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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

#81
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely it. My pet theory is that the true effect of "cancel culture" isn't really on rich/popular people. But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. The outcome is that entities which don't take sides are the real victim…

> But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. > The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. That’s essentially human society. We organize ourselves in races, countries, cultures, religions, sports teams, etc. We are constantly excluding others and trying to belong to certain…

> The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that all other groups should be exterminated.

In which given enough time all groups come to that last same conclusion. No group is safe once the extreme amass too much power.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#82
post #52

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.

Just curious, what are your primary sources of information that have shaped your opinions and perspectives shown in this thread?

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#83
post #73
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[flagged]

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#84
post #76
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…

> The prime minister of Israel claims they had a deal worked out, but the Biden administration nixed it.

No he doesn't. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-bennett-walks-back-cl...

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#85
post #68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say no Russians have died. There have been horrible deaths on both sides. No one is winning in this war.

US imperialism and the defense companies are winning this war

Exactly. I don't think they are being fairly open about that. They aren't even hiding it.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#86
post #30
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.

WikiLeaks arguably helped people to do that quite effectively. They've never really claimed to be neutral but especially around 2016 they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state (at best as a messenger). III.B.3 of the Mueller report I don't know if they are evil but I find it very hard to view them as anything other than selectively truthful at best.

Put yourself in Wikileaks' shoes for a second: you have information, you might even know that the source is malicious, but you also know the information is true. Your mandate as an organization is to release truths. Are they really supposed to not release the truth because it hurts the Democrats?

I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but the truth is the truth. If we only care about the truth when it favors us, I don't see how we're better than liars.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#87
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#88
post #76
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…

Britain has historical roots to the US territory, going back to centuries ago. According to your logic, a British invasion and occupation of US would be justified.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#89
post #84
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The prime minister of Israel claims they had a deal worked out, but the Biden administration nixed it. No he doesn't. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-bennett-walks-back-cl...

Yeah, noticed "walks back". He just said he is now "unsure". Why did he say it in the first place? Sounds like the US put the squeeze on him, so he "walked it back". Nevertheless, there was SOMETHING on the table that could have been the basis for talks. They ruled it out of hand.

Business Insider is a rag, not credible.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#90
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, if WikiLeaks had focused on being the Craigslist of information, without attempting to market themselves, they would have gotten a lot more public support. You can't transparently publish information and have an opinion.

Why not? Why is public support necessary for transparently publishing information?

Wasn't that the whole idea behind Wikileaks? To not only be a platform to upload and publish random documents, and instead to provide context and work with writers to make it understandable for a wider audience? That's how I understood it at the time, that Assange was unhappy with the limited audience existing platforms were reaching.

/e: I see my reply was less targeted towards your comment but the one above.

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