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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview that he does not believe the U.S. intelligence community proved its case that President Vladimir Putin directed a hacking campaign aimed at securing the election of Donald Trump. He blasted news organizations for lazily broadcasting the assertions of U.S. intelligence officials as established facts.
The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill speaks with Seymour Hersh at his home in Washington, D.C. two days after Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Hersh denounced news organizations as “crazy town” for their uncritical promotion of the pronouncements of the director of national intelligence and the CIA, given their track records of lying and misleading the public.
“The way they behaved on the Russia stuff was outrageous,” Hersh said when I sat down with him at his home in Washington, D.C., two days after Trump was inaugurated. “They were just so willing to believe stuff. And when the heads of intelligence give them that summary of the allegations, instead of attacking the CIA for doing that, which is what I would have done,” they reported it as fact. Hersh said most news organizations missed an important component of the story: “the extent to which the White House was going and permitting the agency to go public with the assessment.”
Hersh said many media outlets failed to provide context when reporting on the intelligence assessment made public in the waning days of the Obama administration that was purported to put to rest any doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s emails.
The declassified version of the report, which was released January 7 and dominated the news for days, charged that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election” and “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” According to the report, the NSA was said to have had a lower confidence level than James Clapper and the CIA about the conclusion that Russia intended to influence the election. Hersh characterized the report as full of assertions and thin on evidence.
“It’s high camp stuff,” Hersh told The Intercept. “What does an assessment mean? It’s not a national intelligence estimate. If you had a real estimate, you would have five or six dissents. One time they said 17 agencies all agreed. Oh really? The Coast Guard and the Air Force — they all agreed on it? And it was outrageous and nobody did that story. An assessment is simply an opinion. If they had a fact, they’d give it to you. An assessment is just that. It’s a belief. And they’ve done it many times.”
Hersh also questioned the timing of the U.S. intelligence briefing of Trump on the Russia hack findings. “They’re taking it to a guy that’s going to be president in a couple of days, they’re giving him this kind of stuff, and they think this is somehow going to make the world better? It’s going to make him go nuts — would make me go nuts. Maybe it isn’t that hard to make him go nuts.” Hersh said if he had been covering the story, “I would have made [John] Brennan into a buffoon. A yapping buffoon in the last few days. Instead, everything is reported seriously.”
Few journalists in the world know more about the CIA and U.S. dark ops than Hersh. The legendary journalist broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Abu Ghraib torture, and secret details of the Bush-Cheney assassination program.
In the 1970s, during the Church Committee investigations into the CIA’s involvement in coups and assassinations, Dick Cheney — at the time a top aide to President Gerald Ford — pressured the FBI to go after Hersh and seek an indictment against him and the New York Times. Cheney and then-White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld were furious that Hersh had reported, based on information from inside sources, on a covert incursion into Soviet waters. They also wanted retaliation for Hersh’s exposé on illegal domestic spying by the CIA. The aim of targeting Hersh would be to frighten other journalists from exposing secret or controversial actions by the White House. The attorney general rebuffed Cheney’s requests, saying it “would put an official stamp of truth on the article.”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer calls on a reporter during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Jan. 24, 2017.
Photo: Susan Walsh/AP
Although critical of the Russia coverage, Hersh condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media and its threats to limit the ability of journalists to cover the White House. “The attack on the press is straight out of national socialism,” he said. “You have to go back into the 1930s. The first thing you do is destroy the media. And what’s he going to do? He’s going to intimidate them. The truth is, the First Amendment is an amazing thing and if you start trampling it the way they — I hope they don’t do it that way — this would be really counterproductive. He’ll be in trouble.”
Hersh also said he is concerned about Trump and his administration assuming power over the vast surveillance resources of the U.S. government. “I can tell you, my friends on the inside have already told me there’s going to be a major increase in surveillance, a dramatic increase in domestic surveillance,” he said. He recommended that anyone concerned about privacy use encrypted apps and other protective means. “If you don’t have Signal, you better get Signal.”
While expressing fears about Trump’s agenda, Hersh also called Trump a potential “circuit breaker” of the two-party political system in the U.S. “The idea of somebody breaking things away, and raising grave doubts about the viability of the party system, particularly the Democratic Party, is not a bad idea,” Hersh said. “That’s something we could build on in the future. But we have to figure out what to do in the next few years.” He added: “I don’t think the notion of democracy is ever going to be as tested as it’s going to be now.”
In recent years, Hersh has been attacked for his investigative reports on a variety of policies and actions authorized by the Obama administration, but he has never backed down from his aggressive approach to journalism. His reporting on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden dramatically contradicted the administration’s story, and his investigation on the use of chemical weapons in Syria cast doubts on the official claim that Bashar al Assad ordered the attacks. Although he has received many awards for his work, Hersh said praise and condemnation have no impact on his work as a journalist.
Jeremy Scahill’s interview with Seymour Hersh can be heard on The Intercept’s new weekly podcast, Intercepted, which premieres January 25.
Top photo: Journalist Seymour Hersh in Perugia, Italy, on April 1, 2009.
My experience was eye opening.
I went to Mother Jones and asked everyone what specific evidence they’d seen – this was the day after the release of the declassified report – that convinced them the US intelligence agencies’ were true.
The responses were both predictable and mind boggling.
First, I was called a lot of named. A lot. These included lots of variations of things like, “Reich wing Trump troll”.
Second, and most disturbingly, in the end it turned out that the dozens of people defending said report hadn’t actually read it.
This was exactly the same behavior I saw reprleatedly leading up to the Iraq War. Wilful ignorance coupled with partisan rage.
Bad times.
Thank God for Mr. Hersh, probably the most accurate and honest REAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER of the last forty years!!
Dear Seymour, ya think? The US media and government is hopelessly corrupt, why does anyone even address this issue of Russia altered the election in Trump’s favor?
What does Seymour Hersh say about the White Helmets? Does he agree with Murtaza Hussain that they are the good guys? Out with it. Say something you people’s champions. Why the silence? You know you did a bad thing with that pro USAID, pro White Helmets crap, Don’t you?
Hersh seems surprised that the US “intelligence” agencies and MSM were jointly attempting to undermine Trump before he even took office. He should know better. The CIA has had its talons in the MSM since the 1950s. “Operation Mockingbird” never ended. Perhaps Pompeo will finally fix that.
That said, Hersh should also know better than to claim Trump is trying to “destroy” the media. The 1st Amendment protects the press against prior restraint and other forms of government control; it does NOT guarantee access to anyone or anything, nor absolve the press of accountability. If Trump wants to revoke the White House press credentials of outlets that were effectively Hillary’s PR flacks, he is free to do so. Heck, if he wanted to he could eliminate press conferences entirely and do Q&A via Twitter. That is not “trampling,” Sy — that is calling out the presstitutes.
Note the MSM meltdown the other day just because Spicer snubbed the AP at the initial news conference and took the 1st question from the NY Post instead. Talk about a gang of spoiled brats!
from here, it looks like if you tried any harder to look down your nose, you’d fall off the back of your chair. just how do you determine Hersh’s “surprise?”
and however spoiled members of the press corp may be, however regimented or entitled, i hardly think Hersh has defended them in that regard. but to deny Trump’s attacks on and antagonism towards members of the media who fail to quote the company line is contradictory in this context, and completely oblivious.
Trump also said that he or his administration will factcheck media. I think it is about time to indeed factcheck these liars.
Except that he’ll assign the task to the likes of some lunatic like Alex Jones
The election of Donald Trump exposes the split on the left. Trump has a great deal of support from radically antiwar libertarians and the alt (extreme, radical, far) left despite the very obvious negatives that go with an unpredictable Trump Presidency. Trump’s stated policy of detente with Russia has garnered the attention of antiwar activists. Trump’s foreign policies – as far as they have been defined during the election campaign – are interpreted to challenge the neocons and liberal interventionists which dictate US confrontational policies and policies of regime change throughout the world, but especially in the oil-rich Middle East.
While “liberals” or “progressives” generally agree with the alt left on domestic policies and the need to view the world through colonialism and identity politics, there is a dramatic difference on foreign policy defined by the US role in the world. Antiwar activist, John V. Walsh, sums up this difference in his June, 2016 article posted at LewRockwell.com (“The Antiwar Left Likes Trump’s Foreign Policy” https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/06/john-v-walsh/antiwar-left-likes-trumps-foreign-policy/):
“……….Until recently the progressive mind has been resolutely closed and stubbornly frozen in place against all things Trump………But cracks are appearing in the ice. With increasing frequency over the last few months, some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy. Let us hear from these heretics, among them William Greider, Glen Ford, John Pilger, Jean Bricmont, Stephen F. Cohen and William Blum. Their words are not to be construed as “endorsements,” but rather an acknowledgment of Trump’s anti-interventionist views, the impact those views are having and the alternative he poses to Hillary Clinton in the current electoral contest……..”
Anti-American, extreme leftist, John Pilger doesn’t mince words on Hillary Clinton or US foreign policy as quoted by Walsh in his article:
“…….The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.”………”
The alt left supports the rise of China and Russia as a counter balance to American power, and they are more than willing to chuck democracy, human rights and civil liberties in the interest of world peace (Syria, for example). In this vision, the global powers are given an area of influence which must be respected like Ukraine which effectively belongs to Russia. Internal issues of human or political rights like in China are simply ignored in the interests of peace (with the one notable exception, the Palestinians). The antiwar extreme left is only interested in rocking the American boat which (they feel) drives the majority of conflicts in the world today.
The alt left viewed Hillary as a typical American hawk on foreign policy while progressives viewed her as the first women President in American history, and a supporter of social liberalism. To progressives/liberals, Trump runs counter to progressive values. Trump embodies European/white racism and anti-Islam bigotry. He chooses to collectively punish all Muslims for the acts of a small minority. Additionally, Trump made some remarkably racists and insensitive remarks about Mexican immigrants and while the alt left deplores those same comments, turning the rudder on US foreign policy is the priority. Trump is the anti-neocon. American “exceptionalism” is the problem – in this vision. For those reasons, the alt left supports Trump.
Your entire last paragraph shows that you are in the same politically unconscious state as the Democrats are. Hilary isn’t progressive despite what they, her, and you say, and there’s evidence everywhere to back up that assertion; the outpouring of support for Bernie’s campaign and what it represented being the best, most easily understood example.
Both Hillary and Trump run counter to progressive values, with no one I know remotely thinking that Hillary or Trump deserved to be President – so I guess i’m not alt-left after all, whatever that really means.
And good luck continuing to try to pigeonhole Trump into any poorly understood category you’ve listed so far – he doesn’t really align himself with any political ideology that I know of, unless, of course, you consider narcissistic monkey-see-monkey-do tantrums to be descriptive of one.
In the 1990’s, Mark Singer of the Atlantic magazine sums up the quandary of deciding what to think of Trump by observing that Trump is “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.” I pretty much think that’s as close as we’re going to get.
sillyputty
“………our entire last paragraph shows that you are in the same politically unconscious state as the Democrats are. Hilary isn’t progressive despite what they, her, and you say, and there’s evidence everywhere to back up that assertion…….”
That’s a fair criticism about HRC (who I really cannot stand). I was just pointing out how progressives view Hillary VERSUS Trump. True liberals don’t support Trump for the reasons I pointed out in the above post. The main point of the post was to show how the antiwar extreme left “supported” Trump over the hawkish HRC because of his potential to alter US foreign policy. That is a major break on the left where many progressives support liberal intervention (as in Libya). Hillary is liberal on most social issues; for example, according to Wikipedia:
“………The American modern liberal philosophy strongly endorses public spending on programs such as education, health care, and welfare. Important social issues today include addressing inequality, voting rights for minorities, reproductive and other women’s rights, support for LGBT rights, and immigration reform.[2]…..”
However, she definitely supports neoliberal policies (before she turned against TTP), and by no means is as “progressive” as Bernie Sanders who is more of a leftist in economic policies. Hillary was strongly influenced by and supported by Wall Street. She represented the status quo. Hillary was not a popular candidate at all. Many Democrats (and some Republicans) voted for her because she was NOT Trump.
Trump is very difficult to define politically because he is not an idealist. He is pragmatic supporting some liberal as well as conservative policies. Mostly he is loyal to his base of support which is definitely to the right (as we will see when he announces his Supreme Court nominee). I feel comfortable saying that Trump will support right wing social causes to reinforce his evangelical base; anti-immigrant and anti-refugee legislation to reinforce the alt-right; and trade will move to the top of his priorities list to reward the working class (in that sense, Sanders and Trump see eye to eye).
Thanks.
I know. And for the reasons I stated you are wrong. Not being able to define something (a progressive, in this specific case) ensures that outcome.
With regards to your ongoing attempts to pigeonhole Trump, they seem doomed as well.
“An existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul” pretty much nails it, I think; and because of the evident Dunning-Kruger effect you both exhibit, that observation applies equally to you as well.
You’re welcome, and have a great day.
Representative Tulsi Gabbard is back from her Syria fact finding mission, and tells Jake Tapper that America must stop funding and backing the terrorists…would love to see The Intercept do an in-depth interview with her..
https://theinternationalreporter.org/2017/01/26/cnn-exclusive-rep-gabbard-on-meeting-with-assad/
Thank God President Trump stopped the flow of “refugees ” from there. The best thing we can do is let Assad reclaim siria and let him deal with the terrorists and be done with it.
We have to stop obomos endless wars…
Hope she will go on a fact finding mission to Ukraine soon !
“Lazily…”?
Did Hersh really say that? It’s not in quotes so one can’t be sure. But he said this and it’s just as bad:
“They were just so willing to believe stuff.”
Really? And we’re assuming they really believe it because…?
I like Sy Hersh. Done great work. But let’s be honest here. The press hasn’t been fooled. They are complicit in a PR campaign to deflect away from the Clinton-Podesta leaked email scandals by screaming Russia from the tops of their lungs constantly.
A lot of stuff came out in those Wikileaks releases that is very damaging to a lot of people – including the press. From the beginning it has been blatantly obvious the cries of “Russia did it!!!” were all just a big diversion. And after the election, the Russia hysteria grew louder to divert from having an accountability moment over the losing direction of the Democratic party.
The All Putin All the Time show has been nothing but a media diversion to avoid facing the issues of corruption in the Clinton Foundation and all the many people that touches, corruption of the media who were clearly caught faking some news on behalf of Goldman Sach’s favorite candidate, and eventually, the failure and collapse of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party.
I don’t believe for a second that Sy Hersh really believes all these “journalists” were duped. And they certainly don’t deserve the professional comity he’s awarding them by refusing to say it.
I completely agree. Disrupt began immediately following the election and seemed to have the purpose to detract from any reporting on the HRC email/foundation scandal. What the public see’s and deduces from this doesn’t seem to matter.
i think it may be fair, without making excuses, to say that the Democrat press saw and believed what they wanted to see and believe. much like many Democrat voters and supporters, who suddenly adopted the manner and mindset of the Fox-Rovians they’d despised for years.
“the extent to which the White House was going and permitting the agency to go public with the assessment”
This is a stretch. The White House kept it hushed for months because Obama didn’t want to give the impression of partisanship.
Doesn’t ANYONE remember the blockbuster, and currently relevant, Seymour Hersh article called Military to Military? It wasn’t mentioned in the Scahill article, and I see no reference to it in comments..it has everything to do with the “Russian situation”, and was a harbinger of what a Trump administration might bring with regards to Syria and the Middle East, namely cooperation between The United States and Russia in the fight againt ISiS and ISiS “suppliers”(including many “western” factions)..
Google (Seymour Hersh Military to Military) to find the Seymour Hersh exposé, from well over a year ago, published in London Review of Books(behind a paywall)…this article got so little exposure that one would have to conclude that it was swept under the rug, then buried..
A few quotes from this Alternet article I found..
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/sy-hersh-blockbuster-top-us-general-ignored-obama-led-secret-plot-protect-assad-and
“The thrust of Hersh’s article is that unbeknown to President Obama, his former Joint Chiefs chairman orchestrated the way for Assad to remain in power while paving the way for Russia to enter the Syrian war—despite stated White House policies and criticisms of both Assad and Putin. That White House drum beat, which to Hersh sounds like a Cold War script…”
And this:
“According to Hersh, the president’s policy—that Assad must leave office, and that moderate rebels in Syria could be armed in order to defeat him—was built on major flaws. That was the conclusion Dempsey and the various intelligence teams that prepared reports for the Joint Chiefs made. There were no moderates in the Syrian civil war, as repeatedly proven by failed CIA attempts to arm and train forces that took American weapons and sold them to Assad’s fiercest opponents, either Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State. Moreover, removing Assad would likely lead to a situation similar to what has been seen in Libya and Iraq, where America’s removal of those dictators created a vaccum that was filled by warring factions and fundamentalists. Hersh quotes Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to ’14, who said of the White House, “They did not want to hear the truth.”
(Note to photosymbiosis.. this is why I don’t think it’s such a stretch to believe that the “no columns” quip had a double meaning…they need to clear out the “ISiS backers”..
When you add the implication, as the Alternet article puts it :”Did Obama’s top generals outfox him when it came to the war in Syria?”, to the fact that Flynn is now National Security Advisor, and that Trump appears ready to work with the Russians against isis, in direct contrast to the preposterous “official Obama/establishment position” of the past few years, that”Russia is the greatest threat in the world”..well, looks like the military and “intelligence community”, among others, are in for a pretty major “shake-up”.)
Seem to recall Mattis making the exact same comment: “Russia is top threat”.
Noone knows wtf DJT is going to do.
OT – The number of “rogue” Twitter accounts from federal science agencies is up to 22 now.
https://twitter.com/StollmeyerEU/lists/twistance/members
Meanwhile, the real Inaugural Day video transcription has been released.
;^)
God bless the old Sy Hersch. He told the truth about how the Bush admin was a coup for religious literalists and Knights of Malta. Now he’s a DoD pawn.
The Trump administration is clearly “at war” with portions of the media, but claiming that it is out to destroy the media is over-stated. Besides, with things like the “Russia hacked the vote!” coverage, it appears that at least some of the media are out to destroy themselves.
The “circuit breaker” analogy of President Trump breaking the two party system is interesting and correct.Trump has broken the circuit, and there is now an opportunity for a new political system with new political parties. Currently a few billionaires and their powerful corporations and financial institutions have corrupted the political system, and as they own both parties it is a sham of a democracy.They have polluted politics with money to ensure the rise of corporate governments that are militarized, criminal enterprises serving only their agendas of greed. There is now an opportunity to instigate huge change and for people to rise against the establishment and to demand a fairer and less corrupt new political system.
Interesting how Hersch believes that disrupting the 2-party system is good, but disrupting the sycophantic relationship between the press and the White House should be feared. I mean, have you ever been to a WH Correspondent’s dinner? It’s a real creep-fest.
The idea of allowing reporters from outside DC to Skype into press conferences may not be a bad idea..the usual suspects will scream bloody murder..
Well, gee, it’s probably because of his own, decades-long sycophantic relationship with, let’s see. . . ten (10) presidential administrations. ;^)
Actually. . . you’re very confused. Read the piece above the line, again and then do some research on the interviewee. The research will be easier if you learn to spell his name correctly.
They were following a partisan line of attack more than just the intelligence agencies.
The difference is that the agencies included caveats that the partisans ignored.
That very large part of the press was just part of the Hillary campaign, and then part of an outraged attack on Trump as their reaction to the shock of unexpected loss.
“.. and his investigation on the use of chemical weapons in Syria cast doubts on the official claim that Bashar al Assad ordered the attacks.”
-scahill
Did you compare notes w/ respect to your investigation of Mother Agnes Mariam, and her sympathizing tact?
Yes ,, I did !!
Did you ?
Maybe Hersh can unmask the truth…
And hopefully it is better than his unbelievable (and not since further corroborated or strengthened at all) account of Bin Laden being the Pakistanis’ dinner guests and how the entire U.S. operation was supposedly a hoax, according to primarily one unnamed source.
Maybe an almost 80 year old Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who, broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Abu Ghraib torture, and secret details of the Bush-Cheney assassination program has done enough and should be respected for his opinions on how the rest of the media is slacking in their jobs.
You won’t get much meat trying to nibble on his ankles.
Funny how the OBL piece didn’t make the list of accolades.
If you want to grovel at his ankles that’s your prerogative. Hersh indeed has credibility but that doesn’t translate to deference. His name attached to a piece earns must-read status but the hero worship ends there.
A lot of Hersh’s criticisms of the media’s Putin-Russia coverage is true. Buzzfeed for example messed up. Hersh criticizes intelligence agency assessments but his own OBL article was primarily derived from a single government source and I recall his piece having three total sources, all anonymous. Because of this, other journalists couldn’t corroborate his analysis.
Hersh, on TI’s podcast sounds straight apathetic about Trump. “Let’s just see” what happens…. That is some terrible advice
Nate, you are at the ankle-level.
Just because you do not believe something doesn’t make it unbelievable.
You didn’t watch the Python skit, did you. If you did then you failed to comprehend the fact that negating another’s position does not an argument make.
Go look up the pictures from My Lai. The before and after shots (no pun intended);
it is as sick as anything you’ve ever seen. Our government has a proven track record of lies and atrocity. I’ll take Mr. Hersh at his word before any government stooge.
If you want to grovel at his ankles that’s your prerogative. Hersh indeed has credibility but that doesn’t translate to deference. His name attached to a piece earns must-read status but the hero worship ends there.
Why do you characterize respect for professional accomplishments as groveling, deference, hero worship? You have quite the little denigration fetish going on. :-s
Explain the spectrum from ‘must-read’ to ‘hero worship’ because I’m unfamiliar with the shifting grounds of what is needed to be ‘sorta-respectable, if-grudgingly’ here, but ‘whoa-why-are-you-on-your-knees’ over there.
And please do tell me where the red line is between what is acceptable (‘sorta-respectable, if-grudgingly’) and what is not (‘whoa-why-are-you-on-your-knees’). One definitely doesn’t want to end up on the wrong side of that.
Perish the thought. :-s
;^)
Hmmm, maybe because you tried to refute my innocuous comment by appealing to Hersh’s accomplishment? It might also be because you’re a prominent member of Glenn’s cult of personality. Granted, your knee-pads aren’t as worn out as Mona’s but they’re certainly not in mint condition.
Dammit Nate! No more posts for you!
h/t SoupNazi
You’re comment wasn’t innocuous, it was an attack on Hersh’s credibility. It was reasonable to counter with his accomplishments. In that balance, I side with Hersh. YF(ootage)MV.
I’m concerned for your vision…and anatomy studies. Those are kneecaps. One day you’ll get tall enough to know what lies above.
So sensitive! It wasn’t a credibility attack but a barb at his more recent epic OBL-raid piece, which I found highly questionable. And this wasn’t just a single outlier. This was preceded by his also highly questionable claim that Turkey was involved in the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria. His credibility is well intact, but with greater skepticism.
“[I’m] So sensitive! It wasn’t a credibility attack but a barb[-b-que] at his more recent epic OBL-raid piece [served squab], which I found highly questionable. And this wasn’t just a single [bird] outlier. This was preceded by his also highly questionable claim that Turkey was [available] … in the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria. His credibility is well intact, but with greater skepticism [one can always point out what is not there].”
Zzzzzzz…
Don’t wake me up before you gogo.
Nat to pedinska
” Granted, your knee-pads aren’t as worn out as Mona’s but they’re certainly not in mint condition.”
Come on, Nate, this ain’t your first rodeo; I hear mint won’t get that taste out of your mouth.
Hersh is (and has alwsys been) the Real Deal. Bravo for giving him a platform in this most unsettling of times.
So we have a quote from Hersh stating that Trump is directly copying the Nazi rise to power in dismantling the press, but the lede on this story is “lazy journalists jump on Russian hacking story”?
I mean, sure, you could say that the understaffed, under-financed, dying media institutions are the bad guys in your lede, sure! That’s something you can say. (You did!) I guess it strikes me as odd that you’d bury the source comparing the new President to Hitler in a direct comparison and showing how he’s instituting the same policies the Nazis used before WWII.
Well Mr. Hersh is a little embarrassing when he starts trotting out his Godwin analogies. Sure the Nazis hated the free press, but every government that ever existed hates a free press. We shouldn’t draw any conclusions concerning Mr. Trump’s future behavior on that basis.
So the journalist has decided by himself with no transparency or acknowledgement to print embarrassingly flawed and inaccurate information in a quote and not provide any context for it?
That doesn’t sound like journalism anymore.
The context for the quote was the interview. Journalists, unfortunately, often report what the subject said, rather than what he should have said. This can create much confusion and misunderstanding.
So that’s how that’s supposed to work! ;-)
This type of prop makes people go crazy, and allows those in the throes of lunacy to decry any attempt of rational because of the “credibilty” of MSM. I did not vote for trump. I am not a fan of putin and most certainly am not a fan of putin actually sounding more truthful than my own gov and people. Also, thank you for not rinning with the “is it okay to punch a nazi?” That was astroturfed across the “free press”. Coincidentally, anti protest laws are springing up from state to staTe, and I’m sure trump will send all the military toys LE could ask for.
This won’t help you if your phone’s entire operating system has been compromised.
There are no sure fire ways to prevent absolute power when it is concentrated absolutely on a given goal. But if enough of us take these kinds of measures, we can make the process as slow and grinding as possible. And things like using encryption (e.g. Signal app on your phone – ffs, it’s FREE), and sharing our efforts with friends and family, asking them to join us, and helping them understand why it’s important are small efforts that add up over time.
Mario was a very special guy. For the last few years of his life, he was a neighbor in the little town we lived in and he died in our tiny community hospital. He had been teaching (math & philosophy) at the nearby state university campus. He’ll always be a hero.
Just FYI, Galactus is correct. If the operating system (and the hardware!) of a device is controlled by someone else (remotely, no less), you cannot trust the security of any application you may install.
Additionally, Signal, itself, has a number of limitations and vulnerabilities. Probably the most significant is that users just don’t do a good job of comparing and verifying public key fingerprints — necessary to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. See, for example:
When SIGNAL hits the Fan
Just FYI, Galactus is correct.
Yes, I believe my first sentence acknowledged that.
Additionally, Signal, itself, has a number of limitations and vulnerabilities. Probably the most significant is that users just don’t do a good job of comparing and verifying public key fingerprints — necessary to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Thanks for the reference. My response would be, then, that we need people who understand what’s in that paper to digest it down and make it understandable so that common users (e.g. people who lack the skill set) can grasp what needs to be done and how to do it.
In my field, HIV research and treatment, we had a wide population of patients who would never be able to read/grasp the volume of papers circulating on why it was important for them to be conscientious and diligent in taking their medications on time, every time. So it was our job to make it as easy to graps as possible. We couldn’t avoid all unforeseen complications, but we did a good job of telling them what they needed to do to minimize damage to their health.
That’s what I’m asking for.
“grasp” not “graps”. The latter are small friut that are delisiouc.
p.s. Doug, you are absolutely right to blame me whenever your dingers get fyslexic. :-)
Well, I probably shouldn’t have pointed out the Signal vulnerabilities, because doing so just caused distraction from the more important point:
You cannot be confident of the security of ANY application running under an operating system that is controlled by others.
The above is true because all applications are under the control of the operating system, must acquire their input through the operating system (what you type into, e.g., Signal, is actually being passed to Signal by the operating system, which can do anything it wants with that data, in addition to delivering it to your app). And the operating system, along with applications that may have been installed by the people who control it, can see and manage whatever processes and procedures your app may launch/execute.
All of the entities that control the operating systems most of you use — on your phones, your tablets, your laptop and desktop computers — have histories of surreptitiously spying on, collecting, aggregating, selling, sharing, etc. user identities, user activities, user data, etc. for their own purposes. All of them also have histories of secret cooperation with government spies and law enforcement agencies. And all of them are subject to warrants, national security letters, the provisions of legislation such at the “Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act” (“CALEA”), which require them to configure their systems to be able to promptly and efficiently provide the requested or required data and information.
Now, are there situations in which weak and/or flawed applications and methods may be “good enough?” Sure, but judging that requires knowing all of the details of the situation, as well as knowing with some certainty the identities and capabilities of prospective attackers.
You cannot be confident of the security of ANY application running under an operating system that is controlled by others.
Yah, I know. That’s why I wrote in my first sentence to Galactus:
There are no sure fire ways to prevent absolute power when it is concentrated absolutely on a given goal.
I’m still glad you put all that out there because I know there are people reading who don’t know it.
Now, are there situations in which weak and/or flawed applications and methods may be “good enough?” Sure, but judging that requires knowing all of the details of the situation, as well as knowing with some certainty the identities and capabilities of prospective attackers.
Steep learning curve, yes. People need to be informed and realize that there is more than just donwloading, yes. Absolutely. But tell me, why then did Edward Snowden – who is, granted, way more talented than most of us will ever be in this field – recommend that people use Signal?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-makes-pitch-android-signal-private-messenger-1526909
The learning curve has to start somewhere. Are you recommending that we all wait to start using some of these tools until we are perfect in our use? Perfect and complete in our understanding?
That’s not how learning happens. And most of us don’t know someone as knowledgeable as you.
I can’t tell you why Snowden recommends Signal. My guess is that he thinks it is “good enough” for the purposes for which he uses it and thinks that it is “good enough” for most people and most circumstances. I don’t know if he’s aware of the man-in-the middle usability survey. And I’m pretty sure that Edward and those with whom he exchanges sensitive information are skilled at and careful about key verification.
I’m quite certain that Snowden knows what I’ve already told you about the relationship between apps, operating systems and the people and entities who control the latter (and, in the case of mobile devices, the networks or parts of them).
No. I’m just warning you that the security that can be provided by those tools is limited. Depending upon one’s situation, the sensitivity of the subject communications, the consequences of interception, the identities and capabilities of likely attackers, etc. the limitations may or may not be a serious problem.
I will say that it would be a very good idea to have a thorough understanding and be thoroughly accomplished — or have the guidance and assistance of someone who is — before attempting secure communication of critical information via any digital, wireless or telephonic means.
If it’s critical, and you’re not sure you’re sure, have a conversation in a park or forest, use paper and ink (you can encrypt in that medium, too), send a courier, even use snail mail if you have no reason to believe you are, or the recipient is, subject to scrutiny at that level.
Oh, lots of people have been doing computer security for quite a while, now. I expect most folks in the developed world have qualified helpers and/or teachers not too far away.
And, for everyone connected to the Internet, the EFF guide to Surveillance Self-Defense is right here.
Hersh is spot on. Something has gone terribly wrong with the US MSM, it’s pure unadulterated shit these days. I mean–it has been basically shit for, say, the past 40 or so odd years, but since at least 2003 it is tabloid shit, smarm and propaganda. Anybody who still tunes in to Fox News, CNN, CBS etc for “what’s happening in the news” needs their heads examined. NPR: pure, unadulterated SHIT. Do not forget how NPR cheerleaded for war in the Persian Gulf War 1991; and also both Iraq and Afghanistan wars 2001 and 2003 respectively. I really, really detest NPR most of all because they still, to this day, promote themselves as “public radio”, when in fact they have massive corporate donations, I think about 40% of their total budget. Long story short: find independent internet news sources, dump the corporate asshats: Democracy Now! is good for day in day out newsie, Truthout, Truthdig, CounterPunch….all good.
Unless your handle was hijacked, Deschutes, your tenor changed completely between your post here at 12:17 and those at 12:21 and 12:23.
DN! Is good for domestic issues, however, recall their cheerleading for the war of aggression on Libya, and other such times that they read off the State Department Lie.
Consortiumnews is also a site worth keeping up on.
I love Sy Hersh – I’m a big fan of the work you guys do here and your partners. Usually, I’m in agreement – but I’m scratching my head at how stuck you all are on this irrelevant story when the world is falling down around our feet. I do not believe that any of you believe that Russia DIDN’T interfere in the US election. Of course they did, in all kinds of creative ways that haven’t even been “assessed” in any dossiers. We do it to them and a lot of other countries – they do it to us, and to all their neighbors. Russian bots relaying US generated fake news sites everywhere on social media was just a tiny but influential part of a very well played game. And even supposing Wikileaks didn’t get the Podesta emails directly from Russia – are they certain their source didn’t – can they prove that? Is the Intercept asking those questions anywhere? Finally, for all the leaking that hurt the Democrats – we now know there was far more lethal leaks floating about on Trump as early as July – yet, suddenly everybody’s too honorable to report them – even Comey, who had no hesitation bitch slapping HR Clinton in public, failed to investigate what was handed to him on Trump. I didn’t want HRC as President either, but after the convention she was all we had left to stop this travesty. We rely on you guys to focus on the real news – so when you’re done telling us how innocent Putin is and what liars the CIA are (is that even news?) could you go tackle the mile high pile of shit on Trump so we have the information? Or – and this is what worries me the most about the sources I’ve trusted the most thus far – was a Trump Presidency the actual goal, ‘cos that’s what it’s starting to smell like.
it’s honestly mind-blowing that a story which says Trump is America’s Hitler buried that under a nothing-burger attack on mainstream media. Is it sour grapes at the Intercept or something? I am in total agreement with your comment.
I agree a lot with Audrey too. There’s been too much finger pointing about who got us in this mess that people are losing sight of the mess we’re in already.
It reeks of sophomoric ego stroking about who is the better journalist.
I, too, see a Trump presidency as the unexpected gift for the conservative republican movement. They got an insecure ego maniac who is desperate for attention and approval. He easily manipulates crowds and the media because they’re exactly like him: desperate for approval and attention. The conservative party already knows how to manipulate him. And now the entire government is run pretty much by that single party of conservatives. It’s a coup nobody wants to admit happened under their noses.
I don’t believe Russia “interfered” with the US election because I don’t, as a logical matter or as a democratic one, that another could “interfere” with any election by releasing true information about any candidate.
Maybe you do. But until I see proof that Russia hacked vote totals, individual ballots, or released fabricated documents to Wikileaks, then I categorically deny as a logical and democratic matter that Russia “could” have “interfered” with the US election.
And in fact, only people who have yet to come up with a single solitary argument how it can be a corruption or “interference” of a democratic election by release true information about candidates, I’ll just accept you’re neither rational, nor anything but a partisan fool.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.90648623ec63
You’re hanging your whole argument on the Podesta emails – as in, they were his and it’s fair to publish something that’s true. Ok, but that’s not my argument. On the fake news front alone – the Russians did a lot to stir up anything that confirmed the worst anti Hillary bias. It should have been called out and countered fairly by our free press, but it wasn’t. Trump was an outrageous candidate, worthy of all kinds of scrutiny he did not get. That part I don’t understand, unless people we trust in the media actually wanted the crazy orange guy to win. I’m neither irrational nor a “partisan fool” – I’m not even a Hillary supporter. I just believe in balance and fair play and believe that it’s silly/cowardly to call a stranger a name online so you might want to knock it off. I’m wasting my time on here today because I believe everyone, everywhere should have done everything in our power to keep the foxes out of the hen houses – to protect the environment, public housing, women’s rights, the ACA, medicare, social security and on and on. Hillary is a corporate shill, yes, but at least she doesn’t vacuum up all the oxygen.
@ Audrey
Let me put it to you another way, for you and all those who believe Russia “interfered” with the US election.
If a mainstream newspaper in an allied nation, say Australia, had received the leaked Podesta e-mails and DNC e-mails, or any other e-mails, and to the best of their ability vetted them and found them newsworthy and true (not fabrications), should they have refrained from releasing them at their discretion regardless of its potential impact on the US election?
If so you don’t even begin to believe in the concept of a “free press”. Nor do you believe that the America people should at all times be entitled to as much accurate information about their potential elected representatives.
For my part, I really don’t want to be fellow citizens with people who are afraid of more information and desire less information about their potential elected representatives.
It quite simply is anti-democratic, and in fact makes meaningful representative government impossible if our potential elected representatives are entitled to shroud in secrecy their rue thoughts and positions on issues and events, and/or their contemplated actions in response.
Further, what it means if you believe that, is you want to be fed a steady diet of sloganeering, propaganda and public relations speak, instead of doing the hard work of being an informed citizen. And that too is short-sighted, anti-democratic, and makes me believe that “democracy” is truly doomed in America if people actually want to be fed a steady diet of bullshit instead of having as much access to demonstrable reliable facts about their potential elected representatives–because what you then believe in is a fantasy about what your potential elected representative actually thinks or will do if elected. And that makes you stupid and irrational.
@ rrheard
Perhaps you misread my comment or you’re responding to someone else’s? I believe entirely in a free press. The Podesta emails should’ve been reported and more. All the energy that went into reporting HRC’s efforts to win the nomination, to discredit Bernie, to curry favors for Clinton Foundation donations, even down to the scare mongering crap about her being on death’s door when she wasn’t – deserved reasoned attention – from our Press, not bots relaying strategically from RT and Sputnik. By all means, report on all of it, but make sure you’re also reporting on Trump’s tax returns or lack of – a matter worthy of daily coverage ‘cos yes, we very much do care what’s in there and have a right to know; the same goes for his business investments with/or loans from parties who deserve close scrutiny; what about off shore bank accounts – does he have them, are they legal?; what about all the interesting depositions made by him or against him in the countless lawsuits, can you report on them too please?; or the outtakes from the “Apprentice” which apparently confirm the worst about his unstable temperament, his attitude toward women, toward minorities, toward poor people. Have the press managed to get them for us – what’s the matter, don’t they know how? Where’s Assange and all his leakers when we need them? Everybody and his cousin had the golden shower dossier on Trump since July 2016 – they kept the heat on Hillary, often with bs stories right up to the day of the election – why did they bury this far more salacious click bait on Trump? Please don’t insult me with the ‘unverifiable’ argument – a quarter of the country get their news from Breitbart and Fox – which accounts for the “steady diet of bullshit” that influenced this recent expression of democracy. So what’s a little more if it balances out.
Trump is President now in part because of all of this confluence of lousiness. And the Intercept is still crying about the CIA being liars (we know, we know, we read books and watch Homeland) when they should be out there digging up the mountain of “factual” information on Trump we don’t have. It will all come out, because we’ll all pissed off now and we’re on it. But it’s too late. He’s torching the house already.
I hope you’re not making the argument that the press didn’t seek dirt on Agent Orange? You seem quite aware of that dirt! How did you gain that knowledge?
Fighting mud with mud, eh? :>(
Post-election, places like Salon are now almost exclusively Trump Derangement Syndrome peddlers, more even than pre-election.
Yes, I am making exactly that argument. Both that the media did not properly investigate Trump – neither in a clean straight up way nor by the down and dirty tactics Republican sponsored media have used against the Clintons for decades. Trump himself put up a reward for anyone who could help him prove the Birther argument against Obama – and everybody reported on that. So yeh, mud with mud. Why not? We should have both, because it’s been normalized.
And no – I don’t have any of the information I’m talking about. I don’t know what’s in his tax returns, which “500” corporations he’s invested in, and where, or what his debt is, to whom. I’ve personally heard stories about what’s in the Apprentice outtakes – can’t Assange go get one of his friends to go rob, oops, I mean, leak them? Can’t we subpoena them for the sexual harassment case? Seems like people have been incredibly lax in pursuing some big, big stories.
This normalising of fake news (to use a fashionable but often misused term) is precisely a massive problem of our time. Adding to it can bring no good, although it could land you a corrupt victory: power for the sake of power.
For that reason, I’m out! :^(
The idea of handing power to a corporate shill (and more besides that) by means of a dirty tricks campaign of mis/disinformation is actually quite abhorrent to me. And to most others here, I think…
Call me a member of the purist brigadem if you will. There are far saner ideas floating around on TI than yours. ;^)
What it seems like, to me, Audrey — having read through your posts — is that you are simply an angry partisan in the intramural games of American politics. You are upset that your candidate, the candidate of the near-right wing of the One Party with two right wings, lost the election and, like so many in your wing, you are thrashing about looking for people other than yourselves, your leaders and your candidate to blame.
You’re not likely to find too much sympathy here, because only a minority of commenters buy into the theatre of our phony “two-party” system.
The truth is that your party (wing) lost because it (a) semi-covertly promoted Trump in the Republican primaries, thinking he would be an easy opponent to beat; (b) actively sabotaged a candidate all the polls indicated would beat Trump much more thoroughly than Clinton could hope for; (c) nominated one of the few prominent Democrats who is so widely disliked and mistrusted (for very good reasons) that she actually could lose to the nutcase, Trump; and (d) ran a campaign so pathetically awful that she actually did lose.
If you don’t what your party (wing) to crumble and fall into permanent dysfunction and repeated failure, you’d better get to work on a ground-up restructuring that truly addresses the interests and needs of the people Democrats have long pretended to represent, rather than the banksters and Owners to whom they have sold their souls.
If you just want to whine, bitch, accuse and complain, you should probably head for Daily Kos or one of the other phony liberal sites. You’ll find more like-minded folks there.
@Doug Salzman
None of what you said is true. Do you care about that even a little bit? The idea that the only way I can argue as I have on this matter is because of what you’ve assumed about me says more about your own bias.
Sometimes sticks work better than carrots.
Never understood this appeasement strategy you and others put out, and then try to guilt others for not joining up. It’s that same ‘holier than thou’ crap that turned people off the liberal elites, and conservative bullies exploit. Have irrational egomaniacal greedy bullies ever responded postively to reasoned arguments and facts? I remember that’s how it worked in cartoons, but it never works like that in the real world.
You either stand up to bullies and punch them in the nose, or you live with them pushing you around.
You seem to have a very poor understanding of what ‘we’ here are putting out. But I appreciate that a very superficial reading will lead to your thinking we think we’re ‘holier than thou’.
You also still don’t grasp what made the Dems lose the elections, despite having read several threads on TI about that. I’ll put that down to your self-professed disinterest in politics. I don’t understand fly fishing either because it doesn’t interest me in the slightest.
Your reference to ‘appeasement strategy’ is truly cryptic. Who, in your view are we ‘appeasing’?
This is the issue with your assertion: there is no (or at the very least, you’ve provided none) verifiable, same-for-everyone evidence (not assertions or claims) that prove what you and others say.
Yes, it’s demonstrably true that the main stream media fell down on the job in most respects, but the real problem in America today and how it arrives at conclusions revolves in your other assertion, that you don’t want anyone to “insult [you] with the ‘unverifiable’ argument” because, in your mind “a little more [unverifiable “fact” claims] balances out” the other sides bullshit altogether.
Please explain more how two lies inevitably lead to better results, i.e., the truth?
Because how I see it is that this is exactly the type of “reasoning” (or more accurately, lack thereof), that got us here in the first place.
@Sillyputty
You are right about the contradictions – at least the moral ones in my commentary.
But first, there are multiple articles that support the claim that Russian bots went to town on the fake news stuff about Hillary. Most of the fake news pieces were generated in the US (there’s a NYT live on FB interview with a kid from the South who is most famous for the fake news piece he wrote about 100,000 fraudulent ballots being found pre election in Illinois, all voting for Hillary – he wrote it as click bait for his Christian News site but his primary goal was Adsense revenue from Google). Russian bots sent it out everywhere – see the NYT report. Those who hated Hillary reposted everywhere as confirmation bias. Craig Timberg has done more detailed reporting here (see below). Maybe the independent studies he cites are fake, but even though I don’t like the WaPo, should I assume that they too are citing fake reports?
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/bots-trolls-and-state-media-how-russian-propaganda-machine-spread-fake-news-to-sway-u-s-election
Here’s why you do have a point about my contradictions – but I’m just a private citizen. The Republicans hurl shit very well. It sticks. They’ve institutionalized deceit – in Congress, through Fox News, through Church and Social networking – they repeat lies over and over to their people, knowing they are lies. Why, because that’s how they win. They cheat through gerrymandering districts too – they are smart and sophisticated in their pursuit of power.
The Democrats got caught out in very sloppy versions of similar tactics – especially in trying to derail the Bernie movement. They paid a very high price for that.
So here’s the moral contradiction – the Democrats directed their tactics at the wrong target. Trump was the enemy – and he beat them, dirty, very dirty. He’s not a legitimate President and he wouldn’t have made it in without the whole confluence of lousiness, Russian interference included.
With hindsight, many of us would’ve sanctioned any dirty tactics to stop Trump. The tragedy is that we wouldn’t have needed to stoop, had everyone done their job, and not just the MSM.
The usually reliable radical free press, including Assange were mighty quiet when it came to any thorough investigative work on Trump. Can it really be true that nobody leaked anything to Wikileaks on Trump? Anything at all? What about all the people who sued him? The employees he never paid? Every woman who came forward and said he molested them? Why weren’t we watching daily interviews with all these people – wall to wall coverage, instead of orange man on the podium selling steaks and exhorting us to punch protestors? We know major press organizations had the Russian dossier last July, but Wikileaks didn’t? We know Comey had it but stalled on the investigation – said nothing about it. Everybody says the CIA are big leaky leakers – so why did they wait ’til after the election?
You speak of “truth” as a result – and it all feels to me a little like Brexit. A crucial percentage of the electorate – a very small one, but one that made the difference – voted for him in protest, in jest, as a reactionary move. An even bigger percentage than that probably now regret it (I have no evidence of this but I’m surmising) – If we’re even only talking about a million people who might have been swayed not to vote for him – anyone who liked their ACA for example but who were too stupid to realize that it is Obamacare, anyone in public housing who weren’t aware that Trump might take away their subsidies with Carson, old people on medicare who may see a reduction in their allowances soon, or big Pharma move bilk them more for drugs; parents of kids in public schools that are about to see funding cuts if de Vos has a say – you know, logical stuff that a voter ought to understand when s/he’s voting.
If some Breitbart-Counter-speak site needed to spend every day talking about Trump liking Russian prostitutes peeing on him in order to make some of these voters think twice, then yeh, “unverifiable” is fine by me. If you bring a knife to a gun fight, you lose.
You’re still making the same “two wrong things make it right” argument, just using different examples to bolster it.
There’s nothing magical going here – the GOP, by consistently rebuffing all progressive policies almost all of the time, made progress legislatively impossible – and the Democrats helped them by focusing on economic policies that made things seem all right for most Americans. but which ignored that things really weren’t OK for a large percentage of them.
These folks dilemmas are what got Trump elected, and from a legislative standpoint, having both parties sling shit at each, in whatever ratio you like wouldn’t have changed that dynamic without policies in place to address their real concerns.
So what do the Democrats, or whatever coalesces as a progressive movement do about it?
They do one the GOP has done and done well – stand for something all the time. Every day. All day. With every member on board. Universal health care is a great example. Had the Democrats chosen just this one issue to run on, and chosen a credible messenger to deliver it to the American public, they would have one.
And that’s no shit.
There are not enough leaders in the Democratic party to do as you suggest.
We’re talking about humans here, not angels.
I’ve lived in many countries and I would characterize Americans generally as more honestly and openly out for themselves first and the greater good second, or if it’s convenient. Cornerstone of the American dream, you could say.
The reason why so many Democrats (as evidenced by the Clintons and all the other corporate puppets we’re shortlisting this week) are ideologically pro business, pro corporate, pro elite is because ideologically, they truly believe in that world, they aspire to be part and parcel of it – thought leaders, salon martini sippers, celebrity brusher-uppers. It’s hard to reconcile those personal goals with the political imperative to convince the impoverished masses you’ll fight for jobs, health care, education, legal fairness. Just read Matt Taibbi’s The Divide to understand the systemic corruption the underclass face at every juncture – and the utter disdain of leaders like Eric Holder who say one thing for rhetoric and do the exact opposite. Cory Booker followed suit this week on the Big Pharma vote. Look at the sheep voting for Trumps nominations right now. Do they even understand the word opposition? Or soon we’ll connect the dots back to their sponsors and see what’s in it for them.
The GOP are the same, only squared. And uglier.
I don’t disagree much with anything you’ve said here. My main take-away from all this is that whatever the Democrats do as it’s currently formed won’t work; we have to have enough folks on the progressive spectrum make it clear that this is the type of advocacy they want because it works.
Over one-half of the voters eligible to vote did not. Given that, and the fact that now we have millions more progressives who are actually turning out and using their voices publicly (Womens March, etc) it will likely have to be these newer voices that make those desires manifest, which will take time.
You’re really repeating yourself now. EVERYTHING bad you know about Trump you know because the MSM intensely publicised it.
He’s democratically elected, no matter how much I hate him. He won’t be impeached unless he makes a relevant error.
Doesn’t it bother you that the US has interfered countless times in other people’s elections? Hellary suggested doing just that with the Palestinian elections. Some Democrat!
As a remain voter I can assure you there’s diappointingly little evidence for that assertion. The Brexiteers are in fact digging their heels in and voicing loud protest re. what they see as delaying tactics by the Supreme Court.
“You’re really repeating yourself now. ”
ain’t that the truth …
you lack entropy, audrey …
clogging the threads
Yup. Still so many don’t seem to get that, which is at least one more reason to keep hammering the point.
@ Audrey
No I’m also hanging it on the DNC e-mails. Are you suggesting any of those were fabricated?
List three examples of “fake news” propagated by Russia, with proof Russia propagated, and demonstrate with links, how that swayed a single voter or group of voters in a “swing state”.
I’ll wait.
Again, demonstrate with links the fake news that the “free press” failed to call out or counter.
And he got a ridiculous amount of coverage (most of it highly negative), period, compared to Hillary or Bernie in number of stories over time and as a function of bias.
I post under my own name, rrheard (initials and last name), when you start doing that you can question who is a coward and who isn’t.
I noticed you didn’t even engage the question of “interference”, nor did you even try to define it or explain rationally how the release of true information from any source re: any candidate, in whatever amounts or distribution (i.e. as between Trump vs. Clinton) can be logically construed as “interference”.
Here’s a newsflash: Russia and no other country is obligated to refrain from commenting on our politicians, particularly when it comes to dissemination of true information about them, whether we like it or not and particularly given America and American citizens don’t give them any meaningful say in all the actions we take that affect them.
I didn’t misread it, maybe you misunderstood the implications of your own words.
You’re going to have to defined “reasoned attention”, and then establish how “bots” whatever those are, “relayed” such “[un]reasoned” information from RT or Sputnik. I don’t read RT and neither do most Americans. The vast majority of what was learned about hacked (assuming they were and they weren’t released by an insider which hasn’t been established by anybody to my satisfaction) and released e-mails were covered by the American mainstream press.
You are aware you are talking about all of the above because the US press DID report those things. It didn’t matter to enough people in a few states.
Assange is not an American. American politicians have made it clear, if not threatened that they’d like to see him assassinated, some of the Democratic party members and Hillary supporters. Do you honestly believe he has some obligation to the American people (or its politicians) to strike some “balance” re: what Wikileaks releases? I don’t and I’m American. As long as what he releases isn’t fabricated and true, I want more information about the world not less, and I hold Wikileaks and Assange to no requirement of “balance” as if he or it ever could.
Because none of it could be verified, and still hasn’t been verified. Is that your idea of a free press, that they print ever bit of unverifiable or as yet to be verified innuendo about whomever just because they are “creeps” in your book? That’s not a free press, that’s a “fake press” on the order of National Enquirer.
And if you believe that “quarter” of America who gets their news from Breitbart of Fox was going to ever vote for Hillary Clinton you’re deluded.
No it isn’t. It’s because the Democratic party has lost legitimacy with the other 70% of Americans of voting age who they can’t bother to motivate to vote for them.
Donald Trump was elected by about 1/3 of the US population that is eligible to vote.
I agree the press could always do better, but the real blame lies with a Democratic party that stands for nothing consistently or coherently and puts the GOP which couldn’t get elected in any other civilized nation on the planet, in a position to make every single race in America close.
Focus on that, and maybe you’ll understand that the problem wasn’t Russian interference, but that the Dems, demographically and as a function of “progressive policy” (assuming they actually believed in it and were willing to fight for it openly and consistently with some solidarity, might be able to rebuild a coalition that could give the GOP nightmares.
But they won’t because of two many centrists like you looking to cast blame for its failures, and craven complicity in the neoliberal order that is destroying this nation.
Sorry for typos like “two” instead of “too” and forgetting to end parenthetical after “solidarity,”.
I seriously don’t understand how anyone cannot see this plain fact.
+10 for the rest too. You have far more patience than I have.
Again, you are completely wrong – about everything you assume about me – especially the centrist thing. And I have cited a bunch of stories that explain the bots and how they relayed the fake news stories. With sources. And I have given my full name, if you were paying attention. I agree the majority of the Democratic leadership betray their base, every day – that Hillary was the wrong candidate – that Russia interfering was only one of many terrible things that put Trump in power. But if we have to rebuild an opposition to Trump arm and arm with someone as ill spirited as you, we are royally f**cked.
None of those citations explain anything – other than the fact that what is being reported is conjecture, and not facts.
As Seymor Hersh explains in this podcast on the subject, “if [the intelligence community] had facts, they’d use them. They don’t.”
The continuous harping that ‘the Russians did it!” is irrelevant and counterproductive right now; first because it hasn’t been proven (just asserted, huge difference) and secondly because even if some voters were swayed by these allegations (not evidence – allegations) they would not have been enough to make a difference.
Stories and assertions galore, I’ll give you that.
Total agreement with you on those issues. You do not read RT, but I read RT daily and have never seen where they publish the so called fake news about Hillary. When Hillary called Putin evil and Hitler of cause they featured Putin’s response when asked about his comment, which was “she says I have no soul but at least I have a brain”.
RT plays it very cool in presenting the Russian view point and stays factual because that is how the gained credibility. And they play it like Putin does without coming straight your face but always politely convey their analysis of the facts. I will read them any day before I read CNN, or listen to Fox news or any other MSM. and yet I voted for Hillary although I did not expect her to win. Long before the campaigning began, I told my friends and posted at liberal websites and to anybody who will listen including dailykos (yes I am a die hard liberal) where I use to visit a lot before I was banned at that site that if the Hillary was the democratic nominee for president, the democrats will lose the election. I came to that conclusion because I live in the south and I mix freely and discuss with people and was convinced that even if Jesus Christ were to walk back from Golgotha with blood streaming from his head and the cross on his shoulders and Moses vouching for him and he were to asked the people to vote for Hillary, he would be crucified all over before they will vote for Hillary. That was the situation it did not matter how they arrived at that opinion of Hillary it was there and it was not going to change and may have even been there before RT was ever born.
For many liberals that She would have relied on in a tight race, her inability to learn (Iraq war vote, vote for the bankruptcy bill and warrant less wire tapping Libya, Syria, Ukraine, TPP stand, universal health care stand, Love affair with Wall street and the Clinton foundation shenanigans), gave them lead feet. I held my nose and voted for her but surprisingly I did not feel bad that she lost and as they began trying this their coup with the Russia nonsense, I kind of felt relief that she lost. Trump is an evil but a lesser evil since he is coming from outside not from within. The evil from within one cannot excise as excision will also kill the person but evil coming from outside we can fight with all we have.
The blame the Russia meme amuses me so much.
I suggest you only read articles by Robert Mackey on this site. They’ll probably align with your focus (“real news” about how awful Trump is). Some even allow comments.
LOL.^^^^^^
The US Media is better than Joseph Goebbels Hitler’s propaganda machine, much, much better.
How would you know. I mean, what a stupid comment: ‘US media better than Goebbels’. You just toss out this glib, shallow statement, but have nothing to back it up. Maybe Socrates should retreat back into Plato’s cave, methinks.
Baby boomers patting themselves on the back, yet did they teach their kids any of these lessons? Did they work to make their country better for future generations? Or did they only think about themselves and are trying to this very day to hang onto everything?
It’s nice and all some grandpa is waxing nostalgic, but look at where we are now. It’s clear people did not learn despite this man’s concerted effort. It’s the same old “It’s up to you kids to fix our mistakes, except you don’t get any tools, oh and we think life is too easy for you so here are artificial hurdles we never had.”
It’s this man’s generation that created what we have now. Sure, the baby boomers will balk at this, but they rigged the system for the young to stagnate and fail while they enjoy a couple extra years of geriatric delusion.
All their efforts in government and institutions are to maintain their generation’s tenuous hold on power. The young are scared into submission for now. The question is, when will the cornered animal lash out in defiance?
how did all baby boomers rig the system. you really think most of us had any control over this at all? you speak as if there were some monolithic generational conspiracy.
Of course it’s not a conscious conspiracy. It’s how the people of that generation saw the world and their actions that created this.
They grew up in a world that never saw a global conflict, during a time of amazing economic growth and success, and it was easy to raise a family even on a single income. That generation still pushes that delusion all the time even though our reality is completely different, especially economically.
The election is proof of it. The whole conservative platform is built on “Remember back when life was great for you? Let’s make it like that again.” Complete garbage and they know it. They’re old enough to know better, but they enjoy being on top so they push their propaganda.
There’s no controlling it. People are animals and will react to their environment as such. I have detached my emotions from the outcomes of politics and people’s games. Control and choice are delusions conditioned into people to help them feel okay with the fact they have no control over their lives. I just like offering a larger perspective since it’s easy to get mired in details. I say grab a snack and enjoy the show because there’s no controlling the ride of life.
I have detached my emotions from the outcomes of politics and people’s games.
No you haven’t or you wouldn’t continue to come here and post what you do. And that’s a good thing, imo because nihilism – faux or otherwise – hasn’t ever done shit for people.
BTW, the DSA is looking for donors to help get the youngsters involved by teaching them organizing skills, giving them a place to have strategic discussions on what to do and to form networks to do some real resistance work, as opposed to the lip service version we’re seeing in the dems. I donated. How about you?
https://dsausa.nationbuilder.com/fays117o?utm_campaign=yds17email1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dsausa
Seriously folks, MS isn’t wrong when he says this:
They grew up in a world that never saw a global conflict, during a time of amazing economic growth and success, and it was easy to raise a family even on a single income.
Where I think he strays is in thinking that there aren’t a bunch of us in that generation – I’m a tail-ender – who recognize what’s gone wrong since and how it will impact on the generations coming after. We need to step up, own it and do something to help. Where we can and in proportion to the resources we have.
You’re deep in the game, so you’re all in and I get it. I do not share your passion on politics, but I will comment on people and their behavior because it’s interesting to me. I study the psychology and neurology of people and their behavior. Faith in an ideology and the behaviors that come from it are fascinating, or they are to me at least. You may have misinterpreted my comments as genuine concern for groups of people and politics. I couldn’t care less about either. When people become parts of groups and ideologies, that’s when they lose me. They transform into machines programmed to react as they’re trained. Individuality and creativity are lost for some other person’s idea on how things should work according to their narrow perspective.
Money and politics have never done much good, at least in my lifetime, so I’m going to save my money on this one. Good luck with your fundraising.
Yeah, you seem lost. It might be a good idea to read some physical anthropology and archaeology.
Humans evolved in groups — tribes. Humans can’t survive as individuals.
At its most basic level, ideology is a collection of ideas and beliefs. To function successfully, a tribe (group) must share, to some extent, a common ideology.
Indeed, I am lost. I am perfectly okay with it.
I have yet to find my tribe. Or, probably more accurately, my tribe was destroyed a long time ago.
Who knows, once the experiment of the US comes to an end it will be interesting to see how humans evolve their ideas. If they do at all. Not much has changed in 3,000 years, so I won’t be holding my breath. Humans are just human after all.
Check out the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It’s easily the best and most holistic view of modern culture I’ve read. Very much in line with the anthropology and archaeology you suggested for me. You may enjoy it :)
Spoken like a true sociopath.
If you think the human “individual” accomplishes much of anything of note, without the assistance of “groups” and “ideologies” (whether it be the ideology of “rationalism” or “human rights” or whatever ism or ology you choose) then you’re not just a sociopath, but really fucking stupid and ignorant of human history. And that means you’ll never contribute anything to the canons surrounding the “study of psychology and neurology of people and their behavior” which if you actually do, is a really sick joke.
Wow. You are angry.
My comment clearly elicited in you some deep emotional issues. I would suggest seeking spiritual and perhaps psychological guidance to help with that.
There are millions of forgotten people throughout time who have made impact in the world. I don’t care if history remembers me. As long as I continue to practice compassion and work for those I love in my life, then I’ll be okay.
Check out A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Another good one is Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson. They helped me a lot with my own anger and self-loathing.
That appears to be the ‘standard’ answer you give to most people who disagree with you. Third time now.
Anger seems to be a pretty standard emotion when people feel like their ideas and feelings are threatened. It’s understandable, and I don’t take it personally.
I point it out to help. Anger is reactionary and hijacks your ability to effectively use your higher cognitive resources. Feel the anger, but don’t just react to it. Try and understand where it’s coming from and figure out what is truly making you angry. Then let go of it. Otherwise you will be controlled by it and anybody who pushes your buttons controls your reactions.
Sun Tzu said, “If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you will win countless battles. If you know your enemy but not yourself, for every victory gained you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither yourself or the enemy, you will succumb in every battle.”
I doubt very much that rrheard’s feels his ideas and feelings are threatened. You don’t really impress anyone here, I think…
Not anger, frustration with the unreasoning pap peddled by pea brains like you on internet comment sites. It’s why I first started commenting a few years ago, and why I continue to do so.
I don’t know you well enough, or personally, to be able to muster anything remotely resembling anger.
And save your armchair spiritual and psychological advice. When you’re willing to come out from behind your pseudonym, like me, and stand behind your opinions openly, we can compare character and psychological issues openly on the basis of demonstrable facts about our real selves not some persona you fabricate.
Until then based on what you’ve been writing here lately I’ll figure you’re just another full of shit know-nothing who couldn’t reason his way out of a paper sack without glow-in-the-dark crayon instructions written on the inside of the bag.
“They grew up in a world that never saw a global conflict..” -ms
Except for Korea and Vietnam, eh, McToolio?
Oh, pardon, I’m a victim of the US education system. I forgot the US was the entire world after WWII.
Settle down, Veruca.. Daddy will delight you w/ as many ‘Golden Geece’ as you desire..!!
And, umm, the Cold War. During those wonderful days of yesteryear that MS imagines we grew up in, our elementary education included gems like this:
Duck and Cover
nobody has seen a global conflict since ww2. wages haven’t risen in real terms in a long long time. the election is proof that we had 2 appalling candidates, and one won the electoral college. you can justly blame baby boomers for reagan, but we haven’t had good choices for president for a long time.
You’re an idiot. Seymour Hersh is not even a Baby Boomer. He’s 79 years old.
Indeed. Quickest way to find idiots on the web? Check out the Intercept’s comments LOL. Challenging Youtube’s still undefeated position as world’s largest gathering place for idiots saying idiotic things to each other, or to the coffee table, etc.
“The orders from the discredited Democratic leadership are clear. Everyone parrots the same foolish words. All repeat that “seventeen intelligence agencies” confirm Russian interference … as if they were hypnotized cult members. ”
– Margaret Kimberley , Black Agenda Report
Hersh is great. He has exposed so many of Obama’s war crimes and lies. For one, the rat line — where Obama funneled weapons from the destroyed Libyan state into Syria … to give to gay-hating, misogynist jihadists.
I also love his piece on the whole Bin Laden lie. The Obama administration claimed they found him on their own and it took the courage of Dear Leader to strike. When in reality, Obama lied to America; he had been told about Bin Laden the previous fall.
Without journalists like Hersch, we would never know the Nixonian nature of Obama’s deceptive and illegal foreign policy.
Sy Hersh interviewed by Jeremy. This is the good stuff.
BTW, does anybody know of a non-Fakebook way of seeing the “Anti-Inauguration” event at the Lincoln Center from January 20th?
I’d like to see what Scahill, Klein and the others had to say, but found nothing that I could access when I did a search.
I’m not being lazy… I really tried.
Thanks.
Bashing the corporate media, Obama/Clinton Democrats, AND Trump is necessary to maintain integrity.
Let’s hope more people jump on that bandwagon.
Thank god for Sy Hersh and others like him.
We do need a free press. But what we have for the most part is a ‘bought’ press. Are journalists just getting lazier, dumber and richer?
“The Russians hacked the election” is that very powerful thing, a convenient lie.
For the press, it allows them to save face (sort of) over their consistent predictions of Trump losing – rather than being out of touch with the population, they were predicting what would happen in a fair game.
For the Democrat establishment, it also allows them to save face (sort of) over their backing of Hillary – rather than being out of touch with the population, her win was stolen from her.
For the Republican establishment, it allows them to save face (sort of) twice over – rather than being out of touch with the population, he was forced on them (excuses their opposition to him, and will be trotted out to distance themselves from him in the future)
For the American public, it allows them to save face (sort of) over his becoming the First American – they didn’t see a racist sexist liar as representative of themselves, they were conned.
Of course, those are ALL lies, but if you can get people to believe the first one, the rest become truths.
The Democratic establishment is definitely using the lie to try to maintain the corrupt status quo.
Did you catch the news about Third Way raising $20,000,000 to attack the Warren/Bernie wing?
The anti-progressives would rather keep having a powerless Democratic party than turn against Big Money…
… not that I trust Bernie or Warren any more… but the attacks on even their half-measures is telling.
Hats of to The Intercept and SyHersh. I can’t wait for the interview. We need more of you. The news is boring nowadays.
God bless
The most glaring aspect of the recent election is that
no one did more to ensure Trump’s election than did
the democrats and Hillary Clinton while
no one could have done more to try to elect Hillary Clinton
than did the republicans and Trump.
There was/is no “lesser evil” within the schemes of both
domination-obsessed corporate owned fake parties
in the faking U$A.
If you believe there would be no escalation of corrupt
surveillance under a Clinton corporatocractic presidency you are being
willfully ignorant.
“If you believe there would be no escalation of corrupt surveillance under a Clinton corporatocractic presidency you are being willfully ignorant.”
Spot on.
Or fracking, or Wall Street cronyism, or, or, or. Plus we would have been given the TPP. But she was just so good on women’s issues (as long as you aren’t unfortunate enough to be non-white…then you’re fucked).
Whereas Matt Taibbi backed off the same position in his 12/30/16 column “Something About This Russia Story Stinks” when appearing on the Majority Report 1/19/17. Why?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439
Has Taibbi already completely disavowed his skepticism of the lack of evidence provided to support the Russian Hacking claim and all the other questionable issues regarding the validity of the allegation? (Segment starts at 47:40)
Further, Seder turned the entire discussion into conspiracy theory with zero facts. Funny, given his show’s complete hostility to addressing any of the thousands of factually supported questions regarding 9/11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uogDL9MsC-Y
“…..factually supported questions regarding 9/11.”
Questions aren’t supported by facts. That’s a theory you got there, and a repeatedly disproved one at that. What you want are factually supported answers.
It goes like this: Question + Evidence = credible answer
Finally, the credibility of the answer depends on the amount and quality of the evidence provided. More peer reviewed evidence = a more credible answer.
Really happy to see Sy Hersh in The Intercept. One more voice for truth among the stinking ocean of whores in the USA.
So now Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges, all Pulitzer winners, as well as Robert Parry, another well respected award winning journalist who broke the Iran Contra story, have all condemned the main stream media for basically acting as propagandists for the Obama-CIA-DNC-Hillary coalition in claiming that Russian hacking had helped Trump to win, something which agreed with Julian Assange’s and WikiLeaks’ repeated denials that the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked by the Russians.
Very telling about the current sorry state of the media (perhaps more aptly called “lame” stream media) and the apparent lack of real investigative journalists that Hersh, Greenwald, Hedges and Parry are now all writing for independent outlets.
No wonder the likes of WaPo, NYT, CNN, NBC and so forth, which had openly been supporting the Clinton campaign, are apparently so desperate to paint alternative/online media as fake news while denying that many informed readers have already realized where much of the fake news were really coming from – the apparent “lame” stream media.
I would be ready to pay good money if these journalist decided to publish their editorials in a weekly magazine. Suggested title: the journalist.
I believe you may need a citation for one of your claims. “The aim of targeting Hersh would be to frighten other journalists from exposing secret or controversial actions by the White House.” This assertion should either be classified as an opinion or have a citation attached (regardless of how obvious their intention might be). Keep up the good work. This is one of my favorite news outlets.
My apologies. I didn’t read the source provided in the next sentence.
This has been Mr. Hersh’s downfall. The cycle of positive feedback between reporters and government officials is critical to building the trust which is the bedrock of all reporting. Once that trust is broken – when the reporter declares his fealty to the truth rather than to the government official – the relationship is broken. So Mr. Hersh is forced into a process of painstaking information gathering, constructing narratives which contradict government approved ones, and generally being ignored.
If the truth doesn’t serve anybody’s agenda, what use is it?
“If the truth doesn’t serve anybody’s agenda, what use is it?”
I think Benito Mussolini said that right before he was hanged. At least he wasn’t ignored.
And your interpretation of “If the truth doesn’t serve anybody’s agenda, what use is it?” is what ?
Oh Benny ,,
There’s Traditional Sarcasm and there is the pushing of the Traditional Boundary of Sarcasm .
I welcome you Benny ,, to the un-explored territority of GENIUS !!
Be carefull ,, the swipes will take action !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADN1lLEp3H0
I don’t know how our republic is going to survive if out most precious service, journalism, becomes corrupt and craven to political interests. I have stopped watching all liberal news media or reading liberal news media on the Net. However, I am forced to switch to Fox which is a mite better, but let’s face it. The news organizations are now in bed with partisan politics, and “Independent” news sources are non-existent except on the Net, where I go more often.
What a terrible injustice has been perpetrated on the American people! Media is all about clicks and channels, corporate masters controlling the omissions and fact-free reporting. Even when they come back to ‘correct’ a report, the meme has already gotten out.
It’s now just a notch below calling them out as propagandists…
“SEYMOUR HERSH BLASTS MEDIA…”
Glad to see that the intercept is using ridiculous clickbait-style headlines like huffpost and everyone else on the internet. Really helps convince me that this is a legit site.
While I’m here: can anyone recommend a way to earn 8,532/month from home without getting out of my pj’s?
Give me a break, the idea that Sy Hersh is giving tips on how to prove assertions is complete garbage. It wan’t all that long ago that Hersh was covering for the Assad regime with thinly-sourced innuendo about Hillary Clinton feeding chemical weapons to Syrian rebels through Libyan rat-lines, who apparently then used those chemicals to stage false-flag attacks on themselves. He has no first-hand knowledge about the claims at hand, he has nobody who can actually corroborate the chatter he perennially claims to be hearing.
“was covering for the Assad regime ”
Right. America would never destabilize a nation by providing weapons to extremists … or create extremists in the first place by leveling a neighboring country …
you just described what happened!
you are so naive…
Hersh’s claims were proven by numerous sources, from Postol and Lloyd’s debunking of the claims of Syrian government responsibility for the Ghouta attack, to the UN stating that the sarin from Ghouta was identical to the sarin from the attack on Syrian forces at Khan-Al-Asal.
And let’s not forget that State Department email, in which Clinton was told “AQ (Al-Quaida) is on our side in Syria.”
The quality of the trolls around here is really starting to slip.
Do you call a drive-by shooting a ‘false-flag’ attack by drug dealers on themselves? Or do you insist that it was the police who did it? Or, because you know that these ‘rebels against drug laws’ see each other as only slightly less the enemy, and just as much a threat, as the ‘regime’ of law enforcement and government, do you accept that the weapons they have been allowed to acquire by their backers are turned on their fellow ‘rebels’ frequently?
who ya going to trust?
It takes ages to acquire it – moments to throw it all away.
Why exactly did they do that is an interesting question in itself?
Mr. Scahill
“……..He blasted news organizations for lazily broadcasting the assertions of U.S. intelligence officials as established facts………”
Seymour Hersh has more sources than Cod has liver pills yet he has not found a single source inside the intelligence community to dispute the conclusions which is that Russia hacked the DNC and turned the emails over to WikiLeaks. That seems more than odd from a journalist that has broken so many stories on the US government and the military. In other words, Hersh has absolutely nothing to dispute the findings (that he is sharing at this time).
“…….While expressing fears about Trump’s agenda, Hersh also called Trump a potential “circuit breaker” of the two-party political system in the U.S. “The idea of somebody breaking things away, and raising grave doubts about the viability of the party system, particularly the Democratic Party, is not a bad idea,” Hersh said. “That’s something we could build on in the future. But we have to figure out what to do in the next few years.” He added: “I don’t think the notion of democracy is ever going to be as tested as it’s going to be now.”…….”
This is classic far left wing and radical antiwar libertarian thinking. The election of Trump may not be so bad for various reasons (John Pilger, RT, ‘Utterly bizarre': Trump team seeks good relations with Russia, but threatens China – John Pilger https://www.rt.com/op-edge/373840-british-weapons-trump-interview/#.WIi_KWyRO-0.twitter):
“………As far as Trump goes, he worries them because they didn’t get their woman [Hillary Clinton]; he worries them because he doesn’t come from inside that milieu, although Trump is actually the embodiment of a modern, powerful America. He’s made his money in property. But that still puts him outside the State Department, the CIA, even outside, to a large degree, his own party. And what worries them most of all is that he might recklessly go around the world and make peace with countries like Russia. That would be appalling! We need a second Cold War to keep things cooking along. That may sound like a parody, but unfortunately, it’s true…….”
The statement by Pilger is so common. No one in their right mind views the election of Trump as all positive (except the alt-right). Far left wing Pundits like Pilger and Greenwald are skeptical of Trump, but they view Trump as the one that can change the status quo in US foreign policy – as opposed to HRC. Seymour Hersh just reinforces that common hope. In fact, this is a massive gamble on a hyper sensitive, unpredictable President. Paul Pillar writes at The National Interest (“Why Donald Trump Might Become an Interventionist” http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/why-trump-might-become-interventionist-19149):
“…….Those commentators who have been repelled by the hegemonic inclinations of the Washington consensus or by the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s general election opponent and who have hope for fewer foreign misadventures may be in for some unpleasant surprises……..”.
I love this idiot logic. Why is it his responsibility to prove the opposite?
This is why your arguments are soooo weak. You want the burden of proof of something that doesn’t exist, rather than making the burden of proof on someone who does say something exists.
Get a clue! Your Blame-Shifting is just stoopid. The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the person making the claim. In this case, Intelligence community made a claim and everyone is requesting that they prove it.
Hersh is not making any claim, therefore he has NOTHING to prove or to provide any proof.
“…….This is why your arguments are soooo weak. You want the burden of proof of something that doesn’t exist, rather than making the burden of proof on someone who does say something exists…….”
I would agree with you normally, but Seymore is a credible investigative journalist who can cause damage to the intelligence assessment with a well placed source. However, he adds nothing to the argument. Same rhetoric advanced by many others.
…”but here I;ll make an exception for partisan reasons.”
So, if this statement of yours is true, why do you attempt to burden him with providing proof of
?
He is not required to provide to you or anyone to dispute anything. He is merely stating they have not provide proof and asks for proof.
This is untrue. He does add something to this argument. He adds his credible voice you rightly pointed out that the CIA’s assessment has not achieved a valid basis for their findings.
What this comes down to is credibility. You might prefer to trust the assessment and that is your right. However, many do not. And if it comes down to credibility, Hersch wins that argument, straight up. The CIA are deceptive and in the deception business, whereas Hersch is in the truth-telling business.
Not too difficult a choice to make for the everyday citizen on who to believe. Right?
“…….Not too difficult a choice to make for the everyday citizen on who to believe. Right?…..”
No. For me it is really simple. I believe US intelligence simply because the assessment makes really good sense in terms of Russian concerns for the anti-Russian, hawk HRC which I have posted on a couple of occasions (not to mention Trump promised better relations with Putin). It makes really good sense in terms of the private cyber-security company Crowdstrike which made the same (initial) assessment. It makes really good sense in terms of cyber-security firms Fireeye and F-Secure who have studied the malware for the past decade associated with the DNC hack (which I have also posted). Russia hacked the DNC and turned over the emails to WikiLeaks.
Again, Hersh adds nothing to the argument, but his name.
Maybe Hersh will be publishing his 2 cents soon. At approximately the 32:15 mark in the podcast he suggests he is reporting on the matter.
Fair enough. Will wait to see what he has to offer.
You should know better by now. Those making claims (Intel agencies, in this case) are required to produce evidence backing them up – not those who question those claims.
FYI – this isn’t about the “far-left” or whatever other pigeonhole you’re trying to fill.
It’s about how learning how finding out the truth works.
@ Sillyputty
Craig doesn’t require proof when it comes to assertions by the US intelligence agencies. He actually believes the Coast Guard and USAF actually had an opinion on the Russia hacks as part of the “17 Intelligence Agencies” (which is really 4, and calculated if not conflicting), and when he’s on a first name basis with the ODNI (at least rhetorically if not in real life).
But what do you expect from your average hyper-patriotic American moron, you know the kind that can immoral justify torture.
Like I said, I think the wheels are going to start coming off this country and it is going to be fun for smart liberals to have big collections of stupid people faux patriot pelts on their mantles.
rrheard
Don’t be a fucking idiot rr. As I have mentioned a number of times, there may not be a smoking gun. US intelligence doesn’t require “proof” to make an assessments. They have a high degree of confidence which falls short of “proof”. That’s good enough for me if you consider the assessments of private security firms familiar with the malware used to hack the DNC (like F-Secure, Crowdstrike, Fireeye). Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern (Consortiumnews; “Obama Admits Gap in Russian ‘Hack’ Case” https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/):
“…….Does the Russian government hack, as many other governments do? Of course. Did it hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee? Almost certainly, though it was likely not alone in doing so. In the Internet age, hacking is the bread and butter of intelligence agencies. If Russian intelligence did not do so, this would constitute gross misfeasance, especially since the DNC was such easy pickings and the possibility of gaining important insights into the U.S. government was so high. But that is not the question…….”
McGovern questions whether Putin actually ordered Russian intelligence to turn over the emails to WikiLeaks. Considering the motive for Russia in undermining the hawkish anti-Russian HRC and supporting Trump who promised better relations with Russia, I assess with a high degree of confidence that Putin ordered the hack. Additionally, we really have no idea what US intelligence has which might also implicate Putin yet is to sensitive to publish.
Thanks.
First of all, you can question their evidence all you want, but they are not required to make public how they arrived at the assessment (for obvious reasons). Second of all, their credibility is extremely important – especially considering that there is a new President who is skeptical of their work. They presented their case to Trump and Trump concluded (actually admitted is a better choice of words) that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the data to WikiLeaks.
It’s a done deal no matter what you or I believe.
They should be, absent legitimate national security concerns.
Name any alphabet-soup-letter op that’s succeeded, that couldn’t have been done openly in the past 50 years.
On a scale of 1-10, Trump’s credibility is what again?
It’s a done deal no matter what you or I believe.
Which simply means that you’ve typed a bunch of words for no reason, and as a result, so have I. What prize do we get? Crapflooders of the week?
Not sure how the html tag got there – but read the linked article, it’s good!
I’ve been on the look out for Mr. Hersh’s assessments on a variety of issues these days. Where can I find his most current writing? Aside from this interview, has he published anything since 11/8/16? Please advise.
Hi Jeremy,
Will you update your answer to my question?
You were in Columbus OH to show your film “Dirty Wars.” It was shortly after the Edward Snowden documents were being written about.
I sensed like others that this was an earthquake in our political system.
I asked approximately this short question and you gave a short answer. Since it is so short if the words are off a little, the meaning is loud and clear.
I asked if the Snowden documents would lessen American Exceptionalism.
You forcefully answered.
“NO! Exceptionalism is so deeply buried in the American culture that I don’t know of anything that change it”
In light of the election of Trump, and the most important political actor is now The Climate Regime, and from what Sy Hersh said about the challenge to the two parties, do you see that there is a chance that Exceptionalism will be lessened? Reduced to a level that the US can deal with the issues?
Corruptions of Empire
Getting over the indispensable-nation complex
You might not like my usa_naziland comment but as both our time ticks by, you to will become aware of its menacing truth. This hersh slime-ball can only bastardise the vast majority of world citizens (people who are not enveloped by nationhood blinkered thinking) who turn a proverbial back to the supposed main stream media. MSM is dying a vocal death & popularist provocateurs now hold the ear of good people. For good reason to because even if you disagree with Alex-jones and the likes. They are blunt about opinions without sly underlying agenda’s!
what exactly is your objection to hersh here?
GunZenBombs’ objection? That he’s a slime-ball, obviously! ;>)
Sy Hersh! Good work.
It’s too late; the media has already lost credibility. The only thing left to count on is hatred and rivalry to bring out truth in reporting. The lines are blurry: is The Five a news show or propaganda? Is Maddow’s show, Baier’s show, ..?
The most reliable news came from The Daily Show when Jon Stewart was doing it; now it’s just bull shit. Even Colbert sucks now.
Bill Maher may be the last best refuge to watch; still watch the other shows tho.
Would be nice to see/hear a Hersh-Ritter type talk again like he did at NY Society for Ethics..
I’ll grant this much — the end of the Jon Steward daily show the first clear indication to me that the Democrats were in trouble.
Bill Moyers’s departure from PBS, too, heralded the collapse of major media’s credibility.
We need more voices like Sy’s and TI and we need them to be much louder.
I find Maher to be nothing more than Maddow with curse words. Or maybe a liberal Rush. Extreme, opinionated and quick to dismiss opinions he does not like.
Masterclass !!!