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Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

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Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#71

Post by starkd »

luckylion wrote: post #54
starkd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange how you automatically feel the need to support one side and can't see the horrible outcome this has been for all parties. This could have been resolved through diplomacy. You never see the term even mentioned anymore.

> This could have been resolved through diplomacy. Yes, by giving Ukraine to Russia. We know how it works if you try to appease fascists, come on.

This is a more complex than that. I don't like the invasion, but its not like Russia has no vital interests in the area that is right on their border. And they have occupied Crimea in the past going back to 1776. I'm just saying they have as much national interest as the West does. Israel Prime Minister claims they had a deal that was agreed to but Biden administration turned it down.

It's also the responsible thing to do to look at the prospects of forcing a war though, when the Urkainians are so heavily outgunned. 200,000 Ukrainians have died in this fight. Maybe 50,000 Russians have died (its hard to find out specifics). The US wants to fight this war on the cheap with the Ukrainians taking all the casualties so that Americans won't have to. That is pretty deplorable to me.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#72

Post by CamperBob2 »

starkd wrote: post #63
chpatrick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet only one belligerent invaded the other. There aren't two sides to this.

I am not denying the Russian invasion is unlawful. Reread what I wrote. You are proving my point.

Ok, I re-read it. It was just as violently stupid the second time around.

"Diplomacy" doesn't mean "I break into your house and agree to take only 10% of your stuff if you don't fight back." And when the cops show up, that's not a "proxy war."

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#73

Post by ethbr0 »

starkd wrote: post #63
chpatrick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet only one belligerent invaded the other. There aren't two sides to this.

I am not denying the Russian invasion is unlawful. Reread what I wrote. You are proving my point.

Calling for diplomacy in a war of aggression where the aggressor has claimed annexation of the defender's territory means... what?

What is there to negotiate?

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#74

Post by mardifoufs »

phphphphp wrote: post #56
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is…

What's the revisionism? The collateral murder video was actually especially popular and impactful to the demographic (democrat young white liberal) that is now almost comically against Assange.

Also, there's literally no difference in the way they did "narrative building" with Collateral Murder than , say, the NYT does in covering war crimes in Ukraine. I mean to be honest it's a bit hard to understand why you would even highlight the narrative building by the exposing party, when the actual events involved a cover up of war crimes from the Pentagon and an insane amount of damage control and PR. It just doesn't register for me, it's like saying you lost confidence in the NYT for covering war crimes in a way that highlighted that war crimes are actually... bad.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#75

Post by kerkeslager »

phphphphp wrote: post #56
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is…

The truth is a narrative. Not all narratives are true, but calling something a narrative doesn't in any way disprove it.

Would you like to actually call out anything in Collateral Murder that you think wasn't exposing the truth?

I'm old enough to remember Collateral Murder. I'm old enough to remember it's video footage. Of members of the US military murdering people, and laughing about it. You can't dismiss that as "just a narrative", it's also the truth, and it's a fucked up truth that the public deserves to know about.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#76

Post by starkd »

mopsi wrote: post #69
starkd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.

> The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. Because the insistence of calling it a proxy war to make the war appear larger than it is comes from Kremlin's PR canon. They can't bring themselves to admit that they are losing to Ukraine and hence emphasise how they are "acktshually fighting against the whole NATO". Allies have given a lot of support, but mainly in…

Many us legislators are openly admitting it is a proxy war. See Rep. Dan Crenshaw-TX comments on Ukrain support. He calls it a good deal that we get to fight a major geo-political adversary without any American deaths by just supplying Ukraine with weapons. He is not the only one. That is by definition a proxy war. Fighting a war on the cheap that isn't designed to ultimately win anything, meanwhile sending 200,000 of those Ukrainians to their deaths is despicable in my opinion.

I am not on Putin's side on this, but this is not 1945. Russia does have some vital national interests in the reason, since its right on their border and they have a long historical relationship with Crimea. The prime minister of Israel claims they had a deal worked out, but the Biden administration nixed it. This is a result of strategic planning within the State Dept. to have this fight.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#77

Post by mjklin »

superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

A similar thing happened when Alexander Solzhenitsyn defected to the US from the USSR. As long as he was blasting the Soviets everybody listened, but when he started critiquing the US as well…his speaking invitations dried up.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#78

Post by vuln »

kerkeslager wrote: post #75
phphphphp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is…

The truth is a narrative. Not all narratives are true, but calling something a narrative doesn't in any way disprove it. Would you like to actually call out anything in Collateral Murder that you think wasn't exposing the truth? I'm old enough to remember Collateral Murder. I'm old enough to remember it's video footage. Of members of the US military murdering people, and laughing about it. You can't dismiss that as "…

That's the play, attack the person or how it was release but never acknowledge the contents of the release.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#79

Post by misnome »

starkd wrote: post #52
driscoll42 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange how you don't comment on the many more Russians that Putin has murdered by his unprovoked war of aggression as well.

Strange how you automatically feel the need to support one side and can't see the horrible outcome this has been for all parties. This could have been resolved through diplomacy. You never see the term even mentioned anymore.

One side could unilaterally end the war in one word.

Strange that it’s only in the interests of that side that people call for this.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#80

Post by starkd »

starkd wrote: post #76
mopsi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. Because the insistence of calling it a proxy war to make the war appear larger than it is comes from Kremlin's PR canon. They can't bring themselves to admit that they are losing to Ukraine and hence emphasise how they are "acktshually fighting against the whole NATO". Allies have given a lot of support, but mainly in…

Many us legislators are openly admitting it is a proxy war. See Rep. Dan Crenshaw-TX comments on Ukrain support. He calls it a good deal that we get to fight a major geo-political adversary without any American deaths by just supplying Ukraine with weapons. He is not the only one. That is by definition a proxy war. Fighting a war on the cheap that isn't designed to ultimately win anything, meanwhile sending 200,000 o…

I will also note that the cash burn rate for this war in Ukraine is now exceeding that of Afghanistan in the early years. It is more money after nothing, because they won't even define what victory means. Just more war slogans.
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