UT, and your point is ?
Sorry, I realize that's being a bit sarcastic.
But quotes are from the article, and I feel they are needed for understanding of the situation.

What Wikileaks exposed is the the US diplomatic pressure on Germany being accomplices
to the actions of the CIA's actions of rendition and torture.

Fair and balanced in America

The link also provides a video of the TV segment.

Huffington Post
Dec 9, 2010

A Democratic Fox News analyst called for the assassination
of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

What defines a news organization? More to the point, once the precedent of howWikileaks (whatever they are) is handled in this situation, how can that be made to NOT apply to news organizations? What is the clear, legal separation?

What about unaffiliated individuals who may see information on the internet and post a link to it somewhere else (such as this message board)? Are we protected from prosecution? Is Undertoad?

This is genuine curiosity on my part--I'm not asking because I think I already know the answer.

Flint, I think the old definitions of "news organization" is extinct.

But it is just because of your remark/question about liability, and copyrights,
when I re-post some item that I try to take real care with links, citations, and quote-boxes for the copied text.

My understanding is that copyright infringements are avoided if there is a good faith effort
to provide the citation AND the copied material is not the entire document.
That way, the reader has reason and means to go back to the original.

Treason? Beckel must be using a different dictionary than everybody else.

I guess my take would be based on "intent". What is Wikileaks intent on publishing the data, and what is a news organizations intent on publishing the data. I don't ever recall that the NYT or any other news organization stated their intent was to go after governments and try to bring them down. Assange has declared himself to be the judge of what is right and wrong. He is nothing more than an internet terrorist and should be treated as such.

Editorial on those "real" journalists:

The willingness of leading media outlets to amplify clear falsehoods highlights their true allegiances

I can't even read your comments.
Is brainwashing that effective?
Take a fucking step out of your little shells, and take a look at the bigger picture.

Since we're all not smart enough to see the one true objective reality that is clear to you, perhaps a small dose of explaining what the ƒuck you are even talking about could go to great lengths?

I'm not referring to all comments here.
I saw a wikileaks thread here, so i got all excited, entered, to find comments against wikileaks, and against Assange.
What more is needed to be said on my behalf?
I'm not going to enter a debate about this.
No argument can be made against Assange and what he's doing.
I see the word Treason?
How retarded does someone have to be to use that word in this discussion?
So yeah, i'm not planning on having a debate with the mentally handicapped.

Woah other people have different opinions than you!? Get the fuck outta town.

If you're done uselessly crying and calling people "retards" instead of contributing, feel free to step in with some rational points that can be debated. Otherwise go cry somewhere else.

If this discussion revolves around treason, then no, as i said, I'm not interested in having a debate with the mentally handicapped.
Why don't we put American people an trial for treason against Iraq or Afghanistan.
We can't? I wonder why.....

There already is a guy on trial for treason.... you know that member of the military who broke his oath and the law by stealing and giving away classified documents. Derp.

Yeah, he's not Assange.
Tell me this... why are a percentage of American's concentrating on Wikileaks for leaking the truths about their Government and foreign policies, rather than studying the content of the leaks which expose the actions of their government and foreign policies?

These studies would result loss of Ego, loss of Patriotism, and possible revolution.
How is Assange the bad guy in this equation?

As far as I could tell in this thread only the Fox News moron quoted in post 121 called him a traitor. All the other references were to his source.

Also.... Americans should focus a little bit on the motive behind this break of oath of the man on trial.
Would you not also be tempted to break your oath holding this kind of info?
Perhaps the man on trial is the most patriotic American alive?

Hooray valuable contribution! See was that so hard?

What HM said..

You seem to take the stance that America is alone in these kinds of foreign policy actions, as such should be made example of. Anyone who isn't "retarded" would know that every government on the planet with foreign interests has back channels and more dirty ways of discussing and getting things done than the average Joe knows or cares about. Canada included my friend. Sorry.

You mention Canada as if i hold some kind of pride in nation.
I hold no ego, no pride in race, nation or species.

Good for you. That wasn't the point.

Didn't wikileak Canada as our close ally?

Assange begins with Ass.

Before you start screaming about what idiots are saying in a thread, you might want to read what those 'idiots' have actually posted.

I bet he will have plenty of time to think about that thought.

State Department Warns Students Not To Cite WikiLeaks On Facebook

I noticed today that the Washington Post is referring to WikiLeaks as "anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks."

The Post seems to not want to extend the label of "press" to WikiLeaks.

And they should not do so.

Flint, I believe that warning was withdrawn within a day or two afterwards.
(I'm pretty sure I posted the retraction here, but I haven't found it again today... I'll keep looking)

Even if it were not withdrawn, how do you feel about it "
Is it acceptable for an official would make such a directive as the voice of the government ?


I guess I did not post the retraction, but here is the link to it

That is not the point. If you are going to break the law based on ideological disagreements you have to accept the consequences of your action. You can't let someone off the hook just because you personally agree with their intent.

I never said anything about letting him off the hook.
I'm just saying, the guy sacrificed his freedom so that you can see what he could see....the least you could do is look at it.

I did not find anything real surprising from wikileaks.

neither did i... most Americans that looked found out a lot.
Those who haven't truly looked are either well clouded by the media influence around the topic, or they're too afraid to look, as they face a demolishing of their core beliefs in their nation.
Most American's are happy to be proud.

Why would you support people who obtained stolen classified material from our country? Assange is an accessory to a crime and should be treated as such. Wikileaks is not a news organization and should not be afforded any such protections. I am quite happy to see him in jail, regardless of whether or not wikileaks continues to release stolen classified information. And I would fully support the arrest and detention of any person or persons who pass on such information to the general public.

The White House press corp does that every week. Its called news. Once it is released to the public domain, it is news.

Wikileaks and the White House press corp both suppress information that might cause damage to national security or harm human life. Why do you conventiently forget those who intentionally outted Valerie Plame only for a political agenda? That was far worse than what Wikileaks is doing. Why the double standard?

I'm not seeing this as cut and dried as Merc. One the one hand I have "my feelings" about it, and on the other: a black hole where something quantifiable should be, but isn't.

In the times we live in, the idea of monolithic news sources has evaporated. For the same reason that we don't buy sets of encyclopedias anymore--the monopoly on information has been cracked! WE ALL HAVE THE INFORMATION NOW. This is a condition that we regularly CELEBRATE, when we pause to consider how miraculous it is.

And now, what we have here is somebody taking information and, according to "my feelings" using it irresponsibly. I "feel" that one man has put himself forth as a kind of superpower, in a way that "feels" wrong--like the world shouldn't be that easy to throw off balance. I'm uncomfortable with an individual citizen having this much power--although if I were to "feel" differently about what he is doing, I would be CELEBRATING the power of the individual! . . . See the problem? This should be more quantifiable than whether we "feel" the individual is right or wrong, in his...motivations.

Is doing something for a bad reason enough to make it wrong to do, if, done for different reasons, it would have been okay?
Is doing something for a good reason enough to make it right to do, if, done for different reasons, it wouldn't have been okay?


It's a jumble of contradictory ideas that will not be so easy to sort out. Society will be FORCED to deal with this.

Flint, nice discourse... is a puzzlement :)

You realize that you are implying that Americans haven't truly looked until they agree with you, right? Many people have a hard time believing this but many Americans can think for themselves and there is no particular political label that generalize this group of Americans.

Also, if you think that wikileaks has exposed a demolishing of core values I am very curious of what you consider American core values.

Maybe Mr Assange is the anti-christ and this is the begining of the end of days!

I'm not even gonna respond to the first part of your post, its pretty low.

Re: the part i did quote, try freedom for one.
For an American to have a glimpse of freedom, he's gotta compare it to a third world countries.
America is full of bars, re: information, speech, expression, demonstration, even in race, religion.
Not comparing the USA to a third world country, what freedom is it exactly that Americans feel they have?
(I could insert hundreds of youtube clips to demonstrate the lack of freedom in the USA, but hopefully you've seen at least some of them to get my point)

Americans believe they have the freedom to chose who runs the country, and yet, regardless of which puppet takes over, its the same people/families/companies that call the shots.

Generally, Americans have this core belief that the USA is the good guy in their foreign affairs, when it is pretty clear that its quite the opposite.

An American, even today, maintains the belief that his/her country, is rich, when the numbers don't actually agree.

An American today, believes that his/her country has some kind of power hold in the world, when in fact, the nation's future can be described in realistic terms, as a pan-handler amongst the worlds nations.

These realities the USA now faces, were pointed out by America's own forefathers who saw this day coming, and warned future Americans of the results we now see unfolding.(Check George Washington, Thomas Jefferson)

Do not mistaken my comments as a generalization of Americans, rather the majority.
I'm well aware that there are several Americans who are aware of the facts, but hold no power to lift the people up to overturn the path, due to the fact that America has failed to up-hold the base of the second amendment..... the original purpose of the amendment has been lost into impossibility.
The foundations of the country were solid, and yet, they have not been held in tact.

Wikileaks has provided just the tip of the truth.
I advise to look beyond commentary on the subject, and focus on the hard evidence that's to come.

Please do not confuse freedom of speech with dissemination of information.

EVERY country as their procedure for dissemination. Would any country like another country to disseminate theirs?

Americans are not demoralized. The government may be embarrassed but not broken. What this government does in secret, you can bet other governments do too.

I suppose I am not understanding your angle. Should we crack open ALL government documents from every country? If it is good for us, it should be good for every country right?

Should someone hack your computer and put it all out there on the web? There is a certain sense of, this is MINE, not yours to just pass around. Don't YOU want to decide who you share information with?

I do.

That would be...oh, almost all of the current, mainstream "news" organizations.

You think that makes it ok? ...cause some other Governments do it?
Comparing shit to shit to make it look better, does not make it so.
Some people rape 3 year old girls, does that make it ok for us to do it?
Cause some other people are doing it?
What kind of logic is that.
If you truly look at the documents that have passed, and those that are on their way, you'll see that no other government has done quite the same.

Re: the rest of your post, i was responding to the following query

There appears to be this continuous mass illusion.
I don't think in this case, it's because brainwashing is so effective.
I think its because people want to eat what the media is feeding them.
If people turned off their tv and did not read the newspaper, and just looked at the hard facts, they would not even be considering these things.

this is what happened:

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

some of us get over it by living life and some of us do NOT get over it. I was bitter and angry and republican for a good while. Then I lived a bit. I saw the need for compasion. those who say work harder! have never been in need =- in true need, in need of human kindness.

Someday, though, they will be in need.

May goddess bless them.

Hard, unless it was in braille. :p:


What are the hard facts?

Fixed it for ya. :p:

We don't know that. Intelligence and counter intelligence is how governments operate. Those are the facts.

I wish we could live in a Utopian world too, but history proves this will never be the case.

It's pretty low but you just responded by telling us what, in your personal perspective, Americans think and then how you "know" better. Then on later posts you drop the term brainwashing, which is rarely used by someone with an unbiased opinion.

From what all I've gathered from wikileaks, no mainstream tv stations or newspapers btw, tells me that our foreign policy tactics have either not changed or even have gotten better (in an ethical sense) since the cold war.

If you have "hard facts" to show me otherwise, I am more than willing to see. Also, please don't show just one or two instances of something happening and then try to generalize all of US foreign policy from it...

Once you venture into political discussion on the internet, you quickly realize that you can't just toss out half-formed ideas the same way you can while getting drunk with your buddies, or any comparable sitiation in real life. Your buddies might not tell you when you're full of shit, but I guarantee that somebody on the internet will.

Listen to them.

This might be the most important, life-changing thing you ever encounter. It has the potential to revolutionize your entire thought process and transform you into a better, smarter version of yourself.



For starters, have the intellectual honesty to question the premise that you, of all people, have achieved complete omniscience, while every other person in the world is some stupid, brainwashed automaton. What is the statistical likelihood that a convergence of special genetic and environmental factors came together in just the right way to produce a super-human thinking machine, and that person is you, and you alone?

I'm not dropping anything.
Brainwashing is what is going on American television sets.
If you fail to see it, i feel very sorry for you.

:rolleyes:

Very particular, huge international happenings occur in the world, and are not covered by US News.
In its place, are distractions, that in fact direct the human mind in a specific direction.
The objective is to cloud the huge international happening, also, sometimes, alter the perception in regards to the specific issue.
A Russia & China agreement comes to mind.
A speech directed towards the United States that was never heard.

There are various perception's in regards to why the military is in the middle East at this time.
Most assume to be Gnostic on the issue, when the reality of why, escapes.
Reality on this issue escapes even the imagination of most.

When media continuously conceals the truth, replacing it with a false reality that is presented to an entire nation, it can be pretty much translated in the way that I have done.

Those of us who are not wackos, nor extremists -- i.e., not tw -- note that nothing in revealing Valerie Plame's employer and line of work would have shut off sources of information/intelligence. It is the professional standard in intelligence work that you never ever ever compromise your sources or your methods -- I worked in that field, back in the day. Let enemy counterintelligence work to compromise your source; never hand it to them.

Nor was there really any "only a political agenda" about it. Consulate staffer Wilson was no one's idea of a professional intelligence gatherer, and indeed he had never done anything of the kind in the logistical and embassy-admin work he had done up until then. The whole of his endeavor, beginning to end, was to make some appointments with some officials in Niger -- who told Wilson exactly what they wanted Wilson to hear about yellowcake and yellowcake inquiries. Plame pulled some strings to get her husband Wilson to be the one to take the trip.

No, tw, your anti-Republican prejudices continue to blacken your soul, dim your mind, and screw your writing. If you were any worse, you'd torture puppies -- in the womb, you horrid stumblefuck and sexual undesirable.

Kinda like the students protesting in London the other day.
The issue escaped everyone as the news read.
"Attack on the Royal family"

^^^^^THIS^^^^^
is brainwashing.
Cleaning the mind of the true issue

Like the G-20 Summit in Toronto that occurred.
Tens of thousands of people went to protest.
Do you think maybe they had a reason?
Well, nobody watching the TV found out, cause the news did not broadcast why.
You think maybe giving a reason why tens of thousands of people gathered to protest might be newsworthy?
No no no no, you gotta set up a stage for distraction, so they gave the News something to talk about, to alter the perception.
Of course the protesters are the bad guys.

Tens of thousands of people gathered so they can burn a police car.

You see, ^^^^THAT^^^^ is brainwashing

Why are you complaining about tv news, when a vast majority of non-local news consumption is through the internet now? The public has vast resources available through the internet and can get a wide variety of viewpoints and reporting on the same subject. CNN has "ireports" where private individuals do their own reporting and upload it to the website for example. This is completely independent from the corporate CNN structure that determines what is presented every day.

CNN even showcases every now and then articles from a news organization called VBS.TV, which you should check out sometime. They do very good independent reporting on a wide variety of topics from Pakistan weapons manufacturing to wildfires in Oregon. And that's just CNN.com. Point being, the American people have at their fingertips a much broader and multi-faceted wealth of information about the world than you seem to think, since you're so stuck on this tv news brainwashing thing.

It's kind of funny that you mention cnn, cause i remember working the day of the G-20 summit, and looking at cnn.com on a few occasion's to see what the headlines were.
top 2 headlines were non g-20 summit issues.
the third was something about some stupid celebrity romance issue, and 4th something irrelevant.

When they finally did mention it, this was the link
:http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americ...sts/index.html

If you read whats written, its truly absurd.
I guess you'd have to have been there to grasp how insane whats written there on cnn.com

I only mentioned CNN because they offer some very good alternative, independent news sources in addition to their own corporate news structure/formating. Which again was my point: that there are a large number of different ways that people get their news information, even from traditional, established news outlets and corporations. In light of that, I think it is knee-jerk to say that people have been "brainwashed" by major media.

That is one of my all time favourite poems, from one of my all time favourite poets!


Fucking well said Bri.

You didn't have to look far to find out what the Brits were protesting about, but just in case you don't know yet, it was over the fact that a new legislation was passed which will tripple university fees. That's a huge increase and will only widen the cultural divide and make a good start on bring the class system rocketing back to full strength. Hope you've all got your peerage booklets out! Let's get feudal!!!

Alas, this is true Ali.

It isn't just that they are tripling the fees: they are also reducing the state contribution by 80%. They have removed the state subsidy, currently paid to universities for each student they take on, from arts and humantities students. They will only now contribute to the teaching costs of scientific, engineering, medical and vocational type courses.

So: the average student will end up paying between two and three times the current cost of a degree, but will get significantly less for that money, than they currently do. They will also be much less likely to go for arts and humanties subjects as the universities which are able to maintain those courses despite the loss of the teaching grant, will be the ones able to command the highest rate of fees.

Not only will university access begin to split off along class/economic status lines, but within the university sector, there will be a classifying of subject type: with kids from working-class and poorer backgrounds tending towards the lower fee, technical and vocational specialisms, and the wealthy kids having access to a more expensive, but culturally more rounded degree choice.

It breaks my heart it really does.

The Conservatives have wanted to do this for a long time, and they've come into power (shared) at a time when the economy provides a politically defensible rationale for doing so. They are systematically dismantling the relationship between state and university education, and placing it in the hands of private and proprietorial providers. By slashing the state teaching subsidy, the 'market advantage' of the state supported universities (and that includes Oxford and Cambridge) is removed allowing the private sector to compete more effectively for students.

More and more education will be sold as a ticket into this career or that. Less and less frequently, do we hear a defence of learning in its own right.

Such learning has been simultaneously devalued in that it is not deemed important enough to fund, and made precious in that it is becoming once again the province of a few.

I guess it depends on how you define brainwashing but this is what I see:

US corporate media is run in a capitalist system where ratings are king. Each news corporation has its own flavor but they all stay within the acceptable limits of their mainstream audience. If they did not, viewers would simply change the channel or read a different newspaper.

This type of system will naturally not challenge viewer's/reader's personal views of the world. People do not like their personal worldview to be wrong so it's not in these new agencies' interests to tell the complete raw truth. This is what you see W.H.I.P.

But, there is a limit as how far they can sugarcoat what is going on. Hell, even Noam Chomsky admits that the Wall Street Journal is pretty accurate because US businessmen must have an idea what is going on so they can make rational business decisions. Other newspapers are not that far off either. Plus, with the availability of alternative new sources on the internet, it forces a check on these news agencies.


I will admit, and I'm sure every American on this board will agree with me to some point, that US news is not ideal in any way and that it gets extremely annoying how they care more about appealing to viewers/readers instead of getting the raw truth. But this is not brainwashing. While political agendas do have a role in news, they do not control it. There is no conspiracy where the US government is trying to tell us where to think. It is in their interests to keep us within a certain threshold, yes, but it is not worth it for them to try too hard.

If you want to see brainwashing look at North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, China, Burma, Arab countries, etc. This is a lack of free speech. US news has its problems but it is not brainwashing unless you choose a different definition and then we are arguing semantics.

As ever, the voice of reason.

After all this brainwashing to create a uniform point of view, we seem to still have one of the most diverse nations in the world.

In fact, right now, everybody is at everybody else's throats for their differing beliefs.

If you go to any US political forum you will find nothing but people who are angry at what news is being consumed that they don't agree with.

Entire organizations are dedicated to pointing out falsehoods and laughable bias on the other side.