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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

The real reason they were so pissed off at Assange seems to be in two parts: 1) The Chelsea Manning State Department cables. The video was all the hype, but just dig through the 'SECRET' cables on Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc.

2) Those Vault7 CIA leaks are incredibly embarrassing, it's like so closet criminal organization - and with a program to run cyberwarfare attacks using Russian/Chinese signatures in the code to hide atttribution? That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think.

All told, those revelations make the State Dept. and the CIA look more like some kind of organized white-collar mafia outfit in the service of Wall Street shareholders than anything else. That kind of raw exposure makes the corrupt insiders in the US government very sad.

I'd guess they've got a lot more to hide, and are most worried about further eruptions of embarrassment.

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Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc.

You can go to the cable archive and type 'human rights' in the search box and see this isn't remotely true. Whatever one might think of US diplomacy and its goals, the cables are mostly of historical interest and cause for mild embarrassment. They don't really show some diabolically clever empire cynically manipulating the world. They mostly show it pursuing its publicly stated goals and interests - one can have a pretty dim view of these goals and interests but you don't need the cables to develop or support that viewpoint.

Sorry, that's an abysmal argument. The fact that human rights are mentioned is not at all proof that US intelligence cares about them, when there is clearly no regard for them in the actions.

Hegemony is a publicly stated goal of the US. What do you think that entails? What do you think is necessary for a nation of 327 million to be the hegemon over 7.5 billion?

> Hegemony is a publicly stated goal of the US.

Where? Stated by whom?

A president? We’ve had 46 with wildly conflicting public statements and goals. A Congress? We’ve had 117 sessions of Congress.

“The US” isn’t a single entity. I don’t think you can make any blanket statements across that much time and that many people much beyond “they are all humans.”

I'm not sure if I agree with the OP that it's publicly stated but the bipartisan hysteria towards China, Russia, or even one or two generations ago Japan (interesting historical piece[1]) is kind of constant. With very few exceptions American politics, however divided internally is generally unified in some McCarthy style campaign against this or that perceived foreign threat.

The prospect of the US having to live in a world shaped by forces it has no control over is melting brains across the board. Americans, and yes this is a generalization but not a wrong one, cannot imagine a world that is run on values utterly foreign to them.

[1]https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1987...

I'm not sure what argument you're responding it, it doesn't sound like it's one I made. The point I'm making is about how these cables are characterized by the OP, not US policy. What they reveal is much closer to The Quiet American than, I dunno, Star Trek's Cardassians and that's an easy thing to check by looking at the cables.

Ah, I did qualify that statement with the search term 'SECRET' (classification level box) on the CableGate archive.

Yes, there are unclassified and even classified cables discussing human rights initiatives - but I'm guessing 'SECRET' is what they really care a lot about, and that stuff in my experience of reading literally hundreds of cables (okay I was leaning more towards energy research) that's just not an issue anywhere I've seen. For example, Syria? It's all about forcing Assad to cut ties with Iran and get into the Saudi-Qatar gas pipeline deal. UAE? Huge arms deals. Ditto for Saudi Arabia. For grim laughs, look up Raytheon and Yemen.

It's really not very flattering, although the writers seem intelligent and well-informed.

Oh I see, I misread it as scare-quoted secret rather than specific classification level but there are also piles of SECRET documents/cables that are about human rights, promotion of democracy, etc as well.

I don't think it makes much difference either way because I think you're over-interpreting the classification level as some sort of extra level care. All of this stuff was readily available to a Private First Class stuck on a forward base in the Iraqi desert. And I think my point still holds - whatever views one might have on US foreign policy, one can form them and support them just as well by simply reading the news. Besides piles of detail, the cables don't tell you anything different. They're basically this but for diplomacy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEtrT3E4vb8

Really? You have specific sources? Pretty sure last time I checked there wasn't much 'SECRET' communication about Saudi human rights abuses for example. Not anywhere really. . . I mean, we want to ban solar panels from China 'cause 'human rights' but where's the ban on Saudi oil imports?

Doesn't explain the heavy handed procecution then.

> That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think.

That just seems like standard for spy agencies along with a pretty mild black propaganda angle. Even books about WW2 propaganda cover the topic.

I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been.

"I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been. "

They do. But maybe they do, because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires.

Those leaks showed the general public more of the real picture, not the fake official one. And sure, they do not like that.

> because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires.

That's not their image in the US at all and that's not how formal education about the CIA works in schools in the US. The opposite is closer to the truth.

You're maybe aware of the common American conspiracy theory that JFK was murdered by the CIA? As retribution for the Bay of Pigs, among other things.

Every other Hollywood movie in which they make an appearance has portrayed the CIA as up to no good for decades now, especially when it comes to topics like the war on drugs and terrorism. They're frequently portrayed as duplicitous and incompetent. That's because that's how the culture views them at this point. They do not have a good reputation with the American public.

See: American Made (2017), Kill the Messenger (2014), Syriana (2005), The Siege (1998), The Jason Bourne movies, among many others

There has been some shift in cultural perception, true (even though "Day of the condor" is even from 1975)

- but the official picture and the ones painted by a common movie, is still a very different one, from reality. I mean take James Bond for instance. Glorification of the noble spycraft par excellence. (but I have not watched the latest ones, maybe there was change, too?)

And I have no first hand experience with US school education, but here in germany we kind of were educated about our intelligence agencies(and about the ones of the US) in a very friendly way. One that does not match reality.

James Bond is a fictional British spy who works for MI6, not the CIA. American cultural perception of the CIA is not great.

Yeah, I know that. I think we were talking in general about spycraft and the perception of it in the west and not just about the CIA.

"I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been. "

Funny you use 007 as an example bc the early films were funded by mi6 as pro spy propaghanda, its a good example of how they would like to be percieved

The real source of embarrassment of the leaks (ESPECIALLY the state department ones) is how much these services are basically at the beck and call of the elite, and how all the dirty shit that is done for those power brokers then blows back on us.

Most of the time that blowback is the gradual, steady erosion of America's soft power, ideals, and "good guy image"

Sometimes it is planes crashing into skyscrapers.

>"AtlasBarfed"

I absolutely love this nick

How is making it look like one adversary hacked another adversary when it was really the CIA evidence against them fighting evil empires? It is exactly what I would expect them to do against an evil empire.

>I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been.

They certainly do, and that is one of the reasons we are seeing a massive authoritarian crackdown on free speech. The last thing the spy agencies and the rest of the deep state want is for people to understand what they actually do and how dirty they actually are.

A false flag cyberattack - an act of war in the modern world, many say - is pretty far beyond what peacetime intelligence agencies have historically gotten up to.

I mean, if you left Russia fingerprints on, for example, a CIA-led cyberattack on a nuclear reactor, that could start a major war. It's pretty reckless in my opinion to even make such tools.

Formerly there were consequences if a spy gets caught, even one of your own nation. This just brushes it off...

It's always funny that every big revelation has dozens of comments of people coming to the realization that the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc are not friends of democracy.

We are fortunate that they need to bathe themselves in the trappings of democracy, unlike, say, Putin's services.

It's instructive that they view the third world and the UK as different rules. They get to shit all over the third world and know they can get away with it. Assassinations? Abductions? All A-OK in the brown countries.

This isn't me characterizing things, the quotes are from the officials in the article.

As for the mafia, the founding basis of all mafia romanticism is that government is just another source of power and abuse, and the mafia are simply another competing source.

That would be ridiculous, but the security agencies of the feds certainly do their best to make it plausible.

> and with a program to run cyberwarfare attacks using Russian/Chinese signatures in the code to hide atttribution? That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think.

Uh… I assume you can see how leaving a note saying “CIA was here!!!” might run counter to the goals of a spy agency. You might separately not like some of the missions they are tasked with, but this is what they would be doing even if they spent all their time rescuing orphans and their puppies from North Korean salt mines.

Perhaps one of the missions they were 'tasked with' was ramping up tensions with Russia (for the benefit of the arms dealers) by launching a lot of bogus false flag attacks on US corporations, with attendent hysterical media coverage?

The CIA is more of a propaganda outfit than anything else in my opinion, although their dirty banking and drug dealing games are right up there to. Their 'intelligence role' on important issues could be entirely subsumed by the DIA. Should have been shut down in the 1960s like JFK wanted to do. Useless failure agency on 9/11, too. And, the CIA was behind all the dirty Iraq/Afghanistan torture programs, were they not?

I'm reading "The Secret History of The American Empire." Recommended. It's difficult to believe Perkins - after his initial book - was still around to continue to tell the tales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fVAifnnlg0

Capitalism Enforcement Agency :)

> Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc.

Is this a shock to anyone? "Human rights and democracy" is the new imperial "white man's burden". We use it to justify invading, colonizing and stealing from others. When have we ever cared about human rights and democracy? I forget if it was chomsky or someone else who said that we've murdered more people, caused more human suffering and stolen more wealth in the name of "human rights and democracy" than nazi germany did in the name of nazism. Think about that.

I wish the non-western world would just collectively laugh at and mock any western leader when they talk about "human rights", "democracy", "western values", etc. How can they stand the hypocrisy? How can we?

Why do you think even the pro-democracy forces in China see the US's support of "democrats" as a farce? Why do you think the images in HK of protestors with the US flag were seen as nothing short of treason, even among the liberals of China? The hypocrisy is so obvious, and the naked self-interest too glaring.

The US's foreign policy has set back the cause of democracy and liberalization in China by decades with its underhanded shenanigans. To recieve their support, even moral support, is the kiss of death in China.

There are numerous countries in the world that have becomes democracies inspite of the blundering and corruption of the powers that be in the west. Dont use the US and its dysfunction as an excuse please.

When US dysfunction includes things like regime change and election tampering, it can definitely be used as an excuse.

Yes, some countries have independently produced pro-Western democracies, but if they have enough value and start electing anti-Western leaders their democracy will become a target of Western attack. See the ~2002 US backed coup attempt against Hugo Chavez, or the recent Morales elections.

Can you list some them? Bonus points if outside Western Europe.

Tunisia.

Not anymore unfortunately [0].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/tunisians-protest-again...

See that's the thing, it's not that simple. The ruling party which controlled the parliament for a few years is corrupt. The president, who was democratically elected by the majority of the people, used the constitution to suspend said parliament, with the support of the people. It's definitely an unorthodox move but it relates to one of democracy's limitations; what could be done when an elected party represents its own interests and not the people's?

Lots of factors could be at play indeed. I'm certainly not an expert, but if I read correctly, the man has disbanded parliament and ruled by decree since two months, publicly announcing his disregard for the constitution. To me, that does not count as democratic anymore.

The former yugoslavia

Taiwan, South Korea, Japan.

I've never heard of those, but I've heard of the countries whose dictators we propped up and helped (often by literally sending lists of names) to exterminate their secular opposition. Then when they have a revolution because the degree of crushing desperation of the populace exceeded the strength of internal policing, the only leaders left are religious, thereby turning the country into a theocracy.

I 100% agree with everything you're saying.

However, let's not forget that 50/80 years were dominated by a two-headed fight for world hegemony under the threat of nuclear war and potential apocalypse.

In this fight, while the US was far more evil than anyone cared to admit at the time, and the USSR far less than the US propaganda would have you believe, RELATIVELY speaking one side did offer more freedom, liberty, and prosperity than the other. And the primary counterargument from the Communists was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

This remains true today with China. CPC apologists are all too happy to point out (factually correct) gaps in US integrity and freedom. But in the grand scheme of things, relatively speaking, for all it's flaws, "The West" still has due process, doesn't ban religious expression, and doesn't put millions of citizens into force re-education camps.

The most recent Chinese return of the 2 incarcerated Canadians in return for the Huawei executive is the most blatant current example that China will do absolutely whatever it wants.

Whereas even in this news story - where you have government agents freely discussing assassinating Assange - there are others working against them, Lawyers using legal guidelines to flummox the plan, and ultimately it doesn't go forward.

For all of the US's evils, Russia and China would not have hesitated to kidnap or execute Assange in identical circumstances if he was hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy on their soil. He would have been disappeared a decade ago.

> However, let's not forget that 50/80 years were dominated by a two-headed fight for world hegemony under the threat of nuclear war and potential apocalypse.

Nuclear war? And in that 50/80 years, only one side has ever nuked a city full of civilians. Twice.

> This remains true today with China. CPC apologists are all too happy to point out (factually correct) gaps in US integrity and freedom.

"CPC apologists". Did we have any integrity and freedom when we were colonizing china? You do realize that we colonized china for nearly 100 years. It was the "CPC" and the communists who liberated china. You do realize that right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol

How anyone can claim a nation brutally ( and partly motivated by racism ) colonizing another nation is the one with integrity and freedom is beyond me.

> And the primary counterargument from the Communists was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

"Whataboutism" is a well-worn social media propaganda term used a few years ago. Nobody uses it anymore because it exposes the person who uses it.

> The most recent Chinese return of the 2 incarcerated Canadians in return for the Huawei executive is the most blatant current example that China will do absolutely whatever it wants.

China arrested two canadian spies/operatives in retaliation for canada kidnapping one of their spies/operatives? Shocking. What do you expect. It's statecraft. Tit for tat. Like when we kick out chinese or russian diplomats. They do the same. Or are you still pretending china arbitrarily locked up two innocent canadian tourists?

Strangely you aren't worked up about canada kidnapping a chinese national. Kidnapping chinese is fine but kidnapping canadians is wrong?

> For all of the US's evils, Russia and China would not have hesitated to kidnap or execute Assange in identical circumstances if he was hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy on their soil. He would have been disappeared a decade ago.

But two canadian spies were arrested and not "disappeared". Using your logic, china should be shipping two body bags right? China hasn't disappeared the dalai lama. How many chinese traitors hiding all over the west has china "disappeared"? Absolutely none.

You are just stating the same propaganda we've heard over and over again. It gets stale and boring. China bad. Russia bad. US good. Right. At least you didn't bring up anything about genocide.

At the end of the day, everyone has done good and everyone has done bad. But one has done far more evil than good while hypocritely pretending to be the world's beacon of good. This hypocrite not only colonized one of the "bad", it also invaded the other "bad".

It's the hypocrisy that's just unbearable. I don't remember china claiming to be the world's beacon of good. Don't remember russia claiming to be the epitome of freedom and democracy.

>>>It was the "CPC" and the communists who liberated china. You do realize that right?

Depends on what you mean by "liberated". The bulk of the fighting against the Imperial Japanese military was done by the KMT Nationalists, under Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT lost the civil war afterwards due to still being a shitty unpopular government, and then the CPC went on to "liberate" tens of millions of Chinese from their corporeal bodies during the Cultural Revolution.

>>>I don't remember china claiming to be the world's beacon of good.

The Chinese government is VERY good at information operations.[1] It is usually more subtle than America's ham-fisted chest-thumping. The CCP uses a lot of proxies to sing its praises, like this: [2]. But Xi Jinping is generally assertive in casting China as a model for the world. From [3]: "China will become more assertive on the world stage and believes its governance model is attractive to other countries will likely raise all sorts of alarms in Asian and Western capitals. Xi declared that China "has become a great power in the world" and "it is time for us to take center stage in the world and to make a greater contribution to humankind".

[1] https://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/bridge-ii_fullreport...

[2] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-05/31/c_139980463.htm

[3] https://sinocism.com/p/welcome-to-the-xi-era-sinocism-weekly...

both china and russia have ridiculous claims for every day of the week just as well.

at some level all political claims are ridiculous but all countries mentioned in your post are pathological liars, they just lie about different things in different ways.

You ignored that China limits religious expression and puts people in re-education camps. That’s not propaganda, that is the actual situation. They also make an enormous point of trying to portray themselves in the best possible light. That’s why their news media is extraordinarily censored. That’s why people trying to spread virus information by text had to use ridiculous circumlocutions to avoid the automatic banned-phrase detectors.

Russia has sham elections where Putin always gets 99% of the vote. It absolutely tries to pretend it’s a democracy.

There is an obvious moral appeal to democracy that is inherent to the idea. Likewise guarantees of human rights. China and Russia could embrace these ideals for real and have the same moral high ground, but that is obviously not the state of things, and the fact that they are both run by leaders not accountable to a real vote is why I they are unlikely to change soon. At least the US has means to course correct.

Essentially you're wrong because you're drawing a false equivalency between the US and CCP/Russia. Your argument is that because the US has done bad, made mistakes, etc... they are in the same grouping as CCP/Russia. Which is an un-nuanced argument that the OP explained was wrong.

Basically your argument is an un-nuanced "muh US is evil". Even though you can simply look at the countries aligned with the US and factually see that they are the freest, have the least corruption, and have the most open elections.

factually they are also the most violent and warmongering, and have caused the most global chaos, both in the past and the present.

the benefits of unrestricted freedoms and open elections have also never been as questionable as now, so you should not be surprised that others do not also believe that those are universally considered good.

Canada arrested a Chinese national under the court system on legitimate charges. China arrested random canadians on trumped up revenge charges.

Whataboutism is not a propaganda term from a few years ago. It's a decades-old term from the Soviet union using LEGITIMATE criticisms of the US (the US civil rights record should have been/was an international embarrassment for Americans and humanity) to deflect OTHER Legitimate criticism of the USSR's appalling human rights and civil liberties concerns that ultimately were worse than Americans. (e.g. the number of black americans lynched in the US was DWARVED by the number of soviet citizens killed by the system in the gulags, etc)

This remains the case today. Regardless of the US actions, any sensible impartial observer (from a non-US or even non-western perspective) can see that the PRC is far more of a reprehensible civil rights abuser than any country in The West. This is not up for debate.

When was the last time the Dalai Lama visited China? My point is that China and Russia would have treated Assange differently if his equivalent was on THEIR soil like Assange was on British. There would have been no respect of rule of law, or international sovereignty of diplomatic missions. He would have been gone.

Lastly, I'll give you some credit on one point. The US nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a reprehensible and unforgivable act by any ethical code. It was not needed to end the war. There is no defending it. That does not change the reality of the next 50 years of nuclear deterrent.

> At the end of the day, everyone has done good and everyone has done bad. But one has done far more evil than good while hypocritely pretending to be the world's beacon of good. This hypocrite not only colonized one of the "bad", it also invaded the other "bad".

> It's the hypocrisy that's just unbearable. I don't remember china claiming to be the world's beacon of good. Don't remember russia claiming to be the epitome of freedom and democracy.

Personally I don't care about hypocrisy, just objective actions - positive or negative. The US has done plenty bad, but overall has been a net good for the world - both for increasing the liberty/quality of life for their citizens, and for the rest of the world by establishing overall peace and prosperity through globalism (which improved the quality of life for Billions).

China has also done the same. But the costs to it's citizens seem higher.

> while the US was far more evil than anyone cared to admit at the time, and the USSR far less than the US propaganda would have you believe,

Have you not heard of Stalin? Many more murders than the fascists / Nazis / holocaust.

> Many more murders than the fascists / Nazis / holocaust.

Really can't believe I'm about to defend Stalin, but if you hold the Facists/Nazis responsible for all the deaths in WW2 (Which I think you have to), they were responsible for more deaths.

Purely direct victims in concentration/death camps, yes Stalin killed more people.

But let's not forget, that was all in the 30's. The Cold War started AFTER WW2, after Stalin's death, and the narrative of The Evil Empire vs The Land of The Free all occurred then.

Well put. This is the basic argument against these CCP and authoritarian apologists. Most likely they are going by "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which is a simplistic thing to base your world view on.

It's not a shock to me in Hong Kong. Been called a wumao by so many virtue signalers for just saying it's an illusion: we're less oppressed than they say we are, americans are less virtuous in their attempts to "free" us than they say they are.

Why can’t it be both? Since when are people or countries only motivated by one thing?

If you think the US went to war with Nazi Germany for purely altruistic reasons you’re sorely mistaken.

But at the same time an evil fascist dictatorship was defeated because the US got involved.

The world is a messy complicated space and human actions are messy and complicated.

The propaganda works. Look how many victims claim that the release of this information endangered people. Well, no kidding, innocent lives are on the line. The best way to prevent further damage there should be consequences and reflection on government interventions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

If you own a bakery, the ingredients you use need to be transported to your bakery. Once there, they have to be processed by some form of equipment. Your employees and customers need to physically go to your bakery...

Every activity in that bakery, in one way or another, depends on energy. That is also true for any other economic activity.

By selling energy you effectively have a share of everyone's business.

Also, if you control the fuel supply, you can control entire economies.

Are you trying to say we can’t have energy and care about human rights and decency?

The United States has plenty of domestic energy reserves and the capability to build a lot of renewable energy and nuclear energy. There’s zero reason to be catering to Middle East despots, other than corruption and cronyism.

I never said anything related to that.

But governments and organized crime have a lot in common.

I can’t see clear to what other point you could possibly be trying to make in this context. Perhaps you should clarify what you meant then?

If you don't know what I meant then why assuming malice as your first reaction?

The only reason I can figure you would make those points in this context is malice. You don't seem inclined to clarify or correct me, either, so...

> 2) Those Vault7 CIA leaks are incredibly embarrassing, it's like so closet criminal organization - and with a program to run cyberwarfare attacks using Russian/Chinese signatures in the code to hide atttribution? That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think.

I can’t tell if you’re being willfully obtuse or you’re just an extremely histrionic, but it’s clear you didn’t reach that conclusion through principled reasoning.

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