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The DNC's Lawsuit Against WikiLeaks Is an Attack on the Freedom of the Press
It's a large world, filled with felonies big and misdemeanors small. And so I prefer to write long columns. But sometimes a short, sharp word is necessary. The Democratic Party is suing WikiLeaks and they shouldn't. As Glenn Greenwald wrote last week in The Intercept:
The Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit this afternoon in a Manhattan federal court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and various individuals it alleges participated in the plot to hack its email servers and disseminate the contents as part of the 2016 election. The DNC also sued WikiLeaks for its role in publishing the hacked materials, though it does not allege that WikiLeaks participated in the hacking or even knew in advance about it; its sole role, according to the DNC's lawsuit, was publishing the hacked emails.
As Greenwald points out, the Dems' claim that "WikiLeaks is liable for damages it caused when it 'willfully and intentionally disclosed' the DNC's communications ... would mean that any media outlet that publishes misappropriated documents or emails (exactly what media outlets quite often do) could be sued by the entity or person about which they are reporting."
After the Manning releases in 2010, the Obama Justice Department wanted to sue WikiLeaks. However, they couldn't prove that anyone from WikiLeaks had actually stolen documents. They knew that suing WikiLeaks would have infringed on press freedom. Sue WikiLeaks, and you have to sue the Washington Post as well.
The DNC has no such qualms now.
Also at Al Jazeera.
See also: Why the DNC Is Fighting WikiLeaks and Not Wall Street
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:09PM (15 children)
Your real problem is that you the choice of two state-sanctioned political parties, which is how the owners of your country like it.
I live in a country of about 4 million people and we have 5 parties in Parliament at the moment. The UK has eight.
You are in a Nation of more than 300 million people and have had elections for longer than almost any other western country, but you've never managed to get to the point where multiple different voices can be heard.
It's a real shame.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday May 03 2018, @01:47AM (7 children)
100% agree with you. I've felt that way all of my adult life. 3rd parties occasionally make it into lower-level positions in local and state governments. I can only attribute the problem to money: wealthy powerful people, sometimes using corporations at their weapon of choice, buy all kinds of influence both privately and publicly. I've had this discussion for 20 years and I don't see any way to fix it. Anyone who gets into power either is part of the problem, or there's nothing they can do- it's too big- and they give up or get sucked into it. I'm not expert, nor have I read enough to be sure, but I'm pretty sure it's why Trump won- enough people are sick to death of the political machine in the US and they were hoping a relatively independent outsider could shake things up enough to stem the tide.
I vote to abolish political parties. No two candidates share the exact same platform. Get rid of parties, and have all candidates just make their political platform and beliefs known and go from there. I know, it will never happen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by archfeld on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:48AM (3 children)
"...sometimes using corporations at their weapon of choice..."
I honestly think it is just the opposite; Extranational corporations using government agencies and elected officials as their weapons of choice. Money makes the world go 'round.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday May 03 2018, @04:30AM (2 children)
And one merely needs to look at your sig to see the obvious rebuttal. The NSA is no corporation's tool. Else they wouldn't have screwed over without consequence so many corporations in the past.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Thursday May 03 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
There are always exceptions to the rule, but you can't deny that the EPA, the FCC, FDA, and several other alphabet agencies are battle grounds for corporate wars, and our congress is FULL of part time corporate sponsored employees. The SEC, the NSA, the FTC are certainly much more in control than the rest of our government structure.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 18 2018, @12:20AM
And several of those work counter to corporate interests, such as the EPA and the FDA. Corporations certainly didn't win a war against the EPA, for example.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:21PM (2 children)
I don't think abolishing political parties is practical, so I would go the route that the UK and Germany have. In elections you don't vote for the candidate, you vote for the party. And then the party gets seats in Congress based on the vote percentages and party leaders choose the people to fill the seats.
The current US system is plurality-takes-all, and in 99% of cases a Democrat wins or a Republican wins. The Green Party candidate, Libertarian Party candidate, Reform Party candidate, Constitution Party candidate, Patriot Party candidate, and Communist party candidate can get 0.5%, 1%, 8% of the vote and it doesn't matter because the Republican or Democrat is going to get 40%+ and win. Most of the voters hate the two parties but won't vote for a third party candidate because they know the end result on public policy is nil. But with the vote-for-party system, if the Democrats get 38% of the votes they get 38% of the seats, if the Republicans get 45% of the votes they get 45% of the seats, and if the Libertarians get 10% they get 10%.... so the people voting away from the Big Two still get a voice in the legislature unless their party is especially unpopular.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:34PM (1 child)
The problem with voting for candidates and not parties is that, while people can certainly inspect the Presidential candidates in the run-up, and maybe some of the Congressional ones, voters just don't have the time, energy, or will to carefully examine all the various candidates at all levels on their ballot. That's why we have parties; it's like a "brand".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 04 2018, @12:34PM
The other question is why spend any time learning about their platform, as though what they say on a campaign has any predictive power whatsoever over what they would do in office? Everytime somebody says that i laugh ruefully.
The only useful exercise, if you're gonna insist on wasting time researching the motivations of the psychopaths our political system cultivates, is to follow the money. Look up who their donors and bundlers are. Look at who their campaign managers and handlers are. Those people are the strings that make the puppet dance for the masters.
Me, i think we need to reset the dial for democracy entirely, but let's at least see what we have now with clear eyes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:54AM (5 children)
The US system is designed this way.
We have first past the goal post winner takes all elections. This system has been shown to lead to a two party system (Duverger's law).
Some states like California have completely disenfranchised 3rd party and independent voters. Proposed by a Republican senator, and backed by the, then Republican governor (and undoubtedly equally loved by the Dems), the law eliminates any but the two highest vote recipients in the primaries from appearing on the general election ballot. They even eliminated the ability to write in a candidate. Yup, complete disenfranchisement for those who refuse to vote for either of the corrupt major parties.
At the presidential election level, we have an organization founded and controlled by the two major parties controlling who participates, the format, number, location, and rules of the debates. They once changed the rules for participating in debates the night before a debate to keep out a candidate that was apparently threatening to the establishment candidates.
Jerrymandered districts mean that the outcome of many elections is preordained-- of course, never going to a third party / independent.
There are also policies to prevent folks from organizing and unifying against the rich elites (who control both major parties). Race has been used for this for nearly the history of the nation-- keep the plebs fighting among themselves, and they won't notice the masters holding the whips. Suppression of the left has been part of this (both the brutal kind including executions, and more mundane like renaming International Workers Day aka May Day. May Day came about after the Haymarket labor leader executions in the US (one of the executed was not even present during the demonstration that led to the executions, and there was no evidence that any of the executed were linked to the attack on the cops they were convicted of). It is still observed nearly everywhere in the world, except in the US. To prevent US labor from having something to rally around, it was renamed to Loyalty Day, then to Law Day (both of the latter promoting obedience). Also, we have laws that prevent solidarity among workers like Taft Hartley. By keeping plebs from organizing together, they've kept us from reaching a critical mass where a non-elite controlled political organization had enough people behind it to challenge the two rich elite friendly/run establishment parties.
Trump is a complete moron with the intellect of a tin can, and policies hostile to all but himself (and the rest of the rich). But, at least the "fuck you [to the establishment]" votes that folks threw his way may mean that it is possible to overcome these obstacles (hopefully in a positive direction next time).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @03:22AM (4 children)
Trump and Sanders were independent candidates working within the two-party system. In both cases, they faced obstacles within the party. Trump took advantage of the crowd of Republican candidates with very little support individually and manipulated the media into giving himself all the free airtime he wanted. Sanders on the other hand put up a pretty good fight but was opposed by the Clinton taint within the DNC and not given the airtime he needed.
Trump has set an example for future "third-party" candidates. Don't run as a Green, Independent, Libertarian, write-in, whatever. Run as a Democrat or Republican. Make as much noise as possible. Never apologize for anything; always double down. If you can win in the primary, then you become one of the big 2 instead of the outsider who'd be swell to vote for but is considered a "wasted vote".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_tent [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 03 2018, @01:55PM (3 children)
Sanders was just too ethical and decent; that was his problem. If he had said all kinds of outrageous and inflammatory stuff, and then refused to apologize and doubled-down, he would have gotten lots of free media coverage, and could have won the primary vote. Basically, that's what Trump did. Making up nasty pet names for his Dem opponents (esp. Hillary, but also the others earlier on) would have helped too.
I think we all owe Trump a debt of gratitude for the 2016 election, for showing us as a nation what a farce our elections really are, and how easy they are to game if you play it right.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:32PM (1 child)
I'm not sure that adopting that persona and going after Hillary strongly would have helped Sanders as much. The supporters are different, etc. But there's one thing I can point to. "[The] American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!" Sanders essentially tossed the issue to the curb with that one line, earning him some applause and praise but not much else. Trump focused on it throughout the year and got an email-related October surprise from his biggest (unintentional?) supporter, FBI Director Comey.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:32PM
Yeah, you're probably right. The supporters are so different that acting like Trump probably wouldn't have helped. But I do wonder if trying to focus more on her negatives and tearing her down would have helped him win the primaries. He tried to run a principled campaign focused on the issues, which is laudable, but as we've seen over and over, it just doesn't work that well in the real world.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:21PM
Yeah, my reaction to his loss when I was talking to a friend was "Figures. We all know what happened to the *last* socialist Jew who said to be good to the poor, don't we?" To which he said "Yeah, and they don't listen to him either."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:10PM
That's not quite true. It is definitely true now, but it was not for many years. For a great example just look at the elections the year Lincoln was elected. There were quite a few parties involved. I forget the exact number but 6 or 7 floated their candidates against Lincoln and he won with only something like 20-25% of the vote. We once did have multiple voices, but they have been trying to entrench two parties only for a long time.
I think they're going about it the wrong way though. If you want different parties you shouldn't try to simply elect a third party candidate to the Presidency. You need support to build on the lower levels so when that candidate makes it to the White House they don't become a plain affiliate for one party or another.