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Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by alfalfasprout on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @03:04PM (#36231831)
You don't even need to be much of a conspiracy theorist nowadays to realize that mainstream media is controlled by a concentrated set of interests. Just look at how coordinated the media was against "quiet quitting". And then against "work from home". And pushing many, many other anti worker narratives.

No surprise, following the leaks Snowden was painted as a traitor that clearly only pandered to Russian interests.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by DANmode on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @03:49PM (#36232512)
> 10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned?

More pieces of the Zeitgeist, really.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by DSingularity on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @04:21PM (#36232986)
Of course it’s not a conspiracy. It’s all about the interests. Just compare coverage of Palestine and Israel. US interests lie with Israel — a US proxy ready to gladly down any nation that steps out of line using American. So Israelis are the angels and Palestinians are the devils. Who cares about the brutal occupation. Who cares about settler violence. Ignore all Israeli crimes to the point of white-washing. Meanwhile, all media outlets will rush to ensure that any Palestinian resistance against the violent occupation — whether it’s violent or peaceful — is covered as if it is terrorism or racism.

US media is just Propaganda.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by sixQuarks on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @04:55PM (#36233422)
The thing I don't get is that while you and others can clearly see the propaganda going on with US media, when it comes to Trump, people on the left all of a sudden go along with the propaganda and conspiracy theories such as Russiagate, or that Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian conspiracy. People want to believe what they want to believe, I don't know if the propaganda is done to control people, or it's what the people actually want - to believe their government is a force for good, that we're the good guys, etc.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by alfalfasprout on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @04:58PM (#36233464)
The propaganda exists across the entire political spectrum. Americans have been pushed to fight against each other so that they're too tired, angry, and distracted to focus their efforts on those in power.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by lozf on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @09:48PM (#36236156)
Yup, it's "Divide and Conquer" all the way down. Not even just political, or mainstream media, but everywhere. - Endless distractions to keep us bickering with each other, instead of addressing the bigger issues.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by CrackerNews on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @06:01PM (#36234240)
At the very least, those leftists want to oust Trump using whatever means possible.

Not to say that every leftist does this. There are those who are principled enough to not buy into the propaganda.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by dragonwriter on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @06:04PM (#36234270)
> At the very least, those leftists want to oust Trump using whatever means possible.

“Oust Trump”? Are you under the impression that Trump is still in office from which he could be ousted?

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by shrimp_emoji on Thursday June 08, 2023 @10:47AM (#36242754)
Ooooo
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by rayiner on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @07:01PM (#36234873)
My wife (who read National Review back in high school and voted for Bush in college) was intensely anti-Trump and went down the rabbit hole of listening to all the NYT podcasts, Maddow, etc.—the pee tape, “walls closing in,” bank records showing ties to Russia, the whole nine yards. I’d love for someone to try and put together an objective montage of those stories as they developed over time, cross referenced against the Mueller and Durham reports.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by sixQuarks on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @10:09PM (#36236284)
Jimmy Dore has done a good job chronicling all that.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by pacifist on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @11:37PM (#36236871)
Also Aaron Mate. He won an Izzy Award for debunking russiagate.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by giardini on Thursday June 08, 2023 @12:43AM (#36237309)
Links please.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by sixQuarks on Thursday June 08, 2023 @11:02AM (#36243013)
Jimmy Dore show on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejimmydoreshow

Aaron Mate is a regular on his show.

Jimmy has been debunking the Russiagate conspiracy for years now. He's a comedian turned truth-teller. I stumbled across his show many years ago, and my honest first impression was that this guy looks like a shady used car salesman, so I was very skeptical of his claims. He will go into angry tirades often.

But after seeing enough of his segments, and seeing how things unfold over weeks and months, I realized he's actually legit. Whenever I see news unfold now on mainstream news, for example - the Nordstream pipeline being blown up and Russia being blamed for it, I know I will get a more accurate assessment of the truth from Jimmy Dore. And again, it's not that I take his word for it, I see how things unfold weeks and months later and turns out he was right.

Note: The left smears Dore as a right-winger. That's so bullshit. He's actually progressive and more left than the establishment left - antiwar, wants universal healthcare, pro-union pro-worker, free-speech. Dore was one of the first people to endorse and interview AOC when it looked like she was a legit anti-establishment lefty (that turned out to be wrong). The left doesn't like him because he criticizes them from the real left and reveals their hypocrisy and corruption.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by giardini on Thursday June 08, 2023 @12:41AM (#36237303)
Links to "all that" done by Dore, please. Otherwise you're spamming.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by dontlaugh on Thursday June 08, 2023 @03:49AM (#36238568)
US liberals, sure. Actual leftists have as much contempt for both Trump and Biden, they are both part of the same ruling class.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mcv on Thursday June 08, 2023 @07:14AM (#36239970)
"As much" sounds rather extreme. Biden has plenty of shortcomings, but he's not running the government as a mafia don and is objectively doing a much better job. I agree that US politics is too much of an oligarchy, but how they rule still matters, and Biden is a breath of fresh air after 4 years of Trump.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by dontlaugh on Thursday June 08, 2023 @07:22AM (#36240037)
Biden spearheaded the destruction of Yugoslavia, was a big part of the austerity measures in the 90s and 2000s and was vice president during the vast increase in drone bombing.

Trump assassinated a foreign dignitary, but not much else. His rhetoric is worse and aesthetically he’s somewhat worse, sure.

I don’t see much practical difference.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mcv on Thursday June 08, 2023 @08:47AM (#36240984)
I'm talking about his presidency. The breakup of Yugoslavia was decades ago, and it was falling apart by itself, not because of anything a specific US senator did. Of course lots of mistakes were made by many parties around the breakup of Yugoslavia; by the US, by various European countries, and most importantly of course by several Serbian leaders. It's a bit much to blame it all on Biden. But it was falling apart no matter what the US or EU did, unless you want them to support genocide.

It is true that Biden was heavily involved in foreign affairs during that time, but that may actually be why he might currently be the perfect president to have during the war in Ukraine. For a US president, he's doing a much better job at finding a good balance in supporting Ukraine without escalating than I can imagine any other recent president would have done.

Was Biden responsible for the drone strikes? I thought that was Obama's thing. It was certainly a terrible atrocity and something that should never have happened. With Obama's presidency I had high hopes and ended up mostly disappointed. With Biden, I had very low expectations, but he's surpassed them. Not my favourite guy, but definitely better than Trump. Better than Bush. Possibly even better than Obama.

Although I'm deeply disappointed about his union busting. Train union busting, even. I thought he liked trains. That is where I expected much better from him.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by dontlaugh on Thursday June 08, 2023 @09:15AM (#36241349)
Biden repeatedly argued for bombing my neighbours, which then happened.

Of course Biden wouldn’t support unions. Like his entire party, he represents one faction of US capital.

For what it’s worth, US communists and trade unionists don’t talk about Biden the way liberals like you do.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mcv on Thursday June 08, 2023 @07:08AM (#36239924)
You sound like you've fallen for the right-wing media propaganda. That is propaganda too. Even more blatantly so, perhaps.

If you want a more neutral perspective on American media, look at foreign media. Trump is worse than the US media are willing to tell you, and Hunter Biden's laptop seems to be entirely made-up by US media and a couple of political figures.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by sixQuarks on Thursday June 08, 2023 @11:08AM (#36243123)
Are you aware that there is a site that has posted all the photos from Hunter Biden's laptop? There are thousands of photos of him in very shady situations. You're telling me those are all made up and photoshopped?
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mcv on Friday June 09, 2023 @06:05AM (#36255647)
I have no problem believing that Hunter Biden has done questionable things. But nobody is arguing to elect Hunter Biden as president, and unlike Trump, Joe Biden doesn't hire his own children as part of his administration. So politically, it's irrelevant. We should be much more concerned about all the shady situations Trump has been in.

But also, people with political agendas have been messing with that laptop for years, so it's hard to trust anything coming from that laptop anymore. Whatever evidence there may be has been quite thoroughly compromised. The fact that it was handed to people with a political axe to grind, rather than to the police, was a mistake.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mo_42 on Friday June 09, 2023 @07:45AM (#36256402)
> People want to believe what they want to believe, I don't know if the propaganda is done to control people, or it's what the people actually want - to believe their government is a force for good, that we're the good guys, etc.

I'd put it a bit differently but I think we have the same idea in mind: people believe what resonates well in their minds because they are already tuned for this. So if someone likes to believe that natural medicine is good, then their mind is more likely to believe in big pharma conspiracies and that homeopathy is valid medicine (yes, I'm aware that natural medicine can be evidence-based and homeopathy is not natural).

In that sense, propaganda always needs to consider how minds are tuned already to give them something that they like to consume.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by 0xedd on Thursday June 08, 2023 @01:32AM (#36237638)
Maybe it's because the tiny strip of land doesn't warrant so much attention. Coupled with facts like Jordan is also part of Palestine and is 4 times larger than Israel. Or basically just reading a history book rather than watch CNN. I recommend Time Immemorial, a book that cites all its resources in the appendix rather than cramming a bandwagon narrative.

Oh, the best one (not in the above book as that was written in the 1990s, before the following): Israel offered the Palestinians up to 94% of all lands they claimed their own. Unilateral, without demands. On 3 occasions and under 2 different PMs. The Palestinian leadership refused each time with no counterdemand.

Read a book.

Footnote: This isn't to say propaganda isn't ravaging the West.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by DSingularity on Thursday June 08, 2023 @02:04AM (#36237842)
What a thing to say. The occupation and ethnic cleansing of that “strip of land” has produced millions of refugees whose lives have been - and continue to be - upended for decades. I wonder if you were one of the children of these refugee camps — would you say the same?

Here’s a book for you to read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Pale...

Will you actually read it?

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by edanm on Thursday June 08, 2023 @03:54AM (#36238600)
(Note: I'm Israeli)

You are simplifying the issue to the point of absurdity. It's not "Israelis are angels, Palestinians are devils", but it's not the reverse either. It's a complex issue in which there isn't an easy path out, because of the actions of both sides.

Israel isn't solely to blame for the problems of the Palestinians; they were even refugees in Arab countries before they became Israeli refugees. And their current situation is at least partially caused by themselves, and at least partially caused by the fact that other powers in the region have a lot of incentive for the conflict to continue. It's also partially caused by Israel having incentive to continue the current situation, as it is strategically beneficial to Israel. (Which of course doesn't make it right!)

More to the point of your original post, I think coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian situation is very biased against Israel in most parts of the world, including the US. And I say this even as someone who is very "leftist" in my views of the situation, and absolutely hate what our current government is doing (in many ways, but including in this way). And in fact, I hate how Israel has acted over the last many years, though I, like most Israeli, have no idea how to "fix" the current situation.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by epups on Thursday June 08, 2023 @06:48AM (#36239778)
Your country is an effective Apartheid regime, and every week it murders dozens of innocents in name of an illegal occupation. Those are the facts, and it is all you need to know. The rest is moral equivocation at best.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mu53 on Thursday June 08, 2023 @07:19AM (#36240006)
He gave a nuanced answer acknowledging the complexity of history and human behavior. Your response made it black and white.

At what point in history did any leader of Israel have any chance to change the course of history? I have learned more about this subject than I have wanted to, and since the event that ended in 1945, they have done the best they can with what they had

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by shrimp_emoji on Thursday June 08, 2023 @10:48AM (#36242772)
They conquered the whole Sinai peninsula and then gave it back! Beats Russia's track record.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by epups on Thursday June 08, 2023 @11:56AM (#36244045)
The situation here is black and white. Israel is and has been on the driver's seat for the last 50 years, and for decades now has been practicing terrorism and collective punishment against civilians. They could, I don't know, not bomb children and assassinate journalists like they do every other week?
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by woooooo on Thursday June 08, 2023 @09:42AM (#36241752)
I was with you on the nuance until you said "US" -- we have actual laws making it illegal to boycott Israel in a bunch of states. Its not illegal to boycott anything else on the planet, just Israel.

Any politician who steps out of line on the issue, even just pointing at obvious facts on the ground, is disciplined immediately. See what happened to Rashida Tlaib a few years ago for making mild factual observations.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by edanm on Thursday June 08, 2023 @10:44AM (#36242699)
I'm not sure you're being accurate about the laws against boycotting Israel - from what I remember, there's only laws against the federal government hiring workers that boycott Israel. A private citizen (or company) can still boycott Israel to their heart's content, IIRC. I could be wrong on that though.

I'm opposed to laws against boycotting, fwiw.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by woooooo on Friday June 09, 2023 @11:30AM (#36259332)
Either way, no other country or organization gets that level of deference over here.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by jacooper on Thursday June 08, 2023 @12:45PM (#36244844)
Its not a complex issue, stop your BS.

Its an occupation started by the Arther Balfour deceleration in 1917. Started with Zionist crime gangs that later turned into the mossad and other occupational military forces who run the apartheid occupation.

It doesn't matter where Palestinians come from, why they live there, etc, ITS AN OCCUPATION, as simple as that.

Its an occupation of one of the holliest lands for all three religions, with ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Muslims and Christians, through every way possible, killing journalists, children, families, mass killings.

Yet when Palestinians go to defend their land and their rights they are called terrorists, what unfavorable coverage are you talking about? Palestinians throwing Molotovs against occupation forces? Terrorists, Ukrainians doing the exact same thing? Heros.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by DSingularity on Thursday June 08, 2023 @06:49PM (#36250339)
I mean in some ways the fact that Israelis are not all angels and Palestinians are not all devils is precisely my point. But look at the US media. They border line worship the Israeli army. Yeah — the same army that assassinated Tamimis father and killed her baby brother in the process. The same army that protects a sniper that journalist Shireen in the head. How is that not fucked?

But the whole “both sides are wrong” issue is total bullshit. One side has all the power and the other exists below the boot. One side is actively ethnically cleansing Palestine and the other side is being ethnically cleansed. You can’t possibly make both sides equal in blame.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by kornhole on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @09:41PM (#36236107)
Julian Assange suffered a worse fate for doing much less and nothing illegal. The 'crime' of both was revealing information inconvenient to the powerful. The powerful had their MSM focus on the messenger rather than the message and smear them any way they could.
Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by mcv on Thursday June 08, 2023 @06:57AM (#36239848)
It's interesting to read this. My experience is completely different, but I'm Dutch and tend to read either Dutch or online media. And online media mostly in the tech sphere. Everybody is pretty positive about Snowden, and more objective about issues like "quiet quitting" and working from home.

I think there's something really fundamentally wrong with US media. And not just with Fox News, but with all of them.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by specialist on Thursday June 08, 2023 @10:40AM (#36242633)
Yes and: wrt journalism, corporate media cares more about access than holding power to account.

Therefore corporate media ends up defending the status quo, by default or by design.

Re:10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned? by aio2 on Thursday June 08, 2023 @12:48PM (#36244894)
I want to explain this from my perspective so you can maybe see why this is happening:

I remember all the talk about quiet quitting and working home and all that, but because media has slowly shifted away from that, I seemed to think about it less. In fact, I completely forgot about quiet quitting until you just mentioned it, when I realized they have slowly blocked it out.

Imagine that. It took me a while to realize that. And I still needed something to remind me of it. A lot of people aren't constantly reminded about it, which means they'll think more about whatever is currently in the media and keep falling for their trap.