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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: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:12PM (5 children)
>We need a party that's a voice for the poor, especially the rural poor.
We have this party: it's called the Republiican Party. They're the party that aligns with the rural poor on the two issues they care most about: guns and abortion (and the closely-related third issue: religion). Republicans oppose all gun laws, and oppose abortion, so the rural poor will vote for them on that basis no matter what their stances on other issues are, even if the Republicans pass tax plans and other policies that end up economically hurting the rural poor.
Another party is not going to get the support of the rural poor unless they adopt the GOP positions on guns, abortion, and religion. And such a party is going to be automatically voted against by atheistic urban liberals like me.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)
That's an oversimplification of the situation. Part of the reason the rural poor align with the Republicans is because they feel abandoned by the Democrats on issues of jobs and quality of life, and they feel abandoned because they are abandoned. As the grandparent post wrote, the mainstream Democrats sold their soul to start winning elections in the early 1970s after they lost to Nixon and the famous 'Southern Strategy'. They cut back on their fights for minimum wage and their strong ties to labor unions. The only Democrat response to "The jobs are going away!" has been "education!", but I don't care how many PhDs you take with you into the coal mining town where I grew up, nobody's hiring. There were several coal mines still working and three big manufacturers within 20 miles in 1985, they're all gone now.
At best the Democrats had no ideas, at worst they don't give a damn about anyone outside major urban areas. The Republicans with their "drill here, drill now!" and "clean coal" and "America first" and "trickle down" are consistent on their lie that they'll revitalize rural economies. They won't revitalize urban areas. But the Republicans are on message, they're consistent, they're winning support with the narrative that the Democrats hate rural whites.
On the bright side, Hillary lost. I'd rather have her as president than Trump, but hopefully this is the wake up call the party needs to remind it that they've lost most of the good qualities they had fifty years ago. The surge in worker strikes across the country is encouraging too.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 03 2018, @03:09PM (1 child)
The Democrats have a huge propaganda problem, because no matter how many times that kind of thing is repeated, oil states like North Dakota have skyrocketed up from being pretty poor, to being the 16th highest income state in the country, whereas Democratically controlled states like Michigan remain mired in poverty, ranking 33rd highest in the country. Surely if Michigan would just increase taxes and regulations some more, then they'll finally be wealthy, LOL, they just need to do what doesn't work even harder, LOL.
I mean, its not just that the message doesn't sell, or that the message isn't being repeated enough, but there's not enough centralized control. So in related news stories its all about massive hiring in the Dakotas or job shortages in the Dakotas or house prices tripling in the Dakotas meanwhile there are "unrelated" stories about house prices in Detroit going to zero and abandoned houses being demolished and no jobs in Detroit and everywhere there's a democrat government there's, purely coincidentally, a food desert and dead malls and high gun crime and stuff like that.
I would imagine with increased social media and central control of the media via mergers, they'll be able to put propaganda like that out with a straight face and no opposition by cheating the public. Censor some wikipedia articles of actual numbers for being racist or something, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income [wikipedia.org]
That also ties in to the problem of the Democrats can only win by propaganda / lying / cognitive dissonance, whereas the other side is fact and reality based, which is a much easier sell even if what remains of legacy media is screaming in unified, centralized, corrupt opposition.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday May 04 2018, @08:34PM
North Dakota has a small population, so the income boost from a few oil and gas companies has a huge impact on the state economy. The same amount of drilling in Michigan, which has thirteen times the population, wouldn't do as much. So you're lying with statistics too, though I'm not sure whether it's intentional or not.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 03 2018, @06:24PM
>On the bright side, Hillary lost. I'd rather have her as president than Trump, but hopefully this is the wake up call the party needs to remind it that they've lost most of the good qualities they had fifty years ago.
I'd say the article we're discussing here is proof that the party remains completely clueless and is doubling down on the stupidity that lost them the election.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 03 2018, @07:16PM
I disagree. Minnesota has, at least at the state level, a Democratic Farmers' Party. And as things stand now, the GOP's disgraceful Trump-sucking has gotten so bad that even some of the "guns, God, and gay-bashing" types are starting to realize they've been taken for a ride. I never said it was gonna be easy, but it should be possible to have a party that actually stands for peoples' rights--ALL of them--and does something besides lip service for the suffering rural poor.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...