The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674652507

In light of recent serious discussions on this page regarding who is a journalist, see the above, an interesting publication on pamphlets during the Revolution days. 

Our Founding Fathers passed in the First Amendment in 1791, which was and is a great idea (despite modern-day Donk Party reservations). 

And think about it: Back then, a journalist or commentator was anybody who printed pamphlets, or paid to have pamphlets printed (such as Thomas Paine).  

Today, we have the internet, and the equivalent idea is that anybody voicing an opinion or presenting journalism is thus a journalist, only in pixels, and not print.

And yet we have emerging the loathsome idea that a real journalist must be attached to a successful commercial media organization, which leads to ridiculous standards such as Chris Cuomo is a real journalist, but Glenn Greenwald presently is not. 

I advocate the US government stop prosecuting Julian Assange.  I guess the Donk Party wants him prosecuted. Many establishment 'Phants too. 

[Ron Bulman]

16 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

1/6 committee isn't messing around. These texts... holy f**k

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/585659-meadows-texts-show-hannity-don-jr-wanted-trump-to-stop-jan-6-riot

Hanity and Ingram, DJ.  His base doesn't know this dooky.  The Truth will ultimately shatter them.  

For the self perceived don of nyc, who claimed he could get away with murder on 5th avenue.

 

[Bob Ness]

38 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob  - your illustration has nothing at all to do with Wikileaks’ practices. It may be that other organizations have been careless and irresponsible, but Wikileaks always maintained careful vetting of materials submitted.

 

This is the problem Jeff. Quote from para two:

WikiLeaks planned to take a year to slowly roll out the unpublished parts of its archive of leaks in order to redact as much as possible.  But Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding published the password to that archive in their book published in February 2011. 

A German newspaper, Der Freitag, learned about the password and published it even though Assange tried hard to convince them not to because of the risk of revealing informants’ names. After Freitag published it Cryptome dumped the entire un-redacted archive on its website on Sept. 2, 2011.

WikiLeaks then took the decision to also publish the entire archive the next day to help alert informants so they could get to safety. Nevertheless, the government is trying to portray Assange as recklessly endangering individuals. 

Seriously? You're claiming they didn't act irresponsibly but "somehow" the credentials for the archive became public knowledge? WTF? How hard is it to make the archive unavailable or restrict access on a server? It isn't! Any fifth grader could! Wikileaks was responsible for the dump because it was in THEIR archive and in THEIR source's best interest to protect them. FCS they apparently knew about it for 7 months!

In fact I'm sure they're lying about it because the effort to maintain the security of the archive is trivial (especially for tech people) to the point it appears intentionally mishandled. It was his/their responsibility to care for the material NOT the people they spilled it to.

Put another way: The intention party X has in giving classified information to party Y, who then makes it public, is not relevant to to the culpability of both parties in making those materials public. They are both part of the conspiracy equally.

These facts are why the links you post to UNATTRIBUTED authors at Consortium News are worse than useless because people actually believe the thrust of the article. They get difficult to read.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Bob Ness

[Benjamin Cole]

I guess the long knives are out to censor Joe Rogan too. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-matters-hot-pod-spotify-moderation#comments

If this how the left-wing thinks today? 

I hope the readers of this space, who should be aware of media manipulation in the wake of the JFKA, and of the national security state and its grip on media...have more enlightened points of view regarding press freedoms...

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Bob Ness said:

To illustrate the point:

If I were the administrator of this site, I could potentially publish financial data from you that would be available online that you freely gave to this site without reading the terms of agreement (who does?). I could host it and route it through 10 different countries with no treaties, cooperation agreements or capability to enforce regulations and your lawyer or a Federal Attorney (not certain who covers that - SS, DoJ ???) would be stopped at the first uncooperative country. After that, if the country agreed to help, they'd have to convince the next one to share their information. And on and on until they get to the country where I reside that has legal authority over me. But no laws have been broken domestically that I can be charged with and there you go.

That's an over simplification but is essentially how many of these extra legal organizations function without any corresponding oversight. Now your debit card is online and when the complaints finally make it to my doorstep, I claim I'm a journalist and many of the charges revealed in your account corroborate the claim my other source (I'm keeping that secret) gave me that you're planning an assassination! Perfect!

One of the ways to keep from running aground is to do investigations on your plot under the aegis of an actual media banner established for investigating such things. They can and have been sued for substantial sums when they've got it wrong. To one degree or the other they're also obligated professionally to act in accordance with the best public interest. Wikileaks has done a number of remarkable expose's but has also offered itself as a dump site for information from people with grudges.

In some ways they should be held to a much higher legal standard than Fox or the NYT simply because their business model seems to depend on the dissemination of wholesale "leaked" material with no consideration of the punitive effect on innocent people (there are plenty).

Thank you, Bob. I like the logic in this reply and it does illustrate some of the complexities involved. 
 

Do we hold our personal data (legally or ethically) as non crime committing individuals on a par with state institutions classified information? Or, is one more important than the other? Or, is it determined on a case by case basis? 
 

If state crimes or, international crimes were uncovered in those data leaks. Are both parties prosecutable? Or, just Assange? Is this a factor in the Assange case? Or, was he just exposing questionable behaviour, not criminality? 
 

it’s very difficult to understand the crux of the matter in the British media. 

[Bob Ness]

3 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I guess the long knives are out to censor Joe Rogan too. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-matters-hot-pod-spotify-moderation#comments

If this how the left-wing thinks today? 

I hope the readers of this space, who should be aware of media manipulation in the wake of the JFKA, and of the national security state and its grip on media...have more enlightened points of view regarding press freedoms...

They haven't figured out what the Republicans have - you can just outright lie and enough of your supporters are stupid enough they will believe you and it doesn't matter how outlandish the claim is. A significant amount of them think Trump won still.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I guess the long knives are out to censor Joe Rogan too. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22821823/joe-rogan-media-matters-hot-pod-spotify-moderation#comments

If this how the left-wing thinks today? 

I hope the readers of this space, who should be aware of media manipulation in the wake of the JFKA, and of the national security state and its grip on media...have more enlightened points of view regarding press freedoms...

Suddenly the heat is on after daring to question the dreaded C narrative. How did he get cured so fast? Reputation destruction in full swing. 
 

 

[Bob Ness]

3 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Thank you, Bob. I like the logic in this reply and it does illustrate some of the complexities involved. 
 

Do we hold our personal data (legally or ethically) as non crime committing individuals on a par with state institutions classified information? Or, is one more important than the other? Or, is it determined on a case by case basis? 
 

If state crimes or, international crimes were uncovered in those data leaks. Are both parties prosecutable? Or, just Assange? Is this a factor in the Assange case? Or, was he just exposing questionable behaviour, not criminality? 
 

it’s very difficult to understand the crux of the matter in the British media. 

There's a really big gray stripe down the middle of that road I'd say. Certainly the ability for journalists to reveal the truth is extremely important in every sense. The point where it goes over a line is usually best handled in court rooms I suppose. Imperfect as they may be they're built for sorting through complex issues with conflicting arguments studied in excruciating detail.

One example of a very close call was the case in Chicago in I believe 1942 where a newspaper there published a story that revealed the US Government's successful decryption of the Japanese "Purple" code:

For 74 years, only members of a Chicago grand jury could definitively say why they declined to indict a reporter responsible for a 1942 front page article that implied American cryptanalysts had cracked the Japanese military code.

The documents were unsealed for a group of petitioners in late 2016 after a three-year court battle, and on Wednesday, a number of carefully selected documents will be publicly available online for the first time on the National Security Archive’s website, said John Prados, editor of the postings. The timing — just 10 days after the publication of “Stanley Johnston’s Blunder,” a novel by former journalist and historian Elliot Carlson — was merely coincidental, both men said. Carlson sued for the release of the grand jury documents with the help of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Prados testified as an expert...

...The grand jury declined to indict Tribune war correspondent Stanley Johnston and the Tribune’s then-managing editor, J. Loy Maloney, because Adm. Ernest J. King, who Carlson called “the adult in the room,” didn’t want to risk even more media attention and the chance that Japanese leaders would change the code from the one the Americans had already cracked.

“If this had gone on to a public trial, there’s no telling how much publicity it would’ve received or how much chaos it would’ve caused,” Carlson said from his Maryland home Tuesday. “It was already turning into a media circus, and Adm. King didn’t want to risk it hitting the airwaves. They didn’t so much fear Japanese agents in America, but that somehow all the publicity of the trial would come to the attention of the Japanese and they would change the codes.”

Keep in mind the Grand Jury files were just unsealed in 2016!! This is a case where tens of thousands of lives could have been lost as a result. Maybe even more. But the Chicago Tribune, the Managing Editor and the Reporter were all called in and faced charges. They didn't go run to the Spanish Embassy and hide out until the war was over.

In general I'd say on a case by case basis as the rights of the individual are at least as important as the state.

Regarding Assange I believe there was an 18 count indictment but it's really hard to say whether there will be superseding indictments and who they may cover. They've already gone after others and there's probably more on the way.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

There's a really big gray stripe down the middle of that road I'd say. Certainly the ability for journalists to reveal the truth is extremely important in every sense. The point where it goes over a line is usually best handled in court rooms I suppose. Imperfect as they may be they're built for sorting through complex issues with conflicting arguments studied in excruciating detail.

One example of a very close call was the case in Chicago in I believe 1942 where a newspaper there published a story that revealed the US Government's successful decryption of the Japanese "Purple" code:

For 74 years, only members of a Chicago grand jury could definitively say why they declined to indict a reporter responsible for a 1942 front page article that implied American cryptanalysts had cracked the Japanese military code.

The documents were unsealed for a group of petitioners in late 2016 after a three-year court battle, and on Wednesday, a number of carefully selected documents will be publicly available online for the first time on the National Security Archive’s website, said John Prados, editor of the postings. The timing — just 10 days after the publication of “Stanley Johnston’s Blunder,” a novel by former journalist and historian Elliot Carlson — was merely coincidental, both men said. Carlson sued for the release of the grand jury documents with the help of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Prados testified as an expert...

...The grand jury declined to indict Tribune war correspondent Stanley Johnston and the Tribune’s then-managing editor, J. Loy Maloney, because Adm. Ernest J. King, who Carlson called “the adult in the room,” didn’t want to risk even more media attention and the chance that Japanese leaders would change the code from the one the Americans had already cracked.

“If this had gone on to a public trial, there’s no telling how much publicity it would’ve received or how much chaos it would’ve caused,” Carlson said from his Maryland home Tuesday. “It was already turning into a media circus, and Adm. King didn’t want to risk it hitting the airwaves. They didn’t so much fear Japanese agents in America, but that somehow all the publicity of the trial would come to the attention of the Japanese and they would change the codes.”

Keep in mind the Grand Jury files were just unsealed in 2016!! This is a case where tens of thousands of lives could have been lost as a result. Maybe even more. But the Chicago Tribune, the Managing Editor and the Reporter were all called in and faced charges. They didn't go run to the Spanish Embassy and hide out until the war was over.

In general I'd say on a case by case basis as the rights of the individual are at least as important as the state.

Regarding Assange I believe there was an 18 count indictment but it's really hard to say whether there will be superseding indictments and who they may cover. They've already gone after others and there's probably more on the way.

Thanks - Great reply, you write well. 

I thought there would be a grey area on this. 

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Bob Ness said:

WTF? How hard is it to make the archive unavailable or restrict access on a server? It isn't! Any fifth grader could! Wikileaks was responsible for the dump because it was in THEIR archive and in THEIR source's best interest to protect them. FCS they apparently knew about it for 7 months!...

These facts are why the links you post to UNATTRIBUTED authors at Consortium News are worse than useless because people actually believe the thrust of the article. They get difficult to read.

Bob, can you then explain why your formulation apparently does not start from the start - I.e. the US government organizations and political parties, that is the Pentagon, CIA, and DNC whose sloppy information security procedures assisted the leaks in the first place? Are they not then part of the conspiracy equally too?

From the “unattributed” Consortium News:

Ellsberg made an astute observation from the stand that the low-level field reports leaked by Manning contained information about U.S. torture and an assassination program that would never have been in such reports in Vietnam, which Ellsberg said he himself had written when he worked at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the war.

The existence of such programs, he said, would have been restricted to the highest levels of government. That thousands of people had clearance to read the reports Manning leaked showed that torture and assassination had been “normalized.” 

Bob, can you explain how the “attributed media” blew such major stories as the Warren Commission conclusions, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and “Russiagate” ( which was essentially retracted three weekends ago). Particular attention to WMD - because the Brown University Costs of War project shows since the “attributed media” blew the story and helped steer the USA into a devastating military disaster, about a million people were killed and a staggering 38 million persons have been displaced as war refugees. Ooops. But yeah, let’s shoulder Julian Assange with all the blame.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

 

 

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob, can you then explain why your formulation apparently does not start from the start - I.e. the US government organizations and political parties, that is the Pentagon, CIA, and DNC whose sloppy information security procedures assisted the leaks in the first place? Are they not then part of the conspiracy equally too?

She should have been raped after dressing in a bikini. Something like that, Jeff? You have a strange way of making victims. The perpetrators should be victimized? The victims are the real perpetrators?

The Pentagon, CIA and DNC are organizations that us US citizens entrust (no matter what your or my opinion of them is) to engage in our defense (by extension Canada and Europe too!!) and political concerns (DNC) for the purpose of furthering our society. We pay for them (Canadians get a free ride there) with our tax dollars and expect that they will be protected by courts and legal authorities from expensive and otherwise costly intrusions and theft of property, intellectual or physical. That's not unreasonable.

Wikileaks and it's members are not part of what has been assembled to inspect and oversee the performance of those institutions. I didn't ask them to purloin documents and create untold amounts of man hours and expense to undo their bungling of the information they received illegally. Wikileaks could have provided the information redacted and in tranches and maintained their security while accomplishing their "journalistic" endeavor. 

They didn't. I personally think that much of what they have done is amateurish and speaks more to their earnest desire to right wrongs (I'm sure they feel justified and I might agree with them most of the time) while not really knowing how to accomplish it properly. Assange is problematic because I believe his motives are different. His overt narcissism conflates reporting with his need for recognition and success in the business and that's where the problem lies. In principle "Wikileaks" is a great idea. In practice it became an extension of his ego.

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob, can you explain how the “attributed media” blew such major stories as the Warren Commission conclusions, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and “Russiagate” ( which was essentially retracted three weekends ago). Particular attention to WMD - because the Brown University Costs of War project shows since the “attributed media” blew the story and helped steer the USA into a devastating military disaster, about a million people were killed and a staggering 38 million persons have been displaced as war refugees. Ooops. But yeah, let’s shoulder Julian Assange with all the blame.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

Uh... Russiagate hasn't been retracted, Jeff. Nice try.

Either way - how do you know about it, Jeff? It wasn't Wikileaks. Any of the above examples you cite have been exposed and not necessarily by little publications. I could go on about these examples but with the exception of Russiagate I'm sure we would agree about them. I may even know stuff you don't about certain episodes!

Edited December 14, 2021 by Bob Ness

[W. Niederhut]

      Well, I appreciate the references from my two alma maters, Brown and Harvard, but it's truly irritating to watch Jeff Carter continue to deny the reality of the Trump/Putin Russia-gate swindle-- even comparing it to the M$M disinformation about the Warren Commission Report and Iraqi WMDs.  What bunk.

     Jeff has promoted this Russia-gate denial nonsense for the past four years in our discussions here. Basta per Dio!

     And Russia-gate is also relevant to the debate here about Julian Assange.

     My own view is that Assange and Wikileaks provided a valuable service to humanity by exposing U.S. war crimes and  our misguided involvement in the destruction of Libya and Syria.  For that, I thank him.

      The gripe that I have with Julian Assange is the deliberate, strategic role that he played with Russian military intelligence in helping to elect Donald Trump to the White House in 2016-- something which has been profoundly destructive to my country.

      Perhaps it's no big deal to Jeff Carter and our forum members across the pond that Trump was used by Putin to actualize the "Gerasimov Doctrine" -- to fracture U.S. society along racial and cultural fault lines.  It worked!

      Or that Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and rolled back pollution controls.  

      Or that Trump tried to sabotage Obamacare and defund Medicare and Medicaid in 2017-- after claiming in 2016 that his health plan would provide affordable healthcare for all Americans! 

      Or that Trump further slashed taxes for billionaires and corporations--increasing our national debt by $8 trillion in four years, without stimulating significant GDP or private sector job growth in the U.S.

     Or that Trump stacked our courts with pro-corporate Federalist Society Koch judges who will uphold Citizens United and Shelby v. Holder-- perpetuating corporate plutocracy in the U.S.

      But, as an American, the damage that Putin, Trump, and Assange have done to my country is a very big deal to me.

Edited December 14, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Benjamin Cole]

16 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

      Well, I appreciate the references from my two alma maters, Brown and Harvard, but it's truly irritating to watch Jeff Carter continuing to deny the reality of the Trump/Putin Russia-gate swindle-- even comparing it to the M$M disinformation about the Warren Commission Report and Iraqi WMDs.  What bunk.

     Jeff has promoted this Russia-gate denial nonsense for the past four years in our discussions here. Basta per Dio!

     And Russia-gate is also relevant to the debate here about Julian Assange.

     My own view is that Assange and Wikileaks provided a valuable service to humanity by exposing U.S. war crimes and  our misguided involvement in the destruction of Libya and Syria.  For that, I thank him.

      The gripe that I have with Julian Assange is the deliberate, strategic role that he played with Russian military intelligence in helping to elect Donald Trump to the White House in 2016-- something which has been profoundly destructive to my country.

      Perhaps it's no big deal to Jeff Carter and our forum members across the pond that Trump was used by Putin to actualize the "Gerasimov Doctrine" -- to fracture U.S. society along racial and cultural fault lines.  It worked!

      Or that Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and rolled back pollution controls.  

      Or that Trump tried to sabotage Obamacare and defund Medicare and Medicaid in 2017-- after claiming in 2016 that his health plan would provide affordable healthcare for all Americans! 

      Or that Trump further slashed taxes for billionaires and corporations--increasing our national debt by $8 trillion in four years, without stimulating significant GDP or private sector job growth in the U.S.

     Or that Trump stacked our courts with pro-corporate Federalist Society Koch judges who will uphold Citizens United and Shelby v. Holder-- perpetuating corporate plutocracy in the U.S.

      But, as an American, the damage that Putin, Trump, and Assange have done to my country is a very big deal.

"Perhaps it's no big deal to Jeff Carter and our forum members across the pond that Trump was used by Putin to actualize the "Gerasimov Doctrine" -- to fracture U.S. society along racial and cultural fault lines.  It worked!---W.

I wonder if it was Russians who carefully and skillfully played US media to make the Rittenhouse story a race story. 

Were the Russians were behind Jussie Smollett? Interesting question. 

[Ron Bulman]

40 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

She should have been raped after dressing in a bikini. Something like that, Jeff? You have a strange way of making victims. The perpetrators should be victimized? The victims are the real perpetrators?

The Pentagon, CIA and DNC are organizations that us US citizens entrust (no matter what your or my opinion of them is) to engage in our defense (by extension Canada and Europe too!!) and political concerns (DNC) for the purpose of furthering our society. We pay for them (Canadians get a free ride there) with our tax dollars and expect that they will be protected by courts and legal authorities from expensive and otherwise costly intrusions and theft of property, intellectual or physical. That's not unreasonable.

Wikileaks and it's members are not part of what has been assembled to inspect and oversee the performance of those institutions. I didn't ask them to purloin documents and create untold amounts of man hours and expense to undo their bungling of the information they received illegally. Wikileaks could have provided the information redacted and in tranches and maintained their security while accomplishing their "journalistic" endeavor. 

They didn't. I personally think that much of what they have done is amateurish and speaks more to their earnest desire to right wrongs (I'm sure they feel justified and I might agree with them most of the time) while not really knowing how to accomplish it properly. Assange is problematic because I believe his motives are different. His overt narcissism conflates reporting with his need for recognition and success in the business and that's where the problem lies. In principle "Wikileaks" is a great idea. In practice it became an extension of his ego.

Uh... Russiagate hasn't been retracted, Jeff. Nice try.

Either way - how do you know about it, Jeff? It wasn't Wikileaks. Any of the above examples you cite have been exposed and not necessarily by little publications. I could go on about these examples but with the exception of Russiagate I'm sure we would agree about them. I may even know stuff you don't about certain episodes!

So the former prez  and assange are narcissist's.  Yet the chump's son has cried foul outing dad on j-6,  Funny if not so serious.

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Or that Trump tried to sabotage Obamacare and defund Medicare and Medicaid in 2017-- after claiming in 2016 that his health plan would provide affordable healthcare for all Americans! 

That's coming out next week! You'll see. Everyone will be covered! It's just in draft form waiting for final embellishments!

Well said W.