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Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

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Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#151

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

Fnoord wrote: post #146
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. > 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.…

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.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#152

Post by smeeth »

justanotheranon wrote: post #142
jariel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, a…

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.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#153

Post by raincom »

pftf wrote: post #80
sandworm101 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Voting doesn't work for the most important issues, where human rights are being severely violated. It took a civil war for the end of slavery to begin in the US. It took decades of terrorism for the Irish to stop being as subjugated by the British in Northern Ireland. And so on. History indicates that what you really need in the US right now is some violent, direct action against those committing human rights atrocit…

"Violence is the foundation of law" is something I read in some philosophy of law books. I think it is in HLA Hart's or someones. While parroting the rule of law to the submissive, the rulers (or the beneficiaries of the current law regime) will hide the foundations of the existing law regime.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#154

Post by sudosysgen »

arcticbull wrote: post #128
ftfp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does. Anything that removes power from the demos makes it less of a democracy.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#155

Post by sudosysgen »

leetcrew wrote: post #135
arcticbull wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think it makes it less of a democracy, per se. after all, officials are still elected through a public vote, and the gerrymandering is carried out by democratically elected leaders. tbh I'm not even sure how you would get rid of it. political boundaries have to be drawn somewhere to begin with, and sometimes they may need to move if the population shifts over time. I dunno how you could make the current party…

The criteria is simple. Does gerrymandering spread power to the people or does it concentrate it in the hands of the few? If the latter, then it makes for less of a democracy.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#156

Post by squarefoot »

sudosysgen wrote: post #61
squarefoot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is not the US people in any case, is their government. 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…

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.

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.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#157

Post by shadowfox »

justanotheranon wrote: post #140
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Wes…

> he set back computing by 50 years

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.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#158

Post by exolymph »

justanotheranon wrote: post #142
jariel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, a…

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.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#159

Post by Karunamon »

ftfp wrote: post #121
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty disgusting thing to advocate.

Just to be clear here, are you saying that you're more disgusted by the idea of violent, direct action against those committing human rights atrocities? Rather than by those committing the human rights atrocities?

One implies the other. Any kind of revolution means that there will be innocent lives lost.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#160

Post by Viliam1234 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #100
GOONIMMUNE wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a leftist myself, I can't recall ever talking to another leftist who supported female genital mutilation, or called someone a racist for criticizing it. I think you're talking out your butt

They've developed a false argument. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a vocal critic of female genital mutilation, but many of her other positions are islamophobic. Positions like "we are at war with Islam and it must be defeated." In reality, I can both oppose female genital mutilation and consider Ayaan Hirsi Ali racist.

> In reality, I can both oppose female genital mutilation and consider Ayaan Hirsi Ali racist.

Of course you can. But became sufficiently famous doing so, and you will probably also find yourself on some list of "problematic" people.

In case I am completely wrong about this, the best way to convince me would be to provide a name of a recent famous speaker against female genital mutilation who is considered politically correct.

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