Society

"Conservative Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith blogged: “I find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified ... it is not obvious what law he has violated. ... I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at The New York Times.” (WikiLeaks has partnered with several news organizations, including The New York Times, in its document releases.)... The U.S. Justice Department, if it pursues a case, will have to answer the question: If WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, what of its media partners, like The New York Times?""

"Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims."

"He hasn’t been formally charged with any crime. His lawyers have heard that a grand jury in the United States has been secretly empaneled, and that a U.S. federal indictment is most likely forthcoming. Politicians and commentators, meanwhile, have been repeatedly calling for Assange to be killed.... Democratic strategist... Bob Beckel, who said on a Fox Business show: “We’ve got special ops forces. A dead man can’t leak stuff. ... This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so ... there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called WikiLeaks a “foreign terrorist organization” and said that the website “posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” He went on: “This is worse even than a physical attack on Americans; it’s worse than a military attack.”"

"In a call with reporters hosted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation on Tuesday, board member John Cusack expressed his umbrage with the media’s “character assassination” of Edward Snowden and neglect of The Real Issues. “Why are the red and blue elites in the establishment press so afraid of an informed public?” he asked rhetorically. “Why do they keep changing the subject?” “Have the establishment media been so co-opted by government access that they’ve lost all sense of proportionality?”"

"The corporate press’ “myths” include “that Edward Snowden is a Russian spy,” Greenwald noted. “While he was in Hong Kong . . . what was being said with the same authoritative tone: ‘It’s very obvious: Edward Snowden is a Chinese spy.’ When he ended up being trapped in Moscow, the very same people who’d said that, their accusations instantly morphed into, ‘Of course, he’s a Russian spy,' without any acknowledgement they’d been saying something profoundly different just weeks earlier." ...This character assassination includes the allegation that Snowden’s motive for leaking NSA classified information is due to his being “a narcissist”—although after initially coming forward Snowden turned down numerous interview requests from top media outlets, which, Greenwald quipped, is a strange way for someone craving attention to behave...He also defended Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, whom he said had been smeared in the press for blowing the whistle....Maligning dissidents as deviant or mentally ill is a technique repressive regimes use to marginalize dissenters, Greenwald said, the rationale being that only crazy people would resist the status quo, while normal, well-adjusted people support it. He added that those reporters who are professional flatterers of the powers-that-be can’t understand someone acting and taking risks due to “conscience” because they are cowards minus consciences."

"While we can see Snowden’s experience as an instructional primer on both the value of whistleblowers and the costs of vilifying them, there are elements of his story—fed by the character assassination reprisal tactics of the government—that perpetuate many of the misperceptions about whistleblowers and contribute to the view that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed, rather than potential solutions. Snowden’s case also typifies the most egregious manifestations of the institutional belief that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed rather than sources of risk management and mechanisms for promoting compliance—the focus on the “messenger” rather than the “message.”"

"That Assange has been right all along, and getting him to Sweden was a fraud to cover an American plan to “render” him, is finally becoming clear to many who swallowed the incessant scuttlebutt of character assassination. “I speak fluent Swedish and was able to read all the original documents,” Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, said recently, “I could hardly believe my eyes. According to the testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never taken place at all. And not only that: the woman’s testimony was later changed by the Stockholm Police without her involvement in order to somehow make it sound like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my possession, the emails, the text messages.” ... WikiLeaks has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents, ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors have realised they have no clothes. It has been an unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism, whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt and their apologists."

"His "crime" has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name. For this, as the American historian William Blum points out, "dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination"... In Britain, Assange's trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider, while books of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue."

"Online dating and dating apps are powerful connectors in the American dating landscape. In 2023, 30% of Americans used online dating services or apps according to Pew Research Center. As is the case when meeting someone new, whether online or offline, it’s wise to keep a few precautions in mind for safer interactions. Very few dating apps conduct criminal background checks on users, so it’s up to each user to determine if they are comfortable meeting up with someone. And remember that if you do experience sexual violence while dating online or using an app, it is not your fault. Below are some steps you can take to for safer interaction with others through online dating apps and services—whether you are interacting virtually or in person. We say “safer” because no sexual violence “safety” tip is ever a promise of safety, and the only one responsible for sexual assault is a perpetrator. Full stop."

"Cybercrime affects each and every one of us. Every aspect of our lives is vulnerable to the criminal abuse of our networked world - not just by hackers and criminals, but by governments and foreign enemies."

"What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence."

"But when the world’s ‘safest’ internet is currently found in China, where access is heavily restricted and censored by the state, it becomes clear how terrifying the government’s safety agenda really could be."

"The internet is not divorced from other areas of life. It’s a place where every one of us spends a lot of work and leisure time. It is a public space for everyone."

"Social media amplifies the volume and intensity of attacks on journalists, not least when platforms become vehicles for state-sponsored attacks. Large platforms have a responsibility to help curb harassment globally, but companies and governments who aim to get to grips with online hate speech can also overreach and undermine free speech."

"Bhikkhus, this Kassapa is content with any kind of robe, and he speaks in praise of contentment with any kind of robe, and he does not engage in a wrong search, in what is improper, for the sake of a robe. If he does not get a robe he is not agitated, and if he gets one he uses it without being tied to it, uninfatuated with it, not blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape.Bhikkhus, this Kassapa is content with any kind of almsfood … with any kind of lodging … with any kind of medicinal requisites … and if he gets them he uses them without being tied to them, uninfatuated with them, not blindly absorbed in them, seeing the danger in them, understanding the escape.Therefore, bhikkhus, you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will be content with any kind of robe, and we will speak in praise of contentment with any kind of robe, and we will not engage in a wrong search, in what is improper, for the sake of a robe. If we do not get a robe we will not be agitated, and if we get one we will use it without being tied to it, uninfatuated with it, not blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape.‘We will be content with any kind of almsfood … with any kind of lodging … with any kind of medicinal requisites … and if we get them we will use them without being tied to them, uninfatuated with them, not blindly absorbed in them, seeing the danger in them, understanding the escape.’ Thus should you train yourselves."

"He who keeps fleeing, flees from his own past."

"I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison to its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognises its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness.I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlightenment.I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind."

"So long, bhikkhus, as beings have not directly known as they really are the gratification as gratification, the danger as danger, and the escape as escape in the case of these five aggregates subject to clinging, they have not escaped from this world with its devas, Mara, and Brahma, from this generation with its ascetics and brahmins, its devas and humans; they have not become detached from it, released from it, nor do they dwell with a mind rid of barriers. But when beings have directly known all this as it really is, then they have escaped from this world with … its devas and humans; they have become detached from it, released from it, and they dwell with a mind rid of barriers."

"While still living in the palace, Abba Arsenius prayed to God in these words, "Lord, lead me in the way of salvation." And a voice came saying to him, "Arsenius, flee from men and you will be saved.""

"Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control."

"There are these three elements of escape. What three? The escape from sensual desires, that is, renunciation; the escape from form, that is, the formless; and the escape from whatever has come to be, from whatever is conditioned and dependently arisen, that is, cessation. These, bhikkhus, are the three elements of escape."

"The latest move of the hands was precipitated by the recklessness in Trump’s nuclear thinking and the deepening crisis over Korea. Trump wondered aloud about the point of having nuclear weapons if he couldn’t use them. His answer was to make them more usable, which he did with his new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the first since Obama’s 2010 NPR, which had reduced the role of nuclear weapons in the US defense posture. The 2018 NPR significantly elevated their role, permitting use in response to vaguely defined “extreme circumstances,” such as cyberattacks or attacks on the infrastructure of both the United States and its “allies and partners.” The review doubled down on Obama’s unconscionable 30-year trillion-dollar modernization of all parts of the nuclear arsenal. The actual cost looks to be closer to $1.7 trillion and climbing. To make matters worse, all eight other nuclear powers are undertaking their own modernizations, though on a far more modest scale. Russia, it should be noted, actually cut its defense spending this past year."

"How late is it now? On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce the time on its Doomsday Clock. Last year, the bulletin moved the hands forwards 30 seconds, to reach two minutes to midnight: the closest to catastrophe in six and a half decades. Since then, the immediate peril encapsulated in Donald Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” to North Korea has receded. But Mr Trump should take no credit for pressing pause on a crisis largely of his own making. His actions have exacerbated existing problems... As a candidate, Mr Trump is said to have asked why the US could not use nuclear weapons. So it should be no surprise he has proved reckless in office. Last week, his administration announced it would begin its pull-out from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty next month, and Mr Trump called for billions of dollars of new spending on missile defences. Arms control experts have warned that the missile defence review, and Mr Trump’s rhetoric in particular, risk provoking an arms race, encouraging Russia and China, both of which are potential and actual destabilisers already, to increase their own capabilities."

"According to Chomsky, the Doomsday Clock setting at 100 seconds to midnight is based upon: (1) global warming (2) nuclear war and (3) disinformation, or the collapse of any kind of rational discourse. As such, number three makes it impossible to deal with the first two major problems. Along those lines, within the Republican Party there’s virtually a disappearance of any pretense of rational discourse. Twenty-five (25%) percent of Republicans believe the government is run by an elite satanic group of pedophiles. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. Only fifteen percent (15%) of Republicans believe that global warming is a serious problem. Therein lies an insurmountable problem to solving the main issues that continually tick the clock ever closer to a disaster scenario that will likely be unprecedented in the annals of warfare and environmental degradation. As a result, Chomsky says: “We’re living in a world of total illusion and fantasy.... Unless this is dealt with soon, it’ll be impossible to deal with the two major issues within the time span that we have available, which is not very long.”"

"Atomic scientists say the world is closer to complete destruction than at any time since the Cold War. The reasons include a renewed nuclear arms race, man-made climate change and state-supported disinformation campaigns. The scientists released the 2019 Doomsday Clock statement this week. They set the clock at two minutes to midnight – the same time as in 2018. They call the current international situation a “new abnormal.”"

"In January 2018, the experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight, where it had stood during the darkest days of the Cold War, from 1953 to 1960."

"With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation."

"They started by referencing the Doomsday Clock (Science and Security Board Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), which has pegged humanity’s risk of annihilation at an all-time high of only 100 seconds to midnight. Chomsky feels we’re actually closer to midnight than that. For example, his opinion is influenced by information in a leaked draft of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) upcoming report..."

"The scientists argued that threats to humanity – nuclear and climate change – worsened with disinformation from political leaders around the world. They said nationalist leaders and their supporters lied in many ways, but especially on social media. The leaders did not care they were lying, said the scientists, but insisted “that their lies were truth, and the truth ‘fake news.’”"

"To turn back the clock, the group called for several actions to make the world safer. Those include extending nuclear arms talks between the U.S. and Russia, adopting measures to prevent military events along the borders of NATO, demanding action to deal with climate change and discouraging the use of disinformation to decrease public trust."

"The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believes that advances in science and technology should make life on earth better, not worse. We equip the public, policy makers, and scientists with the information needed to demand, recognize, and support public policies that reduce manmade existential threats such as nuclear war, climate change, and disruptive technologies. Our award-winning journal, iconic Doomsday Clock, open-access website, and timely events promote evidence-based policy debates essential to healthy democracies and a safe and livable planet."

"If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother."

"The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear."

"I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

"Just as a group of bad friends reinforces unilateral supremacist thinking by encouraging group punishment and shunning of the conflicted other, good friends insist that people think twice, to look to their own participation in conflict instead of calling the police. Good groups help their family, friends, and community members recognize and dissipate anxiety rather than joining them in acting out cruelly against others."

"If a person cannot solve a conflict with a friend, how can they possibly contribute to larger efforts for peace? If we refuse to speak to a friend because we project our anxieties onto an email they wrote, how are we going to welcome refugees, immigrants, and the homeless into our communities? The values required for social repair are the same values required for personal repair."

"Certainly I am not a practitioner of doing nothing. There is little more destructive than the passive bystander allowing cruelty to be freely imposed. I’m the opposite of a Buddhist, as I believe in action. But there are all kinds of actions: some are designed to acknowledge and reveal the sources of conflict and pain in order to resolve them, and some are designed to obscure those sources so that resolution/change can never occur. Which one we choose, of course, is related to how we see ourselves and others, and what we don’t see about ourselves and others. There is no evidence that time heals all wounds, or even most wounds; instead, it freezes unnecessary enmity and makes it harder to overcome. Time allows perpetrators to forget the pain they have imposed."

"The community holds the crucial responsibility to resist overreaction to difference, and to offer alternatives of understanding and complexity. We have to help each other illuminate and counter the role of overstating harm instead of using it to justify cruelty. I suggest that we have a better chance at interrupting unnecessary pain if we articulate our shared responsibility in creating alternatives. Looking for methods of collective problem-solving make these destructive, tragic leaps more difficult to accomplish. People who are being punished for doing nothing, for having normative conflict, or for resisting unjustified situations, need the help of other people. While there are many excuses for not intervening in unjust punishment, that intervention is, nonetheless, essential. Without the intervention that most people are afraid to commit to, this escalation cannot be interrupted. In other words, because we won’t change our stories to integrate other people’s known reasons and illuminate their unknown ones, we cannot resolve Conflict in a way that is productive, equitable, and fair. This is why we (individuals, couples, cliques, families, communities, nations, peoples) often pretend, believe, or claim that Conflict is, instead, Abuse and therefore deserves punishment. That the mere fact of the other person’s difference is misrepresented as an assault that then justifies our cruelty and relinquishes our responsibility to change. Consequently, resistance to that false charge of Abuse is then positioned as further justification of even more cruelty masquerading as “punishment,” through the illogic at base of refusing accountability and repair."

"While perfection is never achievable, positive change is always possible. Resolution doesn’t mean that everyone is happy, but it does mean that perhaps fewer people are being blamed for pain they have not caused, or being cast as the receptacle of other people’s anxieties, so that fewer people are dehumanized by false accusation."

"Pristine river of lives is swallowed by the crowd - Human getting lost into humans."

"Man and woman cease to be humans once they get lost into crowds."

"A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart."

"In the crowd, herd, or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates—which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind, finally, uncivilized."

"A mob's a monster; heads enough, but no brains."

"προσεκύνησαν τῷ θηρίῳ λέγοντες Τίς ὅμοιος τῷ θηρίῳ, καὶ τίς δύναται πολεμῆσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ;"

"The “exchange” in cultural exchange suggests you give something in return for having taken something. If it’s culture that’s taken, then presumably what’s given back is the art. In which case the difference between appropriation and exchange, to be (maybe absurdly) logical about it, would have to lie with an assessment of the value of the art itself. Of course we can’t really quantify the value of what is taken or the value of the art, but that would be the logic. The more you take, the more you have to give back — the better the work has to be. Maybe when we say it’s wrong to take something, we really mean, What you’ve given back is far too poor, too mediocre — it’s bad art. I’ve never heard anyone accuse the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan of appropriating Chinese culture. This may be because I haven’t talked to enough people. But maybe it is because the music that came from a group of hip-hop kids from Staten Island who watched a lot of kung fu movies in trips to Times Square was that good."

"To be entirely against taking anything from another culture would be to condemn everything to memoir — and of all the genres of literature, I think memoir deserves the reputation for being the least true. It’s awkward to recognize that “Madame Bovary” couldn’t be better written by a French housewife. Flaubert himself identified with Emma just enough. RZA (who with his friends referred to Staten Island as “Shaolin”) saw himself, just enough, in tales of underground kung fu rebellion leaders. But most of us instinctively have more faith in what someone outside the center of power has to say; what of this instinct is legitimate, and what of it is too blunt? We remember that it was a gay, bourgeois Jew who best portrayed the French aristocracy, and not the reverse. Even though we also know that Tolstoy, from his family estate, could write any character, from peasants to princes. In the case of Wu-Tang Clan, the distribution of power between the culture they came from and the culture they borrowed from is usefully unclear."

"The [western] intellectual property rights system and the (mis)appropriation of Indigenous knowledge without the prior knowledge and consent of Indigenous peoples evoke feelings of anger, or being cheated."

"But what is cultural appropriation and exchange? Would it have made a difference if the traveler’s kaffiyeh had been manufactured and purchased in, say, Kuwait City, instead of an Urban Outfitters store in Toronto? Determining such a distinction is also, as with so many things, dependent on intent. Appropriations are expressions of ignorance or aggression, when objects, ideas, lived experiences or points of view are not so much examined as exploited and performed. Exchanges, conversely, suggest a certain sort of generosity, an openness to discussion and an invitation to reciprocity."

"…the truths of Christianity are constant, unchanging, and meant for all people, times, and places. But the methods by which truth is articulated and practiced must be culturally appropriated, and therefore constantly translated …if doctrine is constant and practice is constantly changing, the result is living orthodoxy."