I first noticed this when the Snowden leaks happened. A lot of the commentary (and what I thought and said myself) was of the sort, well yeah, of course the NSA is spying on everybody using our woefully insecure digital infrastructure! But no, we didn't actually know that until Snowden told us, and it was not (and still is not) actually common knowledge that digital communications are not generally private.
I've seen the same thing with the recent Facebook privacy kerfuffle, and now this.
My guess as to why it's on the front page right now is because of Syria. It's called whataboutism.
It doesn't work because anybody with a conscience can tell you that Reagan was wrong then, just as Putin is wrong now.
They seem like part of a larger attack against western intelligence, and if you don't pay attention to the details I can understand why it comes off as damning.
It's easy to pretend that the CIA is some puppet master, but their job is intelligence. The intelligence agencies, analysts/strategists, and the decision makers aren't the same apparatus in the US.
Look at the later claims of WMD that were the pretense for war, there's plenty of evidence to show that the CIA wasn't making the claim that they had WMD. They made the claim that they didn't know. It was members of the Bush administration (policymakers) that were pushing the narrative.
But if you happen to be a nation state doing something damning it's convenient to blur the mistakes of the policymakers with the intelligence community to discredit the intelligence that's calling you out.
However, consider the source of the jaded, deflated tone of this contigent of people when things they already knew or suspected come into the public debate: they were just recently the butt of jokes about tinfoil hats.
It's not the worst fate, but it does make somebody bitter.
[0]: That's History. Having an accurate historical record is of much value, as long as it is actually used to guide present and future decisions.
This might be repeated in Canada within the next few years as the sentiment of "we're different" is extremely strongly implanted in the Canadian psyche.
No idea if that's still the case but I often wonder how we can have skyrocketing prices across so many asset classes yet near zero inflation. For example, Statistics Canada shows next to no inflation in the CPI component for shelter in BC: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/e... Whereas actual prices look more like this: http://news.buzzbuzzhome.com/2018/01/chart-greater-vancouver...
Obvious blatant lying (obvious because of the actual data, but also because it's mathematically impossible (after adjusting for interest rate differential) to have 10%+ annual price increases in the most expensive asset class for over a decade, no decrease in spending in other sectors, zero wage growth, and zero inflation), but good luck finding someone that works for a mainstream newspaper to print an article pointing that out.
Well for one, the inflating assets aren't directly part of the CPI. And to the extent they are (eg bankrent on a new home purchase), they only apply to the sliver of people who just bought a house.
Furthermore one would expect the long term CPI trend to be downwards, due to technological progress and economic evolution. So the fact that we are not seeing that is indicative of huge inflation. eg Walmart hollowed out the economy by providing things "cheaper", and they did. But rather than this actually benefiting people (who should have to work less to afford those goods), even taken at its face value the CPI feedback system guarantees people's costs stay the same, meanwhile there are fewer jobs.
I would agree with you, if not for:
- CPI is supposed to measure inflation - if the effects of monetary inflation (due to excessively free credit) in the largest household expense category by far are completely masked by the typical slow turnover of that asset, shouldn't that be accommodated in the calculation (again, keeping in mind what the advertised intent of the CPI is)?
- Despite the slow turnover, you would expect the increases to show up eventually, would you not?
- I can't find the link today, but in the past I discovered in the methodology description that index measurements are deliberately chosen outside major cities, as the prices there are "too volatile" and therefore "not representative" of overall prices (ignoring both population concentration, and the fact that we well know more and more of the population is moving to the major cities)
> Furthermore one would expect the long term CPI trend to be downwards, due to technological progress and economic evolution. So the fact that we are not seeing that is indicative of huge inflation.
Agreed, except for the people who are spending >= 50% of their take home pay on rent. If this very serious state of affairs isn't reflected in the CPI numbers, then I suggest we start a public debate on shutting that government department down so we can at least save citizens a few dollars on taxes, because I can't see what value it is providing beyond misleading propaganda.
This is simply, demonstrably false. Snowden's a bad example of what you're talking about. In fact, it's a good example of the opposite: people who didn't bother to pay attention to widely-available information suddenly acting like what they've just learned is completely new.
It wasn't just a "relatively small and knowledgeable contingent" that knew about the government's mass surveillance program. The New York Times broke the story on the Bush Administration surveillance program in 2005 (which forced Bush and Gonzales to publicly acknowledge the program's existence for the first time that December), and it and many other publications followed up on those stories for years. It was a major, widely-reported topic of discussion all throughout Bush's second term, with the discussion following the predictable party lines.
Snowden may have given us more detail about what was going on, but the public was already well aware of the government mass surveillance program long before he blew the whistle.
James Bond gets to do whatever he wants because he's "one guy" doing blackops on a fairly exceptional basis. When you've a whole swarm of James Bond wannabes you need to reel em in and have oversight.
Actually, I think Snowden is a great example. Because apart from being in line with first principles (what would the NSA be doing if they weren't tapping communications cables?), the public was repeatedly exposed to the idea before Snowden. But yet they refused to listen until the topic happened to be presented in a way that caught on, which really illustrates the social-proof-power that mass media holds. And given this power, especially in a democracy, mass media can't help but be captured by entrenched interests.
The phase you're describing is just the people who were making the point the whole time trying to get across that the outrage du jour is something they've been persistently talking about for years.
Is pretty obvious how much a elitist thinking and be part of a tiny minority (as "hackers") make obvious stuff like this nonobvious.
The funny thing was that I used to think like you do, but Snowden's leaks showed that to be false. They spied on everybody in certain war zones, but in the US, they only spied on some people and only had a limited ability to query pen register metadata on all Americans.
The NYT covered that the US knew Iraq was using chemical weapons and manufacturing more in 1984. https://mobile.nytimes.com/1984/03/30/world/us-aides-say-ira...
The New York Times covered that the US knew Iraq would use chemical weapons while helping Iraq (the same as this article) more than 15 years ago. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/world/officers-say-us-...