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Why WikiLeaks Is Worth Defending
SomePgmr writes "By now, anyone with even a passing interest in the WikiLeaks phenomenon is familiar with most of the elements of its fall from grace: the rift between founder Julian Assange and early supporters over his autocratic and/or erratic behavior, the Swedish rape allegations that led to his seeking sanctuary in Ecuador, a recent childish hoax the organization perpetrated, and so on. Critics paint a picture of an organization that exists only in name, with a leadership vacuum and an increasingly fractured group of adherents. Despite its many flaws, however, there is still something worthwhile in what WikiLeaks has done, and theoretically continues to do. The bottom line is that we need something like a 'stateless news organization,' and so far it is the best candidate we have."
âoestateless news organization,â
soo, you'll stand up for the USA, even if the USA has become corrupt and every bit as criminal as the nazis were during WW2? you spineless piece of shit haven't you got any integrity worth anything?
Freedom to post whatever you want in a public forum is important in our world today. Wikileaks seems to self destructing and isn't necessary in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, Godwin, no and maybe!
It's a reckless, amoral organization, that doesn't care who it hurts, doesn't care if it gets blood on its hand, and could care less about the fate of the people who supply its documents. What the world needs, and still has plenty of, are people of good moral character, who will fight for what's right, who will take stands, and who will take risks. I have way more respect for the three young women of Pussy Riot and what they have accomplished than anything Wikileaks has done.
Feel free to compare the United States to any other nations they express a serious interest in from a military, economic, or overall political standpoint. Try living in both nations for five years apiece. Then report back on your findings, provided you have the spine to actually try this for yourself.
Write failed: Broken pipe
even if the USA has become corrupt and every bit as criminal as the nazis were during WW2?
I guess I missed the part where the US has annexed sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity.
Although, our economy would probably be in a lot better shape if we had someone like Albert Speer. That man did wonders for Germany's wartime economy.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Feel free to compare the United States to any other nations they express a serious interest in from a military, economic, or overall political standpoint. Try living in both nations for five years apiece. Then report back on your findings, provided you have the spine to actually try this for yourself.
And the point of this is what?
Funny, until the "anti-American" bit, I could have sworn you were talking about the US government. Amend it to "anti-American people", and you still could be.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Just a coincidence or a witch hunt, amazing how things fall apart when you are Enemy of the State.
Submitter's idea of "need" and mine are apparently worlds apart. I need Wikileaks like I need a shovel for that big steaming pile of dragon shit in my front yard that doesn't exist.
#1 Reason - Pentagon Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers .
When the USA keeps secrets, the entire world suffers. Sad, but true. There probably isn't a single country that the USA hasn't screwed over in one way or another, including herself.
To the rest of the world, it is the government, not the people making these dangerous decisions. It has happened with both political parties. JFK lied and every President since has too. The military has kept many secrets.
They should try helping and protecting their sources, not dropping them and pretending they don't exist.
I thought, from all the commenting being done by the media that it wasn't merely *allegations* but that he HAD DEFINITELY raped two women!
PS is it equally odd to anyone else that when someone says about someone who has merely been accused (and not even by the 'victim' herself) of rape that, if you say "There was no rape", you're being a rape apologist? I mean, from context, that would mean "rape apologist" would be someone saying "I'm sorry you weren't raped".
But not Assange. He's not WikiLeaks. Simple as that. He betrayed them with this massive stunt.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Sorry, maybe you're being coy - but someone who pretends to hold the moral high ground, calling out someone for their belief, while posting anonymously... probably hasn't actually seen the other side of the coin.
The thing I wrestle with is that its a clearing house for stolen property. In the ral world, even pawn shops have to check serial numbers to see if they are dealing with stolen property. I can understand the fascination that access to secret or unknown information can bring. But at the same time, whoever is giving the files to wikileaks has no right to give away the files. Sometimes real, innocent, people's lives are at risk by unmanaged disclosure. Communications that are made with every expectation of privacy are made public without context. This is the part I don't like. Its like watching that movie "Angus" where the bad kids play a stolen video of him dancing with a doll at the homecoming dance.
If you are the kind of person who's easily swayed by the media's depiction of Assange, then yes, you most definitely need wikileaks
I corrected that for you.
(PS Valerie Plame ring a bell?)
The problem with most ideological stances, is that they only work if the ideolody is applied to everyone else
Hence, Wikileaks stands for openness and public scrutiny of everything and everyone except Wikileaks. How much money has Wikileaks received in donations, and how much of it went in to Assange's pockets? Maybe an insider could post the answer on Wikileaks. No, wait...
Communism works great if everyone is equal and everything is shared equally... unless you happen to be a Party Member, in which case you have have all the trappings of Capitalism
Democracy is great idea, giving everyoe an equal say in how things are run. Until you get elected, then you don't need to worry about the electorate for another 4 or 5 years.
Dictatorships work well unless you disagree with the ideology of the dictator
Freedom of Information is a great idea, until you realise that all governments and companies need to undertake certain discussing in private in able to function effectively.
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
Fully agree with this. Just make US secrets available to everybody, while doing nothing about those of countries like Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China and so on. When they start leaking the secrets of our enemies as well, I'll consider getting behind that.
Will you reserve the same judgement for yourself or any other who complain about North Korea or China? Or those who compare themselves FOURABLY to Cuba, Europe, Australia, China, et al?
No, you won't will you.
Because you have nothing to be proud of than the nation in which you got pinched out your mothers' clacker.
He really should get mentioned as well. "Mr. Delete" has done a lot of good for evil men, disapointed many who risked a lot to leak, and kicked Wikileaks as much or even more than anyone else could have...
"When they start leaking the secrets of our enemies as well, I'll consider getting behind that."
Wikileaks cables reveal China 'ready to abandon North Korea ...
www.guardian.co.uk News World news China
WikiLeaks Spurs On Protests By Releasing New Egypt Corruption ...
articles.businessinsider.com/.../30066985_1_police-brutalit...
Wikileaks Goes After The Saudi Royal Family - Business Insider
articles.businessinsider.com/.../29970450_1_saudi-prince-sa...
and so on....
Why we need WikiLeaks: Remember the article on the Australian tax authority the other day where they want expansive powers to snoop on businesses on the off-chance they might be paying less taxes than the government would like?
OK, then, we the citizens need powers to snoop on government bureaucrats on the off-chance they're doing something illegal. If they're not doing anything wrong, they should have nothing to fear.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I guess I missed the part where the US has annexed sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity.
That was during the 18th and 19th century (you know, the Indians, slavery, annexation of Hawaii, etc.) so it's understandable why you missed it.
As far as world domination goes, the US has far surpassed the Germans, and even the British -- that's why there are hundreds of military bases all over the world, and why there's one set of rules for countries in the imperial fold (e.g. Israel's nukes) and those outside (e.g. Iran's legal nuclear program).
True, the U.S. empire is "softer" than the German one -- it doesn't need mass extermination camps, it merely needs to imprison over 2 million of its own citizens, and apply surveillance over the rest, in order to keep the lid on things. That plus mass narcotization of its population via consumerism, entertainment and actual pharmaceuticals has proven a more effective form of centralization of power than the crude 20th century models.
no really he loves godwin cause no one talk of atrocites and other bad crap too bad you have no clue what the real meaning was about and why your a tool for bringing it up
The point is Godwin's law.
More importantly, comparing the USA today with Nazis during WW2 is like saying the Nazis weren't all that bad, and that the genocide of millions of people is comparable to modern Western civilization.
The USA isn't perfect by any means, and there have been innocent lives lost due to unnecessary wars. But Nazi Germany? Get real. This is more like "hindsight is 20/20" than "the USA is specifically targeting millions of a particular race for death due solely to their race". And the USA promotes freedoms that are nearly as good as, if not often much better, than most other nations today.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Good article that really made me think. But whether Wikileaks itself continues to exist or not, the genie is out of the bottle and someone else will take up the cause and activity. And much of its function really was useful and perhaps beneficial. Julian himself is an arrogant fool. Did he ACTUALLY think he'd get away with releasing truckloads of U.S. intelligence info? And when it was pointed out to him that he may well have killed people who were working with us, he said that anyone working with the U.S. deserved to die (yeah, he did. it was in an interview broadcast by the BBC). And Julian, take a lesson from these remarkably coincidental sex charges in Sweden. You might consider turning yourself in. The next "coincidence" might involve an automobile accident or "falling" out a window. You'd probably be safer facing espionage charges. Hell, we don't shoot people for that anymore :)
Anti-American Agenda, what is that? Is that like Alcoholic Anonymous Association?
Hi, my name is Julian Assange and I used to drink a lot, I mean I used to be pro-American, but I've been sober for 5 years now, so sorry, for all my 'anti-american agenda'.
WTF does that mean? Is it un-American to point out that the government is now essentially tyrannical? How is it un-American to be politically active, to bring to light all the transgressions of the powerful elite running the system?
Is telling truth to power a bad thing somehow? How about telling truth to majority .
You can't handle the truth.
"where the US has annexed sovereign states by force,"
Texas?
"or systematically imprisoned"
Gitmo.
"impressed into forced labor"
100% of military helmets are made by prison inmates. This is not all they're forced to do.
"and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity."
Chinese/Japanese, WW2? Negroes both before emancipation and in the tests on them in the ghettos in the 60's.
I mean, if you're going to pretend that the holocaust was SOLEY based on ethnicity, you'd have to include every ethnic race in the world. And it was religiously led for the jews and politically motivated (kill the outsider, the source of all our problems and things will be fine) for them all.
I would but last time I did the comment section was closed when I got back.
Really? Are you saying that your history class literally failed to cover the Mexican American War, slavery, and the systemic genocide of the native population? These were standard topics in American History when I was growing.
You don't get it, don't you? Lets say, you have some important information to reveal. If they make the Republicans look bad, put it into the NY Times! If they make the Democrats look bad, put it in the Wall Street Journal! If they make the lower classes look bad, put it into !Forbes. If they make the upper class look bad, put it in the Daily News!
You see the pattern? Whenever you find a larger group in the U.S. who likes the information to be known, you will find a news outlet to publish it. Only if no news outlet in the U.S. will publish it, because it makes nearly everyone look bad, where do you go? - Tada! Whichever news outlet will publish it, to the U.S. as a whole it will look as if it has an anti-american agenda - just because it publishes the stuff, no other news outlet will publish, because they fear the anger of nearly all groups in the U.S.
No, a news outlet like WikiLeaks will always look as if it was anti-american. If the news was somehow neutral or pro-american, it would have been published in the U.S. already. So your "anti-american agenda" just turns into "I don't like the information to be known, because they make me look bad."
>More importantly, comparing the USA today with Nazis during WW2 is like saying the Nazis weren't all that bad, and that the genocide of millions of people is comparable to modern Western civilization.
"Millions" isn't enough to differentiate. South-East Asia 3-4 million; Iraq 1.5 million; already we are pushing that famous figure of 6 million, and that's without even mentioning a score of other nations that have seen their citizens killed by US aggression. (But as war wasn't declared, and few if any Americans were hurt, that's OK).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This discussion is about Wikileaks, not Windows 8.
I guess I missed the part where the US has annexed sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity.
Then you must be Rip Van Winkle. There is an element of truth in your assertion, in that - since the 19th century, as others have pointed out - the USA has not seen fit to annex other nations in the sense of adding them to its own territory. Instead, it finds it more convenient to invade them, destroy their existing political systems, and set up puppet "Quisling" regimes. But dead people are dead however they got that way, and wherever the US armed forces have gone there seem to be an awful lot of "excess deaths". Maybe the liberated brown people simply die of excessive joy at their newly-conferred rights and freedoms.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Why we need WikiLeaks: Remember the article on the Australian tax authority the other day where they want expansive powers to snoop on businesses on the off-chance they might be paying less taxes than the government would like?
OK, then, we the citizens need powers to snoop on government bureaucrats on the off-chance they're doing something illegal. If they're not doing anything wrong, they should have nothing to fear.
Every time there's a discussion about government snooping here on /. there's a reply like this that gets modded up, and while I agree with the sentiment what interests me more at this point is how you propose to implement such a plan?
Assange is trying to attract attention. Wikileaks only really has the support that it does because people are trying to take it down. If credit card companies weren't blocking his site, would all these people still be trying to donate to him? If Assange didn't needlessly put the lives of his informants in danger, how would he stay in the spotlight? Did they really need to run that fake NY Times article? There's got to be something new on each episode of this man's strange little life or else people will stop watching. We need news sources that don't run themselves like celebrity burnouts. And that's not Wikileaks.
Yeah, what about her?
I think you just proved the opposite of what you wanted to prove. She got her message out. She testified before the Congress, Press and the American people. Its just that no one cared enough. Democracy is about freedom, but it is not free. It takes a lot of hard work and no one is going to hand it to you.
The disturbing thing is that you see a few people in every Wikileaks story saying that we have no right to know what our government is doing. We are the government! We have every right to know, and I firmly believe that politicians should be hounded by investigative reporters like paparazzi hound vapid celebrities. However, as a society, we are more interested in who Tom Cruise is currently dating (or if he's secretly gay) than we are how much money a state Senator is embezzling. Even when we do get any kind of investigative reporting, it's usually just sex scandals. Wikipedia even keeps a list of them.
Wikileaks isn't exactly my ideal candidate, but it's one of the few organizations that's willing to actually shine a light at something important. Everyone else is either too scared or compensated not to do so.
Your point of view typically comes from the extreme left wing which is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. You have those like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, etc., etc. who not only have war time body counts, but much of the count comes from 'peace time' genocide of undesirables in the population.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
By the way, you don't need to leak classified information of any kind to be considered 'anti-american' and to be locked up for decades in jail in USA, even as an old retired guy, all you need to do is to piss off the government agencies something fierce by taking them on.
You can't handle the truth.
Nice strawman you have burning here.
"As far as world domination goes, the US has far surpassed the Germans, and even the British -- that's why there are hundreds of military bases all over the world, and why there's one set of rules for countries in the imperial fold (e.g. Israel's nukes) and those outside (e.g. Iran's legal nuclear program)."
The difference is one of consent. Poland did not consent to German military bases. Nations benefit heavily from American military bases on their soil, that's why they're there. The only exception I can think of where a nation doesn't want an American military base on their soil is Cuba, and even there Guantanamo was put there pursuant to (at the time) Cuba's consent.
How in sweet hell is this +4 insightful? He pulled the numbers out of his ass and you morons just jump on the bandwagon. Isn't this site supposed to be frequented by "smart" people? At least, engineers are always saying how smart they think they are.
Yep, Assange's claims that the Americans are out to get him are ludicrous, and I think he knows that. If someone put embarassing information about Russia or China in Assange's hands I guarantee you he wouldn't release it because he knows perfectly well he actually might have very serious, very dangerous people after him.
I love this line of argumentation: "Your point of view "typically" comes from , hence the US never did anything wrong."
Doubleplusgood, citizen #42784932. Your chocolate ration will be increased by 42%.
(Protip: Other people's atrocities are no justification for your own.)
Your point of view typically comes from the extreme left wing which is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths..
As it happens, I am a libertarian conservative.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Your point of view typically comes from the extreme left wing which is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. You have those like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, etc., etc. who not only have war time body counts, but much of the count comes from 'peace time' genocide of undesirables in the population.
That's a straw man argument. Killing people is bad. War is bad. Lying about motives for war (i.e. Casus belli like the threat of WMD) is evil.
Of the five you name only three are considered "left", two were prototypical for the exact opposite. Better example would be the Khmer Rouge (but then again they were supported by the UN, including the USA after the Vietnamese had driven them from power)
Information is power; If a government is forced to be wide open then they lose power. Open information should replace or be added to the 2nd Amendment. The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was to act as a brake on out of control government. But at this point in history a bunch of guys running around with 9mm pistols isn't going to change a thing. But open information can change everything. Corrupt contracts become a whole lot harder if the whole process becomes open. Things like ACTA become impossible if every step of the lobbyists become open and accountable. When I am talking open I mean really really open. Things like the DHS would be wide open. The only time I would think the government should be allowed to be even slightly closed would be open investigations which would require a judge to say, OK this is closed for 30 days. Then wiretaps and whatnot would be effective. But the second the investigation ends the records are instantly open.
All finance should be open right down to the paperclips. Wasteful spending can't happen if everyone can take a peek into their area of expertise and say, "Whoa there cowboy. You don't buy laptops for $2000 and a service plan of another $1000 per year." Or "That isn't the right concrete for an overpass. It will fall down in 10 years."
Think of the steps that had to be taken in private in order to create the Dick Murtha Airport.
Keep in mind that there are Nordic countries where they publish income tax records onto the internet. They do record who looks though. So you can see your neighbour's taxes but they can see that you are a nosy bastard. The result has been some fantastically rich people somehow claiming around $100,000 in income being busted by people finding this and then it becoming front page news.
How many times have the police gotten out of control where the whole thing was dealt with "internally"? Open government would end this.
Only the simplest minds cannot tell the difference between healthy criticism and anti-patriotism.
I am John Hurt.
When I get up in the morning I have a cup of joe and read Slashdot, not Wikileaks. The information they compile is newsworthy for a bit, then the world moves on until the next whistle blower publishes something interesting. What has that accomplished aside from pissing off politicians and getting people thrown in jail? A few people from the news have followed Wikileaks, and some people follow those stories. That's all fine and dandy, but Wikileaks hasn't accomplished this so called policing of governments it claims is so important. Bottom line, no ordinary person gives a shit.
And when that consent was withdrawn, they did not leave...
I am John Hurt.
By the US govenrment who employed him.
Reckless endangerment merely to get back at someone who embarrassed the US government.
You just critisized the repressive government of China (by calling them repressive), and you are still breathing. See, how easy that is? How much courage did it take you? Nothing! It just came out of your fingers without much thinking.
And that's exactly your problem. You demand from WikiLeaks things, that happens everywhere anyway. Atrocities in Syria? Open the next newspaper! Torture in Iranian prisons? Switch on the TV evening news! Propaganda trials against critical voices in Russia? Read it up on the Internet! So what's the point for WikiLeaks to repeat that? What's the unique selling point for WikiLeaks to publish that? WikiLeaks publishes stuff it deems genuine, and which are not published everwhere else. Mostly this is stuff many other people in the Western world don't want to see published.
And the world is full of fucking idiots for being duped once again.
To nerds, who this news is purportedly for, "stateless" is the opposite of stateful -- the outputs are an instantaneous function of the input. Thanks to our retarded editors who cannot be arsed to translate or annotate political jargon when it collides with engineering jargon, I (and no doubt many others) wasted a couple minutes trying to figure out what that could possibly mean in the context of a news agency, and why it would be desirable.
How to do this? Fund Wikileaks. Duh.
They knew what their diplomats were saying.
So I guess that means that you think that WL has leaked nothing.
The only thing anyone is proving is that it's impossible to own the moral high ground. Many seem to assert that there is nothing worth fighting for. Yet when you actually speak to someone from, say, behind the iron curtain or from someplace like Vietnam, suddenly the picture changes. Even with Iraq. messy as it was, there was twenty years of almost cartoonishly bad oppression that included the actual use of WMD, yet the anti US crowd dismisses it all with the wave of a hand.
What is worth fighting for? Should the US simply stand by and watch as the rest of the world descends into dictatorship and religious extremism?
Peace comes from strength and credible military deterrence, not from wishing hard.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Yep, Assange's claims that the Americans are out to get him are ludicrous, and I think he knows that.
Au contraire: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
how you propose to implement such a plan, well given the the poor IT security in most government departments combined with general disaffection of government staff, data is just walking out the door all the time at the moment, no plan needed.
"an organization that exists only in name, with a leadership vacuum"
Someone could standup to the leadership position however the problem with the "I'm Sparticus, No! I'm Sparticus" policy is that alot of people get nailed to a cross when faced with an opposition with no morals.
Irwin Schiff went to prison for not paying his taxes. I don't fault him for that. Civil disobedience, is after all, a noble act of defiance. However, as such, you have to be prepared to suffer the consequences. The US Government is what the US Citizens decide it should be. Who's fault is it that the American people are too lazy to fight for what they want? Oh, too busy working to put food on the table. What crap! The average person watches some 20 hours a week with their eyes glued to the TV watching vacuous nonsense.
Imagine what one could accomplish spending half those hours engaged in some aspect of civics. Oh, that's right, no one remembers that along with their rights, they have certain duties and responsibilities.
I wonder how different the US would look if Martin Luther King had sat back and watched Real World.
"And when that consent was withdrawn, they did not leave..."
That's not how leases work. The treaty requires both sides to abandon it for the lease to end.
These comments (and many others - I've been keeping track) have me wondering if Slashdot is infected with astroturfers.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" he dissects the way in which public opinion arises - why certain memes "go viral" and become popular, while other apparently equally valid ideas do not.
In his model, certain people are "connectors". The best example of this is "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", where Kevin is a connector because so many people are related to him by movie acting.
Along with connectors, there are mavens (people who are expert in a particular subject, usually a hobby or pastime - not job related) and salesmen (people who can convince others to try something). The other 97% of us are just regular people.
Slashdot is a magnet for mavens, and it's wide appeal (200,000 people per day?) would put it in front of many salesmen and connectors in society. Indeed, with all its viewers it probably eliminates the need for connectors outright.
The comment above is such a blatant example of propaganda, it makes me wonder whether special interest groups are paying people to post them. Controlling Slashdot would be instrumental in preventing the revolution of ideas which would disrupt the status-quo.
At the very least, certain ideas which are known to be false seem to rise up all the time and provide distractions to the discussion at large. The US can't have broadband because the land is thinly populated (belies other countries with similar density, and ignores lack of coverage in US population centers), the victim is to blame (it's his fault for wearing that T-shirt on a plane), and many others. Someone always posts one of these and the discussion goes careening off into a non-sequitur discussion of some tangential issue.
Are we being manipulated? Are people being paid to distract us from discussing the core issues?
Posts like this sometimes make me wonder.
I found Assange appears to be biased and targets democracies, not they don't need some oversight but seems to not want to expose the secrets of totalitarian regimes such as China, North Korea, Russia etc etc.
In that he has a program on Russian state TV which is 100% under the control of Putin, a former KGB officer, who has the opinion that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union -- which happens to have been one of the most brutal authoritarian regimes of the 20th century.
It seems he has no issues tieing himself with an totalitarian head of state Putin, and also went to seek assylum with a country that has a poor human rights record for media freedoms (Ecuador) according to Amnesty International, makes me suspect he either has extremely poor judgement or has an anti-western democracy bias. The sexual assault allegations seem to suggest he does have poor judgement.
I suspect he will have no desire to release state secrets from Russia, China and other totalitarian regimes, thus my belief he is ideologically biased thus has no credibility.
Doesn't anybody remember the leak describing how they were going to destroy wikileaks? They've been doing it.
Wikileaks is being made a negative example of what free press gets for doing it's duty to mankind. It needs to be a positive example and that is enough reason to defend Wikileaks. Furthermore, the illegal and high disregard for the meaning of law (by using twisted technical letters of the law) HARMS everybody going forward not only the press but it terms of how far officials can acceptably abuse the system without repercussions further regresses us back towards despotism.
The CIA deals with this kind of stuff, they plant seeds of discontent within any organization they are fighting-- USSR or now tiny groups where they still have cold-war level budgets but no empire to use them against. Assange probably has relatives who are informants against him. You don't know history if you think the CIA isn't capable of doing a huge amount against such a tiny relatively powerless group. Hell, the classic attack against idealistic movements is to make their leaders into self-serving pigs who put themselves before the cause they lead; nothing causes more internal conflict, demoralization, AND harms recruiting outside support. In this age of celebrity "press" and the US culture of making everybody into some kind of celebrity it practically happens all by itself. They could make a 110% dedicated idealist look like a self-serving celebrity without really trying. Any dedicated activist will leverage the celebrity culture to promote their cause despite knowing it will not help their personal life (surely he didn't think more sex was worth being the single biggest target of the US... If he wasn't well known, he'd be just another one of the RECORD number of journalists the USA "accidentally" killed.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You really think the UK benefits from having US bases?
Just... wow.
Just like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba which the US has occupied since a "treaty" in 1903... and they won't leave in spite of Cuban government requests.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Wikileaks, and freedom of speech in general, is worth defending
because governments cannot be trusted.
You might consider that subjective, but housands of years of history knows that it is perfectly objective.
Let me introduce you to this place called Iraq...
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
The American control of the panama canal. When Panama told the USA to leave they sent in the army and changed the government.
No. Or are you suggesting that none of the KKK members thought race equality protesters were traitors to the USA?
What is worth fighting for? Should the US simply stand by and watch as the rest of the world descends into dictatorship and religious extremism?
Huh? You make it sound like the USA cares for those countries it attacked. I assure you that this certainly hasn't been the case, they would marbly stand by and watch the world burn if they thought it brought them an advantage.
They do care about themselves though (a lot), and they will attack for: a) oil/resources, b) creation of sockpuppets, c) preemptive removal of perceived threats.
These were standard topics in American History when I was growing.
Yes, those are all standard topics, but what is not a standard topic is the conflict you omitted: The American invasion, conquest, and pacification of the Philippine Islands, which may have killed more people than all those you mentioned combined. This conflict has mostly been dropped down the memory hole, and few Americans have even heard of it. The Nazi's got many of their ideas for their death camps by looking at the concentration camps that the USA ran in the Philippines, although the British concentration camps in South Africa were an even bigger influence.
But dead people are dead however they got that way, and wherever the US armed forces have gone there seem to be an awful lot of "excess deaths". Maybe the liberated brown people simply die of excessive joy at their newly-conferred rights and freedoms.
Wow, just wow, please find a so called invading army that caused fewer deaths when they showed up, The British? nope, the Japanese, ha! The Russians? Bitch please. Excess deaths according to what metric? Or do you believe that Uday and Qusay were going to rule Iraq as a utopian paradise of freedom and love.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
The 1903 treaty was willingly signed. It also fell far short of the four bases the US sought, but the US settled for two, Guantanamo Bay and Bahia Honda, the latter returned to Cuba in exchange for more land at Guantanamo.
The treaty was replaced by another in 1934 that affirmed the conditions of the prior treaty and required that both parties agree to the US leaving Guantanamo. Technically, should a friendlier government come to rely on the US base and would the US want to leave, Cuba could force it to maintain the base.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Apparently, plans for his arrest under any circumstances have been revealed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/24/julian-assange-ecuador-embassy-police-arrest-plan
Such a great country, groveling on its belly before a deformed, diseased and rotting pimp. And yes, a deformed, diseased and rotting band of lunatic pimps have seemingly conquered key-points of the American legal system, and England loves them and on her scabby belly she slithers hither in a wake of lustful oozings to her warwhore master.
We need a new movement.
The first phase of government transparency was the Freedom of Information Act, followed by similar acts at the state level.
The next phase needs to be cameras installed in every government official's office, running all the time, and accessible via web (defense excepted).
Backroom deals, sweetheart contracts, all that stuff: either capture on camera or prevent it from happening or make it much more difficult.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
You answered it yourself in the summary, SomePgmr, we need an outlet for discovery and whistleblowers that is neutral and independent. Once you become the news (thank you, Julian Assange, for being a douchebag and completely screwing over the organization that was once yours), you are neither neutral nor independent, because now you have a foot in the game.
We need a faceless, boring, monotone organization where the only intriguing elements are the documents and information it provides to everyone. No stupid grandstanding "release schedules", no James Bond preening, and no ridiculous press conferences. Leave that to the politicians. Thankfully, we have such an ad hoc organization. It's called the Internet.
What Assange was trying to do was organize the efforts to his own self-gratification and reward. Thank you, but no thank you. He's like the stereotypical corporate middle manager who's trying to pimp the efforts of the engineers, coders, etc. to advance his own career up the ladder of success without adding a single bit of significant value himself. (Instead, he's a liability.) We have enough of those in the world already. Wikileaks is sunk, because its name has been forever sullied by the antics of the idiot that was its public mouthpiece. It's time for new blood.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
and even there Guantanamo was put there pursuant to (at the time) Cuba's consent.
More like an offer they couldn't refuse. It was one of the conditions of removing the occupying force.
is any better than a "stateless news organization".
Only if no news outlet in the U.S. will publish it, because it makes nearly everyone look bad, where do you go?
Exactly. News organisations are not objective. The style of reporting and even whether a story is reported at all depends on who it damages. So if some Iranian police are beating protesters, an American newspaper can really go to town on the story, using emotive language etc. If some US police beat protesters in the same way the story (if printed at all) would have a much more neutral tone and probably would downplay any police violence.
Getting angry about issues which make an enemy look bad but downplaying or ignoring issues which make your own country look bad is standard practice. If a US newspaper routinely got just as angry about US police violence as it did about Iranian police violence, then it would be viewed as some crazy left wing pamphlet and widely ridiculed.
The best way to get your news is to shop around through. Look at the BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, Russia Today etc. Between them all you can get a good picture of what is going on.
You seem to forget that the US government has instilled dictators in multiple countries (some of which had representative governments!), and that the US supported Saddam for years. In fact, here's a YouTube video of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand. The "fighting oppression" and "liberation" lines the US has used over the years is just PR bullshit.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I see only two ways to deal with this.
1) All policy must be done at locations that are under 24 hour surveillance. This would have to be enforced with very strict laws, defining exactly what constitutes policy and what doesn't.
2) 24 hour surveillance of all politicians.
The first one doesn't really stop any collusions from occurring -- it just punishes people for it. The second one is a massive invasion of privacy that would alienate even the most radical open government advocates. I imagine that few people would actually be in favor of stripping all privacy from politicians, even though it does sound kind of tempting to force them into the same kind of situation that they keeping pushing for in our lives.
nt
The people who WERE there (the women involved) say it wasn't rape.
The ones accusing him of rape are some swedish government stooges.
(NOTE: if they want to question him, then this can ONLY be because they have enough to charge him with but wish to give him the chance to give an alibi. Absent one, they should already have enough to charge. So why haven't they? YOU DO NOT have to go to the station to answer a few questions. You ONLY have to go to the station when they've charged you with a crime. So why don't they charge him? He DOES NOT have any legal requirement to answer questions, since he isn't charged and therefore is a free man. Supposedly.)
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
This report covers the facts and only the facts, including why the UK arrest was illegal form those rules and laws governing an European Arrest Warrant (EAW). They didn't cover all the surrounding and important stuff, as I would, namely that all those anti-Assange players in Sweden are connected financially in one way or the other with the rightwing Bonnier family, owner of one of the top 10 global media companies on the planet, Bonnier AB. (Ever heard of Popular Science, Sports Illustrated, Time, etc.?? Their reach is extensive.) Also, I would have mentioned the connections between the Bonnier family and Karl Rove, and pointed out that both Karl Rove and Joe Biden want to put away Gov. Don Siegelman AND Julian Assange --- now isn't that interesting?
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
Bullcrap is what you spew, this report is my retort --- read, for a change . . . .
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
And the most relevant news, from Nordic News Network,
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
Great points, Sique, tremendous points.
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
No, the people are not the government despite "We the People..." in the US Constitution. The representatives that the elect are the first level of government.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Mussolini
Armed conflict always results in more fatalities than had the conflict not occurred.
I believe the salient point is that civilian deaths pretty much always vastly outnumber those of combatants. It was true before the rifle was the primary weapon of war. It's still true in the age of "smart bombs" and drone strikes. Even if we are to believe that an enemy combatant (or whichever colloquialism you prefer) cannot be safely detained or assassinated^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H engaged by any other means, and that their specific whereabouts are confirmed; do you really believe that the US, or any other nation tries to do anything to remove civilians from the apartment complex or other facility they're presently sharing?
Even if a commander had the noblest intentions to do so, it would surely be overruled by another person in command. "How about we evacuate all the non-combatants from the building before we blow the building sky high?" "And how do you propose we do that without losing track of the guy we're after or tipping him off that something's up?"
Add in combat fatigue, propaganda directed to one's own troops and the overall "fog of war" and it becomes reduced to "kill them all, let God sort 'em out!" Then after you've wiped out their, infrastructure, places of religious and historical importance as well as most of their family members; you've done anything but "winning their hearts and minds" and the cycle continues.
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"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first".
- Thomas Jefferson
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I agree, but there is a flaw; everything the higher-ups want to keep silent is shoved under national security. again and again and again.
Then they'll just make all their deals in the shitter, hell I wouldn't be surprised if many of the deals aren't already being made there.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'll accept that they perform a critical function when they release a treasure trove of sensitive and embarrassing Ecuadorian government documents.
As far as world domination goes, the US has far surpassed the Germans, and even the British -- that's why there are hundreds of military bases all over the world, and why there's one set of rules for countries in the imperial fold (e.g. Israel's nukes) and those outside (e.g. Iran's legal nuclear program).
1. The US is not dominating the world... if we were NOBODY would keep Assange from us, Iran and N Korea would not be marching toward nukes, China would not be manipulating its currency for trade advantages, OPEC would not be manipulating the costs of oil, the Muslim Brotherhood would not be on the march in the mideast, American aerospace firms would have blocked the rise of Airbus and the Brazilian aerospace industry, etc.
2. German domination compared to American domination??? Really???? do you even have the slightest clue?
3. Every military base the US has on foreign soil (with several technical exceptions like Cuba, where we choose to live by the contract we had with Fidel's successor as part of our policy of not recognizing Fidel as legitimate) is not imposed there by military force but is rather there by agreement with the host country. When the host government requires us to leave, we do (as we did in the Philippines, Iraq, etc). US troops do not patrol the streets of Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, North Africa, Japan, the Philippines, or any other nation where we had militarily victories (Afghanistan is a current war and therefore not in this category)
4. Iran's nuke program is neither legitimate nor lawful. First, because Iran is a signatory to the non proliferation treaty (Israel is not a signatory), Second because Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism (backing Hamas, Hezbolla, the PLO, etc), and Third because Iran is in violation of another UN rule that prohibits member states from calling for the destruction of other member states (this is never enforced against Iran because there are so many Jew-hating countries in the UN that the organization routinely condemns Israel while ignoring the actions of Israel's enemies)
You clearly have been the recipient of a modern public school education provided by the Teachers Unions, a wing of the Democrat party
GITMO is a fantastic solution to many little problems, and it is fully-legitimate in our eyes, since we do not recognize Fidel's government as legitimate... it resulted from an obnoxious communist revolution of murder, mayhem, and thievery. If you are one of those jackasses who thinks he's cool while wearing a Che' T-shirt, try reading a little history. Che' had a big picture window installed in his office so he could enjoy watching the firing squads in the yard outside murdering all of his opponents. He was a foul individual and quite the bigot... he hated black people, which is why I am even more stunned when I see some young black Americans wearing those "cool" shirts...
Interestingly, it wasn't true in the classical-era, where no self-respecting soldier would ever dream of killing a perfectly good potential slave or rape victim.
Unless it was a war of payback, of course.
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This post got rated "Informative"??!?!?!?!?!?
1. The US was the only country to succeed in the attempt to build a canal across Panama... we invested piles of money to create the canal where others had failed and once it was built, it made the nation of Panama financially possible (No Canal would mean Panama would be nothing compared to what it is). We had a treaty that made it ours indefinitely... but Jimmy Carter gave the canal to Panama and we closed our bases there. Now China is asserting its influence in the canal zone in a bid to replace US influence (in other words, it's not a matter of whether a giant nation would have influence in Panama and over its very strategic canal, but who the giant nation would be).
2. Noriega was ousted because he was making himself into a pain by importing illegal drugs into the US in industrial quantities while he used his influence to try to corrupt his neighboring countries
If your post had any tie to reality, we would have changed the Panamanian government and taken back the canal, re-asserting the canal treaty instead of just replacing "pineapplehead" and then retreating to watch China move in on the canal
Okay, you de-constructionist, post-American, over-educated (but not actually Educated in the classical sense) genius... Which of those terribly mis-understood and unfairly eliminated regimes that the US eliminated would YOU have saved and why??????????
Let's see... yup... lots of civilian deaths might have been avoided had that nice Mr. Hilter (Monty Python ref) and his "pals" been left in charge in Europe... that is until you count all the civilians who would have died every year under the NAZI boot these past 60+ years, to say nothing of all the additional wars the NAZIs would have gone on to start (it was their way, you know...)
Yeah, I suppose we could have left Tojo in charge... The Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, and Australians, Micronesians, etc would have been really happy with that...
Saddam? What a charmer! He was such a peaceful and loving man... the sort we'd all like to smoke a joint with right? Tell that to the people of Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Kurds, etc just how wonderful and magnanimous HE was... and, of course, civilians died under Saddam all the time, every year.
It's always easy to look at the surface of an issue and analyze it like any 8-year-old would... but as an adult, it's often useful to look at the alternatives and see that the alternative to everything you dislike is not utopia; it's often something worse (in the near-term, or over the long-haul). It is unfortunately true that much of history is the choice between bad things we do not want (like a war) and worse things we do not want (like a long drawn-out period of violence and oppression and civilian deaths, followed by a later and more-violent war).
takes GM away from the shareholders (with no legal authority to do so) replaces the CEO (again without legal authority) and stuffs the company with BILLIONS of tax dollars that it has not and never will repay... (and "no" when they ran those "we re-payed our loan" ads months ago, they did not actually re-pay them... Obama loaned them new money to use to re-pay the earlier money which let them lie to the taxpayers without actually re-paying the taxpayers)
Or when he puts the CEO of GE on his "jobs council" then directs so many tax shelters and government contracts their way that they make billions of dollars but pay not one single penny in taxes...
Or when he takes campaign money from "bundlers", then gives huge government grants and loans to new businesses started by those "bundlers" knowing full-well that the businesses are not viable, then when those businesses go bankrupt he has his prosecutors not go after those businesses to recover the money... Soylindra was one of these, but that was not the only one...
Or perhaps when he uses the power of government to make all citizens buy products he chooses from companies he selects (Obamacare and health insurance)
Need I go on?
GITMO is a fantastic solution to many little problems, and it is fully-legitimate in our eyes, since we do not recognize Fidel's government as legitimate... it resulted from an obnoxious communist revolution of murder, mayhem, and thievery. If you are one of those jackasses who thinks he's cool while wearing a Che' T-shirt, try reading a little history. Che' had a big picture window installed in his office so he could enjoy watching the firing squads in the yard outside murdering all of his opponents. He was a foul individual and quite the bigot... he hated black people, which is why I am even more stunned when I see some young black Americans wearing those "cool" shirts...
Stop trying to confuse people with facts. Truth hurts their brains.
Cuba could force it to maintain the base. Now that would be something to see. Uneven treatise have been applied consistantly and calling them willingly signed is a little disingenuous.
The using 'soft power' US has all the benefits of an empire without the responsibilities of empire.
You can understand when they get cranky when others don't want to play, its a pretty sweet gig.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for managing to Godwin the entire discussion. But perhaps we can all agree that whether or not Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, the United States does some pretty bad stuff, and needs to be held accountable. The question is, do we need Wikileaks, or something like it?
Let's take a moment and consider abuses concealed by the U.S. government by the past ten years. I would nominate Abu Ghraib, the CIA black prisons, and the domestic eavesdropping program as the three worst scandals, in the sense of concealed abuses (as opposed to, say, the Iraq War, which was an abuse of power conducted in full view of everyone). In each case, the scandals were broken by traditional news media. Abu Ghraib, for instance, was broken by Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker. Old media seems to be doing pretty well in exposing the government. To the point, I would argue, that if you're a regular reader of the New York Times, you have a pretty good idea of what your government is up to. The diplomatic cables only confirmed this, I'd argue. When the lid was taken off the whole thing, it worked pretty much the way it we thought it did.
Traditional media establishments do a decent job of keeping us informed about our government's failures, if we care to be informed about them (many people don't but that's another issue). This seems to be true of western democracies as a whole. Democracies already have mechanisms for collecting leaks (reporters) and distributing the information (newspapers, TV news, websites). Where Wikileaks- or an organization like Wikileaks- could really do a lot of good is in areas where traditional media aren't able to operate freely. That would include places like China, Russia, parts of Africa and much of the Middle East. Whether WikiLeaks is the best way to do this is arguable. Assange and his notoriety are both the organization's biggest asset, and it's biggest liability.
First, they only seem to leak important things that hurt America... where are the leaks that hurt Putin or China or Al Queda or the Muslim Brotherhood or Iran or North Korea, etc?????
Second, their most famous leaks are a violation of US Embassies (in this case their cables)... but I see no wikileaks calls for the embassy where Assange is hiding to be violated... I doubt these horse's posteriors would cheer if the US or Britain violated the embassy of Ecuador and simply barged in to snatch Assange... OOOOOOHHHHHH NOOOOOOO there'd be shrieks that the EVIL American or British government had lawlessly violated the diplomatic integrity of an embassy!!!!
Wikileaks "contributors" and supporters are not freedom-lovers in support of a better world, they are dupes and tools of America's enemies. Their funding is not "open"; they pretend this is so they cannot be persecuted and oppressed, but it is just as likely that the funding stream leads to Putin or China (I thought Slashdotters were all for "openness" and "information wants to be free!" .... how about information about all the funding for and sources of Wikileaks?????? Somehow, consideration about repercussions against individuals was not a concern when it was people who were exposed by the dump of US Embassy docs, so for consistency, no such concern is valid for Wikileaks funders/contributors
Jacobo Árbenz? Mohammad Mosaddegh?
'Nough said Dan'O.
Although, for 'operations sake' lets hope that Obama-Boy can get his cocaine Enama very soon. He is so cross without it these days.
Spanish-American War, heard of it? Since when are treaties signed under duress (or by a puppet government) counted as "willingly"?
It is.
Still their country. And I'm sure the British government paid for all kinds of shit before the Revolutionary War...would you have been impressed with this argument had they used it in 1812?
And the United States has been fucking around with Latin America for a hundred years, with military actions and coups every few years. Mountain, meet molehill.
Those were extreme rightwingers, dumbass.
Wikileaks maybe? The site has been known to report false things or to sensationalize other "reports" or postings, which is fine because it brings quicker awareness to an impending problem. But has far as Julian Assange, NO, the guy ripped off or stole others hard work and claimed he, himself, or his team did the work. I question a lot of the strange things he has been caught doing or has been rumored to do, but then again maybe with fame, like so many before him he obtained an over inflated ego. Maybe he does it to continue to draw attention to himself and Wkikleaks kind off a self promotion PR, hoping more people will stand up for him and his battles. But since the US was involved in Wikileaks Reports and knowing the US's history of going after people that have spoke up against it practices, gaining support from those who feel the same, the US has to shut him up. If he stayed low key, or disappeared from the public he may have been okay. It would not surprise anyone if the US seizes the site and shuts it down as well.
OMFG, you're going to compare Abu Gahraib (some people were embarrassed / frightened by rogue prison personnel performing unauthorized actions), CIA black prisons (where some really nasty enemies of the USA were dealt with), and listening to people who are in contact with known terrorists overseas with 6 million people exterminated during WW2? Are you insane? No, you're a "Blame America Firster" looking for an excuse.
In any conflict, and this is a conflict between the USA and people who would eliminate us if they can, some excesses are bound to occur. But genocide vs listening to some phone calls? No sense of proportion whatsoever, and someone looking for an excuse to hate Amerca.
It just does not compute.
Or just maybe there is a need for more than two classifications for all of the world's ideologies.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The Spanish-American War was between Spain and the US, oddly enough. The treaty was signed nearly a year after Cuba gained independence. Cubans had been seeking independence from Spain for decades prior to that war, and the US wanted four bases but got two. If Cuba really was in that much danger from the US, why would it agree to only half of what the US wanted?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
There was nothing better than watching pig-faced Assange making a narcissistic fool of himself on the "balcony" of the Ecuadorean Embassy. As is proverbially said, "guests, like fish, begin to smell after the third day". Eventually, his presence will becoms an irritant to Ecuador, his use as a tool to poke the US with will become ineffective and he will be thrown to the sharks.
Long before then, I suspect the other members of the Wilileaks collective will disown him and thus deprive him of his essential mouthpiece.
So far, I've only seen Wikileaks zeroing in on one source of the world's shenanigans, and ignoring what everyone else is up to. It gives the illusion of neutrality, but seems just as much a unipolar political tool as Fox News. "Fair and balanced"? Not yet.
I suspect you aren't aware that "Nazi" is short for National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Write failed: Broken pipe
I'm waiting for Wikileaks to release Mitt Romney's tax returns from the last 20 years.
I think that Wikileaks is just another example of western culture self destructing. It is being lead down that path by a bunch of idealistic academics that don't, or are not able to, consider the long term impact of their disparate actions which push the bounds of acceptable behavior and law in our civilization to the benefit of competing cultures within and outside of our borders. I call the actions disparate because I've not seen any leaks of value from non-western countries.
Do you see any general publication of state secrets in China? In Islamic countries? From former USSR areas? From the world's totolitarian states? What's the cost to us in our competitive world of this idealism? And what greater value does it provide us that's worth that cost? Is the cost to the proliferation of democracy in those states worth the openness that Wikileaks wants to achieve?
On another matter, if Asange believes in transparency and openness should he not return and face his accusers in court and in public rather than seek sanctuary and cloister in Equador? His approach seems very hipocritical to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpc_HXx5bjE
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I suspect you're not aware that DPRK stands for "Democratic People's Replic of Korea". Ask a North Korean who he voted for in the last election.
Just because the name Nazi has "Socialist" in it doesn't mean the Nazi movement was in any way "socialist" as the term is used today. From Wikipedia:
Upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined "socialism" as meaning a commitment of an individual to a community. Hitler also claimed that unconditional equality of opportunity for all "racially sound" Aryan males was the essence of the "Socialism" of "National Socialism".
Equality of opportunity is pretty much what most of the west has today (theoretically, anyway) but was still being fought for in parts of post-WWI Europe where the aristocracy still held sway over business and government.
If you consider the nature of the times, pretty much any worker's party used the term "socialism". Mostly it was used as the idea of allowing labor unions to form and the right for workers to negotiate for benefits. Actual leftist ideals were very much frowned upon in Germany, and communists were persecuted.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
I suspect you're not aware that DPRK stands for "Democratic People's Replic of Korea". Ask a North Korean who he voted for in the last election.
Just because the name Nazi has "Socialist" in it doesn't mean the Nazi movement was in any way "socialist" as the term is used today. From Wikipedia:
Or perhaps it means today's socialists are as busy re-writing history as the Nazi movement was.
Or perhaps it means today's socialists are as busy re-writing history as the Nazi movement was.
Exactly what are you inferring here? That the Nazis were socialists and modern socialists have covered that up somehow, or that socialism itself has changed from a Nazi-esque system to the current one?
If it's the first, than congratuations, you're as nutty as moon landing deniers.
If it's the second, then you're just wrong, and that can be backed up by historical first hand sources. Socialism has changed, but it was never like the Nazi system.
Want to see what old time socialism was about? Read Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward. It's fairly short and public domain. And of course you can look up the Communist Manifesto, although be warned that while those on the right tend to describe all socialism as communism (communism is just one type of socialism). Want to learn about modern socialism? Examine the way Scandinavia does it, since they're usually used as the best example. Want something a bit more extreme? Look at China, with their market communism, or Cuba.
Or, you can always just believe what all the Neo-McCarthyists tell you (socialists eat your babies!) and live in ignorance. Your choice.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
It does not exist, the site does not exist, I cannot find the object of the discussion, just another celebrity name everyone is supposed to know about. Maybe the ones writing here are the only ones who actually read or heard something?
3 - that socialism hasn't changed at all, or not significantly. And that modern socialists would prefer to deny their history, possibly for good reasons. And that I'm not really interested in all the neo this and neo that labels that are thrown around in an attempt to obfuscate meaning.
Is this we need?
3 - that socialism hasn't changed at all, or not significantly.
Fair enough. I don't agree, but whatever. That wasn't exactly clear by the context, which was some guy confusing Nazis with socialists.
And that modern socialists would prefer to deny their history, possibly for good reasons.
Sure. Nobody's proud of Stalin or the Khmer Rouge. You think the right like hearing about Fascism, Pinkerton's, or the abuses of the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries?
And that I'm not really interested in all the neo this and neo that labels that are thrown around in an attempt to obfuscate meaning.
Oh, come on - that was an easy one! You should have gotten that by context, if Joseph McCarthy didn't spring to mind. Wikipedia describes McCarthyism as "the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence," which is pretty spot-on for what I was meaning. If you weren't aware of McCarthy and the Anti-American Activities Committe, then you've got no grounds making claims about socialist history.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
The USA has been invading sovereign states by force, or systematically imprisoned, impressed into forced labor, and murdered millions of people based solely on their ethnicity since its beginning and hasn't stopped they just pick a different tribal people to invade and take what they have.
Same shit same armies different set of tribal people.
Thank you Europe for sending all you liars, muggers rapist murders and thieves here so long ago.
Native America
Fighting terrorism since 1492
3 - that socialism hasn't changed at all, or not significantly.
Fair enough. I don't agree, but whatever. That wasn't exactly clear by the context, which was some guy confusing Nazis with socialists.
And that modern socialists would prefer to deny their history, possibly for good reasons.
Sure. Nobody's proud of Stalin or the Khmer Rouge. You think the right like hearing about Fascism, Pinkerton's, or the abuses of the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries?
Probably they don't. And you'll likely be able to find me pointing that out, somewhere on the internet.
And that I'm not really interested in all the neo this and neo that labels that are thrown around in an attempt to obfuscate meaning.
Oh, come on - that was an easy one! You should have gotten that by context, if Joseph McCarthy didn't spring to mind. Wikipedia describes McCarthyism as "the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence," which is pretty spot-on for what I was meaning. If you weren't aware of McCarthy and the Anti-American Activities Committe, then you've got no grounds making claims about socialist history.
It seems to resonate a lot more with US citizens, of which I'm not. The rest of the world doesn't find it to be such a big deal. Yes, it happened, and it was bad, but really, worse things happened.
It seems to resonate a lot more with US citizens, of which I'm not.
Ah, OK. I assumed you were in the U.S. because that's where a lot of anti-socialist propaganda has been flowing lately. Anyone commenting on socialism in the context of the U.S. should be familiar with McCarthy and the effects he and people like him have had on the political landscape here.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
gosgog:
Of course we need this....as y'all against it are so damn naive that you think, each President and his surrounds in Washington D.C., are such a nice bunch...lovers of MARY POPPINS???
Come on, within our various very highly placed Government there are folks who would have been equally highly placed in the GESTAPO! Oh sure, every Gov'ts, in the world have things that need to be done, and Morality? perhaps not something there, that Gov't would be proud of, in many cases instituted by POLITICIANS. Case in point right now....OBAMA giving away Islands in Alaska to Putin.....you won't find that in PRESS that no longer has Investigative Journalists....the excuse, they're expensive! 3 things that never go away and could be described as Oldest Professions in the world....PROSTITUTION, GAMBLING & GOV'T CORRUPTION.