As an Argentinian who admires the entrepreneurial spirit
of the USA, I'm amazed and appalled at how quickly it is
becoming politically intolerant and borderline fascistic.
I can't help but draw parallels between cablegate and
watergate and wonder if, had watergate occurred nowadays,
would there be Senators trying to declare the Post a
"terrorist organization" and wanting Bob Woodward dead.
Assange should zip all the documents and release them on
Tor. Although I doubt the onion routers could whitstand
that ammount of traffic.
As an American, I agree with you. I remember the days before this was called "terrorism", it was called "muckraking". I worry that as a country we are so used to tagline/twitter/sound-byte news media that we forgot what actual news looks like. Your Woodward example is a good one. Shouldn't the interest and outrage be about the content, and not the source.
What is the muck? What in the cables was surprising?
This is what I got out of it:
-The State Department gossips about heads of other states (so what?)
-The State Department is party to spying on other countries and the UN (really? we didn't know that already? come on)
-More countries agree with us on Iran and North Korea than I thought (shit, maybe our state department is doing a better job than I thought)
This is not watergate. I wish we had half this much attention on other major scandals that have gone on in the last 20 years that were far more important than everything I've seen in here so far.
-The State Department is party to spying on other countries and the UN (really? we didn't know that already? come on)
It's not the same to suspect than to have proof. And this is no little thing: it's another broken international agreement.
-More countries agree with us on Iran and North Korea than I thought (shit, maybe our state department is doing a better job than I thought)
Nope, not really. It has been a surprise (to most, maybe you know more of international politics than nearly everyone else)to know that arab countries wanted the US to go to war with Iran. Not a little thing, too.
This is not watergate. I wish we had half this much attention on other major scandals that have gone on in the last 20 years that were far more important than everything I've seen in here so far.
As an Argentinian, you should be well familiar that your country took in scores of actual fascists from Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, giving them safe harbor from war crimes prosecutions. There remain entire towns in Argentina where German is the primary spoken language, where still-living Nazis are residing undisturbed.
Calling America "borderline fascistic" because private companies aren't allowed to harbor illegally obtained diplomatic documents is less an accurate characterization of the United States than it is a display that you have little or no understanding of what fascism is. This should be particularly embarrassing because of your country's historical entanglement with fascists.
You could talk to some of your German-speaking countrymen if you're still unclear as to why Godwinning this thread is idiotic.
As an Argentinian, you should be well familiar that your country took in scores of actual fascists...
Perhaps he's arguing from a position of greater experience recognizing fascism as opposed to superiority of non-fascism, as you indicate. He admires America, and now he does less so. Exactly what the historical dictatorships in Argentina have to do with his admiration of America is unclear to me.
Calling America "borderline fascistic" because private companies aren't allowed to harbor illegally obtained diplomatic documents is less an accurate characterization of the United States than it is a display that you have little or no understanding of what fascism is.
And yet, this is not a situation where private companies are being prohibited from harboring illegally obtained diplomatic documents. Both because Amazon wasn't prohibited, they voluntarily (though perhaps with unknown or unspoken and inappropriate pressure) stopped their service from hosting documents and because there is ample historical data to indicate the documents were not illegally obtained by Wikileaks. So who is presenting the less accurate characterization, exactly?
I'm not calling the USA borderline fascistic for this
incident alone, but for a sequence of events dating back
to 9/11.
Actually we got quite late to the postwar Nazi garage sale.
The URSS and the USA[1] got the lot, including the guy who
almost decimated London's civilian population[2].
The best one we could get was Kurt Tank[3].
ODESSA, a former SS officers organization created in 1946
to assist Nazi war criminals, had ramifications in
Argentina. It was mostly backed here by Walther Darre's[4]
family, german companies (e.g. Siemens) and a few
right-wing politicos.
Thankfully, MOSSAD was able to partially correct that black
page in our history in 1960.[5]
Although Peron was quite an intolerant person, he had a
soft spot for human rights and opened the doors to
Jewish inmigrants in 1946. We received 463456 jewish
inmigrants between 1947 and 1951.[6][7]
Also we were one of the first countries to recognize
Israel in 1949.
There is one famous town founded by Germans in 1930,
Villa General Belgrano[8]. Many of their original
inhabitants are survivors from the Graf Spee sinking[9],
although I challenge you to find a fluent German speaking
person there under the age of 80.
If you want to check it out, go during the first weekend of
October so you don't miss their amazing Oktoberfest.
All Nazi related government files have been declassified in
1992, and can be freely accessed. Although they haven't
been digitalized.
After the tenths of thousands of deaths caused by our
last dictatorship[10] in the 70's, we started to develop
a politically liberal, more tolerant and more agnostic
world view.
This led us to be the first country in Latin America to legalize gay marriage and marihuana, among other things.
Sorry for the excessive length of this comment, just wanted
to dispel some common myths about my country.
I can't help but draw parallels between cablegate and watergate and wonder if, had watergate occurred nowadays, would there be Senators trying to declare the Post a "terrorist organization" and wanting Bob Woodward dead.
Assange should zip all the documents and release them on Tor. Although I doubt the onion routers could whitstand that ammount of traffic.