You've got a one presidential candidate claiming that the other is Bad Guy because he might have ties to The Russians.
It sounds like something from McCarthyism, or from the height of the cold war.
And now the mainstream attempts to discredit what is effectively a whistleblowing service seem to center around The Russians.
It's creepy.
And while it's ironic to watch the media that could not have been more supportive of Wikileaks when the reveals focused on Bush-era scandals (at least some of which deserved the attention as abuses) now discovering that Assange is as self-interested as they come now that his dumps concern Clinton, who they're clearly much more supportive of than Trump (justifiably), but he's been known to despise Hillary for a long time now, and the recent dumps have been far less carefully redacted this time around. Wikileaks should be a whistleblowing service. Unfortunately, Assange won't let it be that simple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6mARUrPtXk&feature=youtu.be...
"There’s been a lot of misquoting of me and WikiLeaks publications. In this particular case, the misquoting has to do with that we intend, or I intend, to harm Hillary Clinton or that I don’t like Hillary Clinton. All those are false. They come about as a result it seems of this campaign and those who are trying to personalize our publications."
I would suggest to you that the world is more complicated than the soundbites vomited to you by the as of lately, largely discredited media and Obama administration.
The accusations against Assad change as necessary. It used to be Sarin, until that was disproved, for example. Bottom line, they just really want Syria to be destroyed like Iraq and Libya were, and will make up accusations as necessary. Did he drop some barrel bombs (home made bombs)? Probably. Did some of them hit civilians? Probably. The US has killed it's share of civilians also, hasn't it?
You don't know anything, but you want a nuclear war with Russia. Seems appropriate.
EDIT: just want clarify that I don't necessarily disagree that Iraq and Libya were disasters, and that the Syrian situation seems to have devolved into a no good options situation, but that in no way excuses Assad's human rights violations.
If Assad's regime falls, the Al-Queda and ISIS affiliated groups move in. I'm not sure America wants that. Do we want that? Hard to say!
Saudi Arabia supports the Assad regime falling because the Assad regime is not Sunni.
If we set up a no fly zone in Syria, we are then in direct conflict with Russia's forces. It's no longer a proxy war.
I hope there's a way to be against US intervention in Syria(if only because of grim realpolitik reasons) and simultaneously not defend Assad.
I fully recognize that the Assad regime is terrible(I can pummel you with New Yorker articles). I don't quite believe the Assad people used poison gas, I think the jury is still out on that.
Am I defending he may have killed civilians while bombing rebels? Well, not defending, but putting in perspective, since we kill civilians almost daily.
Am I saying that you have been lied to by an administration that destroyed Libya and wants nothing more than to do the same to Syria? Yes, I am.
Nobody said you need to know every event in Syria to form an opinion. You just need to know about a single, proven event that supports the war hysteria narrative you have been fed.
Do you?
The US government paid out a pathetic $6000 to families of the dead civilians. I'm guessing that didn't quite break the bank.
1) It's a war. There is a fog of war where accurate information is not always available.
2) It's a common tactic to lie about your enemy to garner more money and weapons from your US sugar daddy.
3) The US government itself has an agenda to topple Syria for it's own reasons and those of it's Sunni ally, Saudi Arabia.
But hey, let's go to war with Russia based on unproven accusations. I wonder if you're old enough to remember Iraq, and the lies we were told about that? In 2003, we were told a lot of lies to get the population behind the destruction of Iraq. That was 13 years ago, so you were probably in high school or grade school. But it does happen that our government lies to the populous when it wants to destroy a country.
Perhaps this sounds harsh, but consider the possibility that US intervention in conflicts among and within other sovereign nations may do more harm than good. "Team America: World Police" is a fun movie. It may not be the best of foreign policy goals.
Iran and Syria support Hezbollah because they are unhappy with Israels expansion. Lots of people are unhappy with Israels expansion. How many UN resolutions have condemned Israel for it's actions? You count them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_con...
We are Israels big buddy, so we give scary names to the countries that support Hezbollah. But at the same time, we support rebel groups all over the world. Hell, we're supporting rebel groups in Syria right now. We also supported them in Libya.
Don't let the fact that Syria is on a list because of our unhealthy relationship with Israel, make you forget that we belong on that same list ourselves.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism#Sy...
Something's definitely fishy about the resurgence of the anti-Russia propaganda in the United States.
I recently found a copy of The Soviet Achievement (1967) [1] in a library's discarded booksale. From the jacket:
"... This is a study of the deliberate creation of a new industrial society from a relatively backward, underdeveloped and basically rural country. Mr. Nettl illustrates the shifting balance between theory and practice, the attempt to apply Marxist ideology to practical problems, and the evolution of those distinctively Soviet solutions which have made the USSR one of the two dominating world powers. ..."
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=z81BAAAAIAAJ
My impression is that the Soviets were never the villains that they were portrayed to be in the West. They knew they were behind, couldn't keep up with the US, and were quite afraid of western efforts to subjugate them.
I like Scott Adams' take on 'blaming the Russians':
When Clinton’s surrogates respond to questions about
Wikileaks by saying the Russians are behind it, that’s an
acknowledgment of guilt. Guilty people almost always
question the source of the information first. Innocent
people start with a clear denial, or sometimes confusion
as to why the question is being asked.
> "My impression is that the Soviets were never the villains that they were portrayed to be in the West. They knew they were behind, couldn't keep up with the US, and were quite afraid of western efforts to subjugate them."
Well, the Stalin government killed millions of people, had massive propaganda campaigns, and was rife with corruption. They certainly felt there was an existential threat, as did the US and other western nations, but that's not surprising in that sort of political environment.
Were they villains? Well, not necessarily. Undoubtedly there were a lot of officials who truly believed in the cause they were supporting, but there was also a lot of self-serving abuse of power that started at the top and worked its way down, at the expense of the citizens (to a larger and more extreme extent than what happens in the West).
TL;DR very few people are truly evil but it's hard to imagine the soviets as good guys either; the same is true of the current Russian government, which is very apparently corrupt and frequently abuses its power and, lately, starts wars it knows it can get away with, so there's a very tangible sense that Russia's current motives are bad for the majority of people, including Russian citizens.
Clinton's famous "reset button" was an effort to try to create an opening to reverse that (or, more cynically, merely to be seen as making such an effort.)
The jews suffered heavily from this in the early 20th century/late 19th century, they were constantly used by others for justifications of power grabs or used as distractions. Before that "Vikings" were heavily used as a constant abstract threat by the English government in the 13-15th century. The church used it to recruit and crown used it to justify authority. In public announcements and oratory they would often warn the population about the threat of savage invasion, spreading fake stories of previous invasions, even though there were zero significant viking events in those times. Much like how anti-semites spread a fake story of Jewish consipracy to take over the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of...
Russia is flawed, corrupt, has some backwards policies and cultural norms (see: homosexuality), and does pose some danger in a foreign policy sense, but largely they're a heavily weakened state with a far bigger bark than bite. Any serious conflict with them would turn nuclear fast so any large war is extremely unlikely. But for the people in question bark is all that's need to exploit the situation.
For example if you're an influential person with deep PR connections and embarassing papers come out, you can make the narrative about the Russia rather than the leaks. 75-90% of the recent coverage of Wikileaks has been about Russia instead of the leaks.
The US military dreams of having a modern military/navy like Russia as an adversary. The military industrial complex is hugely incentivized to promote this narrative and push it heavily in the press.
NATO recently released a statement warning of a repeat of the Ukraine incursion in places like Estonia/Latvia... even though the Ukranian thing was entirely a result of exploiting the crisis and near lawlessness that was already happening there. Russia didn't just randomly decide to invade a sovereign state. So it's so incredibly highly unlikely they'd invade stable NATO counties because they happen to have minor Russian populations.
NATO and other security organizations which are seemingly out of date in a world of modern terrorism warfare are also continuing to pump up the threat to justify their existence (NATO only THIS year opened a counter-terrorism department).
There's lots of other examples of people exaggerating the Russia threat for their own ends but this comment is long enough as it is.
> even though the Ukranian thing was entirely a result of exploiting the crisis and near lawlessness that was already happening there.
"We were just protecting Russian citizens" right?
I'm not saying they didn't do those things or were justified. But that was a very different scenario as Ukraine was very unstable.
The Syrian stuff is a whole other beast. US partners like Saudis and Qatar are supporting some pretty awful stuff in Yemen and Syria too. Even the supposedly moderate rebels the US is backing were apparently extremely hostile to US soldiers who deployed in a village recently, calling them invader devils. Aleppo is bad but if the rebels took the save exit to other towns as the UN chief offered then the horror the civilians stuck there are facing would end. The cease fire failed so I'm not sure what their plan is as the US isn't going to double down. Unless they are betting on Clinton being a war hawk.