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After reading the NSA article about getting ISIS in very subtle ways that makes it seem like technical glitches, does anyone believe that there were actual “technical glitches” preventing this guy from testifying on video about his CIA torture?
yes, I believe there's a team funded using millions of US taxpayer money working on sabotaging Assanges defense in every possible way including illegal and immoral ways like hacking, bribing, black mailing, etc..
You can bet on it. Also, these people will be highly motivated and not just be "doing their job".
They'll be made well aware that their "way of life" and "reality as they know it" literally depends on the success of their work. Considering how these people are part of a criminal enterprise, it can be argued it's actually a true self-fulfilling prophesy.
As far as I'm concerned, people involved in such actions deserve to be hunted down and illiminated with extreme prejudice, by any covert agency of any country that does actually respect due process of the legal system.
They have nothing to fear, then, as those countries wouldn't have covert agencies, even if they existed, which they don't.
I agree about the first part though. When losing (on the grand scheme, not necessarily on a single case like Assange) means you go to jail, you get extra motivated.
i believe so too. CIA has every witness to Assange's trial under surveillance and JTRIG are actively targetting them for harassment. anything to sabotage the defense.
i hope the fact of that leaks onto Wikileaks. then Assange walks for the same reason Ellsberg walked. FBI used illegal tactics to persecute Ellsberg before his trial, which the govt was too embarassed about revealing to continue his prosecution.
Do you have proof of that? If so you should definitely send it to NYT, WaPo, etc.
Surely.
Though he did suffer some technical difficulties, he did not testify as the court ruled his testimony was not relevant to the case. Subtly is not even necessary.
The paragraphs in the article.
"In the United Kingdom, Assange’s legal team has been allowed to enter this evidence into the public record. However, during a potential trial in the United States, it will likely be excluded as irrelevant because the Espionage Act does not allow a public interest defense."
"The Central Criminal Court in London was prepared for El Masri to testify. An interpreter was lined up for the ninth day of proceedings. However, technical problems prevented him from addressing the court beyond his written statement.
Prosecutors also objected to El Masri giving live testimony. According to Court News UK reporter Charlie Jones, that prompted Assange to stand up and proclaim, "I will not accept you censoring a torture victim's statement to this court.""
How do judges generally deal with that kind of situation? "Oh, the connection's not working? Ah well, moving on, we're ignoring this witness"?
Other sources I've seen disagree, that Charlie Jones tweet blames the translator, and the prosecution has been discussing blocking this testimony for a few days now.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/09/18/assange-hearing-day-ni...
Another report:
https://assangecourt.report/september-18-morning
"Mr El-Masri was due to give evidence by video link, but, after a legal argument, presiding judge Vanessa Baraitser decided that it would be sufficient for his statement to be read to the court and he need not appear."
And now by Murray (1):
"There had been three days of intense discussion between the counsel and the judge, with the United States government objecting bitterly to Mr El-Masri being heard. A compromise had been reached that he could give evidence provided he did not allege he was tortured by the US Government. However, when he came to give evidence, Mr El-Masri was strangely unable to connect by videolink, even though the defence team had been able to speak to him by video a few hours earlier. Technical staff in the court having been unable to resolve the (ahem) technical issue, rather than simply postpone his evidence until a videolink had been established – as had happened already with two other witnesses when quality issues arose – Judge Baraitser suddenly decided to raise again the issue of whether el-Masri’s evidence should be heard at all."
Wow.
1) https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...
does anyone believe that there were actual “technical glitches” preventing this guy from testifying on video about his CIA torture?
FTA:
it will likely be excluded as irrelevant because the Espionage Act does not allow a public interest defense.
Assange is accused of 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act
In the US. That doesn’t apply here yet.
The article about NSA "getting ISIS" mentioned:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520757
Once there, see the posts by bashinator and _kbh_ for other sources.
Back to the topic here, the "technical glitches" were present throughout the process, as reported day after day on:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
E.g.
"This hearing has frequently been interrupted by the strange incompetence of the Ministry of Justice in establishing simple videolinks."
"It was not Professor Feldstein’s fault the day finished in confused anti-climax. The court was unable to make the video technology work. For ten broken minutes out of about forty Feldstein was briefly able to give evidence, and even this was completely unsatisfactory as he and Mark Summers were repeatedly speaking over each other on the link."
Also playing with the times:
"Daniel Ellsberg was to give evidence this afternoon. Edward Fitzgerald QC applied for his videolink evidence to be heard at 3.15pm [(in England)] which is 07.15am in California where Dan lives. Baraitser insisted it could not be put back beyond 2.30 pm, thus forcing an 89 year old man [Daniel Ellsberg] to give evidence at 6.30am [(his local time)]. Simply stunning."
The use of internet was also intentionally restricted:
The judge "explained this by stating that the public could normally observe from within the courtroom, where she could control their behaviour. But if they had remote access, she could not control their behaviour and this was not in the “interests of justice”."
Shouldn't they just postpone the proceedings until the "technical issues" are fixed?
Yes. For those unfamiliar with video and phone testimony during court proceedings, even when they technically work, the defense doesn't have the same ability to normal cross-examination or monitoring that correct procedures are followed. It's like the case is always going off the rails.
An example is if somebody quotes from a document on the phone during a trial, but the document hasn't been submitted or cannot be found. What do you do next? Ask for a continuation for that one document? How about the second one? What if the reading is incorrect?
So to even attempt a bad video link is an injustice.
I find conspiracy theories exciting and compelling, but intellectually hollow. They are like junk food. They can even be right sometimes, just as pizza can nourish you.
But we are better off setting them aside and sticking with the mundane issues of electing sensible representatives, supporting investigative journalism, engaging in fact-based discourse.
I'm not convinced we are better off ignoring all conspiracy theories. There are real conspiracies to break the law in the world, and some of them have been perpetrated by the US government.
We have to look at the merits of each theory and decide whether it's batshit or not. Global conspiracy to fake a pandemic? Doesn't seem possible. A couple dudes in the CIA harassing a dude they tortured and then threatened to mess with if he talked? Not impossible.
The criminal acts the US government has been up to raise serious questions regarding what you suggest we do:
how can you do this when your own government harasses and intimidates people it doesn't like?
how can there be investigative journalism if receiving information could turn out to be a felony if it's the wrong information?
how can you do this when your own government is hiding relevant facts from you?
You raise good points. Moderation in everything.
A conspiracy theory is just one possible explanation of events. There is nothing wrong with attempting validate it while also considering other possible explanations. The harm comes when a shadowy cabal is one’s answer to everything.
Conspiracy theories are ideas. Any particular theory may be 100% right, 100% wrong, somewhere in between, or it may be unknown/unknowable (too complicated or difficult to measure, the facts are classified, etc), like any other idea.
How might a person know such a thing without doing something like running a parallel universe and trying the two approaches?
That was painful to read, that poor man. Absolutely disgusting behaviour from the US.
It’s totally absurd that US can kidnap random people outside their country.
kidnap... and assassinate.
Is not the US people in any case, is their government. And some of those people seem to have severe and worrying sadistic undercurrents in their personality. As human beings, torturers are a real failure.
This a million times. I'm speaking broadly as I'm not from the US, however this applies pretty much to every country: "People are not their government" should be always considered when criticizing any nation or being criticized by others because of government politics. Identifying people with their government choices is the 1st step towards building hatred that will be used to convince weak minded citizen to enroll and invade that country. Most wars happened because governments screwed their own people convincing them there were enemies ready to kill them, where in fact there was nobody.
Still, tacit responsibility applies. They ignore and benefit from these acts.
Well, you still get a dissonance, right? Either the US is a democracy, and the People are responsible, or it isn't, in which case the People are deluding themselves.
Both things could be true, but if you want to pick one possibility that is more true... have you ever spoken to an American? Of course we are deluding ourselves.
It's much more complex than this. Take QAnon and their well crafted and targeted disinformation for example; lots of people are falling into that idiocy, including people I know, and I'm on the other side of the planet. Voting is a great tool, but it requires knowledge to be used properly. Someone realized that in modern society they don't need to bribe or threaten people anymore to have them vote candidate X, they just feed them false information ultimately obtaining the same result without any fear of consequences since no crimes were committed - all it needs is some obscure account somewhere and a few thousand likes by a click farm in the Far East and the "information" becomes legit. Democracy works only if accompanied by knowledge and critical thinking, or it soon turns out into people being free to choose their own dictator.
Disagreed completely.
In a democracy, people are responsible for their governments. That's the whole idea of democracy. If you can pick your leadership you are responsible for who you pick and every single action they take. You get the credit for the good, and you get the blame for the bad. With great power comes great responsibility and whatnot.
In an autocracy where people cannot choose their leadership, it's more murky.
[edit] It's so weird to see this American blame shirking from the ground floor all the way to the president. "Well, I'm not responsible for the government just because I pick them," to staying home on Election Day and responding "well he's not my president," to POTUS' perennial "well, Obama and Hillary are really at fault."
Is nobody taking responsibility for anything anymore?
People can vote, but the are lots of things out of control. In my country people can do squat about the government actions for example against organized crime, as much as all common US citizen could not decide whether invade Iraq or not after 9/11. Many actions by governments lie outside of any control by the people, which I concur very often a good thing, but when things end up really bad and the government becomes an alien entity with its own agenda, then calling it democracy doesn't help much.
But what if we have a representative democracy instead? Then people's choice is limited to picking one of the options provided by dominant political parties; and the parties are responsible for providing those options.
Just imagine the idea of "representative X" applied to things other than democracy, to see what difference it makes. For example, "representative freedom" = you can't have it, but you can choose one of two people, and they will. Or "representative sex" = you are free to choose people who can actually have sex; feels great, doesn't it? Or "representative free speech" = you are not allowed to speak your mind, but here is a list of a few pre-approved people, choose one of them, and they will speak their mind freely. Isn't it amazing how different things get when they become "representative"?
I agree we should all inform ourselves and vote but this statement may be taking it too far.
If I'm presented with two candidates, neither of whom I agree with, what am I to do? If I can't trust a word of any politician, how can I make an informed decision?
What do you mean by responsibility? I assume you don't mean every American civilian should be prosecuted for the crimes of their government? If you don't mean this, please clarify what you mean.
Which country are you from? Are you responsible for all of their actions?
Last time I checked I don’t get to vote for policies directly. Last time I checked I didn’t get to vote for every representative position and in some cases people won those elections but didn’t even get a plurality of the votes.
Why exactly am I responsible for something I cannot control?
Err, NO, in democracy, people ARE the government. Maybe they don't represent you specifically or your friends, but they were voted in by your fellow citizens by majority.
Politicians, bar some exceptions, always represent the worst of given population. Sociopaths, power hungry, fucked up inside, very good presentation / talking. Always thinking how to use given situation and people around them to their advantage, and there can never be too many advantages.
The fact that people keep voting the same 1 / 2 parties over and over is a proof for that - nobody disagrees with them enough, en masse, to vote otherwise (or not vote).
That seems like the cheap way out.
The real shocker here is not that people do cruel things. Murderers carrying out abhorrent fantasies exist and existed everywhere, anytime.
Suppose I have such a personality, and that becomes known, my government then should do the appropriate medical and judical procedures.
When the government then goes "oh, here is 10k/month and a ticket to Macedonia and go live your dream", there is something truly, truly fucked up and it is not the individual in question.
And that grievance is a systemic one and therefor a responsibilty of the people should they have the intention to declare themselves as a democracy...
I believe the major issue that everyone affected likes to avoid is their profit of that behavior. Not necessarily torture itself, I don't think it helps for interrogations but may serve as a deterrent, but global power and regular war and demonstrations of strength. That gets you a lot of favorable trade deals, you get to be the world's reserve currency, and you can borrow without any limits. That's pretty good, and probably more than makes up for the insane military spending - and citizens profit from that as well.
I don't think there's a lot of motivation to be overly critical in that regard, much like most people won't be too critical of their company when they get half a million in total compensation.
Remind me again, what made the USA any better than North Korea or any other off-the-rails criminal regime?
If this statement about the Espionage Act is correct, then why is there even a discussion whether Assange will get a fair trial in the USA? It's plain as daylight that he never will, even for that specific fact only.
In fact, any country that signed and ratified the UN's UDHR, should be barred from extraditing anyone to the USA. Especially for cases like these.
If this involved an African, Asian or a Middle Eastern country, the USA and EU would no doubt threaten with bombing the country into submission, if they would continue to violate basic human right in order to cover up their criminal actions.
Exactly.
A lot of people ask also why Snowden keeps "hiding" in Russia and doesn't come back to face the music.
It's because he's not even allowed to use the public good defense per the Espionage Act.
As for Assange, the poor man has already suffered enough, what the UN amounts to torture. This is despicable and anyone who is concerned about the Uyghurs, Rohingya etc. should voice a strong opposition to what is happening to Assange in the West.
P.S. His prosecution isn't even about the 2016 election, however you feel about that, it's about him exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. government, killing civilians, including knowingly journalists and laughing about it.
Snowden avoids the prosecution because even on a public trial he will get a life-long sentence since Espionage Act doesn't have an exemption for acting in the public interest.
Right. What did I say differently?
until the Espionage Act is ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS, the war crimes and abuses of power exposed by Snowden and Assange will never be resolved.
Since 2013, I have come to view Assange and Snowden and future leakers and whistleblowers as necessary steps of the journey, but not the destination.
the destination is to create some contrived legal case that perfectly triggers multiple legal conditions which unlocks the door to be able to directly and openly challenge the espionage act in court. the US Intelligence Community have always gone to extraordinary contortions to prevent the Espionage Act itself from being invoked against the Press which could make it possible to challenge it. Even in Elsberg's case, his charges were dropped before SCOTUS could decide whether the Espionage Act applied to the Press and the Public Interest.
i think one reason why DOJ has been so rabid and vicious against Assange is because he is not a US Citizen, so they don't have to give him as much Freedom of Speech as they would an American.
i dont feel optimistic about Assange's case. if it was going to turn out good, that would have happened years ago.
i can only hope the spiritual successor to Wikileaks is led by an American who is wickedly clever enough to leak the right kind of top secrets that are scandalously in the Public Interest and thereby force a head on collision between SCOTUS, the Espionage Act and the First Amendment.
"Remind me again, what made the USA any better than North Korea or any other off-the-rails criminal regime?"
... is an intellectually offensive question.
Posed in the open, by someone on an 'American' blog, in perfect safety knowing there would not remotely ever be any repercussions for posing the question.
you don't know that there won't be repercussions. perhaps when i say "America is already at dystopian North Korean levels of mass propaganda", my IP address is stored in XKEYSCORE and my cell phone billing info is cross referenced and my name is put on a Watchlist.
perhaps when i try to apply to a FedGov job, some automated sytem for scoring Inside Threats uses that Watchlist, and determines i am a security threat, and i am denied the job.
perhaps that automated scoring system is sold to the private sector, and then i am also denied jobs and bank loans and housing and travel when the system rejects me for unspecified reasons, since the existence of the secret Watchlist will never be known outside of FedGov.
through the existence of numerous forms of mass surveillance exposed by Wikileaks, we know the machinery of an automated social credit system has already been built. it's operational. the only question is how far along are they in putting it to use to truly turn us into a superficially happier nation sized prison camp like North Korea.
The fact that you have to say “perhaps... perhaps... perhaps...” when you describe your authoritarian fantasy is all anyone needs to know. One does not need to similarly caveat North Korean or Chinese authoritarianism, you can see the gulags on Google maps. Have there been human rights and privacy abuses by the US government? Yes. Is our government a bad parody of a dystopian sci-fi movie? Please, let’s keep ourselves grounded in facts.
The fact that you are able to post whatever you feel like typing is radically more freedom than we can presume is available to the average North Korean. Pull the other one, man.
And still US forces murder civilians in the Middle East without repercussions by drone and airstrike. Please explain to me why it would be wrong to carpet bomb the Rammstein airbase to take out the drone operations.
"you don't know that there won't be repercussions. perhaps when i say "America is already at dystopian North Korean levels of mass propaganda", my IP address is stored in XKEYSCORE and my cell phone billing info is cross referenced and my name is put on a Watchlist."
It's really sad how deep down the rabbit hole of delusional moral equivalence so much of the anti American bigotry on HN amounts to, and of course so ironic that this is all American-based.
If you want to work for US government spy apparatus, yes, there will be a loyalty test. And that is fine and normal, and it's the same everywhere.
Otherwise, you are free to say pretty much as you please, whenever you want, unless you're making bombs or calling for violence - even in the later case you can get away with it.
Thankfully, there are forces in the world that remain vigilant towards ensuring that you can do that. You can look on a map and it's fairly evident to see which places are fairly open and safe, and which are not.
Let's see what the British court does; I just hope they don't bring more shame to the country.
I don't know the particulars of this case or the UK, so, maybe I'm wrong, but this is probably already decided.
The way this kind of thing is done is by managing that the case goes to the "proper" judge.
From what I've seen so far, this is just a show trial for them to go through the motions.
Assange is going to be extradited to the US and there's nothing anyone can do about it, short of breaking him out of his imprisonment.
Is anyone strategizing around this? Do they accept donations?
They managed to kill Assange already, all is left is a human corpse still barely functioning and the result of the case is just facade.
Then some Americans are confused that many in the western world don't like American influence. I find it outrageous that these things happen, and I wouldn't want my government to consider such a country an ally.
I totally agree. First, many Americans don't support these acts, it's just beyond their control. And others do support them but either minimize them or believe they are justified for a greater good.
And a lot are totally clueless and just have no idea of what's going on.
There's a lot of propaganda, poor education and lack of information in the US. Just watch a presidential debate, it's a joke.
I agree with what you said, yet can't help but think that everyone who knows about this kind of thing and still doesn't think twice about which party to vote for, is responsible in some way.
Every american is given a voice, to vote for the best party, the best candidate, based on what they know and believe. Voting is anonymous. You dont have to tell anyone what you voted for. Vote for a third party, or for whatever you think is best.
But don't ever vote out of habit.
John Adams and George Washington believed a two-party state was a major threat to democracy, and it's pretty easy to see why.
The reality is Democrats and Republicans are about 6 inches apart on every single major issue. Compare the platforms of the "left" and "right" here to other major democracies worldwide, and you'll see.
Things are a little different with the current administration, but even that, the concrete policy and substance issues aren't all that far apart.
- Neither side supports socialized medicine.
- Neither side supports free or cheap college or doing anything about student debt.
- Neither side supports decriminalization or legalization of narcotics.
- Neither side is interested in reducing defense spending.
- Neither side is interested in immigration reform (as evidenced by the Obama administration having, for a long time, controlled both houses and the presidency and changing literally nothing).
- Neither side is interested in reforming the intelligence services or closing GITMO -- remember that?
- Neither side is interested in prison reform or policing reform. Police in America kill 10X as many people per capita as Canadian police kill. The only leader to actually implement any form of prison reform in decades was Donald Trump, credit where due. And that's likely only because he's not really a Democrat or a Republican.
- Both sides persecuted and prosecuted Asange and Snowden.
Really, what are the major points of policy differentiation? A 2% tax hike on the wealthy?
Until our governmental system is overhauled to allow for more democracy and less powerful individuals then the citizens really don't bare much responsibility for the actions of our masters. I live in a gerrymandered district with no real way to vote for my preferences and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon.
I have a really hard time with that answer. In a democracy each individual is directly and personally responsible for their government. That's the power and the responsibility associated with picking your leadership. You get credit for the good and the blame for the bad.
In an autocracy, it's murkier.
So you are just going to ignore the gerrymandering part of their comment then?
Yeah, that's true, gerrymandering is problematic and does stifle people's ability to express their political voice. Does gerrymandering make the US less of a democracy, then? I don't have an answer to that question, so curious your thoughts.
You were definitely right to call me out on that.
I haven't really picked many of my leaders. Most of the government is appointed by the president so I have no say in that. I only get two choices for president neither of which represent me much at all. My congressional district is gerrymandered so I don't get a say there. I have objectively close to 0 influence in how my government works or the decisions it makes.
If we ever fix our government to add more democracy or operate more on the opinions of the citizens then I might feel connected to what my government does but as it stands now there's very little connection between me and others around me and the government that takes actions on the world stage.
the gerrymandering is a really important issue. my city is split into n districts (where 10 < n < 15), each of which elects a representative to the city council. the city votes overwhelmingly blue, but there are clusters of people who mostly vote red in the more affluent neighborhoods. there are enough red voters (roughly 10% of total) that, if they were concentrated in one or two districts, they would actually have a chance of winning a couple council seats. but the democrats have been very careful to slice all red-leaning neighborhoods right down the middle to nullify their votes.
I'm not arguing the city would be better off with more republicans in office, but it's a good example to show how even affluent people can be totally disenfranchised in a political system. no matter how effectively these people mobilize, they will never win an election, even at the most local level, in the foreseeable future.
A single district electing say 20 people via a single transferable vote would be far more representive. The problem isn’t district boundaries, it’s first past the post.
Sortition with incumbency: if an incumbent wants to “run” again, flip a coin. All empty seats are filled by randomly choosing from a pool of volunteers.
Has the nice property of being well-nigh incorruptible, cheap to implement, and perfectly representative of the population interested in serving.
I also like the fact that it provides direct agency as a “voter” (volunteer to serve), rather than indirect agency (vote for a volunteer).
America isn't a pure Democracy in the sense of Plato's Republic.
America is a Representative Democracy. we vote, but we are powerless to change what our Representatives do on our behalf.
by the way, this is really where the root idea of a "Deep State" existing comes from. We vote for Obama to close Gitmo, then he doesn't do it and we never know why. We never voted for illegal NSA domestic mass surveillance, yet here we are and it's normalized. We never voted for CIA renditions, black sites, torture and political assassinations, yet here we are. We never voted for the Federal Reserve to give trillions of dollars to the richest megabillionaires to park that wealth in real estate and price ordinary people out of affordable housing, yet here we are.
it's no longer a crazy conspiracy theory to look at the catastrophic effects of FedGov and how nothing ever improves and conclude the reason is because the govt we think we have is not really in control, but rather a secret State-Within-a-State is in control. a Shadow Govt, a permanent class of faceless bureaucrats wearing dark suits who operate the machinery of Govt and who flaunt the efforts of our elected Representatives and who ignore the will of the voters.
if there ever was an entity that called for extravagent levels of hyperviolence unseen in history to overthrow it, the Deep State is that entity.
You seem to think that if a party does not accomplish its policy objectives (closing gitmo, DACA) because the other party prevented it from accomplishing those objectives, it does not support them? interesting take :)
In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Obama was President and the House and Senate were both Democratic. Who was stopping Obama from closing GITMO during those three years? This was a campaign promise after all. Did DREAM'ers not exist at this time?
GITMO never closed because the US didn't find countries super willing to take in the detainees, and felt it would be "too distasteful" to let them stay in the US proper. Not a good case for violating human rights law, IMO, but to quote POTUS "it is what it is."
1993, 1994, 1995, Clinton was President and the House and Senate were both Democratic. Clinton's big immigration reform bill was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It's purpose was to "[strengthen] the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system — without punishing those living in the United States legally."
Clinton created the mass-deportation machine in use today. Clinton's bill made it harder to immigrate to the US. Clinton created the 3-year and 10-year re-entry bars that continue to separate loved ones to this day. If an unlawful resident marries a US citizen, they're entitled to a green card but they can't apply for it from within the US but as the minute they leave they get a 10-year re-entry bar.
The last guy to grant amnesty to the undocumented was Reagan in 1986, and he was, last I checked, a Republican.
At some point you've gotta stop blaming the other guy.
Democrats are not the party of immigration, legal or illegal.
Clinton was in fact a centrist "third-way" democrat who often compromised or coopted Republican issues, e.g. welfare reform.
Obama was not as much of a centrist but he was obstructed heavily by the opposition.
I'll continue to blame the people who vote 90% in one direction over the ones who vote 90% the other lol.
Edit: you added some specific comments about immigration. This is correct, Democrats are not very pro-immigration. They are more pro-immigration than the GOP, e.g. DACA order vs. DACA repeal, but the two parties are pretty close on immigration. There is a much bigger gap on issues like healthcare.
Even healthcare, though, what's the Biden playbook on healthcare?
"Instead of starting from scratch and getting rid of private insurance, he has a plan to build on the Affordable Care Act by giving Americans more choice, reducing health care costs, and making our health care system less complex to navigate." This is a quote from the Biden campaign site.
As though letting anyone enroll in Medicare is "starting from scratch."
Compared to the Trump plan on healthcare which roughly amounts to: "Leave the Affordable Care Act in place because there really is no other option that anyone can come up with."
So, the Democratic plan is to leave private insurers be, so long as they cover pre-existing conditions. Which is the Republican plan. The difference is one is framed positively and the other negatively? Bumping up vs ignoring Medicare and Medicaid financing? Maybe? Even that's not clear from the Biden site.
The issue is the system is broken entirely, and both sides plan to move the deck chairs around -- one six inches to the left, and one six inches to the right. This was equally true of DACA. Leaving people in a perpetual state of deferred action parole via executive order is not a solution to anything.
Gore Vidal pointed this out many years ago:
I really wonder what Vidal would be saying today.
I guess it would probably be something similar to Noam Chomsky, who is voting Democrat this year because the policy differences are so stark.
https://the.ink/p/noam-chomsky-wants-you-to-vote-for
Chomsky denied the genocide of Pol Pot and defended the Khmer Rouge to score points against CIA and Western Imperialism.
start here on page 19 of Chomsky's book he wrote in 1979.
https://libcom.org/history/chomsky-pol-pots-genocidal-regime...
Chomsky was dead wrong about his heirarchy of languages and he set back computing by 50 years. He has also been wrong about geopolitics, since he ends up supporting the very Western Imperialism that he rails against.
No opinion on Chomsky's politics. But that quote definitely needs some substantiation.
Personally, I don't see how anyone, has managed to set back computing by 50 years.
i still wonder what was the significance of Assange carrying Gore Vidal's book when he was arrested (kidnapped) from the Ecuadorian Embassy.
These kinds of stats are so dishonest. Police in America are subject to 10x more violence per capita as Canadians.
Citation needed.
Especially as studies show that increasing militarization of the police force leads to more civilian deaths [1], and the trend towards militarization has been stark and pronounced in the US. [2] The issue is really that the US uses police as customer service for life and as front-line mental health treatment due to lack of proper socialized medicine. They are also trained to shoot first and ask questions later -- to treat everyone as a potential threat to their lives.
However, let's take what you say as fact. This points to a deep failure in society that needs to be addressed. People are products of their society, and if society is more violent in America then some serious introspection needs to be done. Looking at 10X per capita and shrugging it off as "well that's just America for you" is the problem.
[1] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2018/07/05/evidence-sugges...
[2] https://fee.org/articles/the-militarization-of-americas-poli...
But this is just about to what works to get votes.
Both parties support this. Citizens don't really have a say in how most of the government works.
If citizens don't have a say, then that's not a democracy.
Thats the problem with democracy: the people own the mistakes of those they elect. Dont like what they do? Vote them out of office. Arrest them. Jail them. If the system fails, fix the system.
No the problem with democracy, we’ll the USAs in particular is there exists no department or task force whose sole duty is to enforce the constitution at every level and to imprison those in government positions who abuse their powers for personal gain or immoral purposes.
Sorry who actually believes someone was sodomised for the greater good?!!
You would be surprised. There is a strong vein of jingoism running through the US that wants to see this sort of stuff. They believe that, by being harsh against domestic and foreign enemies of the United States, we can assert our position of dominance on the world stage. Just check out bumper stickers on pickup trucks in Texas.
Is there anything that EU can do about this. It's biggest economy is still a vassal state.
Till you depend on America for protection you will have to play by their rules.
What I believe Americans are confused about European reluctance to protect themselves.
We recently saw Chinese threatening politician from Checz republic. Other European nations still welcomed the group.
You might want to read about operation Gladio and the extent of activities. The pretense of defending Europe is apparently good enough to even run a secret military group, while also making sure no US unfriendly group takes power.
Thanks for the reference, absolutely wild. Though I have no doubt why US is doing it.
I personally feel that America SHOULD pull influence/military completely out of Europe as they are well recovered from WW2 and should now be able to afford to have full militaries to handle any bullies in the region. We should stop all our foreign wars and are more or less doing that under Obama and now Trump. Let the Europeans deal with the Middle East since it is their backyard and not ours. I do think we should keep influence in East Asia though provided that Japan, Taiwan, Korea would like us to stick around. That's a sane foreign policy. I'm sure the Europeans will be angels in maintaining their political sovereignty.
You have to admit there's two sides to that, though. The fact that the EU doesn't _have_ to defend itself reduces the incentive to do so. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we were to learn that the USA (pre-Trump) lobbies EU countries to keep their defense budget low, as that maintains dependence of EU on the USA.
But I 100% agree with you. Pull USA influence out of Europe - that's the best way to force Europe to take its self-defense seriously.
What strikes me with the US is that they can be very progressive on some issues (e.g. lgbt rights), yet totally backward on others (torture, death penalty, mass incarceration and so on...).
The former is distraction for the others. The left in USA has been convinced (or convinced itself) that identity politics is more important than human rights.
Does the USA have a left today? The right who voted for the new deal are left of today’s left.
Today’s left are more right than yesterday’s right.
They do, but it isn't represented in either of their two parties. The Liberal party and the Far Right party both do their best to ignore the leftists.
That said, at the local and house level there is an increase in left candidates getting elected. We'll see where that goes.
Yep, the two major parties are "center-right" and "far-right" politically. There are some leftists but they aren't represented, and because of the two-party system they won't be. Two parties ~= one party.
AOC and her squad are very far left and they're mainstream.
Centrists.
On what grounds? AOC, like Sanders, advocates for centrist policies like those in the UK. AOC is a left leaning centrist. The rhetoric in the US does label her and Sanders extreme left but that’s evidence in favour of my point - there is no left in the USA.
Who is the USA’s version of John McDonnell telling us all that there’s a lot to learn from Das Kapital?
AOC is centre left, somewhere between Canada’s ruling Liberal party and the NDP currently endorsing them (its a minority government this time). NDP is a little further left IMO but not far off.
Please go back and cite me some references where they defended black rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. I'll be waiting with bated breath.
The indian reorganisation act? ...and breathe again
I disagree. I think we had torture so that a President could look tough on National Security as a re-election strategy. Not-torturing people and "identity politics" are not mutually exclusive, there is no reason that we couldn't have both. "Identity politics" is fundamentally about human liberty and the dignity of the individual, a.k.a. individualism, which is also the same moral foundation that most arguments against torture rest on. Advancing the rights of the individual advances the case against torture.
I'm not saying it's bad to have both. It's bad to have identity politics without first having human rights. Human rights are the foundation on which to build an equal society. Attempting to achieve equality before a even a right to life is secured is perverse and cannot work.
Is it no wonder that the police in USA murder black people, when the state also does so?
Which human rights are being deprioritized and in exchange for what lgbtq rights?
If you say they put X above Y, I feel like you should quantify that with something.
They'll probably have more time to concentrate on basic human rights soon with the Republicans sure to vote in an anti-gay, anti-abortion, racist, anti-women's rights SCOTUS judge. There won't be any "swing vote" anymore. Roe v. Wade is history unless the democrats win both houses and the Presidency and can add 3 more left leaning SCOTUS judges. Say goodbye to voter rights, minority rights, and anything even slightly related to queer rights.
This is because there is almost no US left. What you call the left are liberals, and liberals have always been like this (See: Pete Seeger's song "Love Me I'm a Liberal".
What does identity politics have to do with human rights, and why does one preclude the other? Your statement makes it out to seem that you simply don't like what you consider "identity politics" and wanted to bring that into the discussion, regardless of how irrelevant it is.
You're being uncharitable in your reading.
GP is rightfully pointing out that political discourse is far often centered on identity politics to the exclusion of more important topics such as human rights.
No one is saying that one precludes the other except you.
Like someone else said, which rights are being displaced by "identity" politics? Once again, this is nothing but white anxiety about the public discourse concerning race. Nothing more.
The U.S. is not a monolith. Even I, as an individual, have contradictory traits. The U.S. is the outcome of vast government, corporate, and individual actions across a large, geographically dispersed population with enough money and power that when we make a mistake, everyone gets hurt.
The US is a very large and diverse place.
The US is not particularly progressive on LGBT rights.
LGBT have equal rights in the US.
Not really. More than in some places to be sure.
1. Until June 16, 2020, that you could be fired for being gay or transgender. And that's not even a blanket ruling, as religious institutions in the US are basically exempt from the Civil Rights Act protections.
2. It's still illegal to use one bathroom or another as a transgender person depending on which state you're in.
3. Transgender people are not allowed in the US military.
The list goes on, that's just kinda off the top of my head.
The US is more progressive than many European states.[1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_European_Un...
Do you think it's beneficial for the US military to accept transgender people who, according to dozens of studies, have substantially higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and other negative side effects?
Additionally, some of the hormone blocking drugs can cause bone loss (presenting a real physical risk).
Obviously, this has innumerable risks in a military environment from an objective standpoint. In fact, even post-transition, suicidal ideation is still orders of magnitude higher than average.
This comment won’t look good on you in a few years, I’m sure, and it reminds me of the kind of things people used to say about accepting women into the armed forces.
You pass basic training just the same so half your arguments are null right there. If you can’t pass basic training they don’t care what’s between your legs, you’re going home.
Basic training doesn't disqualify you for some of those risks.
Basic training ensures that some of those risks do not apply.
All the research we have on this says it's caused by the presence of transphobia, and isn't intrinsic to being trans.
Care to share? Other minorities experiencing discrimination do not report similarly high levels of suicidal ideation, so I'm extremely doubtful of this claim.
Some groups in the US are very progressive on some issues. We still have larges swathes of the country that are backwards and like the torture that is mentioned in the article.
The empitome of American Imperialism.
A lot of comments are (rightfully) condemning American atrocity, but let’s not lose sight that it is defense for Assange as well.
His actions clearly came with the moral imperative of whistleblowing - even just this one example shows the humanitarian crimes that would go unrevealed if the leaked documents weren’t published.
There’s just no way to pretend like Assange caused harm or violated law - whistleblowing is not stealing, it’s not treason, it’s not endangerment of affected government perpetrators. It’s the exposure of mass scale criminal murder and torture.
The problem I have with him is that his massive leaks were politically motivated.
The helicopter who shot journalists, that movie was genuine, and a proper leak. All the diplomatic cables being leaked? Clinton's e-mails? I don't believe all of that was in the public interest. He fell in the trap of making it political, us vs them (why he went in bed with the Russians), and disregarding operational safety.
I don’t see any basis it could be disputed in the case of the diplomatic cables. This very witness’s testimony proves it (as his torture and subsequent efforts by the US to pressure Germany and Spain to take no action when the criminal nature of it was learned - it was only brought to light because of the leaked cables, as explained in this post).
These facts render it moot what you or I might personally think about his political motivations. Not only are such speculations not a basis for any of the charges, but the very evidence itself (the cables) requires us to see the humanitarian imperative that they be leaked and thus to view leakers and publishers as whistleblowers, setting all speculated internal motives we can’t prove (and which don’t supersede the moral imperative here) aside.
In the case of the DNC email leaks, I could see a better argument that it was political, but then it also wouldn’t matter. None of the Espionage Act charges or accusations of putting US agents in grave harm are based on leaked DNC emails, only Iraq War leaks and the diplomatic cables. It would be awfully hard to prove any serious harm from publishing the DNC emails - and also the standard for publishers protected in that case is much higher. Keep in mind all that is proved that he did is publish them (no different than tons of other news outlets).
My point isn't that there's no useful content in the cables; my opinion is that it wasn't screened well. The data was dumped, not carefully screened. Assange M.O. changed in that regard, somewhere in the past 10 years, and that is the moment where I started to believe his opponents had a point.
It pretty much affected the outcome of the election up to the point that we USA got an orangutan in office. It is something Russian troll farms and Cambridge Analytica were also trying to do. All three's actions affect our democratic process in a negative way (ie. we want stability not chaos right before an election). Is it basis to get him prosecuted via Espionage Act? No, but that Act is retarded either way; lets look at other laws instead. How about illegal access to a remote computer? Then we're getting to more fair waters. Another one is putting innocent lives in danger by leaking sensitive data.
By every account in the extradition hearing, Assange was obsessed with carefully screening the material and copiously considered the costs and moral imperatives in cases when an identifying piece of information had to be included.
The testimony of John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count (which deeply depended on Wikileaks materials to corroborate many illegal civilian deaths in the Iraq war) is particularly clear on this. He had direct knowledge of the processes Assange used, in conjunction with other major news agencies including the New York Times and The Guardian, to redact as much identifiable information as possible, and even revealed significant details about the software they built to do named entity removal and to extract entries from dictionaries and so forth, across tens of thousands of documents.
It is pure myth that Assange lacked careful, discerning effort to redact materials.
As for your response about the DNC emails I think you have it quite backwards. Assange did not destabilize any election or play any role in Trump being elected. The DNC did that by the behavior that the leaked emails revealed.
The DNC members destabilized the election and created uncertainty and outrage that Trump capitalized on. The DNC members and officials did that, not Assange.
Assange reported it.
You don't think it's in the public's interest to know that one of the two parties of our broken two party system is explicitly subverting a democratic process to get "their person" nominated? Given that getting nominated to one of the two parties is the only viable way to get elected, anything that compromises the integrity of the nomination process is frankly more important than the final voting process.
This is unsubstantiated propaganda.
Motivation is not relevant, results are.
I fail to see how being political is a relevant distinction, it fundamentally just means that something is contested. Not necessarily that there is any good reason for it to be contested. Utterly horrific things can be accepted and 'not political' and the only sane approach contested and declared 'political'.
State terror shouldn’t be safe. It‘s perpetrators deserve far more than just public exposure of crimes. For all I care post their names, photos and real time position data online. Let them hope for imprisonment in a state that observes their human rights.
That's fantastic of him. I wish more people would support Assange and realise that this sort of treatment is unacceptable.
wow, what a shithole this CIA is. Not different from Russia's GRU/KGB
it's much worse and 10x bigger budget