He has spent his life lying about his credentials, and then selling the influence he gains in the us government to foreign countries.
No, I don’t think Biden will be pardoning Edward Snowden.
Drone strike: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-dron...
Disinterested: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/25/fac...
Joes plagiarism: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiaris...
More lying about law school credentials: https://apnews.com/article/cd977f7ff301993f7976974ba07c5495
Selling influence: https://news.yahoo.com/independent-source-confirms-authentic...
https://reason.com/2015/04/09/the-feds-want-a-back-door-into...
"One fine day in 1991, an ambitious senator named Joe Biden introduced legislation declaring that telecommunications companies "shall ensure" that their hardware includes backdoors for government eavesdropping. Biden's proposal was followed by the introduction of the Clipper Chip by the National Security Agency (NSA) and a remarkable bill, approved by a House of Representatives committee in 1997, that would have outlawed encryption without back doors for the feds."
The man is an authoritarian, him playing an absent minded nice man of advanced age and his empty SJW phrases don't change that. You can get real glimpses of the personality like him "losing patience with the unvaccinated" lately.
Firmly embedded in the swamp.
It's hard to define someone in a phrase, but I just view him as a half-bright grifter with backers. The backers are the people to be angry at. His views on civil liberties are probably more taking the easy road (or easy money) rather than being for or agin'.
In fact, it would have been politically expedient last summer for him to say the 1994 crime bill was a mistake in hindsight, but he did the opposite. I think this is who he really is.
There isn't a single president where unpleasant facts about their actions are not documented-- there wasn't a single pure and good president of the united states-- ever, nor even one who did not engage in activities which could be described as "loathsome".
Starting with George Washington who lead an insurrection on behalf of rich slave owners (to protect slavery) and murdered those who would not join his cause. A man who had his dentures made from human teeth torn from the faces of men he had enslaved.
Jefferson, who raped his slaves and enslaved his own children.
Lincoln, "the great emancipator" said, "If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it..." A man that went on to engage in genocide against the indigenous of what is now the United States.
Reagan who engaged in drug dealing to support illegal wars of aggression and his far-right death squads who tortured and murdered many thousands. A man who was instrumental in the genocide of 250,000 indigenous in Guatemala.
But, Johnson wins the prize for greatest single mass murder event, supported by a president, since the genocide of the indigenous in what is now the US. After the far-right dictator, Suharto came to power in a US backed coup. The US under Johnson provided surveillance information used to find and murder, millions of Indonesians who were guilty of the thought crime of belonging to the "wrong" political party (even far-right apologists acknowledge at least 500,000 murdered, but 1-2M is more credible).
Carter who armed and trained the mujahadeen to overthrow the liberal government that arose in Afghanistan after the 1978 revolution (under this left government, Afghan women had equal rights and universal suffrage and the literacy rate had soared). The funding, and arming of these jihadis was continued by Reagan and "pappa" Bush. Yes, the same ones that defeated the US military over the last 20 years. During the US occupation, Afghanistan was tied as second worse place to be a woman giving lie to any noise about US intervention being to improve the status of women.
"Baby" Bush who engaged in illegal wars of aggression against nations who had nothing to do with 911, but who the far-right e.g., the Heritage Foundation had long wanted to overthrow and in its place create a place free of any regulation that would prevent the rich and powerful from abusing those with less money and power-- they even had a plan ready for the invasion when the opportunity presented itself. "Baby" Bush who's regime engaged in illegal, immoral, and reprehensible torture, and displaced and murdered millions.
Every president in the history of the US has committed official, "loathsome", acts that would have landed an ordinary citizen in prison or the gas chamber.
This is absolutely ahistorical. None of the planners of the revolution ever documented this as a motivation. Some were even abolitionists. The British Slavery Abolition Act wasn't until 1833 anyway. On top of that, Dunmore's Proclamation which offered freedom to loyalist slaves was almost 8 months after the war started, so that couldn't have been a motivation.
[edit] I don't have a stake in deciding which president was the worst or in defending Washington per se. I'm only addressing the particular historical claim which is pretty straightforwardly false, as far as I can tell.
[edit 2] I would challenge anyone downvoting this to find historical evidence to the contrary.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/blac...
Since you posted your comment suggesting the claim is false, I found this supporting your claim:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...
This one will have to wait to find more authoritative scholarly sources. But, I accept that it is controversial and possibly in question.
> Both sets of inaccuracies worried me, but the Revolutionary War statement made me especially anxious.
A number of other prominent historians have leveled the same criticism.
I'm not making any general claims about the revolution, or the politics of the moment as they relate to the telling of American history. But I am saying that the claim that it was motivated by the desire to preserve slavery is unsupported. This is the mainstream historical opinion.
> This one will have to wait to find more authoritative scholarly sources. But, I accept that it is controversial and possibly in question
It isn't controversial, it's completely without evidence. There is not a shred of evidence is presented. The linked essay from the 1619 Project picks up with Jefferson in 1776, a year and a half after the war started.
Puncturing the nationalist myth surrounding the revolution and founding is I think worthwhile. It was after all a violent revolution, carried out by people who disagreed strongly with one another. There are contradictions in the founding that at the same time could be troubling an inspiring. Deifying the founders does them a disservice. I thinking some sense their project was about separating the state and power from personalities.
They were flawed people but accomplished something incredible. I’m against the sate conceptually, but they did a lot to bring governance closer to people.
This thread is ripe for America hating propaganda.
Most of what you said is either hyperbole or completely inaccurate.
As for America hating. No. Those who are uncritical of their government are doing no one any favor. E.g., if we had more people speaking up critically against US policies abroad, 911 probably would never have happened.
It will be the uncritical patriots who will allow America to be lead to ruin.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
The rest of your propaganda falls apart just as easily.
You talk like someone from the 50 cent army or a useful idiot who believes the nonsense.
There is nothing false in any of what I wrote. There is one thing that is controversial since he wasn't convicted, but there is a great deal of evidence supporting Reagan selling crack cocaine to fund his illegal wars and death squads. Please go through point by point, if you allow yourself, you will learn something and possibly change your position.
edit: added, "originally not an edit" for clarity.
Now it could be sort of true if you squint and tilt your head, but it's far from conclusive and the narrative of "Reagan selling crack cocaine" is totally unsupported.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Committee_report
edit - I'm more or less an anarchist and think that the state is evil, so a lot of what you're saying fits my priors really well. hat said, I think it's important to come armed with facts when criticizing power and the state. When we make overblown or false statements, it undermines the case.
“CIA did not inform Congress of all allegations or information it received indicating that Contra-related organizations or individuals were involved in drug trafficking,” the inspector general’s report found. “During the period in which the FY 1987 statutory prohibition was in effect, for example, no information has been found to indicate that CIA informed Congress of eight of the ten Contra-related individuals concerning whom CIA had received drug trafficking allegations or information.”
This complicity of the CIA in drug trafficking is at the heart of Webb’s explosive expose — a point Webb makes himself in archival interview footage that appears in Levin’s documentary.
“It’s not a situation where the government or the CIA sat down and said, ‘Okay, let’s invent crack, let’s sell it in black neighborhoods, let’s decimate black America,’” Webb says. “It was a situation where, ‘We need money for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.’”
In many substantive ways, Biden has continued most of the previous administrations policies. Sure, he's temperamentally different, but still a doddering old fool stuck in the politics of a previous era.
In short, I would prefer neither.
Trump led our society straight into Covid denialism, and subsequently vaccine denialism. The root has been there, but the main power of a politician is to lead people, and he led the mainstream right into solipsistic "skepticism" of what would otherwise be pretty straightforward topics.
Trump is also directly symbiotic with reactionary groups that aren't criticizing our society to improve it, but rather to drag us back to the stage when their simple minded prescriptions were useful. As a libertarian, it's easy to explain away many of the other criticisms through different priorities, tradeoffs, relativism, media sensationalism, etc. But those two stick in the absolute sense.
Like every high level politician they're both terrible people, but Biden at least serves the corporate status quo that is the backbone of the country - the "deep state" if you will. I fully support Wikileaks et al, and I wish CIA/NSA/etc were disbanded and prosecuted. But as a self-interested American I'd rather the "deep state" continue causing global mayhem for economic gain, than to have a civil war at home (sorry). If you value global stability you probably should too, despite how disgusting it is.
The way I see it, 2022 is going to be a barometer and 2024 will be the jury verdict on our society. If people have come to see the destructiveness of Trumpism, the conservatives (democrats) will gain ground, and the incumbent power structure can continue sauntering on as it's slowly usurped by technology (ideally p2p rather than big tech middlemen, but that's orthogonal). Whereas if disenfranchised people continue to put performative dissent above rational self interest, the radicals (republicans) gain ground. They'll continue to create more elective crises that drive even more disenfranchisement (hello last 50 years of trickle down inflationism), and we're solidly in a death spiral.
Biden has been a trainwreck for 50 years. Barack Obama himself said "never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up" and that's exactly what the man did in Afghanistan, which might be the worst diplomatic blunder in our history. Our allies are extremely unhappy with us right now.
The theocrats he nominated for the Supreme Court will be there for decades, ensuring that no women without the resources of, say, a Trump family member, will be able to maintain control of their own bodies.
Also the "theocrats" that he's appointed to the Supreme Court haven't even towed his line on any major decisions they've had to vote on and basically have completely stabbed him in the back if you take things from his sides' perspective.
Your actual point was that Trump "did nothing for four years." I refuted that point. Three SCOTUS seats occupied by religious ideologues aren't "nothing."
"In the letter dated May 2010, the al Qaeda 9/11 mastermind wrote he had no assassination plots against Biden because he deemed him “totally unprepared” to lead the United States."
"Bin Laden warned in 2010 letter that Biden would ‘lead US into crisis’"
https://nypost.com/2021/08/20/bin-laden-warned-in-2010-lette...
This guy sent helicopters full of swat teams to arrest a single guy - Kim Dotcom. The whole thing was super illegal and almost hilariously over the top. "Almost" because there was nothing amusing about the whole thing. It was ugly
Let's not forget that Kim Dotcom is a miserable piece of shit who rats on his friends and used his position of trust to snoop through people's data and then snitch to governments and criminals for profit.
Not enough people know his real history but the guy is a pure scumbag, credit card fraud criminal and con artist masquerading as freedom-loving CEO.
He's exactly the kind of person that should be thrown in a hole somewhere and not heard from again and if you knew anything about him you would do it if you could.
Kim funded Megaupload largely off of his fraudulent gains on carder forums and a legitimate business that he scammed money off of.
Kim is the kind of person that deserves to have his asshole tickled with glowing hot metal rods...but that isn't an endorsement if somebody goes and does it.
It's fine to be outraged at the US & NZ governments, but it's not fine to spare the man a shred of sympathy.
Biden might pardon Snowden at the end of his term, but don't count on it. I haven't seen a single sign that Biden (or any American presidential candidate for that matter) would side with anyone for leaking government secrets. The government is sitting on many more juicy details that'd upset the global political balance and transparency is not in the USA's interests.
The DNC had their email server itself hacked, which is an entirely different level of compromise.
Of course, they crafted a narrative that “republicans were hacked too!” which of course is true but highly misleading (typical of such propaganda campaigns).
This was highly effective, as it’s still popping up in discussions like this one 5+ years later.
Based upon the talking points at the time, establishment Democrats very much wanted this to be true. This makes sense since the Russians are a convenient scapegoat.
>suppressing damaging information on Republicans.
They wanted this to be true but it didnt happen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/5pmo25/debunked_...
In any case, hitting up sources for leaks is, well, journalism.
It makes him a journalist who doesnt appreciate being threatened with a drone strike by a sitting secretary of state for practising journalism.
The fact people give him shit for this is pretty unbelievable.
Excusing Russian style journalist assassination is not compatible with respect for Democracy.
Do you expect him to have been neutral on her candidacy?
"if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters"
They explain their interest in a Bernie angle as a result of Trump, in their minds, having a low probability of winning:
"we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting"
He still didnt conceal any leaks in pursuit of that goal and he wasnt a russian spy. Nonetheless, both claims are frequently made in the mainstream media linked to Democrats.
They are lies.
lol I kid. Literally 0% chance CNN will give him one.
Every establishment critic faces the same choice:
1) appear on PressTV or RT
2) face ridiculously hostile interviewers
3) dont appear on TV
Mostly they go for a mix of 1 and 2.
Much like I can - randomly or otherwise - choose any faction in the Nigerian elections.
Or is their some planet-wide law that he fell under?
Are you suggesting that people shouldn't take the actions of others into account?
How do you pardon a foreign citizen?
Furthermore, as Assange isn’t an American citizen and doesn’t get to vote in the USA, none of them have no reason to put personal dislike aside and defend him or his actions.
Hell, he might have been a lot better off now if he was a USA citizen, or even if he’d been officially working for Russia.
Right now, he’s a conveniently unlicensed hot potato: held personally liable by the powers, not even really seen as a journalist even if he was one.
Indeed, hate away.
But its a big jump to imprisoning (or as some would like killing) him.
Just as - and focus here - its not ok to extradite atheists to Saudi Arabia for heresy committed in say New Zealand.
Its after all just a wee election.
[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-tru... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-said-considering-pardo... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/tr...
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/politics/republicans-2016-edw...
I think this shows on either side of the aisle, there is little love for Snowden and people alike.
If it wasn’t Snowden it would have been someone else, matter if time.
Here’s what the gov should do:
1.) Pardon Snowden publicly 2.) Work with Snowden as public front, to build a better (more privacy conscious) surveillance network and win back the public’s trust
Will this ever happen? Probably not
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/leaker-of-drone-secrets-ge...
No need to steer away from "deep state" so hard you go hyperbolic.
Maybe use "Multiple competing power cabals", if you prefer?
It's no deep state conspiracy that the Pentagon or the CIA have their own opinion on world politics. If anything, the Trump administration has shown that there are still some restraints to the president's power. At some point details were made foggy or even left out in Trump's security briefings out of fear they might get leaked to Twitter. The end result of this process isn't to keep the elites in power or to control the people, it's much more tame than that. People don't like change and when a new guy rolls in and decides that the way some government body does something is wrong, people will naturally resist.
There is always a power balance, usually in favour of the democratically elected officials, between the elected government and the government that sticks around. When push comes to shove the elected officials always have the power to overrule the unelected ones, but any future endeavours related to these parties would become difficult once you force matters.
The CIA, FBI, DoJ and FDA don't get a complete reshuffle every four years. The figureheads and even organisational top can get replaced, but there are many layers of middle management below them that have cemented their ways in difficult to change processes, workflows and office culture.
The system has its advantages, notably that the country doesn't collapse after giving a complete lunatic the reigns for four years, but also a great many disadvantages, notably elected officials being worked against in their quest for improvement and change. This effect can be increased or decreased, but it won't ever go away and denying that there is more to politics than elites at the top is just nonsensical in my opinion.
It will erode away as American influence does. Just ask the Brits what happened with their War Office, India Office, Colonial Office etc etc etc. No one thought those were ever going away either.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/15/494157921...
> The committee unanimously voted to endorse the report, and all members signed a letter to President Obama urging him not to pardon Snowden.