To all in this thread.
This topic is not inherently bad. But, can we stick to discussing the allegation of the hack and the possible influence of internet culture.
Any technical details are welcome as well.
But feelings about certain politicians...do that elsewhere because you have a better chance of building house out of Jello than changing someone's political opinion.
And you're inherently broken.
Remember that time Iraq had completely fabricated non-existent WMDs and the US used said fabrication to justify killing more than 100,000 civilians?
Remember that time CNN cut from how important what some of the Snowden leaks revealed about NSA spying to justin beiber?
Remember that time Sony was hacked and the initial reports didn't indicate the DPRK at all, industry analysts didn't indicate the DPRK at all, but some media yahoo posited the question several days later "what if it was the DPRK because the shitty movie is about the DPRK?" And all of a sudden all the media and government changed their story and made it about the DPRK?
This is why we can't trust the media or the various capslock agencies.
This is just more recent memory.
Uh, it could be because James Clapper, the head of the NIA (whose office penned this report), flat out lied under oath, patting his head like a monkey, while testifying before Congress about the NSA blanket spying/metadata harvesting on American citizens. Yet he remained in a position of power and was not charged with perjury, possibly because the NIA/NSA/CIA/et al, shows some signs that it is operating as a completely separate shadow government, wielding extreme power behind the scenes frightening our figurehead politicians. The NSA's Bluffdale data facility was enough to scare the literal bejeezus out of me and forces me to question my own government (regardless of which flavor of figurehead politicos are in power) all the time now.
As for Russia, I'd say they are a pretty decent ally (or could be), given their intelligence agencies warned our intelligence agencies, not once, but twice about the Tsarnaev brothers, before they ended up setting off bombs at the Boston Marathon. But our intelligence agencies stood down when it came time to follow through on this information.
Chris Fisher over on the Jupiter Broadcasting Unfilter cast this week, pretty much mirrored my own thoughts on this most recent matter (only with a much more detailed analysis), that these hacking "revelations" were clearly about punishing Russia and isolating them, keeping incoming President Trump from forming a detente with Russia, after Russia embarrassed the outgoing administration and especially our spooks by spending the past year, killing off the terrorists that our spooks had been arming, training and financing over in Syria. I suspect that the Russian military may have even killed some of our spooks when they were on the ground, training these "moderates," who are now almost exclusively al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and those who have declared allegiance to ISIS.
Syria was supposed to be our government's showcase regime change from a secular government (albeit a less than benevolent one) over to a caliphate-friendly theocratic government for some inexplicable reason. And when the recent cease-fire negotiations were held, the U.S. was completely shut out of the loop, which infuriated the Obama admin and more importantly, our intelligence agencies, since they had all these big plans for Syria. I guess Libya and Egypt weren't enough to totally destabilize the region.
If the Russians were doing any "hacking," I suspect it had little to do with the elections and more to do with gathering intel on what our spooks/government were doing in Syria. And I can guarantee, our intelligence agencies were/are doing the same to Russia, Syria and pretty much every other nation on the planet. The unplayed wildcard in this whole "Red Scare," drama is DNC staffer, Seth Rich, who ended up murdered, shot to death in D.C. in the middle of the night, last summer. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks is apparently implying that Rich was the source for the "hacked" emails, not Russia.
If you can watch the whole Unfilter show, the aftershow goes into a lot of detail about this issue.
Reheating Cold Wars | Unfilter 220
The Podesta "hacks" just illustrate that if you are a politician/political staffer, you should change their email password to something other than "p@ssw0rd." Oh and hire a decent IT guy with a brain, who will not tell you to click the link and reset your password, in response to a phishing email.
YA :)
Oh I fully agree with you. I believe I perhaps haven't made it clear that I don't blame the millennials for the hand they've been dealt by the previous generations - that would be stupid. It is not their fault, but sadly, it is ultimately their challenge to choose to overcome. We can help each other, but we must all want that, and wanting it and working on it is a challenge.
I will try to segue back in to this topic, and the claim I've made about matters of "faith". I will use an example from this very conversation to try and make the point.
Think on the words I've said about the millennials. It is the exactly same words used by this guy here:
Why does he get the applause, and I get called hypocrite (I am not jabbing at you, just using the situation to make a point)?
Does any of this make me wrong or him right? Or opposite, does it make him correct? No we are taking it on faith. We are accepting it on bias. He is a celebrity I am not inclined to be.
Now you have a previous president, a current president, a wife of a former president, and an intelligence agency. What makes you have faith in one but not the other? They have all been known to lie, although we may not agree on the exact instance in each case. None of them will show you the evidence. Even if they show you the evidence, you will not have the resources necessary to verify the evidence. And yeah, there are further truths and narratives to consider.
Everything you take in, you take in on faith, and accept on bias. That is the entire point I'm making here. Who do you have faith in and why, does not decide the actual truth which is outside the simple mortal grasp.
Has it ever been any different?
To be fair, he's just some dude in a YouTube video and you're just some dude on a forum. I have no reason to believe any of the things you've said about his credibility. People clap and have audiences for dudes who claim getting bit by a snake and injected with venom will lead to your salvation, having an interview in a random video doesn't mean a lot.
I'm reminded of a story about a little boy who cried wolf.
Today's media and career politicians have been caught with so many lies and fake news that nobody takes anything at face value anymore. Perhaps this cynicism is healthy, perhaps we are all blindly dismissing impending disaster. The fact is, the American public has no confidence in the very institutions that claim we should be placing our trust... and those institutions have nobody to blame but themselves for the current state of affairs.
But repeatedly lying that still doesn't mean lying every time.
Thanks for pointing out the many reasons to distrust the intelligence agencies. I'm pretty sure I could add a lot to what you've said (not oppose what you are saying, but corroborate it). But I would still put anything they say under "doubt", and not "indiscriminate dismissal".
I mean, don't you agree that we can nothing but speculate, or believe, or take it on "faith" that they are lying this time around too?
I mean, yeah, there is a damn shitty pattern of behavior that makes me seriously doubt anything and everything they say, but that is still me having or not having "faith". Lack of evidence they are speaking the truth isn't evidence of them lying.
As pointed out a couple of times here, its a cry wolf situation. We don't know if the wolf is there. We are just choosing what to believe on bias. And it is, at least to me, very important to know the distinction, and I am trying to imprint it here that there is a distinction, and no matter what we choose to believe in, we must understand the difference between choosing to believe, and actually knowing.
Is no one going to mention pissgate?
Remember the time when you read the intelligence agencies reports and you figured out that they weren't the ones lying and neither did the people in the media? Remember how the media just reported on misrepresentation of intelligence that was done by high ranking politicians in the Bush administration?
Because that was what happened. CIA didn't lie about WMD's, the media didn't lie either. The politicians lied. Bush, Chaney, Powell, Rice etc. They misrepresented the intelligence report which lead to misrepresentation in the media. That's what happens when the public is devoid of critical thinking skills and when journalists are incompetent.
What we have now is different. Wow we have a situation where pretty much every intelligence agency agrees on certain facts about what happened during this election. Now take that and combine it with a lot of things that came out of Trump directly which has been highly suspicious. Like his openly inviting Russia to hack the DNC, sucking up to Putin, his staff members having ties to Russia, FBI warning about Russia hacking and interference months before the election and now Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State as the icing on the cake.
American intelligence agency with American interests in pushing an American narrative.***
A question back on OP topic.
Let's for a moment imagine we actually got to see actual evidence of this.
For one:
What do you guys think evidence would look like? Would it look like documented talks between agents, like ten letter pages going like "Pyotr Pushkin gave money to Fyodor Mishkin, and Fyodor Mishkin broke into the servers using the following IP tunneling sequence on the following nodes, etc.". What do you think evidence would consist of? What do you think the evidence should consist of, to be believable?
For two:
Now, what do you think, how would we (you and I, individually) be able to verify the evidence? Is it beyond our individual resources (as I have surmised myself)? How would we be able to check that the evidence is untampered with and unfabricated? Would we be able to, or is it beyond our own individual resources.
And if it is beyond our individual resources, then who do you think would be able to check the evidence is untampered with and unfabricated?
Ultimately, whom would you have faith in to verify this evidence if it was completely presented to you? For one, it takes competence, for two it takes a person or an organization you "know" won't lie to you?
Do you think this can be done without a due process, court-of-law-like? Is there a historical example of a due process for this kind of thing?
How dare you think like that?! We should trust them. They are always only looking out for your best interests. The CIA is doing the best possible thing to make sure that the American public is taken care of as well as possible. Big Brother knows what is best. He knows things that we don't. We just need to trust him. Don't doubt, or you might get black bagged.
More independent reviews of the "evidence" to start. Having the NSA corroborate the CIA or whatever is eye-rolling. As far as I am aware, the "independent" reviews of this stuff so far have gone "well shit flip a coin" as to assigning blame. This was as of a few weeks ago I don't know if it's changed.
Believing whatever acronym with corroboration from whatever other acronym verify it is a joke. Have an Indian security firm verify it. Have a French security firm verify it. Have a Chinese security firm verify it. If 4 different places with 6 different political interests that don't match the USA figure it's true, then sure. I'll believe it.
I always appreciate your views even though we usually are on different sides. Iron sharpens Iron:)
The appreciation is mutual.
Soooo, no pissgate then.
And were you able to figure out why he lied? It's actually pretty simple and straightforward. No conspiracies are necessary to explain it. His job depended on it. He admits to breaking the law = he loses the job and possibly more.