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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On January 12 2017 05:06 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 04:38 zlefin wrote:On January 12 2017 03:45 Danglars wrote:On January 12 2017 03:12 zlefin wrote:On January 12 2017 03:02 Danglars wrote:On January 12 2017 02:51 zlefin wrote:On January 12 2017 02:45 Danglars wrote:
I have my doubts on how much Trump will do that actually makes America great again, beyond SC justice and ACA and the border. But this was making press conferences great again and I'm glad it'll be more like this than Bush-era/GHWB-era conduct for four more years--eight if the opposition party and its media supporters continue to not learn lessons from their mistakes in 2015-2016 campaigning. I see little evidence that removing aca woudl be creditable to trump, or that the replacemenet system will be any better. nor that the border changes will do anything actually productive. also, what do you mean by "great again"? what actual metrics are you using to measure greatness? what was better in the past specifically that could be improved now? in what way is america not great now? it's a pity still that the republicans ignored the constitution to delay the supreme court so they could have a chacne to get a an extra person on it. damaging the institutions for political gain  I know you think that about the border and ACA, don't worry. But in the minds of people that think differently to you, the first three would be productive steps taken to maga. I have the utmost confidence you know already or can rediscover the arguments made about the damage caused by the ACA, large-scale illegal immigration across the porous southern border, and the activist Supreme Court. I mean, if Republicans ignored the constitution, you must admit the Democrats did it first (Biden particularly). No need to be hyperpartisan. I leave it as an exercise for you to discover where in the constitution it says who makes the rules for he Senate conducting its business, part of which is the confirmation or rejection of nominees to the highest court. i'm not being hyperpartisan, you are  biden also didn't in fact do it, not like the republicans did here. that's a canard they feed people so they feel better about their improper decision. the senate didn't confirm or reject him, they didn't address it at all, which is a patent violation of the system. they abjectly refused to considre the matter, which is clearly improper. i think it about the border and the ACA because i'm correct. more border enforcement might be fine and reasonable, the wall is dumb. arguments have been made about the ACA, an actual factual look at the evidence shows it's unimpressive and poor, helps some and hurts others a little bit. making a superior replacement would be easy from a design standpoint, not so easy politically. the ACA did fix some things, and it's not at all clear that what's done will be better. and the notion of an "activist" supreme court is just the usual partisan nonsense not actually based in reality. you also failed to answer the core questions on waht can even constitute maga. so i'll assume you're just like the 85% or so of americans who have opinions but have a poor and wrong factual basis for their beliefs, heavily covered by partisan bias. I'll wait for your accompanying denouncement of Biden for vocally advocating for such an unconstitutional matter. Otherwise, I'm left thinking you're more opposed based on the party than on the principle. And yes, I am also aware you think the facts support your side of the story. I mean, do we have to rehash why both sides think the other doesn't have a leg to stand on? You have learned the answers to your previous questions, so move on. If Biden in fact did that, I denounce it. whether he actually did so, I'd have to look it up in depth. You can think as you like; it is fairly common statistically that people's opinions are more based on party than principle, as yours are. no need to rehash unless you have new evidence to present. sometimes one side is just wrong. and you never answered on maga so i'll assume that stands. moving on. I don't know if I'm surprised or not surprised that you didn't know about it. You sounded informed and confident when you condemned Republicans for doing it, so I would suppose a prominent Senator and later Vice President wanting the same would arouse your constitutional druthers.
Except Biden didn't want the same at the time. Firstly, he spoke much later in the election season (June 1992) than when Scalia died this time (February 2016). Secondly, he explicitly stated that it would be fine for Bush to nominate someone after the election and for the Senate to act upon that nomination before the beginning of the term of the winner of the election. He clearly said that he was not defending the idea that it should be the election winner's role to nominate a new Supreme Court justice should a vacancy arise before election day, during the mandate of the sitting president.
In any case, I fail to see how Biden's speech invalidates the criticism levied at Republicans for refusing to do their constitutional job -- why are you assuming that we can't also disagree with Biden? And the GOP went much further than what Biden was saying anyway, since it denied Obama a vote on his nominee and argued that the next president should be the one nominating the new justice.
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On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations
So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around?
Is it that much to want to see some hard evidence to justify any sort of response or repercussions?
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On January 12 2017 05:21 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around?
This claim of a double-standard is really tiring, and nauseatingly hypocritical. It wasn't the CIA that started Iraq, it was the previous Republican administration.
The CIA didn't tell Bush, "Hey, Saddam has WMDs, so you need to invade his country to prevent them from being used... because that makes sense."
The CIA said there was a source of dubious credibility that claimed Saddam was stockpiling WMDs. What the Bush administration did with that "intelligence" is the sad part. It doesn't take much Googling to see that.
I know I'm repeating myself. As I say: really tiring.
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On January 12 2017 05:10 ticklishmusic wrote:
no one told trump to "throw away" a multi billion dollar firm.
i find it rather odd that the lawyers here have trouble with the mechanics of a blind trust, though. sure the trump organization probably has a hilariously convoluted corporate org chart, but it's not that complicated to shove the whole thing under control of some trustees. unless of course there's so much shit they don't want to risk even the slightest possibility of exposure?
you could put it under a trust easily, but a blind trust isn't possible with the nature of the enterprises.
and the amount of branding in his organizations make a sale much harder.
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On January 12 2017 05:22 Leporello wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:21 Logo wrote:On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around? This claim of a double-standard is really tiring, and nauseatingly hypocritical. It wasn't the CIA that started Iraq, it was the previous Republican administration. The CIA didn't tell Bush, "Hey, Saddam has WMDs, so you need to invade his country to prevent them from being used... because that makes sense." The CIA said there was a source of dubious credibility that claimed Saddam was stockpiling WMDs. What the Bush administration did with that "intelligence" is the sad part. It doesn't take much Googling to see that. I know I'm repeating myself. As I say: really tiring.
I never mentioned Iraq.
I don't think you know the CIA's history nor the history of the other intelligence agencies.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations
Between his opposition to the standard US anti-Russia line and all the shit he has said about the intelligence folk (which he could easily make into policy), I could see why entrenched intelligence interests might want to stand in his way.
Could you, for example, perceive of a political motive for the CIA leaking the "Russia wanted to help Trump" story, even if you don't think that's what ultimately happened?
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On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations
Are you suggesting that the Bush administration has ZERO to do with wanting to invade Iraq and that it was all a plan by the CIA to... I don't actually know why the CIA cares about Iraq from an invasion standpoint--hard to be a spy in a place you're actively blowing up.
Or maybe the CIA did its job, gave info to the Bush Administration, who either (a) found it credible enough or (b) found it a good enough excuse to go to war.
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On January 12 2017 03:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 03:38 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. On January 12 2017 01:51 Acrofales wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. What do you mean? CNN reported there was an intelligence briefing about unverified information regarding Russia having leverage over Trump. There is nothing to act on except to attempt to verify that latter information. The briefing itself is newsworthy. Just as Comey's letter to Congress was newsworthy 2 weeks before the election. Comey's letter is in a different world considering it was in response to an already made public investigation. The briefing and the memos in question are not public and have nothing behind the allegation of what they contain(ed). They could have been in truth about anything else and nothing would change about what CNN reported on thats the problem. Comey makes an announcement that next week he has dirt on Hillary. Next week comes by and he shows us emails related to Weiner. Once again, the information was fairly meaningless because there was no dirt on Hillary. Comey knew that. But he presented it as evidence against Hillary before even telling us what it was, and even though the investigation was over since July, he decided to wait until November to announce. The anger was from how he attempted to create a feeling of there being evidence against Hillary to rile up anti-hillary sentiments. Not the actual emails he shared because, once again, there were no emails showing any wrongdoing. You're missing the point. The content of what comey said has nothing to do with what he did. Comey made an announcement that his previous statement has to be changed temporarily in light of possible new information. He makes the announcement later that the new information didn't change anything. He had to make these statements as a CYA move because the investigation was made public. The difference here is that there is a name behind what Comey did and its Comey. Names are also irrelevant--you could always get upset at Mi6
Semantics. Names are relevant because they point to an actual entity.
On January 12 2017 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:I encourage people that think of the CNN coverage as inaccurate or fake news to take their challenge: Show nested quote +We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate. Really, Buzzfeed fucked CNN over here; that's why CNN went on record criticizing the Buzzfeed dump. Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 03:36 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:11 TheTenthDoc wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. The same CNN sources saying the briefing occurred corroborated that a 2-page synopsis of the oppo research from the MI6 agent was in the briefing. CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. The sources are the problem though without a name or trust beyond the organization that is CNN theres nothing to argue against that its fake. Trump can say that its fake news and theres nothing CNN or anyone who supports CNN can argue against him on that. Not to mention the former MI6 agent is retained by someone who benefits from this story regardless of its credibility. So far absolutely nothing has shown their sources to be false, not even the Trump team (which has also not said any of the sources were incorrect, notably). McCain has corroborated the story. The reporter who worked on this broke Watergate. There is the benefit of the doubt and then there's creating nonsense false equivalencies that all stories like these should be dismissed (which is of course the right's modus operendi).
Semantics again people say the same about Wikileaks but people have a different opinion about that for some reason thats obvious and clear. The reporter who broke Watergate was reporting on a crime that had already happened, completely different story. McCain has corroborated that there was a briefing and that there was a memo but didn't believe that it was real, again would be hearsay and rumor.
Generalizing the right as dismissing scandals when we got through the same thing on the emails with Hillary is joke.
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I'm glad we're spending as much time scrutinizing the motivations of the leakers as we did the motivations of the DNC hackers.
On January 12 2017 05:28 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 03:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:38 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. On January 12 2017 01:51 Acrofales wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. What do you mean? CNN reported there was an intelligence briefing about unverified information regarding Russia having leverage over Trump. There is nothing to act on except to attempt to verify that latter information. The briefing itself is newsworthy. Just as Comey's letter to Congress was newsworthy 2 weeks before the election. Comey's letter is in a different world considering it was in response to an already made public investigation. The briefing and the memos in question are not public and have nothing behind the allegation of what they contain(ed). They could have been in truth about anything else and nothing would change about what CNN reported on thats the problem. Comey makes an announcement that next week he has dirt on Hillary. Next week comes by and he shows us emails related to Weiner. Once again, the information was fairly meaningless because there was no dirt on Hillary. Comey knew that. But he presented it as evidence against Hillary before even telling us what it was, and even though the investigation was over since July, he decided to wait until November to announce. The anger was from how he attempted to create a feeling of there being evidence against Hillary to rile up anti-hillary sentiments. Not the actual emails he shared because, once again, there were no emails showing any wrongdoing. You're missing the point. The content of what comey said has nothing to do with what he did. Comey made an announcement that his previous statement has to be changed temporarily in light of possible new information. He makes the announcement later that the new information didn't change anything. He had to make these statements as a CYA move because the investigation was made public. The difference here is that there is a name behind what Comey did and its Comey. Names are also irrelevant--you could always get upset at Mi6 Semantics. Names are relevant because they point to an actual entity. Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:I encourage people that think of the CNN coverage as inaccurate or fake news to take their challenge: We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate. Really, Buzzfeed fucked CNN over here; that's why CNN went on record criticizing the Buzzfeed dump. On January 12 2017 03:36 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:11 TheTenthDoc wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. The same CNN sources saying the briefing occurred corroborated that a 2-page synopsis of the oppo research from the MI6 agent was in the briefing. CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. The sources are the problem though without a name or trust beyond the organization that is CNN theres nothing to argue against that its fake. Trump can say that its fake news and theres nothing CNN or anyone who supports CNN can argue against him on that. Not to mention the former MI6 agent is retained by someone who benefits from this story regardless of its credibility. So far absolutely nothing has shown their sources to be false, not even the Trump team (which has also not said any of the sources were incorrect, notably). McCain has corroborated the story. The reporter who worked on this broke Watergate. There is the benefit of the doubt and then there's creating nonsense false equivalencies that all stories like these should be dismissed (which is of course the right's modus operendi). Semantics again people say the same about Wikileaks but people have a different opinion about that for some reason thats obvious and clear. The reporter who broke Watergate was reporting on a crime that had already happened, completely different story. McCain has corroborated that there was a briefing and that there was a memo but didn't believe that it was real, again would be hearsay and rumor. Generalizing the right as dismissing scandals when we got through the same thing on the emails with Hillary is joke.
Um. If McCain didn't believe the memo was real why does his official press briefing say he handed it over to the FBI?
Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.
You don't seem to understand what's going on. I'm glad you failed the CNN challenge though!
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 12 2017 05:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I'm glad we're spending as much time scrutinizing the motivations of the leakers as we did the motivations of the DNC hackers.
Not sure if that was sarcasm - we spent about the past six months talking about the leaks, who did it, and why - and we're talking about the motivations of these leakers now. Arguably it's the biggest story of the election other than the fact that Trump won.
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On January 12 2017 05:21 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around? Is it that much to want to see some hard evidence to justify any sort of response or repercussions?
we're talking about presumably classified stuff, if that would not be the case we'd not need to argue, we already have their non-classified summary
On January 12 2017 05:24 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations Between his opposition to the standard US anti-Russia line and all the shit he has said about the intelligence folk (which he could easily make into policy), I could see why entrenched intelligence interests might want to stand in his way. Could you, for example, perceive of a political motive for the CIA leaking the "Russia wanted to help Trump" story, even if you don't think that's what ultimately happened?
Sure if they'd really not like Trump but if that would influence their behaviour the FBI wouldn't have started this ridiculous Comey scandal in the first place. Doesn't really sound all too convincing.
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On January 12 2017 05:32 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I'm glad we're spending as much time scrutinizing the motivations of the leakers as we did the motivations of the DNC hackers. Not sure if that was sarcasm - we spent about the past six months talking about the leaks, who did it, and why - and we're talking about the motivations of these leakers now. Arguably it's the biggest story of the election other than the fact that Trump won.
Mostly just commenting that the same people bringing up motivations of these leakers argued the only thing that mattered was the DNC emails and discussing motivations was purely a smokescreen to avoid discussing the content (and spent months denying we should think Russia had anything to do with it, even after intelligence agencies said otherwise).
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On January 12 2017 05:28 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 03:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:38 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. On January 12 2017 01:51 Acrofales wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. What do you mean? CNN reported there was an intelligence briefing about unverified information regarding Russia having leverage over Trump. There is nothing to act on except to attempt to verify that latter information. The briefing itself is newsworthy. Just as Comey's letter to Congress was newsworthy 2 weeks before the election. Comey's letter is in a different world considering it was in response to an already made public investigation. The briefing and the memos in question are not public and have nothing behind the allegation of what they contain(ed). They could have been in truth about anything else and nothing would change about what CNN reported on thats the problem. Comey makes an announcement that next week he has dirt on Hillary. Next week comes by and he shows us emails related to Weiner. Once again, the information was fairly meaningless because there was no dirt on Hillary. Comey knew that. But he presented it as evidence against Hillary before even telling us what it was, and even though the investigation was over since July, he decided to wait until November to announce. The anger was from how he attempted to create a feeling of there being evidence against Hillary to rile up anti-hillary sentiments. Not the actual emails he shared because, once again, there were no emails showing any wrongdoing. You're missing the point. The content of what comey said has nothing to do with what he did. Comey made an announcement that his previous statement has to be changed temporarily in light of possible new information. He makes the announcement later that the new information didn't change anything. He had to make these statements as a CYA move because the investigation was made public. The difference here is that there is a name behind what Comey did and its Comey. Names are also irrelevant--you could always get upset at Mi6 Semantics. Names are relevant because they point to an actual entity. Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:I encourage people that think of the CNN coverage as inaccurate or fake news to take their challenge: We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate. Really, Buzzfeed fucked CNN over here; that's why CNN went on record criticizing the Buzzfeed dump. On January 12 2017 03:36 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:11 TheTenthDoc wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. The same CNN sources saying the briefing occurred corroborated that a 2-page synopsis of the oppo research from the MI6 agent was in the briefing. CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. The sources are the problem though without a name or trust beyond the organization that is CNN theres nothing to argue against that its fake. Trump can say that its fake news and theres nothing CNN or anyone who supports CNN can argue against him on that. Not to mention the former MI6 agent is retained by someone who benefits from this story regardless of its credibility. So far absolutely nothing has shown their sources to be false, not even the Trump team (which has also not said any of the sources were incorrect, notably). McCain has corroborated the story. The reporter who worked on this broke Watergate. There is the benefit of the doubt and then there's creating nonsense false equivalencies that all stories like these should be dismissed (which is of course the right's modus operendi). Semantics again people say the same about Wikileaks but people have a different opinion about that for some reason thats obvious and clear. The reporter who broke Watergate was reporting on a crime that had already happened, completely different story. McCain has corroborated that there was a briefing and that there was a memo but didn't believe that it was real, again would be hearsay and rumor. Generalizing the right as dismissing scandals when we got through the same thing on the emails with Hillary is joke.
Are you actually arguing with me that its semantics that it doesn't matter what name people call something?
Do you know the meaning of the word semantics? Like, literally, do you even know the word that you using? Because I don't think you do.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I read a narrative that Comey apparently felt he was in a no-win situation, but that he felt that if he didn't inform Congress then the backlash would be severe. I tend to believe that because despite a few misgivings about certain actions I tend to think highly of Comey and his tenure - especially compared to the leadership of the CIA and NSA.
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On January 12 2017 05:34 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:21 Logo wrote:On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
....
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around? Is it that much to want to see some hard evidence to justify any sort of response or repercussions? we're talking about presumably classified stuff, if that would not be the case we'd not need to argue, we already have their non-classified summary Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:24 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
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THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations Between his opposition to the standard US anti-Russia line and all the shit he has said about the intelligence folk (which he could easily make into policy), I could see why entrenched intelligence interests might want to stand in his way. Could you, for example, perceive of a political motive for the CIA leaking the "Russia wanted to help Trump" story, even if you don't think that's what ultimately happened? Sure if they'd really not like Trump but if that would influence their behaviour the FBI wouldn't have started this ridiculous Comey scandal in the first place. Doesn't really sound all too convincing.
For clarification--are you saying the CIA is attacking Trump because the FBI possibly attacked Hillary?
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 12 2017 05:35 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:32 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I'm glad we're spending as much time scrutinizing the motivations of the leakers as we did the motivations of the DNC hackers. Not sure if that was sarcasm - we spent about the past six months talking about the leaks, who did it, and why - and we're talking about the motivations of these leakers now. Arguably it's the biggest story of the election other than the fact that Trump won. Mostly just commenting that the same people bringing up motivations of these leakers argued the only thing that mattered was the DNC emails and discussing motivations was purely a smokescreen to avoid discussing the content (and spent months denying we should think Russia had anything to do with it, even after intelligence agencies said otherwise).
The difference? The emails were verified to be authentic documents.
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we're talking about presumably classified stuff, if that would not be the case we'd not need to argue, we already have their non-classified summary
Their non-classified summary has no actual evidence beyond a bunch of circumstantial evidence which is nice in terms of building some trust, but it's hardly indicative evidence.
A lot of it depends on the actual repercussion or response being talked about, but if we're talking about something with actual severity that information available just isn't good enough. Like expelling the diplomats seems like a response appropriate enough for the information the public has (something with perhaps more symbolic weight than actual repercussions).
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On January 12 2017 05:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:I'm glad we're spending as much time scrutinizing the motivations of the leakers as we did the motivations of the DNC hackers. Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:28 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:38 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. On January 12 2017 01:51 Acrofales wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. What do you mean? CNN reported there was an intelligence briefing about unverified information regarding Russia having leverage over Trump. There is nothing to act on except to attempt to verify that latter information. The briefing itself is newsworthy. Just as Comey's letter to Congress was newsworthy 2 weeks before the election. Comey's letter is in a different world considering it was in response to an already made public investigation. The briefing and the memos in question are not public and have nothing behind the allegation of what they contain(ed). They could have been in truth about anything else and nothing would change about what CNN reported on thats the problem. Comey makes an announcement that next week he has dirt on Hillary. Next week comes by and he shows us emails related to Weiner. Once again, the information was fairly meaningless because there was no dirt on Hillary. Comey knew that. But he presented it as evidence against Hillary before even telling us what it was, and even though the investigation was over since July, he decided to wait until November to announce. The anger was from how he attempted to create a feeling of there being evidence against Hillary to rile up anti-hillary sentiments. Not the actual emails he shared because, once again, there were no emails showing any wrongdoing. You're missing the point. The content of what comey said has nothing to do with what he did. Comey made an announcement that his previous statement has to be changed temporarily in light of possible new information. He makes the announcement later that the new information didn't change anything. He had to make these statements as a CYA move because the investigation was made public. The difference here is that there is a name behind what Comey did and its Comey. Names are also irrelevant--you could always get upset at Mi6 Semantics. Names are relevant because they point to an actual entity. On January 12 2017 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:I encourage people that think of the CNN coverage as inaccurate or fake news to take their challenge: We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate. Really, Buzzfeed fucked CNN over here; that's why CNN went on record criticizing the Buzzfeed dump. On January 12 2017 03:36 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:11 TheTenthDoc wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. The same CNN sources saying the briefing occurred corroborated that a 2-page synopsis of the oppo research from the MI6 agent was in the briefing. CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. The sources are the problem though without a name or trust beyond the organization that is CNN theres nothing to argue against that its fake. Trump can say that its fake news and theres nothing CNN or anyone who supports CNN can argue against him on that. Not to mention the former MI6 agent is retained by someone who benefits from this story regardless of its credibility. So far absolutely nothing has shown their sources to be false, not even the Trump team (which has also not said any of the sources were incorrect, notably). McCain has corroborated the story. The reporter who worked on this broke Watergate. There is the benefit of the doubt and then there's creating nonsense false equivalencies that all stories like these should be dismissed (which is of course the right's modus operendi). Semantics again people say the same about Wikileaks but people have a different opinion about that for some reason thats obvious and clear. The reporter who broke Watergate was reporting on a crime that had already happened, completely different story. McCain has corroborated that there was a briefing and that there was a memo but didn't believe that it was real, again would be hearsay and rumor. Generalizing the right as dismissing scandals when we got through the same thing on the emails with Hillary is joke. Um. If McCain didn't believe the memo was real why does his official press briefing say he handed it over to the FBI? Show nested quote +Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue. You don't seem to understand what's going on. I'm glad you failed the CNN challenge though!
He literaly says he doesn't know if they're accurate or not and just hands them over to the FBI to see if they can find out if they're accurate or not. Thats what everyone would do in that situation. Theres no smoking gun to "idk hey guys want to run this down to see if its real or no?"
On January 12 2017 05:36 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:28 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:38 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. On January 12 2017 01:51 Acrofales wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. What do you mean? CNN reported there was an intelligence briefing about unverified information regarding Russia having leverage over Trump. There is nothing to act on except to attempt to verify that latter information. The briefing itself is newsworthy. Just as Comey's letter to Congress was newsworthy 2 weeks before the election. Comey's letter is in a different world considering it was in response to an already made public investigation. The briefing and the memos in question are not public and have nothing behind the allegation of what they contain(ed). They could have been in truth about anything else and nothing would change about what CNN reported on thats the problem. Comey makes an announcement that next week he has dirt on Hillary. Next week comes by and he shows us emails related to Weiner. Once again, the information was fairly meaningless because there was no dirt on Hillary. Comey knew that. But he presented it as evidence against Hillary before even telling us what it was, and even though the investigation was over since July, he decided to wait until November to announce. The anger was from how he attempted to create a feeling of there being evidence against Hillary to rile up anti-hillary sentiments. Not the actual emails he shared because, once again, there were no emails showing any wrongdoing. You're missing the point. The content of what comey said has nothing to do with what he did. Comey made an announcement that his previous statement has to be changed temporarily in light of possible new information. He makes the announcement later that the new information didn't change anything. He had to make these statements as a CYA move because the investigation was made public. The difference here is that there is a name behind what Comey did and its Comey. Names are also irrelevant--you could always get upset at Mi6 Semantics. Names are relevant because they point to an actual entity. On January 12 2017 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:I encourage people that think of the CNN coverage as inaccurate or fake news to take their challenge: We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate. Really, Buzzfeed fucked CNN over here; that's why CNN went on record criticizing the Buzzfeed dump. On January 12 2017 03:36 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 03:11 TheTenthDoc wrote:On January 12 2017 03:09 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On January 12 2017 01:44 Sermokala wrote:On January 12 2017 01:30 Doodsmack wrote:
CNN reported true information, beyond that it's just the reaction of the audience. Individual responsibility right? You say that CNN reported true information and then you say that the reaction of the audience is their responsibility? Do you understand how this is contradictory? If we were sure that what CNN reported was true then we should act on it. The problem is that we don't know for sure what part of what CNN reported is true and what isn't because they don't have a verifiable source for it. They're simply reporting on hearsay and rumors regardless of how credible those rumors are they're simply not something an organization that trades in public trust should be dealing with. The true information that CNN reported on is that Trump was briefed on the memos. CNN said the memos are not corroborated. The true information that CNN reported on was that trump was briefed ON MEMOS. CNN can't verify what the memos are nor what they contained. This means that what Trump was briefed on is rumor and hearsay. The same CNN sources saying the briefing occurred corroborated that a 2-page synopsis of the oppo research from the MI6 agent was in the briefing. CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. The sources are the problem though without a name or trust beyond the organization that is CNN theres nothing to argue against that its fake. Trump can say that its fake news and theres nothing CNN or anyone who supports CNN can argue against him on that. Not to mention the former MI6 agent is retained by someone who benefits from this story regardless of its credibility. So far absolutely nothing has shown their sources to be false, not even the Trump team (which has also not said any of the sources were incorrect, notably). McCain has corroborated the story. The reporter who worked on this broke Watergate. There is the benefit of the doubt and then there's creating nonsense false equivalencies that all stories like these should be dismissed (which is of course the right's modus operendi). Semantics again people say the same about Wikileaks but people have a different opinion about that for some reason thats obvious and clear. The reporter who broke Watergate was reporting on a crime that had already happened, completely different story. McCain has corroborated that there was a briefing and that there was a memo but didn't believe that it was real, again would be hearsay and rumor. Generalizing the right as dismissing scandals when we got through the same thing on the emails with Hillary is joke. Are you actually arguing with me that its semantics that it doesn't matter what name people call something? Do you know the meaning of the word semantics? Like, literally, do you even know the word that you using? Because I don't think you do.
You said names don't mean anything when I said comey had a name behind it and it was comey. this CNN thing doesn't have a name behind it because its an unnamed source. I said thats semantics because the names themselves don't actually matter because they're just there to point to one unique entity thats responsible for it being real or not.
If you lack the respect to give who you're arguing with the benefit of the doubt when you're the one thats confused with whats being said you arn't arguing in good faith. Stop that.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
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On January 12 2017 05:37 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2017 05:34 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:21 Logo wrote:On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
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One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
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THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations So we should trust an organization with a repeated history of lying because we can't see their motivation to lie this time around? Is it that much to want to see some hard evidence to justify any sort of response or repercussions? we're talking about presumably classified stuff, if that would not be the case we'd not need to argue, we already have their non-classified summary On January 12 2017 05:24 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:20 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:18 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 05:15 Nyxisto wrote:On January 12 2017 05:05 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:
IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
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One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
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THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Source. What ever happened to the Democratic Party that was deeply skeptical of the CIA after Iraq? Did convenience change the trustworthiness of the organization? What would even be the motivation of the CIA to slander the president elect without any reason? Not quite sure how that ties into this issue. Can you clarify? In the case of Iraq the intelligence community had a clear motivation to lie, they wanted to justify a war. So being sceptical seems natural. What's there to gain here? Why should we assume they are for some reason not impartial? They don't have anything to gain by smearing the soon-to-be president if it's all fabricated and the three letter agencies aren't traditionally liberal organisations Between his opposition to the standard US anti-Russia line and all the shit he has said about the intelligence folk (which he could easily make into policy), I could see why entrenched intelligence interests might want to stand in his way. Could you, for example, perceive of a political motive for the CIA leaking the "Russia wanted to help Trump" story, even if you don't think that's what ultimately happened? Sure if they'd really not like Trump but if that would influence their behaviour the FBI wouldn't have started this ridiculous Comey scandal in the first place. Doesn't really sound all too convincing. For clarification--are you saying the CIA is attacking Trump because the FBI possibly attacked Hillary?
No, I'm saying that there isn't any reason to think that the agencies acted because of some personal grudge against anybody.
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