Evan Davis (smiling): “I want to talk to you about Julian Assange….”
“I want to talk to you about Julian Assange….”
Evan Davis smoothly transforms from nice-but-dim to ideological assassin at the 20:44 mark….
Chomsky is an ok political commentator. I have no respect for him as a scientist. As a scientist he was motivated by service to himself and his ideas, not service to science. So I take him with a grain of salt in any situation.
At the end of the vid, when asked about Assange, Chomsky says one thing that is pure bs, imo. He said (re: Wikileaks) “I don’t know how they decide what to leak or not.” Assange leaked anti Hillary info at just the right moments in the 2016 campaign that would most benefit Trump and most damage Clinton. The motive is clear as crystal. Assange made it clear that he was out to get Clinton, thru out that campaign.
But back to the current US charges against Assange. As much as I despise Assange, and as much as I appreciate the irony of his being threatened so severely by the very administration that he was so determined to get elected, most of the current charges against him are actually an attempt by this administration to criminalize journalism. This Trump administration is seeking all avenues of keeping Trump above the law. Undermining the 1st Amendment is one of his key objectives toward that goal.
I don’t think that Trump has yet stacked the courts enough to get such unConstitutional rulings through. He has appointed 100 ideologically “conservative” federal judges already, along with his stacking of the SCOTUS. But hopefully that is not enough to so obviously go against freedom of the press.
Okay time for some reading assignments.
Assange, Avowed Foe of Clinton, Timed Email Release for Democratic Convention
By Charlie Savage - July 26, 2016
How Much Did WikiLeaks Hurt Hillary Clinton?
By Harry Enten | DEC. 23, 2016,
<a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clinton/">https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clinton/</a>
What Julian Assange’s War on Hillary Clinton Says About WikiLeaks
Robert Mackey | August 6 2016
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/06/accusing-wikileaks-bias-beside-point/
IN LEAKED CHATS, WIKILEAKS DISCUSSES PREFERENCE FOR GOP OVER CLINTON, RUSSIA, TROLLING, AND FEMINISTS THEY DON’T LIKE
Micah Lee, Cora Currier | February 14 2018,
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/">https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/</a>
Guess I’m just saying TimB, makes a good point, if you don’t get it, perhaps the above will help you appreciate, what a one-sided Me First guy he is. Freedom fighter my ass.
CC: Thanks for backing up my claim about Assange with those links.
CaitlinJ on RMaddow’s sudden lurch into defending Julian Assange. [Sic!] -
And she’s not alone. Other mediaw hores, suddenly feeling the wind up their own kilts, are breaking the anti-Julian ranks:
That is a quite disingenuous spin. “Finally Realize”? It was just a couple of days since the Trump admin came out with all the bogus anti-journalist charges on Assange. SO I call bs on that. It is quite consistent to bad mouth Assange for being the self-serving squirrel that he is, and to now be opposed to charges against him, that were just levied, re: the simple journalistic right to publish leaked info.
A self-serving squirrel human can, acting as a journalist, constitutionally publish info provided by a whistleblower. He can’t help the whistleblower get the info, but he can publish it.
He can't help the whistleblower get the info,
Isn’t that what they are saying he did?
The 1st charge that was made awhile back had to do with Assange allegedly helping Chelsea Manning get the password that would help him/her get the classified info. Maybe they can convict him on that. Idk.
The many charges added just recently are about him publishing info. All legitimate investigative journalists sometimes publish info that they get from whistleblowers. This is protected by the 1st Amendment. If Assange gets convicted of that, then Trump will have taken a giant step toward shutting down our free press, because the same decision could likely be applied to any journalist.
Obama jailed more whistle blowers than all the presidents put together
He commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence.
Not pardoned
Obama also did not go after your hero Assange with the legal system.
If u want the perfect ideal of a progressive POTUS, good luck. Chances are u r going to get something less than that at best. So don’t kill off the good for the sake of a perfection that will not be realized. Especially when the alternative is something like Donald J Trump.
Didnt stop the grand jury either
Obama was not a progressive. Hope and change? More like hopleless
If u preferred Romney in '12 or McCain in '08, or Hillary in '08 then complain about Obama. Cuz that was our choices.
Great choice. Right or even more right wing
That is a distorted perception, imo, but even if it were correct, the better choice would be right, as opposed to even more right. So u can be sanctimonious and allow the even more right to prevail and thus cut off your nose because you don’t like your face. Or u can keep your nose to fight another day.
<p style="padding-left: 40px;">Thats a choice for no change and a sham democracy.</p>
No YOU ARE WRONG. It is a choice in which you either wind up with something you don’t like or something you like even less. See, in a democracy, you don’t always get what you want most. And if you don’t accept that reality, you may wind up with the worst of possibilities.
The progressives who had their panties in a wad because Bernie did not get the nomination, and then refused to vote for Clinton, helped give us Trump. So their sanctimonious ideological purity gave us an administration that is stacking the federal courts at a record pace with right wing judges and which has already, similarly, stacked the SCOTUS and may stack it further. So for a generation or more we most probably (if not definitely) will suffer under the reign of a harshly right wing SCOTUS.
You with your dysfunctional logic did not vote for Clinton. You helped give us Trump. By doing that you helped set back not only the potential of attaining progressive goals, but you also helped set back even the maintenance of progressive goals. We are currently on the cusp of women losing personal reproductive choice. Instead of having a couple of moderate Justices in the SCOTUS, we have a couple of hard right biased Justices with maybe more to come. Instead of being close to being able to overturn Citizen’s United, we are probably, now generations away from that. So much for getting money and corporations out of politics. You and your ilk who can’t compromise, when compromise is the last best bet, are a plague on the ultimate attainment of progressive goals.
Having Clinton as POTUS would not have meant that change for the better would never happen. But it would have precluded the change for the worse that we are now getting.