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Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

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Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#141

Post by Buge »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #45
mowenz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just politics? Here is an example: After the DNC scandal against Sanders with DWS resigning I posted an article by Greenwald on this in /r/politics. It was downvoted with such reasons as 'Greenwald is an un-patriotic [homophobic slur] who is afraid to enter the US because he doesn't want to face responsibility for his actions against the US.'

Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour. Meaning, at some point of heated debate, those with no feelings involved take a step back, and find a middleground solution, a compromise with which both sides can live. And usually that boring compromise is accepted by the majority of the people. The problem starts when the majority of the people are cut off from economic growth a…

> politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

Yes it should. But in highly politicized subreddits, left or right, it doesn't.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#142

Post by qb45 »

mirimir wrote: post #132
scoggs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason my mind immediately went to the fact that Wikileaks has to honor protecting its sources. I know it should be real obvious that the task of protecting sources itself is most paramount in their operation, but for some reason I get the feeling that "full disclosure" includes "how do you get the info / who do you get the info from / tell us juicy secrets / tell us the truth about your legal cases". I don'…

Sure. But prudent leakers handle that themselves. So there really isn't anything to protect. Leaking is different from journalism. In journalism, identities of sources matter. In leaking, only the leaks matter. And, by the way, I don't believe that Snowden needed to dox himself. He left the decision to Poitras and Greenwald, and I think that they unnecessarily trashed his life.

I thought it was because both Snowden and Greenwald believed that the US would identify him sooner or later and if his identity wasn't public the CIA would quietly arrest him illegally abroad, like they did to others before, and nobody would even know.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-day-we-revealed-snowdens-...

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#143

Post by rurban »

caycep wrote: post #94
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo... Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also…

the release of the Macron "documents" - complete w/ all the evidence of Russian manipulation and fakery, hanging MS Word edit tags in cyrillic, etc, in the official dump, says volumes. They didn't bother to even read through the stuff before dumping it on the public.

You missed that part of the story where the French staffers got knowledge of the intruders and deliberately changed some documents, to come up with the counterpropaganda after the leak. It was not much, but stopped prosecutors and the public to go after Macron. Which is a shame, but we got used to cointel in the meantime, and media is not helping.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#144

Post by nickpsecurity »

contingencies wrote: post #130
nickpsecurity wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. Not in my experience. I had long discussions with him in 2009 and first met him in 1997. I have only seem him share information and resources and he is clearly motivated by genuine concern for the world. He was raised by left wing family on the east coast of Australia. He created an encryption system to resist torture from authoritarian governmen…

"TLDR; In my view, which is nominally more informed than yours, you are basically re-spouting a baseless or near baseless government sponsored character assassination."

Or you're describing him in his youth which came before his fame plus how he presented himself in discussions with people that like him. I speak of his actions during Wikileaks not theory I gained from speaking to him. Most of his collaborators that left him said similar stuff. They didn't say it about their other associates.

"required mastering networking"

That's funny given his network security was shit until he hired some engineer to help him. He also lied to sources about what level of protection he offered. It's what all good people do. ;)

"He created an encryption system to resist torture from authoritarian governments."

Wow. You're the first, intelligent person I've heard describe it that way. It was actually designed for the total opposite: a person having encryption under a torture-loving, authoritarian regime would give them either nothing or a series of somethings they wouldn't believe. In other words, they'd keep getting tortured until the other side was satisfied with what they found or what damage they did. It was a brilliant, but insidious, system I'd never use for that reason. Incidentally, I never saw any report Julian Assange used it himself for Wikileaks. Cuz being tortured is for other people.

"Isn't this perfectly generic slander? Couldn't you mount the same accusation at anyone intelligent as soon as they get an audience?"

Most of them acted differently. Nothing psychotic or destroying their teams for ego. So, no I don't say the same thing about most other people when they get attention. If anything, they usually do similar stuff to what they were doing before but with more attention. Makes me wonder about Assange.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#145

Post by wand3r »

grandalf wrote: post #122
btown wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that Assange is not simply operating a content-neutral distribution platform. He has the ability to time or suppress releases at whim to influence global politics. And so his whims are of great importance in judging the risk-vs-reward of Wikileaks.

Yes. However since he is essentially captive and sources of funding to WL have largely been blocked, he must utilize guerilla PR tactics to the fullest. Of course I'd prefer if the leaked docs were all thoroughly vetted and used as source material by The NY Times, but due to political pressure the NYT distanced itself from assange and became one of the main propagators of the character assassination campaign against…

I agree with your point but think it furthers the above logic that personality (or editorial motivation) matter quite a bit. Assange and his motivation is important as he has seemingly near total control of WL.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#146

Post by unityByFreedom »

grandalf wrote: post #89
unityByFreedom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.

Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd. The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fig…

> Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole?

He's more than just an asshole, he lead a genocide against the Kurdish people [1] and invaded Kuwait. And, I didn't say any of that justified our entrance circa 2001.

> Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior.

He was a killer. That's not mild. I can't say why Reagan would've considered him an ally while he was gassing the Kurds. There are a lot of variables in play in foreign relations. Trump wants to be buddies with Russia while they've essentially admitted to messing with our elections [because we fund pro-democracy NGOs in Russia]. Who knows how Trump envisions the future of American foreign relations. He's certainly doing some unexpected things.

> the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd.

You feel personality causes a person to kill thousands of people and invade other countries? Okay. Hitler had a shitty personality too, but that's not a particularly useful descriptor when talking about dictators. Lots of people have lousy personalities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#147

Post by grandalf »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #146
grandalf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd. The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fig…

> Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? He's more than just an asshole, he lead a genocide against the Kurdish people [1] and invaded Kuwait. And, I didn't say any of that justified our entrance circa 2001. > Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. He was a killer. That's not mild. I can't say why Reagan woul…

> He was a killer.

George W. Bush killed more Iraqi people than Saddam ever did and caused massively increased suffering throughout the region for decades after.

> You feel personality causes a person to...

No, my point is that personality has nothing do do with it. Nations act out of national interest. Psychoanalysis of "enemy" leaders is what the US does to help the American population hate that person enough to go to war. We're told that any foreign leader we're supposed to hate has a diagnosable psychiatric illness.

Not only is that false (they are typically rational and just acting in their own interests) it is disrespectful of people who actually do have mental health challenges.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#148

Post by unityByFreedom »

grandalf wrote: post #147
unityByFreedom wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? He's more than just an asshole, he lead a genocide against the Kurdish people [1] and invaded Kuwait. And, I didn't say any of that justified our entrance circa 2001. > Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. He was a killer. That's not mild. I can't say why Reagan woul…

> He was a killer. George W. Bush killed more Iraqi people than Saddam ever did and caused massively increased suffering throughout the region for decades after. > You feel personality causes a person to... No, my point is that personality has nothing do do with it. Nations act out of national interest. Psychoanalysis of "enemy" leaders is what the US does to help the American population hate that person enough to go…

> George W. Bush killed more Iraqi people than Saddam ever did and caused massively increased suffering throughout the region for decades after.

Let's say there's a hostage situation at a bank robbery. The police manage to catch or kill the two robbers, but in the process five civilians are killed. Who's at fault there? What if nobody in the community responds, and the attackers get away with money and kill all the hostages? You think the robbers will just stop after one bank, knowing that they can get away with it?

> No, my point is that personality has nothing do do with it

Then why did you bring it up? Everyone else was talking about Saddam's actions. You're the one who simplified it to his personality. If you don't believe his invasion of Kuwait and killing of the Kurdish people make him a bad guy, worse than Bush, then I simply disagree.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#149

Post by dragonwriter »

int_19h wrote: post #140
dragonwriter wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with single-member districts (rather than any sort of party lists) Single-member, FPTP districts are the issue (or, rather, the lack of proportionality and meaningful choice that comes with that is the issue); the absence of party lists, OTOH, is irrelevant. There are solutions to the issues posed by single-member, FPTP districts that retain candidate-centered elections and do not use party lists. (STV in multimemb…

How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)? STV doesn't fix it - while it makes third party votes viable, it still means that third parties are going to win far fewer districts than the overall proportion of their vote across all districts.

> How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)?

It's hard if you keep single-member districts, though there are possibilitie: (e.g., assign seats to parties based on share first-preference votes across all districts, with all the same handling of minimum thresholds, etc, you would apply in party list proportional, and then elect specific candidates from the by-district elections as follows:

- If a parties total number of allocated seats is equal to the number of candidates they have remaining in districts where no candidate has been elected, elect all of those candidates.

- Otherwise, elect the candidate from the party whose currently-elected # of candidates is the smallest fraction of their allocated seats (breaking ties in favor of the largest absolute deficit) who has the greatest share of the vote in the district in which they competed.

- Repeat until all allocated seats are filled.

Voilà: all the partisan proportionality of party-list proportional, with candidates elected from single-member districts, with candidate centered voting, and no party lists.

I think practically STV or a similar system in small multimember districts (about 5 members per district) is probably a better balance of proportionality and individual candidate accountability (and results in more people having a candidate that is both local and politically acceptable than most other systems), and STV of course can scale to any level of proportionality at the expense of greater number of candidates and larger districts.

Party lists provide an easy route to partisan proportionality but eliminate direct accountability to the general electorate of individual representatives. Ideally, I think, you want both proportionality and individual accountability to the general electorate.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#150

Post by int_19h »

dragonwriter wrote: post #149
int_19h wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)? STV doesn't fix it - while it makes third party votes viable, it still means that third parties are going to win far fewer districts than the overall proportion of their vote across all districts.

> How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)? It's hard if you keep single-member districts, though there are possibilitie: (e.g., assign seats to parties based on share first-preference votes across all districts, with all the same handling of minimum thresholds, etc, you would apply in party list proportional, and then elect specifi…

I think direct accountability is overrated. Not to say that it shouldn't be there, but I don't think it's important enough that the electoral system should be fixated on it as the primary goal. For example, in US today, despite single-member districts (which put it as the cornerstone), party politics dominate in practice.

I think MMP is a reasonable compromise system between direct accountability and regional representation on one hand, and proportional representation of national politics on the other - each district still gets a direct representative (or several; I'm not opposed to multimember districts in general), but party lists are used to keep the overall balance of power in line with the national vote.

The risk with the system that you describe is that it can still skew results substantially. For example, a party that consistently gets just under 20% of the vote across all districts would end up with no seats at all, although 20% is a significant proportion of the population, and in fairness is entitled to appropriate representation. This can be improved by adding more members per district, but then the legislature becomes unwieldy - in fact I would dare say it would be unwieldy even at 5 members per district in US, since it would push the number of representatives over 2000. Increasing district sizes proportionally would mitigate that, but it also decreases the connection between the elected representative and the people in their district, and thus also accountability.

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