That’s pretty much what it seems to amount to.
All of the focus has been astroturfed onto the fact that the leaks came from Russian sources, and away from the content of the leaks. The clear (though of course unstated) implication is that the wrong isn’t the DNC’s corruption, but Russia’s self-serving exposure of that corruption.
I’ve never bought this spin.
Certainly Russia had a hand in getting the leaks to Wikileaks, and certainly because they had an obvious vested interest in the US electing Putin’s sycophant Trump.
But I’ve never seen or heard of any specific evidence that any of it was “disinformation” - just the repeated unsubstantiated claim that it was. It appears to be exactly what it looks like - a detailed record of the DNC’s overtly fraudulent maneuvering to torpedo the Sanders campaign in order to ensure the nomination of Clinton, or more precisely, to torpedo the campaign of a sincere progressive who would likely threaten the ongoing flow of big donor soft money in order to ensure the nomination of a transparently corrupt neo-lib who could be counted upon to serve establishment interests and keep the soft money flowing. And notably, early on that was how the DNC treated it themselves, even going so far as to issue a public apology to the Sanders campaign “for the inexcusable remarks made over email” that did not reflect the DNC’s “steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.”
So what it actually all boils down to was that the DNC really was acting in a manner contrary to the public good, driven by their own greed and corruption, and the fact that Russia had a hand in exposing that in order to serve their own interests doesn’t alter that fact.
No matter how one slices it, the bulk of the blame for the whole thing rests squarely on the DNC. Yes - it served Russian interests to reveal the information, but had the DNC simply been operating in a legitimate, honest and neutral way, instead of self-servingly and dishonestly, there would’ve been nothing to reveal.
And just the other day, the Israelis were wringing their hands over the fact that 11 Israeli soldiers died in one day, but here they are, right back to killing Palestinian civilians at many times that rate, pretty much every single day.
It’s as if they’ve made sociopathy official policy.
Yep.
The goal is to be able to say something while evading responsibility for having said it.
Yes - he framed his statement with one of the stock phrases that people use when they want to be able to say something, then later, if necessary, claim that that’s not really what they said
I don’t think a news source has a responsibility to include that bit of transparent rhetorical trickery in a headline.
So… is he desperately dishonest or insane?
Because none of that hysterical gibberish made even the slightest bit of sense.
Holy shit - look at that face.
You can see it in every line and wrinkle - that’s not just an expression he made at some point - it’s his normal resting expression.
That’s the face of a man who has spent his entire life being angry and hateful.
How deliciously ironic that this is paywalled.
Yes - there have been widely differing accounts of events throughout this war.
On the one hand, there’s been Israel’s account. And on the other hand, there’s been the truth.
I never really liked Reddit. I avoided it for a long time, but finally relented and grudgingly signed up in 2011.
I was always on the lookout for a new home, and would follow links to any place that looked promising, but none of them ever panned out - they were always too dead or too narrowly focused or too shitty or behind a paywall or something. And I’d go back to Reddit.
Immediately after Spez’s petulant AMA, I happened on a link to join-lemmy.org. I was especially eager to find a different forum then, just because Reddit was set to get much worse much more quickly and the CEO is a twat, but I really didn’t expect anything of lemmy. I assumed that, just as with all the others over the years, I’d browse around a bit, be unimpressed, and leave.
Instead, I looked around and liked what I saw. And the more I looked, the more I liked it. And I just never went back, and have been here ever since.
I don’t think we can gatekeep it either.
But we can, or not, encourage it. I’d rather not. I’ve never - not even once in more than 30 years online - seen a forum get notably popular without it also, and obviously as a direct result, going to shit.
The great thing about the fediverse is that people have control over which instances they are around, and there will always be some more isolated ones if that’s what you prefer.
If the masses discover the fediverse and move here, that’s not going to remain the case, guaranteed.
They’ll removed and moan because content isn’t centralized (we’ve already seen that), and the rent-seeking fuckwads will, one way or another, rearrange things so that it is centralized, and specifically so that they can then squat on top of it and suck profit out of it, and it’ll end up just another facebook/twitter/instagram/reddit.
Count on it.
Why on Earth would we want to do that?
The last thing in the world the fediverse needs is a bunch of idiots blundering around in it.
Everybody else doing it.
What?
Where on earth did you get the idea that I’m trying to ascribe conspiracy theory belief to any specific cause, much less a single one? That’s the exact dynamic I’m criticizing.
That quote actually supports my point.
Exactly what is being said there is that the researchers did fall into just the trap I’m talking about, then were “surprised” when the study demonstrated that the matter was more complex and nuanced than they expected.
Amusingly enough, I would tend to think that the desire to ascribe belief in conspiracy theories to some specific and limited set of nominal causes is actually an example of the same sort of thinking that leads to belief in conspiracy theories in the first place. It’s trying to stuff some inherently very complex and nuanced dynamic into a simple, one-size-fits-all box.
I think the significant part there though is that it’s what the US government did almost 200 years ago. Not that that excuses it, but it was a much more primitive and ignorant world then, and at least some of it can be ascribed to that primitiveness and ignorance.
Doing the same thing in the modern world though - that’s just pure, unmitigated evil.
As intended.
Israel’s strategy with the West Bank is masterful. Wholly and completely evil, but masterful.
Either the Palestinians just accept their lot, in which case Israel incrementally takes their land through their “settler” proxies, or the Palestinians (entirely justifiably) try to fight back, in which case the IDF goes in and kills a bunch of them, and Israel takes their land anyway.
It’s fucking despicable, but it works, and if one is devoid of morality, empathy or simple human decency, that’s all that matters.
Ah. And all the pieces fall into place.
Motherfuckers.
I’m fully aware that the DNC is under no legal mandate to operate legitimately or honestly.
And that’s rather obviously entirely irrelevant.
In point of fact, if the legal standing of their actions is the only thing that matters, as you imply, then the entire notion that Russia willfully acted to harm them collapses. How could Russia harm them by leaking details of things that are not illegal and therefore (purportedly) entirely acceptable?
If, on the other hand, we stick with the way that things have been presented by the DNC itself - that Russia willfully acted to bring them harm - then rather obviously even they are taking the position that the legal status of their actions is irrelevant.
Go ahead and pick either one - I don’t care. Either there was nothing wrong with their actions, in which case they could not be harmed by having the details of their actions leaked, or they were harmed by the the leak of the details of their actions, in which case their actions were self-evidently judged to be wrong, and the legal standing of them is irrelevant.