an important thing for the people to know the truth, no matter the messenger.
Are you rooting for something different?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...
Just imagine that Clinton won in a landslide and then right afterwards WikiLeaks comes out with the podesta emails saying they waited until after the election to share it so they wouldn't hurt her chances.
In a democracy the people have the right to decide which information they care about, it shouldn't be decided for them by the media.
WikiLeaks expressly says that they time their releases to get the most coverage. It's why a whistleblower might choose them over other outlets that may publish their story to get minimal coverage of it would hurt the powers that be.
When they did, they found nothing wrong. But it didn't stop the pure FUD cloud around them from affecting Hillary's reputation.
When something is leaked, people automatically assume it's bad. Republicans rode that high through election day.
The emails got dumped the same day extremely damaging "grab em by the pussy" video evidence of Trump was release. The whole thing screams political hitjob.
It's like when Trump's lawyer magically got his political rival's son's laptop and paraded it around, even though nothing damaging was on it. Republicans are resorting to banana republic style hacking and theft against their political enemies, which should terrify everyone
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.
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.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496...
https://time.com/4422715/bernie-sanders-dnc-apology-leaked-e...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/debbie-wasse...
https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-robbed-sanders-dnc-brazile-...
>'Wondering if there's a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,' Paustenbach wrote. Miranda spurned the idea, although he agreed with Paustenbach's take: 'True, but the Chair has been advised not to engage. So we'll have to leave it alone.' "
lmao
This gives more insight into the nuance lacking from statements insinuating the only reason Bernie lost to HRC was because the DNC made it happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/0...
The biggest issue with wikileaks release is that the media failed to report on it properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic...
16,917,853 13,210,550
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz...
> Dr. Jansen said she learned of the results from the outside panel of experts shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, and that the timing was not influenced by the election. “We have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves — no politics,” she said.
Edit: It would be nice if the people downvoting this could explain why you disagree.
... Or perhaps your perspective is partisan.
Releasing information will hurt either side without discrimination. You can’t applaud it when it hurts republicans and boo it when it hurts democrats and still claim you support releasing the truth to the public.
Did Assange lash out at the Democrats? Yes. Did he throw the first stone? Not even close.
Wikileaks did the right thing timing their release right before people are making their final decision when casting the ballot.
Wikileaks did the right thing, else imagine what they would be doing now.
Also, who killed Epstein?
[1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...
I don't "suspect" their are things they could have published. I know there are things they could have published because Assange has said exactly that.
Either Wikileaks works for complete transparency or they don't. They either have editorial control over what they publish or they don't. Once they admit that some documents aren't worth putting on their site, they need to justify why the documents they do have on their site are worth being there. What documents about the Trump campaign could Assange be referring to which would be worth mentioning but would also be less worthy of publishing than these[1]? What reason can exist for that disparity besides bias?
[1] - https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/?q=&title=automatic+reply&c...
The Free Press is about the ability to publish, not a requirement to publish.
“We are free press activists. It’s not about saving the whales. It’s about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling. Why? That is the raw ingredients necessary to make adjustments to society and without that we’re just sailing in the dark.”
When we talked about this last week you said the quote meant "we have some information that is not worth publishing."[1] The documents I linked in the previous post are obviously on the site so they by definition are "worth publishing" according to Wikileaks. What documents can possibly have less value than emails saying something like "I'll get the Caesar salad for lunch"?
>2) Your contrived absolutism about publishing everything is a strawman. Wikileaks never committed to publishing everything, couldn’t, not even a sensible or practical idea.
Those absolutist statements were made to show that Wikileaks obviously isn't absolutist in their mission. It shows that they do make editorial decisions about what they post. Once that is accepted as fact, it is completely fair to compare these decisions to each other. That is what I am doing, comparing the decision to leak certain documents with no public value to the refusal to leak other documents which Assange has stated Wikileaks possesses. I am then judging their decision making process based off that comparison.
>3) Literally any reason at all invalidates this claim. Not enough time.
I am not sure what you mean by "not enough time"? Are you suggesting that they didn't have enough time to vet all the DNC docs leaked or that there wasn't enough time to leak the Trump docs?
If they didn't have enough time to vet the value of the individual DNC docs, how did they have the time to vet the authenticity of the individual DNC docs?
That Assange quote was from 2016. They had 4+ years to get those Trump docs vetted so no time constraint there.
>Someone asked not to.
Who is this "someone" that Wikileaks would defer to on this decision? What are this person's biases? Why isn't Wikileaks transparent about who is making these decisions for them?
>Boring.
Yes, those previously linked DNC autoreplies were very exciting.
>Hard to contextualize.
Throwing a bunch of emails into a search engine on the site isn't contextualizing them. The lack of context on the DNC leaks is how we got things like Pizzagate from these emails.
The only way we have discovered to counter him is to get more of the people not committed to him to come to the polls, or to vote by mail.
Thus, we see efforts in numerous states to curb access to polls. Successful efforts.
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?
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.
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.
¹ Or maybe still is, presumed he's still alive and can move freely, which is highly unlikely.
He may be partisan, he may not be revealing damaging info about Russia. But if the information is true, so what? Shouldn't we be doing something about the corruption he revealed regardless of why he revealed it? I can't believe all you have to do is say the R-word and suddenly people are just willing to ignore everything he says, its ridiculous. Like uhh enemies of the US are more likely to expose damaging information about them as compared to allies, no shit?
The appearance of impropriety is still important to some folks though, so when private emails (that didn't lead to rigging an election, something the DNC has no power to do anyway) that show that folks in the DNC favored one candidate over the other, they resigned.
This isn't the same thing as admitting the impossible (that the DNC somehow got HRC ~4 million more votes)
The "Russian leaks" that Wikileaks declined were sent to them during the DNC/Podesta/Hillary email release when their resources were obviously stretched. The "leaks" were mostly public, were deemed unimportant and were declined. As we know that didn't stop whoever anonymously submitted these documents from immediately using this to orchestrate a smear campaign against Wikileaks with full compliance of the media (funny timing during the DNC email release, wonder who it could have been?)
A little later the "leaks" were fully published elsewhere and nobody cared (but let's not kid ourselves that anybody who claimed to care actually cared at all).
How and what information is being presented is an incredibly important part of "the truth" as a whole.
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.
Really? I think that’s probably the most popular option. Why do you say that?
From context, ITYM "disputes", not "argues". Or least that's the only way your comment makes sense; "argues" a position generally refers to supporting that position.
One by dnc and one by rnc. You have video of the dnc one and you don't show it because you lack the other video?
You hide the truth because it is not fair to the first murder that you don't have proof of the other?
> As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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).
Because Assange was ostensibly helping someone steal classified information. These allegations are well known.
"How about a little goddamn proof? "
They literally have text messages of him encouraging and ostensibly helping someone to steal information. This is also well known.
"How about a valid legal case that follows the laws of the USA?"
That's what's happening: they are extraditing him so that the evidence can be put on the table and we can see what's what. This is well known.
"Give Assange his freedom. "
He has his freedom. He's possibly comitted a crime, which is why he's going to court.
I think your comment implies an general ignorance of the situation.
If we tried to arrest every person outside the USA who is trying to do something to/in the USA we'd have to put out arrest warrants for millions of people. We'd be, and are, the laughingstock of the diplomatic world.
Aside: we apparently assassinate hundreds of individuals outside the USA every year (something that Obama complained about IIRC ) with God-knows-what justification. We're well on our way down the Road to Ruin.
I'm hardly a bleeding-heart, but for the USA intelligence agencies to dog Assange to death is immoral, unethical and illegal even under our legal system.
Pursuing Assange is the worst of all causes: a fishing expedition, a routine overextension of international and national law, legal malpractice, and a giant fool's errand for every man involved in this.
Only a psychopath would put the pursuit of Assange on their resume. Of course we likely have plenty of those working for us. Apparently they float to the top, like shit.
jollybean says>"I think your comment implies an general ignorance of the situation."
Nope. But your reasoning above amply demonstrates a bit of how the powers-that-be twist language, logic and reason to justify contemptible behavior and justify crushing an individual. You should write an "Anti-Declaration of Independence" for spies that outlines their grievances against free agents and how they should be able to kill/maim/wound/harm anyone, anywhere just b/c they are irritated with those agents' behavior.
An honest leader would publicly fire with malice every asshole who participated in or encouraged this shitfest and make sure the government never employed them again. Of course, that would be a bit (but only a bit) similar to doing to them what is being done to Assange! Perhaps that would be justice. I'll have to think about it.
When a crime is committed, justice is pursued.
The nationality of the individual doesn't matter that much. American or not, if they've committed a crime against the US, then they will face justice.
If he possibly raped a woman in Sweden, then he's extradited to Sweden to face justice for that crime.
If he possibly robbed someone in Switzerland, then he's extradited to face justice there.
Since it looks like he conspired with Pt. Manning to steal classified data from the US Military, he's going to be extradited to the US to face trial.
" how the powers-that-be twist language, logic and reason to justify contemptible behavior and justify crushing an individual."
This is not some YouTube conspiracy story, for the most part it's really not that complicated.
There is already reasonable evidence in the public domain that a crime was committed, he's going to have to get a lawyer and face a judge so we can find out the truth.
The laws of the USA apply only within the boundaries of the USA with minor exceptions by treaty. Application of USA law outside the USA is illegal, delusional and megalomanical. Furthermore, other nations will either object (the only reasonable response) or expect full reciprocation. Imagine life in a country where USA, French, British, Scottish, South African, Russian, Chinese, etc. law all simultaneously applied? Your suggestions are nonsensical and self-contradictory.
(1) To sic, to attack (used especially in commanding a dog):to incite to attack (usually followed by on).
And indeed, the USA isn’t the only nation claiming universal jurisdiction for various offences.
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
People say Wikileaks is wrong that all the information offered to them was public, but none of the published chat logs show anyone explaining to Wikileaks that there are unpublished leaks in there.
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.
In Serbia's last elections, Vucic falsified COVID numbers on the days leading up to voting day so that his party could convince his voterbase, the elderly, to go out in droves to vote. After the election he stopped the reporting of false numbers and put the country into a lockdown because to no one's surprise, the numbers were sky high. There were massive protests because of the lockdown measures, where police brutality ran rampant, all on Vucic's orders. Expired tear gas was used on unarmed civilians protesting peacefully, cops in full riot gear were beating the crap out of unarmed protesters and chasing them down the streets. He goes around poorer regions of the country and bribes people with sandwiches and basic supplies like wheat and flower for a vote. His son is good friends with famous, high profile criminals, and Vucic himself was buddy-buddy with a bunch of the former guard, more than half of which either have been, or are currently standing trial for war crimes committed during the Yugo wars.
This list goes on and on, and similar things happen in most balkan and eastern european country. Nobody sane trusts a single thing these "people" do, and people definitely don't trust elections, so what ends up happening is that people just don't see the point in participating in an obvious scam. None of us actually believe we're living in a democracy, we're all aware it's a farcical facade that dictators put up.
It is Russians' business, technically, but in practice regular Russians are no better equipped to act on information about it than we are.
From your second link "These incidents don’t prove, as some have alleged, that Assange is some kind of paid Russian agent, or that WikiLeaks is a Russian front organization"
Your first link was addressed elsewhere. I can't personally blame Assange for liking Russia more than the country that has spent a decade making his life a living hell. Even if Russia's motives are obviously impure, they are more helpful to furthering Assange's goal.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveill...
The 12 Russians, and the 3 Russian companies all hired attorneys to represent them and counter sue for defamation. When their attorney went in front of the judge, all charges were dropped by the Justice Dept, refusing document discovery "on issues of national security".
It's all political reality television, from both the right and the left. It's like a cable TV wrestling match.
I've had trouble finding English language sources giving the full story with a 2 min search. They all just cite the dropping of charges against the companies. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-com...
Here's an RT link with a little more info, for whatever that's worth: https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dro... . You might have better luck looking for a little longer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-...
""" In January 2019, the federal government accused Concord of violating a protective court order designed to safeguard information shared among lawyers on the case. Prosecutors said a trove of nonclassified information they had turned over to Concord’s defense team had turned up on a website the previous October.
A message on a newly created Twitter account read: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” """
RT's claim that these groups are not responsible for these troll farms is not credible. The claim that these organizations were attempting to use the court case to get detailed information on how they were investigated however, is.
Didn't take it as a credible source in the matter, but wasn't going to bother with a longer than 2 min. search either for all details.
On a side note, I don't take the NYT to be any less biased that RT. All of them will conveniently forget about the parts of the story which they don't like. They all have favourites in the matter (Trump, Barr, Democrat leadership, Putinistas, etc).
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.
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.
"It took a record 225 days for the Dutch to get a government" (https://qz.com/1112509/the-dutch-took-a-record-long-225-days...)
"Dutch government resigns over child benefits scandal PM Mark Rutte will stay on in caretaker capacity until general elections scheduled for 17 March" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/dutch-governme...)
"Dutch talks on forming coalition government still deadlocked (June 22, 2021)" (https://apnews.com/article/europe-government-and-politics-79...)
The Mainstream Right, the Far Right, and Coalition Formation in Western Europe, Kimberly Ann Twist (https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Twist_be...)
Woman’s rights vs killing unborn children does not leave much moral middle ground.
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).
But yeah the struggle to find the right argument, rather than to win an argument...
Sadly the second of those is, I think, the more common. Interesting to see from your example how stupid it makes us -- if I try to win an argument without understanding the alternative, the the thing I gain most, is a reduction in my ability to reason
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.
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.
Abortion is *literal* murder and women who have
them, as well as the doctors who perform them
should be imprisoned and/or executed.
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-...
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?
"Personally, I believe that women (and men, for that matter) should have control over their bodies. Full stop."
I believe that should be enough information to answer your question, unless you somehow believe that being mass-murdered is the same thing as having control over one's own body.
No. Because what you (or I, for that matter) want or believe is only relevant for our own bodies.
What happens to the bodies of others is up to those others. No one, other than the owner of that body, has anything to say about what happens to their body.
But I ruled it out confidently: The situation where a bunch of people are weighing in on a specific abortion is not one that really comes up, whereas people discuss abortion in general nonstop. You had just said that you aren't opposed to the other potential parent and medical professionals having input in a specific abortion. It doesn't make any sense to phrase that idea that way- having a functional uterus has no bearing on whether you're the one who is considering an abortion. And the other reply also interpreted you as saying men shouldn't comment on the issue and went uncorrected. Taken together, I thought there was no way that was what you meant and I was being excessively charitable.
I misunderstood, but I think you could have been clearer.
I'm not sure how you can make that statement seriously. The only situation where one might want or need to consider terminating a pregnancy is if you have a functional female reproductive system.
Each individual should make those decisions for themselves without a bunch of busybodies telling them what they should do with their own bodies.
As for potential fathers and medical professionals, their opinions may be useful to the person considering such a procedure, but it isn't their body and, as such, that's an advisory situation at most.
>And the other reply also interpreted you as saying men shouldn't comment on the issue and went uncorrected.
Which doesn't make a lot of sense, since I (as a male) was, in fact, commenting on the issue. Or did you miss that part?
People should absolutely be able to express their opinions.
However, when it comes to a specific person considering a specific procedure (whether that be a pregnancy termination, a haircut or removal of a hangnail), the decision necessarily should be that of the specific person involved, and the opinions of others aren't at all relevant.
That's my point. If you can and/or do become pregnant, then the decision whether to terminate or not is yours alone -- but only for your own body.
If you don't have a functional female reproductive system, such decisions are irrelevant to you. If you do have a functional female reproductive system, how that system is used (or not) is completely up to the individual involved and no one should have any decision making power over how another person's body is used.
Feel free to disagree with my position and make your opinions clear. But when it comes to a specific person making a specific decision about their own body, you have no say unless it's your body.
>I misunderstood, but I think you could have been clearer.
That's entirely likely. I tried to elucidate my point. If I failed to do so, my apologies. I attempted to do so again in this comment. I hope I was clearer this time.
They don't, in general.
They do oppose creating “generally-applicable” standards that have the principal effect of preventing access to abortion services, though.
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.
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.
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.
That's an excellent point. No third party has come anywhere close to the major levers of power in more than 150 years.
And first-past-the-post elections certainly contribute to that.
But that's orthogonal to my point. GP said:
"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."
Note that GP doesn't address parties or elections. Rather they claim that Americans have a "binary, categorical view of issues."
That's to what I took exception. Many Americans have nuanced views of a variety of issues.
That said, the reality is that neither major party platform supports all the good ideas from across the ideological spectrum.
But, as you correctly pointed out, most people pick the party that they think gives them more of what they think is right.
That doesn't mean every (R || D) voter supports every (R || D) position. Nor does it mean that every (R || D) voter blindly accepts the talking points of their selected party.
Yes. There absolutely are voters who just vote their party without giving a thought to the policies advocated by that party. Sometimes because they're one-issue voters, sometimes because they, their extended families and communities have voted that way for generations, sometimes because they're too intellectually lazy to understand the issues and take the easy way out.
But to ascribe the above to all Americans (whether they voted or not -- GP talked about issues, not votes) is equally intellectually lazy.
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".
I’ve been following the story since the Slashdot days. Why am I not outraged? Why am I not protesting? It’s certainly doesn’t have to do with some political party that I don’t belong to. I fundamentally feel that Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. They feel more like an anarchists organization than some sort of journalists organization to me. I certainly do not feel outraged nor inclined to protest.
If he's committed a crime, charge him with it and give him his day in court. If he hasn't -- like in the case of this story where he never asked anyone to commit any crimes against the Icelandic government, don't make charges up. I can't believe this even needs to be said.
That's what you should be outraged about, and you don't have to like Assange or Wikileaks to be outraged about that.
Isn’t this exactly what the government has done? https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl...
There are lots of unusual things about the Assange case, but the fact that the government tried to strengthen it by offering leniency to an informant isn’t one of them.
The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.
Why not?
>The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.
I don't want what I view as the US backed media outlets in jail either. This isn't irony, disliking something and state prosecution are drastically different.
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.
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.
Purely because both parties needed some way of turning the people against Wikileaks.
TFTFY.
People act like it was just “randomly people decided he wasn’t sympathetic” all the while we had the government ov the most powerful nation doing everything in their power both legal and illegal to undermine him. It’s not accidental that you feel like Assange and “might be a bad character” it’s be design and the people behind it must have so much worse stories hidden away than the ones we already know of to go to this much trouble to kill freedom of information.
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.
They are telling people what to think and it is working.
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.
> Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who stepped in as DNC chair last year in the wake of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, published an excerpt of her upcoming book in Politico in which she disclosed the details of a fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign reached in August 2015.
> “The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote in the story under the headline “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC.”
> Brazile added of the deal: “[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
> During the 2016 election, Sanders allies alleged that the DNC did not act as a neutral arbiter of the Democratic primary, favoring Clinton in its selection of debate times and fundraising. Their suspicions were only heightened when leaked emails published by WikiLeaks, and now reported to have been hacked by the Russians, appeared to show DNC staffers deriding Sanders and plotting ways to help Clinton. The accusations grew so heated that Wasserman Schultz resigned, which is when Brazile took over.
> But now Brazile has provided explosive new evidence for the initial allegations. "The shocking news here is this idea they were exerting a level of control over DNC affairs that we didn't know about," said Kenneth Pennington, who served as digital director for the Sanders campaign. "If you had told me this during the primary — that they're using the joint fundraising committee to get veto power over DNC functions — I would have called you a conspiracy nut."
The rigging of the primaries was bad, but that's only half the story. The bigger reason for the resignations probably had a lot to do with what they said about their donors and the way that people pretty clearly were buying federal appointments.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/leaks-show-dnc-aske...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/he...
He hid out in the UK to aviod questioning in sweden because they were going to ship him off to america. This would be a legitimate concern if the UK were not the worlds most agressive at shipping people off to the US to 'face justice'. He was actually at far greater danger in the UK, which he had to know because he leaked the UK role in the extrodinary rendition programme, than pretty much anywhere else in the world.
Which country claims they want indefinite detention for Assange? Are you claiming that all of the DoJs indictment is fabricated? Have you actually read through the governments published information?
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?
And Assange seems like a misogynistic antisemite from what I've seen posted by Lee. Yet even he agrees that the US's attack is based solely on disliking his journalistic endeavors, and is an attack on a free press.
Ok so he does have it, but it is totally not a problem.
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.
For example, do a normal google search for "assange ntlm xmpp manning" (without quotes) and you'll see a mere 8 results from:
- justice.gov
- forbes
- abcnews
- reuters
- washingtonpost
- newyorker
- pbs
- apnews
Google needs to cut this shit out. The most appalling part is they don't even put a warning on the results to tell you that you typed a no-no keyword and that they've filtered the results. You might be lead to believe that only these news agencies wrote about it -- that the heterodox opinions don't even exist. It's completely Orwellian.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You don't need to be in the streets protesting for shit, I don't need you calling your reps to ask them to support an independent commission. But I do need it to not be compared to situations that are not laughably benign by comparison.
> 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 didn't say that and I don't believe it. I reread my words, I don't feel I communicated such a sweeping conclusion / assessment.
> I am apparently... a government abolitionist who lacks integrity.
I attacked your argument, you've made it an attack on you. I don't know you, but that comparison was whack, be it bad faith, naivety, or ignorance. In my opinion, of course, however misguided, hyperbolic, or otherwise.
You are primarily trying to refute the the argument by throwing as many derisive marks as possible at it, a joke, whack, naivety etc etc and demanding it not even be considered.
From intention there was plenty in the Chax situation that you really don't want to have your name associated with.
From results, same story.
I was specific about what I found to be bad faith: drawing a false equivalency between Jan. 6 - an attack on our system of governance as a whole, supported by politicians - to those other examples. Yes, I used derisive adjectives, because I find the comparison worthy of derision.
> From intention there was plenty in the Chax situation that you really don't want to have your name associated with.
You won't find me defending CHAZ, like you seem to assume I will. Their intentions were far more benign than Jan. 6, but not benign or harmless, nor should many of the individuals involved be considered blameless. But there was certainly less intent to harm in CHAZ, and absolutely less intent to challenge our system of governance.
I used testy words, but they didn't detract from the point I felt it quite clear: minimizing the significance of Jan. 6 through equivocating it with CHAZ or Kavanaugh protests is an argument made in bad faith, naivety, or ignorance.
> You won't find me defending CHAZ, like you seem to assume I will.
This is exactly what you're doing here, you saw the claim and came running. You're just having to back-peddle now that someone is calling you on what you're doing.
Also, it's funny how intention is the only thing you are grabbing hold of and bringing up. Is that because of literally everything else about the CHAZ situation and the riots and the destruction of property that surrounded it are completely indefensible and infinitely worse?
Is the only reason "Intention" even becomes something you care about because it's the one thing you could try and twist into X is worse than Y?
Please read my comment again. I said "more benign" (than Jan. 6), but literally also said "not benign." I found CHAZ very troubling in both idea and practice. But it doesn't hold a candle to breaking into the Capitol to disrupt our system of governance, possibly murder congresspersons (and the VP), and install their preferred president. CHAZ was bad, but orders of magnitude less so.
And since that's all you thought was worth responding to, I think that's my exit in this conversation.
> But I do need it to not be compared to situations that are not laughably benign by comparison.
> I don't know you, but that comparison was whack, be it bad faith, naivety, or ignorance. In my opinion, of course, however misguided, hyperbolic, or otherwise.
You said what you said ^ and no hand waving about "oooh I didnt mean it like that" will change that.
> And since that's all you thought was worth responding to,
That's all you've given to respond to. All you've done is hysterically scream "False equivalence" and make weak claims of "Intention", which I've already pointed out are bunk when compared alongside the obvious intention of CHAZ.
> I think that's my exit in this conversation.
Yes I think that's about your only option at this point.
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.)
Okay but five people died because the American government did nothing.
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.
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!
The reality is we'll never know the extent of how armed (guns or otherwise) the rioters were, because almost everyone was allowed to leave unimpeded.
And "we'll never know" isn't good enough. Again especially from someone caught lying.
* Decent but not exhaustive summary of the myth you're parroting: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/capitol-protesters-were-ar... * Another one from NPR that gets into more specifics: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters... * Admission of rioter that he had firearms, agrees to cooperate further: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-capitol-riot-oath-kee... * Discusses Oath Keepers' chats and them clearly communicating intent, including their "quick reaction force" with an "arsenal" ready if needed: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/january-6-consp... * Description weapons, focusing on two individuals in particular: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-weapons-deadly-dan... * Database from NPR on those charged (CTRL+F "weapon"): https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-t...
Also watch basically any video reconstruction to see any number of people treating any number of objects like clubs. But I'm not going to rewatch the videos to find the timestamps. And now that I've jumped through your hope, I'll reinforce a key point: the vast, vast majority of rioters (both that entered and just lingered outside the capitol) were not searched.
> They had guns, nooses, there were chat logs, etc. This is not conjecture.
Stop trying to wiggle out of this. You said armed with guns. Don't try and move this over suddenly to "Clubs" because your bs has been called.
I don't disagree that some of them were posing a threat of bodily harm to the people inside the Capitol, but that's a much different claim.
> "Attempted Murder" is a crime for a reason
And it is a lesser crime than murder.
As it should be. I never intended to imply otherwise.
> The original claim was that these particular capitol rioters could have actually destroyed the republic in that moment.
I think there is a reasonable chance that they could have, had the been able to murder the "enemies" on that day. What does that mean or look like? I don't know. But what happens when the only decision-makers left for our Republic are those that tacitly and explicitly supported this action, if not immediately then more and more in hindsight.
If every member of Congress died, would the Republic cease to exist? Probably not. There's a contingency plan for that.
> What does that mean or look like? I don't know.
The claim can't be made if this can't be answered.
Those plans assume good faith leadership. This insurrection was encouraged by the lame duck president and supported by members of Congress that now refuse to investigate it. And it wouldn't have been every member of Congress dead, would it? Those supporting the Big Lie would have been around to govern. Not exactly comforting to me, and I think well within the realm of believabilty for at least the possibility of a permanent change to our Republic as we know it.
> The claim can't be made if this can't be answered.
On the contrary: the fact that the question can't be answered confidently supports my point rather than refuting it. We don't know what would have happened. It's conceivable or systems would have endured, contingencies enacted, order restored. But there's good reasons to think that may not have happened as well.
What is "my way"? That I want people who clearly intended harm to be subject to the consequences of that action (within our justice system and with the burden on the state to prove their guilt)? Is that so radical to you? I'm not asking anyone be hanged ffs. Nor am I advocating for any sort of detention for every person at the capitol that day. But this isn't something we should just try to forget, downplay, minimize, revise.
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)
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...
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.
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.
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...
Agreed.
The difference between January 6 and previous incidents is there's a very well-reasoned argument to be made by people who are experts in this area that the events of January 6 were the culmination of a self-coup attempt we typically only see in developing nations[1]. Fortunately the execution was inept and the institutions were able to withstand the assaults against them, but there were serious efforts to accomplish it nonetheless. The actual assault on Congress was just one facet of the attempt.
I've watched the footage of the rallies in the days before January 6. The people who assaulted the capitol were fed a firehose of lies for days and weeks (and actually going back to 2016) about the election which dovetails nicely with your point:
> 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.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/11/capitol-ri...
Honestly, this is an amazing essay thanks for sharing. From an anthropological perspective this is exactly what I'm talking about, people wanting to feel like they're at some apex of history. Her arguments amount to "this was a coup attempt because I've redefined what a coup attempt means to fit this specific instance". The entire piece is an exercise in redefining what have long been well understood to be the hallmarks of a Coup actually are. Exaggerated language is throughout the essay, but there's a couple sentences that stand out to me:
>>During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump drew Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper out of a White House meeting to follow him for a provocative photo-op in front of a historic church. Paramilitary forces under the president’s command cleared a passage for his group across Lafayette Square.
Summarily debunked[1], but it's one of those enduring memes from this that strikes onlookers as so foul that that any attempt to correct the record is met with discordance and invective. "Paramilitary" forces? The Park Police are now a ... paramilitary force? Let me get my cousin in Montana on the phone, I'm sure he'd love to know this.
>>As in the case of other coup attempts, the president’s actions have put us on the brink of civil war.
Yes, a very "expert" opinion here. "On the brink of civil war", we are.
We're in a situation where we're watching the same film, and seeing two different movies. I don't have anything to blame here but the technology we all help build which allows the narrative to be manipulated like this in real time, with no meaningful way to update.
[1]https://greenwald.substack.com/p/yet-another-media-tale-trum...
No, its a classic autocoup (self-coup) attempt. Executive leader directs loyalists against another government power center for the purpose of either extending term beyond what has been secured through the regular process or seizing additional unauthorized powers in the existing term. It wasn't even covert, they were literally overtly directed to go to Congress for that end.
Now, was it a poorly planned, uncoordinated, sloppily executed, and ultimately failure of an autocoup attempt? Sure, but that doesn't make it not a coup attempt.
Dozens of people have been charged, and a founding lifetime member of the Oath Keepers has plead guilty, to relevant crimes, to wit, unlawfully entering the Capitol with the intent to influece, obstruct, and/or interfere with the electoral vote count, and/or conspiring to do so.
Its not like “attempt or conspiracy to effect an autocoup” is a separate offense under the US Code.
The idea that "trespassing" into the Capital is something you can charge against the citizens of a democratic country, and not an Imperial Empire, is probably a separate question.
> The new IG report is being used by some Trump supporters and anti-anti-Trumpers to revisit coverage of that sort and argue that it unfairly assigned blame to Trump. While some mainstream outlets have misleadingly suggested the new IG report proves Trump didn’t order protesters to be cleared out, Trump supporters have gone even further and have used it to try to discredit the media in general.
> ...However, the operation to clear Lafayette Square involved numerous other law enforcement agencies, including Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). And the report makes clear that the various agencies involved in the chaos that unfolded outside the White House that day were not always in radio communication with one another — and overall were certainly not on the same page.
> Notably, as lawyer Luppe Luppen highlighted on Twitter, the IG report indicates that Secret Service officers on the scene — who were aware of USPP’s operational plan — escalated the situation by using pepper spray against protesters, and by doing so before USPP officers had a chance to give demonstrators any warnings to disperse. The report says a Secret Service official later apologized to USPP officials for the incident, but didn’t explain why it happened.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
[2] https://www.vox.com/2021/6/11/22527796/ig-report-trump-bible...
Nah, I'm aware of them, believe me. This just wasn't that. I think we're going to talk past each other at this point.
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
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.
Oh my, the Capital building was bombed in 1980? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1980s-far-left-female...
What should we do about this terrorist? Put her on the Board of Directory of Thousand Currents, sponsor of the Black Lives Matter movement, of course. Oh hold on, Snopes protests..."In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism." But everybody who protested in Jan. 6th is a "terrorist" correct?
How about Bill Ayers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers, with his Bombing...ahem..."activism" as Wikipedia calls it? In 1971 Bill Ayers bombs the US Capitol building. What happens to him? Why he is deeply associated with community leader cum President Barack Obama for decades. Let's make him an esteemed Professor at the University of Chicago for his crimes...
Now January 6. Perhaps your eyes & ears can tell me who died during the protest? Oh yeah, Ashli Babbitt who was shot by a police office despite not attacking anybody or presenting any imminent danger. Did she really deserve to be shot? Is this "justice", where the punishment depends on politics?
Sure, how justice is served does depend on politics, but should it be this way?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I've seen no evidence for that 'all but a handful unarmed' claim. I have seen interviews with Capitol Police saying they were afraid to use their firearms because they believed they were massively outgunned and would be killed if a serious gunfight broke out.
Even allowing for that hypothetical though, the allegedly unarmed mob a massive tactical advantage[1]:
> “We weren’t battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel,” he said in the first public account from D.C. police officers who fought to protect the Capitol during last week’s siege. “We were battling 15,000 people. It looked like a medieval battle scene.”
> Rioters swarmed, battering the officers with metal pipes peeled from scaffolding and a pole with an American flag attached, police said. Both were struck with stun guns. Fanone suffered a mild heart attack and drifted in and out of consciousness.
> All the while, the mob was chanting “U.S.A.” over and over and over again.
> “We got one! We got one!” Fanone said he heard rioters shout. “Kill him with his own gun!”
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/dc-police...
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.
Jan 6 is about as bad as the Bundy nonsense in Oregon.
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.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
> Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade
Really? A lot of stuff they leaked wasn't even that damaging, like Hillary's emails, because it just showed that the DNC wasn't really up to anything. But they made sure to release them at the most politically damaging moment possible. While they sit on other documents for years.
Trump's closest advisors had direct contact with WikiLeaks, which doesn't make sense unless they were collaborating https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign...
> The special counsel’s office determined that hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta were transmitted from a Russian-government proxy, Guccifer 2.0, to WikiLeaks on July 14, 2016.
> The report does not resolve the question of coordination between the campaign and WikiLeaks’ timed release of hacked emails from Podesta. The report does note, however, that the hacked emails were released on Oct. 7, the same day as the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was heard making vulgar boasts about women.
> The report adds “the release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign.”
Yeah, definitely not partisan
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.
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.
I have no idea what you mean you when you say carpetbagger and am legitimately curious to hear your perspective.
The DNC didn't really do anything. Staff talked outside of school about him but that's it. Bernie was never a player in the Democratic Party, as he just caucuses with them, wasn't a fundraiser, and didn't stump for many other politicians in the party. He ran for the D nomination and lost by millions of votes. He didn't appeal to as many people in the primaries as HRC and he lost.
A) By and large the DNC actually adhered to their own rules.
B) Why should the Democratic National Committee play nice with someone who isn't a Democrat?
1) Everybody seems to forget that while Bernie caucuses with the Democrats he isn't actually a part of the Democratic Party.
2) Everybody seems to forget that Bernie wasn't winning. When you're the underdog, losing well doesn't get you anything.
On the one hand we have an innocuous, as in inconsequential character, Putin suck up who will probably go to prison forever. On the other hand, a consequential character, who groveled so magnificently in public, debased himself and his entire nation, continues to get accolades by 1/3 of that nation, who even think he'll be reinstalled as president come this August.
One of these things is pathetic, the other is a significant mass delusion. How can it be surprising that rank and file Republicans don't recognize Assange as a liar? They have consistently lacked or repressed the basic character assessment skills to identify and avoid empowering liars, grifters, and groveling toward dictators.
It's quite bizarre and outside the realm of politics in my view. It's some kind of macro psychological event that has more in common with behavioral economics (just how irrational are people anyway?)
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.
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?
No, they became a partisan issue because Putin's intelligence apparatus took control of WikiLeaks
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.
You're not allowed to mention that ideology here. Except in a distant historical context.
The thing is we all used to love WL for their active transparency and independence, but when they started playing these games (or allowing themselves to be played) they lost that respect
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?
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.
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.)
I don't remember seeing these same criticisms back in 2010 during the cable leaks, curious that this is only an issue now, after the light is being shined on the democrats rather than the republicans for a change...
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'?