The loss of life, bodily integrity, and personal possession are reasons why your listed crimes are harmful. Their causes are the immediate physical actions that precipitate their loss. In contrast, speech precipitates no loss and no harm, and you only deem it "harmful" because they merely have the potential, down the line, to motivate or to lower the mental obstacles for actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, or personal possession. Your view of "harm" is suddenly made so expansive that it would force us to conclude that, for example, socialist slogans and ideas are forms of hate speech in the sense that they have the potential -- proven through historical precedent -- to motivate actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, and personal possession.
Ultimately, your argument would like us to take extra steps up the chain of causality to ban things that aren't directly related to harm. How far up the chain of causality can we really go, or should we go? 2 or 3 steps seem just as arbitrary a demarcation as 20 or 40 steps. If a butterfly flaps its wings and down the line someone is killed, must we then ban the butterfly from flapping its wings?
Also witness the conflating of DNC's behavior with democracy itself. These leaks exposed anti-democratic machinations from the upper echelons of a major political party, and politicians along with everyone who has a microphone or a press credential are trying to convince us that this constitutes "interference" in our democratic process.
INTERFERENCE
Think about that for a moment. We are actually being told that those who expose anti-democratic behavior are a threat to our democracy, rather than those who carry out that anti-democratic behavior. It boggles the mind.
What's truly offensive is the press is unwilling to show even a speck of skepticism, and in fact is very enthusiastically repeating this to all of us as if we're dumb.
DDoS is not the way a nation state conducts counter-propaganda. It makes no sense strategically since Russia has far more effective resources in RT and various online outlets from which to publish much more impactful hits. It also makes no sense tactically since the sudden absence of some information only highlights the existence of that information.
This points to non-state actors, and unwise ones. It might have been some Trump fans. But it also could have been some other individual or group that Newsweek has recently exposed or embarrassed.
Go ahead. You are your own worst enemies. You will discover in the future that your perverse logic and your ever-expanding definitions of words will have transformed accusations of "racist" and "hate speech" into phrases that are as stigmatized by the vast majority as accusations of "pinko commie" in our modern times. You are the new McCarthyists, and while you come from the other side of the political aisle, your reign of terror on the innocent as you root out perceived enemies makes you hardly any different.
I'll happily goad you and mock you every step of the way.
"affect our elections" is a phrase that has many meanings, and I see Democrats here and elsewhere relying on the broadness of that phrase to muddy the conversation. A foreign actor can "affect an election" through bribery, blackmail, intimidation, and other tactics. A foreign actor can also "affect an election" by exposing the anti-democratic behaviors of trusted officials. The former describes actions that impose influence upon a process and trespass upon national sovereignty, the latter does not. Thus, casting a foreign actor as "affecting an election" has no meaning unless his actions are further qualified.
As an example, if Reporters Without Borders were to release evidence that showed anti-democratic behavior among Iranian public officials in the lead up to elections, they would also be "affecting an election" by the broad definition of that phrase, but hardly anyone would accuse RWoB of imposing themselves upon Iran, or trespassing upon their national sovereignty. In fact, I'd surmise MOST people would celebrate RWoB for having exposed such corruption.
It seemed to me that Assange mentioned Maher's donation as a way to reflect the "impure motivation" red herring back at Maher. Maher had, just a second before that, questioned Assange's motives by saying that he had, through his past dealing with the US government, developed a personal animus towards Clinton. This has been the common attack against Assange from the media in the aftermath of the DNC leak -- it goes like this: Assange's motives are not sufficiently pure, therefore the contents of the DNC email leak, no matter how true, must not be discussed, else we would play into the hands of someone else's agenda. This, of course, is fallacious thinking, and Assange tried to show Maher, through his own example, that a million dollar donation to a Democrat does not and should not cast a shadow upon Maher's brutal and regular take-downs of Republican people and ideas. The truth remains the truth, no matter who speaks it.
And that reminds me of something:
At best, the obscurantist attitude of saying that it is an undesirable document and better suppressed. And if for some reason it were decided to issue a garbled version of the pamphlet, denigrating Trotsky and inserting references to Stalin, no Communist who remained faithful to his party could protest. Forgeries almost as gross as this have been committed in recent years. But the significant thing is not that they happen, but that, even when they are known about, they provoke no reaction from the left-wing intelligentsia as a whole. The argument that to tell the truth would be ‘inopportune’ or would ‘play into the hands of’ somebody or other is felt to be unanswerable, and few people are bothered by the prospect of the lies which they condone getting out of the newspapers and into the history books.
It's been a decade since Wikileaks captured the public's attention, and most people still don't seem to understand that it's only a publisher that relies on others to provide info. I figured Bill Maher would know better. I figured journalists would know better. But they've all been speculating on the "Why hasn't Wikileaks hacked Trump yet?" question for the past week, as if they didn't know what Wikileaks is about.
Are they all this stupid, or just pretending to be fucking obtuse?
No... they MUST be pretending. Bill Maher has interviewed Assange in the past -- without questioning his motives or insinuating that Assange/Wikileaks exfiltrated secret documents themselves. He has demonstrated in the past that he knows Wikileaks is only a publisher. As well, there have been thousands of articles in the mainstream press since Collateral Murder and Cablegate, and they did not cast Assange/Wikileaks as hackers or to insinuate that they were enemy collaborators. Journalists have demonstrated in the past that they know Wikileaks is only a publisher.
No... they DO know better, I'm certain ALL of them know better. But they're so full of rage that no one has yet leaked Trump's info to Wikileaks while their favorite Clinton is being undermined, they've become the mirror image of the Fox-watching "Fairness and Balance"-demanding trogs that the left so often mocks and derides.
I distinctly remember Trump having said that Russia should find Hillary's deleted emails -- the implication being that he believes, as many do, that her server had already been hacked -- and those emails only need to be found from within the FSB archives in which they're being kept. I distinctly don't remember Trump saying Russia should hack any server that is currently online, or even using the word "hack".
But now, not only has this "Trump called Russia to hack Clinton" meme propagated, it's being treated no longer even as speculation but as an accepted truth that premises other stories. WTF?
"affect our elections" is a phrase that has many meanings, and I see Democrats here and elsewhere relying on the broadness of that phrase to muddy the conversation. A foreign actor can "affect an election" through bribery, blackmail, intimidation, and other tactics. A foreign actor can also "affect an election" by exposing the anti-democratic behaviors of trusted officials. The former describes actions that impose influence upon a process and trespass upon national sovereignty, the latter does not. Thus, casting a foreign actor as "affecting an election" has no meaning unless his actions are further qualified.
As an example, if Reporters Without Borders were to release evidence that showed anti-democratic behavior among Iranian public officials in the lead up to elections, they would also be "affecting an election" by the broad definition of that phrase, but hardly anyone would accuse RWoB of imposing themselves upon Iran, or trespassing upon their national sovereignty. In fact, I'd surmise MOST people would celebrate RWoB for having exposed such corruption.
A lot of self-styled libertarians aren't really libertarians philosophically. They just despise the two establishment parties, and the LP happened to be the biggest alternative for a "fuck you" vote. Now that Trump has become the biggest "fuck you" vote, they flock to him. Sanders is other "fuck you" vote, which is why you have the seemingly incomprehensible scenario of significant number of people who are willing to cast their vote for the polar opposite if the other fails.
The Constitution enumerates certain things the government is not allowed to do. It recognized that people are imbued with their rights from the moment they're born. If he's a Jesus freak and wants to interpret that as "god-given", then he's more legally correct than those who say rights are given by the government.
That "free press" given to Trump isn't because they favor him. Rather, it's because they are very enthusiastic to publicize any potential flaw they can find. Of course, they are oblivious to the fact that large swaths of the public see the media as part of the establishment, and that their disproportionate pursuit of Trump's every flaw will only confirm his anti-establishment credentials. The press may realize too late, much like the GOP, that the only way they could have brought down Trump was to acknowledge that they themselves are near universally despised, and to embrace him with their toxicity.
I used to think so, but the recent direction of their reporting -- finding every petty negative story on Trump (golf game and taco bowls wtf), avoiding negative stories on Clinton (HVF/DNC funding expose by Politico), and wholesale dismissal of Sanders (incessantly implying he should quit in the interview last week) -- has turned me extremely cynical.
So they just reported them and drove them to new accounts or more obscure platforms? Why not infiltrate them, honeypot them, phish them, throw in some trojans, etc? They could have caused a lot more trouble. Are these even the 4chan Anons from yesteryear? Where is the chaotic element?
Trek was very much liberal, but that didn't make it SJW. It confronted hypocrisies and injustices across the galaxy and within the Federation by measuring them against principles, and there's great internal conflict when people are placed in situations that force them to break those principles.
SJWism, on the other hand, is no friend of principles -- treating people equally is subordinate to making people feel equal. Let's hope Trek keeps its liberal roots alive by steering particularly clear of SJWism.
Undeserved praise as a way of atoning for undeserved punishment does not show that we are more enlightened. In fact, it exposes further ignorance on our part.
The winner-takes-all format of the Electoral College means that if you live outside of the 10-12 swing states, your state's representation in the Presidential election has already been decided. You don't have the power to flip 100K to 2M votes required to turn a solid blue state red or a solid red state blue.
If you're not in a swing state, you're better off giving that vote to a 3rd party candidate, and help him/her get more exposure.
Wait, I thought gender segregated bathrooms/dressing rooms came about because of conservative hangups and insistence on modesty, which is why advocacy for gender neutral bathrooms/dressing rooms is a progressive issue.
Now you're saying gender segregated bathrooms/dressing rooms are actually progressive?
There is only prevention Besides the obvious tip of not using the same password: - Never use the same username - Never register on any website using the same email address you use to receive bills and bank statements - Never use 3rd party authentication (facebook, twitter, google+) to log in to other sites, much less multiple sites
The wrongfulness of his being handcuffed should not be reason for us to lionize him or create myths about him. We can condemn what we factually know (arrest, handcuffs) without jumping to conclusions about the rest (teachers were racist, he's a genius kid, etc)
The evidence right now actually points to a prank meant get a rise out of teachers, which didn't work (since most ignored it until it started to make noise in class), but which did result in him being referred to the principal for being uncooperative and having police question his motives. We can condemn how the police reacted without the rest of the myth.
Slashdot Mirror
The loss of life, bodily integrity, and personal possession are reasons why your listed crimes are harmful. Their causes are the immediate physical actions that precipitate their loss. In contrast, speech precipitates no loss and no harm, and you only deem it "harmful" because they merely have the potential, down the line, to motivate or to lower the mental obstacles for actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, or personal possession. Your view of "harm" is suddenly made so expansive that it would force us to conclude that, for example, socialist slogans and ideas are forms of hate speech in the sense that they have the potential -- proven through historical precedent -- to motivate actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, and personal possession.
Ultimately, your argument would like us to take extra steps up the chain of causality to ban things that aren't directly related to harm. How far up the chain of causality can we really go, or should we go? 2 or 3 steps seem just as arbitrary a demarcation as 20 or 40 steps. If a butterfly flaps its wings and down the line someone is killed, must we then ban the butterfly from flapping its wings?
Ah yes, that old dirty trick of tampering with democracy through exposing anti-democratic behavior.
Go read first person accounts of what happened at the Nevada Dem convention.
Also witness the conflating of DNC's behavior with democracy itself. These leaks exposed anti-democratic machinations from the upper echelons of a major political party, and politicians along with everyone who has a microphone or a press credential are trying to convince us that this constitutes "interference" in our democratic process.
INTERFERENCE
Think about that for a moment. We are actually being told that those who expose anti-democratic behavior are a threat to our democracy, rather than those who carry out that anti-democratic behavior. It boggles the mind.
What's truly offensive is the press is unwilling to show even a speck of skepticism, and in fact is very enthusiastically repeating this to all of us as if we're dumb.
DDoS is not the way a nation state conducts counter-propaganda. It makes no sense strategically since Russia has far more effective resources in RT and various online outlets from which to publish much more impactful hits. It also makes no sense tactically since the sudden absence of some information only highlights the existence of that information.
This points to non-state actors, and unwise ones. It might have been some Trump fans. But it also could have been some other individual or group that Newsweek has recently exposed or embarrassed.
Go ahead. You are your own worst enemies.
You will discover in the future that your perverse logic and your ever-expanding definitions of words will have transformed accusations of "racist" and "hate speech" into phrases that are as stigmatized by the vast majority as accusations of "pinko commie" in our modern times. You are the new McCarthyists, and while you come from the other side of the political aisle, your reign of terror on the innocent as you root out perceived enemies makes you hardly any different.
I'll happily goad you and mock you every step of the way.
illegally influence a US election
Here's what I wrote in an earlier post to another article about this word use:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
"affect our elections" is a phrase that has many meanings, and I see Democrats here and elsewhere relying on the broadness of that phrase to muddy the conversation. A foreign actor can "affect an election" through bribery, blackmail, intimidation, and other tactics. A foreign actor can also "affect an election" by exposing the anti-democratic behaviors of trusted officials. The former describes actions that impose influence upon a process and trespass upon national sovereignty, the latter does not. Thus, casting a foreign actor as "affecting an election" has no meaning unless his actions are further qualified.
As an example, if Reporters Without Borders were to release evidence that showed anti-democratic behavior among Iranian public officials in the lead up to elections, they would also be "affecting an election" by the broad definition of that phrase, but hardly anyone would accuse RWoB of imposing themselves upon Iran, or trespassing upon their national sovereignty. In fact, I'd surmise MOST people would celebrate RWoB for having exposed such corruption.
It seemed to me that Assange mentioned Maher's donation as a way to reflect the "impure motivation" red herring back at Maher. Maher had, just a second before that, questioned Assange's motives by saying that he had, through his past dealing with the US government, developed a personal animus towards Clinton. This has been the common attack against Assange from the media in the aftermath of the DNC leak -- it goes like this: Assange's motives are not sufficiently pure, therefore the contents of the DNC email leak, no matter how true, must not be discussed, else we would play into the hands of someone else's agenda. This, of course, is fallacious thinking, and Assange tried to show Maher, through his own example, that a million dollar donation to a Democrat does not and should not cast a shadow upon Maher's brutal and regular take-downs of Republican people and ideas. The truth remains the truth, no matter who speaks it.
And that reminds me of something:
At best, the obscurantist attitude of saying that it is an undesirable document and better suppressed. And if for some reason it were decided to issue a garbled version of the pamphlet, denigrating Trotsky and inserting references to Stalin, no Communist who remained faithful to his party could protest. Forgeries almost as gross as this have been committed in recent years. But the significant thing is not that they happen, but that, even when they are known about, they provoke no reaction from the left-wing intelligentsia as a whole. The argument that to tell the truth would be ‘inopportune’ or would ‘play into the hands of’ somebody or other is felt to be unanswerable, and few people are bothered by the prospect of the lies which they condone getting out of the newspapers and into the history books.
-- George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature
It's been a decade since Wikileaks captured the public's attention, and most people still don't seem to understand that it's only a publisher that relies on others to provide info. I figured Bill Maher would know better. I figured journalists would know better. But they've all been speculating on the "Why hasn't Wikileaks hacked Trump yet?" question for the past week, as if they didn't know what Wikileaks is about.
Are they all this stupid, or just pretending to be fucking obtuse?
No... they MUST be pretending. Bill Maher has interviewed Assange in the past -- without questioning his motives or insinuating that Assange/Wikileaks exfiltrated secret documents themselves. He has demonstrated in the past that he knows Wikileaks is only a publisher. As well, there have been thousands of articles in the mainstream press since Collateral Murder and Cablegate, and they did not cast Assange/Wikileaks as hackers or to insinuate that they were enemy collaborators. Journalists have demonstrated in the past that they know Wikileaks is only a publisher.
No... they DO know better, I'm certain ALL of them know better. But they're so full of rage that no one has yet leaked Trump's info to Wikileaks while their favorite Clinton is being undermined, they've become the mirror image of the Fox-watching "Fairness and Balance"-demanding trogs that the left so often mocks and derides.
Nintendo will pick up the tab in addition to paying what they owe him for shilling the game.
I distinctly remember Trump having said that Russia should find Hillary's deleted emails -- the implication being that he believes, as many do, that her server had already been hacked -- and those emails only need to be found from within the FSB archives in which they're being kept. I distinctly don't remember Trump saying Russia should hack any server that is currently online, or even using the word "hack".
But now, not only has this "Trump called Russia to hack Clinton" meme propagated, it's being treated no longer even as speculation but as an accepted truth that premises other stories. WTF?
"affect our elections" is a phrase that has many meanings, and I see Democrats here and elsewhere relying on the broadness of that phrase to muddy the conversation. A foreign actor can "affect an election" through bribery, blackmail, intimidation, and other tactics. A foreign actor can also "affect an election" by exposing the anti-democratic behaviors of trusted officials. The former describes actions that impose influence upon a process and trespass upon national sovereignty, the latter does not. Thus, casting a foreign actor as "affecting an election" has no meaning unless his actions are further qualified.
As an example, if Reporters Without Borders were to release evidence that showed anti-democratic behavior among Iranian public officials in the lead up to elections, they would also be "affecting an election" by the broad definition of that phrase, but hardly anyone would accuse RWoB of imposing themselves upon Iran, or trespassing upon their national sovereignty. In fact, I'd surmise MOST people would celebrate RWoB for having exposed such corruption.
A lot of self-styled libertarians aren't really libertarians philosophically. They just despise the two establishment parties, and the LP happened to be the biggest alternative for a "fuck you" vote. Now that Trump has become the biggest "fuck you" vote, they flock to him. Sanders is other "fuck you" vote, which is why you have the seemingly incomprehensible scenario of significant number of people who are willing to cast their vote for the polar opposite if the other fails.
The Constitution enumerates certain things the government is not allowed to do. It recognized that people are imbued with their rights from the moment they're born. If he's a Jesus freak and wants to interpret that as "god-given", then he's more legally correct than those who say rights are given by the government.
That "free press" given to Trump isn't because they favor him. Rather, it's because they are very enthusiastic to publicize any potential flaw they can find. Of course, they are oblivious to the fact that large swaths of the public see the media as part of the establishment, and that their disproportionate pursuit of Trump's every flaw will only confirm his anti-establishment credentials. The press may realize too late, much like the GOP, that the only way they could have brought down Trump was to acknowledge that they themselves are near universally despised, and to embrace him with their toxicity.
I used to think so, but the recent direction of their reporting -- finding every petty negative story on Trump (golf game and taco bowls wtf), avoiding negative stories on Clinton (HVF/DNC funding expose by Politico), and wholesale dismissal of Sanders (incessantly implying he should quit in the interview last week) -- has turned me extremely cynical.
You can see from my commenting history that I have no love for Russia, but that summary... what are you trying to pull?
This is about structural differences. I imagine the chemical/hormonal differences remain... different?
So they just reported them and drove them to new accounts or more obscure platforms?
Why not infiltrate them, honeypot them, phish them, throw in some trojans, etc? They could have caused a lot more trouble. Are these even the 4chan Anons from yesteryear? Where is the chaotic element?
Trek was very much liberal, but that didn't make it SJW. It confronted hypocrisies and injustices across the galaxy and within the Federation by measuring them against principles, and there's great internal conflict when people are placed in situations that force them to break those principles.
SJWism, on the other hand, is no friend of principles -- treating people equally is subordinate to making people feel equal.
Let's hope Trek keeps its liberal roots alive by steering particularly clear of SJWism.
Undeserved praise as a way of atoning for undeserved punishment does not show that we are more enlightened. In fact, it exposes further ignorance on our part.
The winner-takes-all format of the Electoral College means that if you live outside of the 10-12 swing states, your state's representation in the Presidential election has already been decided. You don't have the power to flip 100K to 2M votes required to turn a solid blue state red or a solid red state blue.
If you're not in a swing state, you're better off giving that vote to a 3rd party candidate, and help him/her get more exposure.
Wait, I thought gender segregated bathrooms/dressing rooms came about because of conservative hangups and insistence on modesty, which is why advocacy for gender neutral bathrooms/dressing rooms is a progressive issue.
Now you're saying gender segregated bathrooms/dressing rooms are actually progressive?
There is only prevention
Besides the obvious tip of not using the same password:
- Never use the same username
- Never register on any website using the same email address you use to receive bills and bank statements
- Never use 3rd party authentication (facebook, twitter, google+) to log in to other sites, much less multiple sites
The wrongfulness of his being handcuffed should not be reason for us to lionize him or create myths about him. We can condemn what we factually know (arrest, handcuffs) without jumping to conclusions about the rest (teachers were racist, he's a genius kid, etc)
The evidence right now actually points to a prank meant get a rise out of teachers, which didn't work (since most ignored it until it started to make noise in class), but which did result in him being referred to the principal for being uncooperative and having police question his motives. We can condemn how the police reacted without the rest of the myth.