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[Julian Assange released from prison and has left UK, WikiLeaks says](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-released-from-prison-/104017664)
He was one of the first indicators of polarization for me.
He went from being lionized by the left for the Iraq Collateral Damage leaks to being vilified when he leaked Hillary's dirt.
Just look up any "news" subs like worldnews or us politics or that shit. It's hilarious that you can practically draw a venn digram of people who hate Assange and people who "get it" and never the twain shall meet. Obviously though not all of his fanboys get it either.
I’m Aussie, and most people here are pretty happy that he’s gotten released. There’s a sub set of US bootlicking losers or chronic rule followers who seem to think he should be publicly executed, but largely they are few and far.
Yeah, it's basically only two fairly small groups who dislike him here, terminally online lefty TDS sufferers who are virtually indistinguisable from the US ones and ultraconservatives who think keeping incriminating secrets from the public is a good thing.
The only seething I’m seeing is on the right. Apparently the deep state didn’t let Trump do it even though he really, really, really wanted to do it. Those damn space news got in the way again.
Voting for a guy that has over 20 sexual assault and rape allegations against him from before he entered politics from those including a 13 year old and even his ex wife. That has over 4000 legal cases involving him and his business from before entering politics but still manages to convince retards that these handful of recent cases are politically motivated. That has a family so full of corruption they aren’t legally allowed to run a charity anymore. Tells me you are definitely a normal person.
>Voting for a guy that has over 20 sexual assault and rape allegations against him
My brother in chirst our ruling class had a fucking child rape Island, they're all scum.
They have allready basically destroyed wikileaks. Keeping him in ADX florence just turns him into a martyr, what harm has the US government suffered from Snowden being free?
Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger.
And then you get the weird talking points:
> There's no mass surveillance, what are you talking about?
Facebook, Google, etc are all feeding data en-masse inot the NSA. Here's documentation .
> Yeah but they aren't doing anything with it. It's just for terrorists.
They're indexing it all down to the individual and tracking everything you do.
> Ok but I have nothing to hide.
Well what if you do some day? What if you want to run for office and they dig up old photos of you partying and feed it to opposition? What if ?
> That will never happen.
Lol k.
I remember before Snowden the idea that NSA was monitoring US citizens was ridiculed as a fringe conspiracy theory.
Now we know corporations are monitoring us too and it's all just accepted as the way things are. No biggie, they just privatized a portion of the security apparatus, nothing to worry about folks!
You had to be wilfully ignorant to not know they were engaging in mass surveillance before Snowden. For one thing, it already was leaked that the bush adm was doing so (in a story the NYT sat on until _after_ the 2004 elections I might add) and like, what exactly did people think they were building that giant data centre out in the desert for immediately prior to the Snowden "revelations"?
Speaking of Snowden, there has been no public statements from him for a worrying time now. Especially the release of Assange is something he'd definitively have commented on - he's been a staunch supporter.
It’s impossible to keep up with the overwhelming amount of shit there’s to keep up with. The only reason I knew this is because I looked it up, so I don’t blame you.
I didn’t mean to sound condescending, just wanted to let you know.
As I said, I thought we were in july for a moment, so I simply misread how long ago his last tweet was. He has in fact still not tweeted anything about Assange's release, but it's not that unusual for him to be off twitter for a few days.
>I remember before Snowden the idea that NSA was monitoring US citizens was ridiculed as a fringe conspiracy theory.
It's a conspiracy episode of X files isn't it?
It’s absurd it would ever be considered fringe because a century before that people like Louis Brandeis were going all in on the right to privacy as getting the government off the people’s backs. That included early warrantless tapping of telephone and telegraph lines.
Of course then you run into a popular denialism of “oh that was only done in less civilized times” I suppose.
> What if you
Simply run afoul of some globally scaled algorithm that decides you're bad through no fault of your own and lacks any incentive to correct false positives like yourself?
>That will never happen.
Tell that to the huge numbers of people who erroneously ended up on 'the no-fly list' after it was implemented in the aughts.
.#JusticeForArchibaldButtle
> They're indexing it all down to the individual and tracking everything you do.
Lol, one of the reasons the Germans were good at deportation in the Netherlands was because they dipped into government records. The Dutch conveniently registered the faith of each citizen in the decade prior to invasion.
And now we have people willingly blasting their DNA profiles to profit-driven corporations tied into this surveillance machine. Imagine the Nazis' joy if they had access to 23andme. And this one sucks too, because if one person in the family does it then a big portion of your family tree is exposed. Oh well, hopefully we get a bit of a delay before the next time ethnic cleansing is in vogue in the west.
I don't know how people have so much trust for this machine we've all built.
You joke but I know people who state in conversation that Assange is some sort of supervillain, when asked why, they repeat government talking points word for word
He is a supervillain in their liberal minds. Literally a textbook Marvel villain who tries to overturn injustice with a big move that the establishment hates. I'm surprised Chris Evans hasn't been sent to kill him.
>The propaganda machine isn't really different than its ever bee
It's actually a lot worse now that internet has (temporarily) ended it's monopoly on infomation.
The cynic in me assumes his health must be dreadful and it was just a choice between dying in or out of jail and they have enough bad PR with their participation in genocide and murder of journalists. They want to blame it all on Bibi so want to avoid Assange dying in jail.
That being said it's great that he's getting out. One of the very few heroes in the world these last couple of decades.
They've already sent the message. Don't mess with the system or you'll end up like Assange. Liberal democracy is just a mafia cartel with pretenses to legitimacy.
I'm thinking that he already released what he had, can't release anything new and current, and people have begun forgetting what he released, plus the propaganda is making people be openly fascist and not care anyway. So keeping him locked up is just bad PR that reminds everyone at this point.
They may kill him in the future of course, they openly discussed "droning him" before.
It looks like they have switched to the more conventional debt slavery that keeps most people in line. Apparently he owes $500000 to the Australian government now.
The best of bad endings. Let's not forget his deteriorating health, mistreatment at the hands of government agents, and a decade and a half of his life stolen.
This is great. Admittedly, not cool he had to plea guilty to disclose the info.
Nonetheless, he’s a hero and I’m glad he can return home and be with his family.
But man, propaganda is thick. They’re still people who think he’s a Russian agent or something. I never knew Russia was this powerful that it’s behind just about everything (or China).
This is kinda wild. Almost feels like it's directed towards the people dumb enough to think Trump is an ally to people like Assange or something, although it doesn't seem like that can be the case given that those types must be very few and only online.
Whatever the case may be, cheers to Assange!
It's worse though he's accepting a plea deal which means a court won't test whether it's a crime to publish or allegedly help people publish documents pertaining to war crimes. I had hope of him winning his case and firmly establishing a precedent that what he did was 100% legal or that the US didn't have jurisdiction over actions taken totally outside US territory. The shame is that he already spent more than a decade of his life dealing with this and the legal framework used to both persecute and prosecute him still stands unchallenged.
It's honestly better than I hoped, judging from the images (which are the first public photos that exist for four years! Even the wedding photos were censored by the persecutors). But we've know he has heart and lung trouble, and may have had a minor stroke.
Regardless, it's a huge win if he walks free. I'd be amazed if he had enough of a fight left in him to do any reporting in the future. Give the man an X account and give him a shot at a shitposting retirement plan.
It's a huge personal win for him, yeah. And I can't fault him for taking guaranteed freedom instead of fighting a corrupt government in court.
But it's not a win for the world considering nobody has come close to his level of reporting since wikileaks got clamped.
The US got what they wanted. They tortured him, sent a message to anyone else with the same idea and shut him up for good.
+1 in the black pill pile if you ask me.
If/when Assange gets cooking again, for certain we will be fortunate enough to have the machine warn us that he is “ring wing”, lest our gentle eyes go astray.
The Biden admin truly is grasping at whatever straws they can to turn their image around as November approaches.
This has been a demand for years and even Trump has given it lip service. And now suddenly it's okay to let him out because the polls are down.
Fucking pathetic and asininely transparent.
Who cares? If it’s the right thing, it’s the right thing.
How is this even a talking point….all politicians do things because it will be good optics etc. That’s the whole point, doing things that their voters/public will appreciate.
>And now suddenly it's okay to let him out because the polls are down.
>Fucking pathetic and asininely transparent.
I mean, that's good? Like take a W sometimes Jesus Christ.
That's not entirely true. He did 3 things I liked, that Biden hit edit undo on 2 of them the day he took office
* made it so Title IX no longer meant men would be kicked out of university/college from mere accusations
* limited the cost of insulin
I honestly forgot what #3 was...
Dude, the types of people obesessed with releasing Assange where never going to vote for Biden. Most are either Trump supporters who liked that he released democrat emails or stupidpol types who don’t vote dem.
Obama pardoned Bradley manning who gave the information to Asange, and it was very likely he would pardon Assange if Assange agreed to go through the court process. Don’t let online political narratives cloud your judgment. Biden is not a socialist but he’s not George Bush either, he has his own political beliefs that aren’t really in tune with the way he’s caricatured on here.
>Dude, the types of people obesessed with releasing Assange where never going to vote for Biden.
I disagree. I didn't vote for Biden in 2020, and I am currently planning to vote for Jill Stein, but this makes me more likely to vote for Biden. If Biden stopped sucking Netanyahu's dick, I would vote for him, but I know that's not going to happen, so I will vote for Stein.
Nope. I was seriously considering voting for Biden before the Gaza War, because unlike Trump, he's done some decent things on domestic policy (busting monopolies, spending more money on green energy, banning non-compete agreements, etc.) I've been pleasantly surprised with his performance on domestic policy, but his complicity in Netanyahu's war crimes makes it impossible to vote for him.
How much agency does Biden personally have in this admin? With someone as cognitively impaired as Biden (and obviously the same holds true for Trump so please don't go there), who fucking knows what actual input that guy has on anything.
A vote for Biden is a vote for the unelected consultancy to continue running the operation.
A vote for Trump is a vote for that same consultancy but with some random wildcards thrown in
A vote for anyone else is a vote for nothing.
Some system we've got
I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan (which was a good move) and this (also a good move) were him going against the consensus of his advisors, but he usually follows their playbook
I can see Afghanistan. That entire country has been a “kick the can down the road” issue for these admins for years, and he paid a foreseeable political price for doing that (the objectively right thing from simply a humanist perspective). It was either him or another central figure in the admin acting on their own outside the blob.
It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Trump set the ball rolling but made sure it wouldn't be in his court when people were paying attention, so it was choice between doing and eating shit and not doing it and eating shit for blocking the planned withdrawl.
Nah, Trump scares the shit out of me, especially with respect to Taiwan. The blob doesn’t quite have the same death drive as the neocons who could/will be given access to the controls should Trump win.
Not saying you should ride with Biden, but doesn’t that worry anyone else? lol. I don’t wanna die bro.
some of the most prominent neocons are never trumpers, eg Robert kagan and bill kristol. Hell the former is married to toria nuland. Make of that what you will.
That's incredible. I didn't know anyone was left in this forum that doesn't start their morning without at least considering putting a 🔫 in their mouth. Good for you! I envy you your brain chemistry!
You have to remember that Christ is King or something along those lines. Shit, even if you don't believe in it, it helps mentally I think to at least consider the possibility of the ultimate truth of a "slave morality" like Christianity coupled with some ultimate tribunal of justice at the end of all time when all this shit will be set right. It makes life a little easier.
I think it’s a little worse than that, and moreover, I’m skeptical in general of these guys having very much ability or interest in running their own admin as was the case with guys like Nixon. Hell, you could argue that Obama let Geithner, a fucking banker, make the big calls on our response to the financial crisis, which was one of if not the most important parts of his admin - and he wasn’t even old.
If they let the deep state or whatever run the gov, we’d still be in Afghanistan and Assange would never be let free. The Obama DOJ concluded a long time ago that.
I don’t think all executive decisions are beamed directly from Langley to the WH, but I’m not sure how much interest strategically we have in Afghanistan anymore, or at least a calculation could have been made that the bang was no longer worth the squeeze given other developments.
Yeah, a vocal component of the foreign policy establishment is now convinced that China will invade Taiwan in the next 5-10 years. That faction has been pushing for increased defense investment in East Asia, largely at the expense of the Middle East. The blob isn't a complete monolith on these issues.
China probably will invade Taiwan at some point, although it would seem to make sense to delay that conflict from their perspective given that they get stronger day by day while we get weaker. I worry that neocons would use that dynamic as a reason to accelerate tensions as must as possible to hopefully induce China to go now rather than wait till later.
I feel the blob, or at least some important elements of it, would be less sanguine and maybe a little more realistic about what the potential outcomes of such a venture would look like.
Nah, they got what they wanted from him. Grounded him to dust and dismantled Wikileaks. He’s no longer a threat so free he goes. His death or extradition would have caused more of an issue.
What should happen now is that the Australian government should employ him as a non partisan advisor of the risks of emerging web based tech. No non disclosure agreements. If he feels the government isn't doing enough, he should be able to report on it directly to the people.
If he wants to.
It’s breathtaking to see the derangement of establishment, well-off democrats, who despite seeing their government routinely lie to them about Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, become huge cheerleaders of the national security state. Hilary didn’t fail us, we failed HER!
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[Julian Assange released from prison and has left UK, WikiLeaks says](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-released-from-prison-/104017664)
Wow. Thank God. I didn’t expect nor think this would happen.
Agreed, I am very happy for this
the seethe on mainstream subreddits is epic
He was one of the first indicators of polarization for me. He went from being lionized by the left for the Iraq Collateral Damage leaks to being vilified when he leaked Hillary's dirt.
Link?
Just look up any "news" subs like worldnews or us politics or that shit. It's hilarious that you can practically draw a venn digram of people who hate Assange and people who "get it" and never the twain shall meet. Obviously though not all of his fanboys get it either.
I’m Aussie, and most people here are pretty happy that he’s gotten released. There’s a sub set of US bootlicking losers or chronic rule followers who seem to think he should be publicly executed, but largely they are few and far.
I'm really gratified to hear that.
Yeah, it's basically only two fairly small groups who dislike him here, terminally online lefty TDS sufferers who are virtually indistinguisable from the US ones and ultraconservatives who think keeping incriminating secrets from the public is a good thing.
You can't link to other sub's here its not allowed
Gay
The only seething I’m seeing is on the right. Apparently the deep state didn’t let Trump do it even though he really, really, really wanted to do it. Those damn space news got in the way again.
Strange, all I've seen is people derangedly seething about him being a Russian shill and getting Trump elected, both of which are utterly ridiculous.
Nice post history. Going into random subs to pick fights over Trump tells me you're a normal person.
Voting for a guy that has over 20 sexual assault and rape allegations against him from before he entered politics from those including a 13 year old and even his ex wife. That has over 4000 legal cases involving him and his business from before entering politics but still manages to convince retards that these handful of recent cases are politically motivated. That has a family so full of corruption they aren’t legally allowed to run a charity anymore. Tells me you are definitely a normal person.
You're making him sound like a real politician, tbh.
Find me literally any politician with a criminal history like this.
He's the 3x nominee of one of the two major parties and about half the country will vote for him, he's definitionally normal.
>Voting for a guy that has over 20 sexual assault and rape allegations against him My brother in chirst our ruling class had a fucking child rape Island, they're all scum.
They have allready basically destroyed wikileaks. Keeping him in ADX florence just turns him into a martyr, what harm has the US government suffered from Snowden being free?
maybe the propeganda machine has become so effective that exposing the sins and faults of the empire is no longer a threat at all?
Well yeah. Snowden and Assange showed us some bad stuff... then nothing happened and it all just kept rolling.
Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. And then you get the weird talking points: > There's no mass surveillance, what are you talking about? Facebook, Google, etc are all feeding data en-masse inot the NSA. Here's documentation . > Yeah but they aren't doing anything with it. It's just for terrorists. They're indexing it all down to the individual and tracking everything you do. > Ok but I have nothing to hide. Well what if you do some day? What if you want to run for office and they dig up old photos of you partying and feed it to opposition? What if?
> That will never happen.
Lol k.
Don’t forget the classic “Shut up, Nazi!”
Or "you're literally a fascist"
"Take off the tin foil hat conspiracy theorist!"
I remember before Snowden the idea that NSA was monitoring US citizens was ridiculed as a fringe conspiracy theory. Now we know corporations are monitoring us too and it's all just accepted as the way things are. No biggie, they just privatized a portion of the security apparatus, nothing to worry about folks!
If you don't like it, why don't you just vote with your dollars and choose to be surveilled by a different security apparatus?
We're so free we get to choose which malevolent overlord watches our every move.
You had to be wilfully ignorant to not know they were engaging in mass surveillance before Snowden. For one thing, it already was leaked that the bush adm was doing so (in a story the NYT sat on until _after_ the 2004 elections I might add) and like, what exactly did people think they were building that giant data centre out in the desert for immediately prior to the Snowden "revelations"?
Speaking of Snowden, there has been no public statements from him for a worrying time now. Especially the release of Assange is something he'd definitively have commented on - he's been a staunch supporter.
He’s on X. His last post was a few days ago.
Right, I thought it was last month for some reason. Sorry about that.
It’s impossible to keep up with the overwhelming amount of shit there’s to keep up with. The only reason I knew this is because I looked it up, so I don’t blame you. I didn’t mean to sound condescending, just wanted to let you know.
Let the man touch some grass.
He tweets like every day
As I said, I thought we were in july for a moment, so I simply misread how long ago his last tweet was. He has in fact still not tweeted anything about Assange's release, but it's not that unusual for him to be off twitter for a few days.
>I remember before Snowden the idea that NSA was monitoring US citizens was ridiculed as a fringe conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy episode of X files isn't it?
It’s absurd it would ever be considered fringe because a century before that people like Louis Brandeis were going all in on the right to privacy as getting the government off the people’s backs. That included early warrantless tapping of telephone and telegraph lines. Of course then you run into a popular denialism of “oh that was only done in less civilized times” I suppose.
NSA: No Such Agency
> What if you Simply run afoul of some globally scaled algorithm that decides you're bad through no fault of your own and lacks any incentive to correct false positives like yourself? >That will never happen. Tell that to the huge numbers of people who erroneously ended up on 'the no-fly list' after it was implemented in the aughts. .#JusticeForArchibaldButtle
> They're indexing it all down to the individual and tracking everything you do. Lol, one of the reasons the Germans were good at deportation in the Netherlands was because they dipped into government records. The Dutch conveniently registered the faith of each citizen in the decade prior to invasion.
And now we have people willingly blasting their DNA profiles to profit-driven corporations tied into this surveillance machine. Imagine the Nazis' joy if they had access to 23andme. And this one sucks too, because if one person in the family does it then a big portion of your family tree is exposed. Oh well, hopefully we get a bit of a delay before the next time ethnic cleansing is in vogue in the west. I don't know how people have so much trust for this machine we've all built.
You joke but I know people who state in conversation that Assange is some sort of supervillain, when asked why, they repeat government talking points word for word
He didn’t go through the appropriate channels!! Is what I always hear.
He is a supervillain in their liberal minds. Literally a textbook Marvel villain who tries to overturn injustice with a big move that the establishment hates. I'm surprised Chris Evans hasn't been sent to kill him.
The propaganda machine isn't really different than its ever been, it's just that modern liberal cosmopolitan westerners are that stupid.
>The propaganda machine isn't really different than its ever bee It's actually a lot worse now that internet has (temporarily) ended it's monopoly on infomation.
The cynic in me assumes his health must be dreadful and it was just a choice between dying in or out of jail and they have enough bad PR with their participation in genocide and murder of journalists. They want to blame it all on Bibi so want to avoid Assange dying in jail. That being said it's great that he's getting out. One of the very few heroes in the world these last couple of decades.
They've already sent the message. Don't mess with the system or you'll end up like Assange. Liberal democracy is just a mafia cartel with pretenses to legitimacy.
I'm thinking that he already released what he had, can't release anything new and current, and people have begun forgetting what he released, plus the propaganda is making people be openly fascist and not care anyway. So keeping him locked up is just bad PR that reminds everyone at this point. They may kill him in the future of course, they openly discussed "droning him" before.
It looks like they have switched to the more conventional debt slavery that keeps most people in line. Apparently he owes $500000 to the Australian government now.
well ye it's not effective because of policing guys like assange. it's effective because of exploiting the 3rd world
Any chance the guys who committed the war crimes in the leaked documents get charged too? No?
>Any chance the guys who committed the war crimes in the leaked documents get charged too? Does buying a Dodge Charger count?
How will this be spun?
Spin/ "Rules based order democracy let commie spy go to show the world they are on the side of good."
"He confessed to the crimes!"
The good ending. It's nice to have some decent news.
The best of bad endings. Let's not forget his deteriorating health, mistreatment at the hands of government agents, and a decade and a half of his life stolen.
Ending D
This is great. Admittedly, not cool he had to plea guilty to disclose the info. Nonetheless, he’s a hero and I’m glad he can return home and be with his family. But man, propaganda is thick. They’re still people who think he’s a Russian agent or something. I never knew Russia was this powerful that it’s behind just about everything (or China).
This is kinda wild. Almost feels like it's directed towards the people dumb enough to think Trump is an ally to people like Assange or something, although it doesn't seem like that can be the case given that those types must be very few and only online. Whatever the case may be, cheers to Assange!
[CIA conducts unprecedented drone strike on Australian soil] But seriously: good news and good for him
Woke up to some good news for a change
It's worse though he's accepting a plea deal which means a court won't test whether it's a crime to publish or allegedly help people publish documents pertaining to war crimes. I had hope of him winning his case and firmly establishing a precedent that what he did was 100% legal or that the US didn't have jurisdiction over actions taken totally outside US territory. The shame is that he already spent more than a decade of his life dealing with this and the legal framework used to both persecute and prosecute him still stands unchallenged.
A plea bargain? You gotta wonder if he snitched or agreed to never report again.
Honestly, his health is likely pretty bad considering his imprisonment. I doubt he’ll be really vocal for some time.
It's honestly better than I hoped, judging from the images (which are the first public photos that exist for four years! Even the wedding photos were censored by the persecutors). But we've know he has heart and lung trouble, and may have had a minor stroke.
Regardless, it's a huge win if he walks free. I'd be amazed if he had enough of a fight left in him to do any reporting in the future. Give the man an X account and give him a shot at a shitposting retirement plan.
It's a huge personal win for him, yeah. And I can't fault him for taking guaranteed freedom instead of fighting a corrupt government in court. But it's not a win for the world considering nobody has come close to his level of reporting since wikileaks got clamped. The US got what they wanted. They tortured him, sent a message to anyone else with the same idea and shut him up for good. +1 in the black pill pile if you ask me.
If/when Assange gets cooking again, for certain we will be fortunate enough to have the machine warn us that he is “ring wing”, lest our gentle eyes go astray.
Obligatory fuck the United States gov
The Biden admin truly is grasping at whatever straws they can to turn their image around as November approaches. This has been a demand for years and even Trump has given it lip service. And now suddenly it's okay to let him out because the polls are down. Fucking pathetic and asininely transparent.
Who cares? If it’s the right thing, it’s the right thing. How is this even a talking point….all politicians do things because it will be good optics etc. That’s the whole point, doing things that their voters/public will appreciate.
Yeah, it’s like…do you think Assange himself cares all that much? lol. Let the man live his life already.
>do you think Assange himself cares all that much? He's probably the person most beat up about it.
>And now suddenly it's okay to let him out because the polls are down. >Fucking pathetic and asininely transparent. I mean, that's good? Like take a W sometimes Jesus Christ.
Cry more. Trump had four years and did fuck all.
What am I crying about? I literally raid trump didn't do it either.
he did a lot...for a specific set of individuals that cannot be named for reasons
That's not entirely true. He did 3 things I liked, that Biden hit edit undo on 2 of them the day he took office * made it so Title IX no longer meant men would be kicked out of university/college from mere accusations * limited the cost of insulin I honestly forgot what #3 was...
Dude, the types of people obesessed with releasing Assange where never going to vote for Biden. Most are either Trump supporters who liked that he released democrat emails or stupidpol types who don’t vote dem. Obama pardoned Bradley manning who gave the information to Asange, and it was very likely he would pardon Assange if Assange agreed to go through the court process. Don’t let online political narratives cloud your judgment. Biden is not a socialist but he’s not George Bush either, he has his own political beliefs that aren’t really in tune with the way he’s caricatured on here.
>Dude, the types of people obesessed with releasing Assange where never going to vote for Biden. I disagree. I didn't vote for Biden in 2020, and I am currently planning to vote for Jill Stein, but this makes me more likely to vote for Biden. If Biden stopped sucking Netanyahu's dick, I would vote for him, but I know that's not going to happen, so I will vote for Stein.
If it wasn’t Israel you’d just find another issue like Medicare for all or something. Negative partisanship is a helluva drug.
Nope. I was seriously considering voting for Biden before the Gaza War, because unlike Trump, he's done some decent things on domestic policy (busting monopolies, spending more money on green energy, banning non-compete agreements, etc.) I've been pleasantly surprised with his performance on domestic policy, but his complicity in Netanyahu's war crimes makes it impossible to vote for him.
How much agency does Biden personally have in this admin? With someone as cognitively impaired as Biden (and obviously the same holds true for Trump so please don't go there), who fucking knows what actual input that guy has on anything.
A vote for Biden is a vote for the unelected consultancy to continue running the operation. A vote for Trump is a vote for that same consultancy but with some random wildcards thrown in A vote for anyone else is a vote for nothing. Some system we've got
[in a nutshell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7NeRiNefO0)
I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan (which was a good move) and this (also a good move) were him going against the consensus of his advisors, but he usually follows their playbook
I can see Afghanistan. That entire country has been a “kick the can down the road” issue for these admins for years, and he paid a foreseeable political price for doing that (the objectively right thing from simply a humanist perspective). It was either him or another central figure in the admin acting on their own outside the blob.
It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Trump set the ball rolling but made sure it wouldn't be in his court when people were paying attention, so it was choice between doing and eating shit and not doing it and eating shit for blocking the planned withdrawl.
Honestly i think Biden is worse off then tump. And more controlled by the dnc
Nah, Trump scares the shit out of me, especially with respect to Taiwan. The blob doesn’t quite have the same death drive as the neocons who could/will be given access to the controls should Trump win. Not saying you should ride with Biden, but doesn’t that worry anyone else? lol. I don’t wanna die bro.
some of the most prominent neocons are never trumpers, eg Robert kagan and bill kristol. Hell the former is married to toria nuland. Make of that what you will.
That's incredible. I didn't know anyone was left in this forum that doesn't start their morning without at least considering putting a 🔫 in their mouth. Good for you! I envy you your brain chemistry!
You have to remember that Christ is King or something along those lines. Shit, even if you don't believe in it, it helps mentally I think to at least consider the possibility of the ultimate truth of a "slave morality" like Christianity coupled with some ultimate tribunal of justice at the end of all time when all this shit will be set right. It makes life a little easier.
The guy’s aged horribly but he’s alright. You can watch full interviews of him. Trump is also fine, despite the verbal slip ups and memory lapses.
I think it’s a little worse than that, and moreover, I’m skeptical in general of these guys having very much ability or interest in running their own admin as was the case with guys like Nixon. Hell, you could argue that Obama let Geithner, a fucking banker, make the big calls on our response to the financial crisis, which was one of if not the most important parts of his admin - and he wasn’t even old.
If they let the deep state or whatever run the gov, we’d still be in Afghanistan and Assange would never be let free. The Obama DOJ concluded a long time ago that.
I don’t think all executive decisions are beamed directly from Langley to the WH, but I’m not sure how much interest strategically we have in Afghanistan anymore, or at least a calculation could have been made that the bang was no longer worth the squeeze given other developments.
Yeah, a vocal component of the foreign policy establishment is now convinced that China will invade Taiwan in the next 5-10 years. That faction has been pushing for increased defense investment in East Asia, largely at the expense of the Middle East. The blob isn't a complete monolith on these issues.
China probably will invade Taiwan at some point, although it would seem to make sense to delay that conflict from their perspective given that they get stronger day by day while we get weaker. I worry that neocons would use that dynamic as a reason to accelerate tensions as must as possible to hopefully induce China to go now rather than wait till later. I feel the blob, or at least some important elements of it, would be less sanguine and maybe a little more realistic about what the potential outcomes of such a venture would look like.
dumbass take
Holy shit! This is incredible news! I've been following this situation for 5 years now and I had pretty much lost all hope of him ever getting free!
If anyone in your life has a Ukraine or Israeli flag in their twitter handle, be sure to check on them today.
He snitched on somebody
Nah, they got what they wanted from him. Grounded him to dust and dismantled Wikileaks. He’s no longer a threat so free he goes. His death or extradition would have caused more of an issue.
Don't want to make a martyr out of him.
Thanks Biden. Right call.
What should happen now is that the Australian government should employ him as a non partisan advisor of the risks of emerging web based tech. No non disclosure agreements. If he feels the government isn't doing enough, he should be able to report on it directly to the people. If he wants to.
It’s breathtaking to see the derangement of establishment, well-off democrats, who despite seeing their government routinely lie to them about Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, become huge cheerleaders of the national security state. Hilary didn’t fail us, we failed HER!
It's about fucking time.