This would be unbelievable in a normal administration. The combination of flagrant lawbreaking and incompetence is just so characteristic of these clowns.
No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
The republicans hold the presidency, have a majority in congress, and a majority (depending how you interpret the moderate members) of the supreme court. Even the more moderate republicans are afraid of the Trumpets so they mostly vote in-line (see for example Cassidy voting for RFK Jr).
There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.
Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
Democrats could do a lot with their physical bodies if they wanted to. Take a page out of classic American protest strategies: strikes, marches, sit-ins, etc.
You mean the democratic leadership, or members of the party/people-who-vote-democratic?
Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.
People-who-vote-democratic need leaders to organize them. Their elected representatives need to be the ones heading marches and organizing rallies, not just AOC and Sanders shouldering the entire burden.
Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.
The Democrats can neither pass bills of impeachment (minority in the House, which introduces such bills), nor convict (a supermajority is required within the Senate, the Democrats don't even hold a majority).
Democrats can introduce bills of impeachment, but those would simply die without consideration given GOP control of the House. So far as I'm aware, none have done so since 20 Jan 2025.
Republicans can't vote against Trump, because the vast majority of Congressional districts are gerrymandered; this means the candidate can be easily outprimaried with just a little bit of cash. The original red map project (2010) cost about 40 million; the last map (2020) was quite a bit more expensive — perhaps 10x as much — but still quite cheap considering the benefit (functional control of the U.S. government). One of the unintended effects of the deep 2010 gerrymanders that project red map discovered was that it also distorts the Senate map (this was unknown effect, at the time). Until gerrymandering is fixed, and the legislative powers ceded to the executive are clawed back, there is no "fixing" the current situation. It was always just a waiting game for a well-heeled (for primaries) autocratically-leaning president to come along.
There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).
The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.
to clarify: the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed to distract from class struggle (which is to say, they still address issues like systemic racism/misogyny/bigotry/etc which perpetuate wide-scale societal inequality but care less about politics which center individual identity). because they are anti-capitalist, they also focus on wages and are heavily pro-worker and pro-union (pro-labor). in foreign policy, they advocate for liberation movements which they believe are part of a global class struggle.
the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).
the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.
You can legitimately shade a multidimensional object to a single dimension without being untrue nor even biased. The point is such a cross-cultural comparison is mostly useless. Identify themes and interests versus unobservable beliefs.
american liberals are for neoliberal markets which alone puts them to the right of their global counterparts. besides hollow support for socialized healthcare, they've put forward no meaningful reforms which would lead to it (besides the ACA which is dismantled more and more every year), they take large donations from corporate donors and are largely aligned with capital (see weakening of Dodd-Frank, Gramm-Leach-Bliley), they frequently support military interventions and large amounts of defense spending (see Iraq war, interventions in Yemen, Libya, Syria), give lipservice to pro-immigration but in action are largely anti-immigrant (see deportations under Obama and Biden), and compromise on core issues like abortion and LGBT rights. that's just a few examples.
do you have anything of substance to share, or is this what passes for intellectual discourse on HN these days?
> the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed to distract from class struggle
This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.
> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics
Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.
yeah fair, the leftmost folks are not really involved in party-level messaging at all.
i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc, though. in federal politics sure but in local politics they're more active and there's much more alignment with Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
Anti-corporatocracy, not anti-corporatism. A fair chunk of the left, if not the majority, is very much in favor of Corporatism (Tripartism and/or social corporatism like the Nordic model).
The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified information.
But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, one could argue external state actors could have convinced the Trump admin their provided forms of communication are tapped, so they should consider alternatives. Such a state actor would know the alternatives are compromised well in advance by them.
Yes, it is illegal (because of the auto-deleting messages) and explicitly against the rules that every one of these people mandates for their own employees. All of them know that federal records must be preserved, and you have to manually turn on Signal's auto-deletion feature, so this is obviously intentional criminal activity.
When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.
Can we stop with the nth-D chess nonsense? This administration proves day by day that no advanced tactics are going on, it’s literally just clueless idiots improvising because they’re way out of their league but are too self-absorbed to step back.
Can we stop with the clueless idiots nonsense? Some are that. The POTUS is also insane. Many more are much, much worse.
Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.
The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.
While I like this razor, it's overbroad. Malicious people can always say 'oopsie, I have no clue what I'm doing lol'. Also, you can have people who are both malicious and stupid.
Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal implications of using a self-destructing messaging channel.
No worries. DNI was in the chat room. Also we have no idea nor can we know if this is the first use of Signal by this or other administrations. We only know because someone goofed up.
So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".
Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen.
> At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
I never realized before with this photo, but space was actually made to still use the toilet sitting in that room with the tower of boxes 6 inches from your face. Straight out of a comedy sketch, almost too perfectly staged with the gaudy lights, stool colored formica, and $2 walmart shower curtain with the pressure fit rod right into the plaster. A shame for all of us that the photo came out of real life and not satire.
After he left office in 2021, it was found that Trump kept boxes and boxes of top secret files at his residence, including in the bathroom among other places. Somehow this is not an issue for the GOP.
I believe that is a picture the FBI took when they raided Mar-a-Lago and found the top secret documents that Trump took when he left office after his first term.
These are files that he took, said he returned, refused to return, denied the existence of, then claimed that he declassified telepathically, in that order
No; I'm saying that there is a lot of useless junk that has a clearance. I did not say that taking boxes and boxes and boxes of cleared materials into a likely-uncleared site was okay (it most definitely isn't).
> Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen.
I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole qualification for applicants for important positions in any organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss other important data points: for example, if they can use messaging apps correctly.
Don’t worry - this massive fuckup will surely spark numerous congressional investigations, resignations, and trigger serious reflection by the administration on their security protocols so they will comply with the necessary recordkeeping laws, confidentiality and proper handling of classified information in the future.
Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against the "discredited, so-called journalist".
Would be great to live in a world where nearly every voter that saw the NSC response and then the Hegseth response could see the clear contradiction in responses and then make the correct interpretation that whenever these clowns are crying about hoaxes and lying media they are full of shit and 100% in CYA-mode so you should never trust them when they do this on any topic.
Agree. Washington DC in fact provides all the incentives silicon valley needs to flourish. It's just that silicon valley needs more self awareness and stay out of politics.
I've already seen at least two posts on X with claims that this was actually all intentional and that "Trump is playing 5D chess"... and I think they were serious.
Sadly, were this a different administration, they would have already declared an investigation with a goal to impeach a president. Such a ridiculous double-standard with clear partisanship on display. “Both sides”…
How was the signal group an accident? It's not (just) adding the journalist which is the problem, it's using a non-approve communication platform for sensitive information.
“People have gone to jail for 1/100th of what – even 1/1,000th of what Hillary Clinton did.” -Hegseth
“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” - Waltz
“Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is,” -Rubio
I always ask MAGA people why Clinton wasn't prosecuted by the Trump administration over this, and have never received a clear reply, if I got a reply at all.
The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not Europe. Vance knows that.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit. After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are super transactional and they were afraid they missed the moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as coin for exchange.
Israel tried already if you recall and clearly they couldn't though they certainly tried their hand at shock and awing. The transactional aspect is vis-a-vis Egypt.
Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.
> So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons.
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
It's been acknowledged by the government that this happened. They aren't denying anything, and are saying it was just a mistake. From WSJ:
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
It’s actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.
Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence, not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about American exceptionalism.
It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.
Also...but her emails!
Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
It's extraordinary to me when anyone claims that the "MSM" is left leaning. If it was, Trump's hubris, criminality, ignorance, senility, self-dealing grift and myopia would yield an unending series of "WTF?" type headlines. Instead they sane wash it.
The guy is sending plane loads of who-knows-who to a country that they have no association with, based upon zero charges or due process, where they are imprisoned into basically slavery. This is so outrageously beyond the pale illegal, both in US and international law, that it is just mind-blowing, but it's just another day. Good god. Despotic, banana-republic autocrat behaviour is now just...accepted.
I saw a complaint by a right wing figure noting the increased number of injunctions Trump has received versus prior presidents. Instead of rationally thinking "gosh...maybe he shouldn't contravene the constitution and/or break laws so frequently", they actually think it's unfair and needs to be balanced. It's a shocking collapse of norms or reason.
Who cares? To a first approximation everybody who reads the NYT (really: any newspaper) opposes Trump. People obsess about NYT coverage decisions, but the NYT has approximately zero political influence in 2025. If education and engagement depolarize, that could change, but it hasn't yet.
That's not what happened in the last election; in fact, the Democrats did marginally better with engaged voters. Anyways, I'm just saying, there's not much point to doing kremlinology about what the NYT is reporting.
The top story on Fox News right now is "Trump allies move to prevent 'activist judges' from overstepping presidential authority." This story isn't even on the front page.
To be fair, it broke as an exclusive to the Atlantic about 180 minutes ago. The NYT now has it "above the fold" on their front page. Unlike a story coming directly from a public source, it sometimes takes a bit longer to spin up re-reporting on another outlet's scoop like this.
They use signal. They added the wrong person to the chat. Oh well. There’s no real disaster here. No real operational details exposed. Just some politicking that surprises no one.
Did you read TFA? Operational details were shared on the chat but the journalist, out of concern for exactly what you describe, redacted those details from his report.
> In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
[Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs) but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.
Semantics. By knowing what meat to reveal amongst a group of tigers, you can effectively moderate the feeding frenzy. Some meat you keep hidden, lest they go nuts on each other for it.
Why flag any and not just see what the community engages with? You don't have to participate in threads about subjects you aren't interested in, you know. And the expectation that this is somehow taking time from the community who would otherwise be engaging in threads you are more interested in yourself, is a little, well, self centered to me.
I'm going to keep flagging all of them, because these stories are all activating and attract tons of upvotes and comments, filling the front page with repetitive recapitulations of the same tired arguments. It's not what HN is for.
It's for discussing on-topic topics of interest to the community, where on-topic specifically excludes "most stories about politics", which is a very easy to bar to clear when the stories you're flagging are literally duplicative of stories with hundreds or thousands of comments on them already.
Because they are long-running discussions, it’s not repetitive. When we allow Rust or JS threads to keep popping up, it’s because we evolve with the topic over time and continuously discuss it.
What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
Rust and JS threads are on topic for the site, most current events stuff is not.
is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin. The quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
> These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin.
Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
The "smaller group" here is anyone with over 500 karma. You're going to have to find some other place to have "contentious go-fuck-yourself arguments" --- about literally anything --- because they are anathema to curious conversation, which is the overriding goal of this site. That goal isn't changing just because we're all activated about politics right now, just like it wasn't in 2017.
We just fundamentally disagree. From my perspective you are the antithesis of curious conversation by censoring topics you don't want to discuss. I don't want to read the latest update on some dumb framework but I don't flag the post.
So then it's not an equal flagging vs equal upvoting, it's fewer flags by fewer people being able to derail a post off the front page which may have been upvoted by 10x or 100x as many people as flagged it.
The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.
It's worked this way for 1,492 years (in Internet years) and mostly for the best. When stories get flagged inappropriately, you email Dan, and he usually fixes it. Seems good to me.
Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.
For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
I realize this website has operated more or less the same for a long time. But as it becomes increasingly popular it's going to become a bigger target for abuse by people wanting to push a narrative. I'm just commenting on why it's been more frustrating for me lately than it has in the past.
There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.
Another thing it's been it's been for a long time is "increasingly popular". If anything, groupthink and common narrative are easier on a smaller site.
There's this strain of navel gazing on this size where people think that they talk about productive shit and this is somehow a better site than other social media sites because 'we don't talk about politics or celebrities, we talk about curiousity!'
But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the SLS rocket. It's all politics.
Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue for the US or international community of the site.
'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic -- the US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN is going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by European sites.
People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are tired of this crap.
Don't threaten me with a good time! I'd love it if there were more places like HN. I like Lobsters, but it's too insular. Start Euro-HN!
I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time greats, but there are lots of different moderation arrangements that can work, and different goals for forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this forum.
> I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic -- the US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN is going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by European sites.
I'd much prefer it be replaced by something led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those other regions...
I'm totally down with that, I just think that it will probably originate from Europe because of inertia with money.
If anything it'll be from some middle ground in that it will originate from a country like Estonia that has a lot going on with startups and the whole digital democracy thing figured out.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
These stories have been on the front page multiple times, yes.
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping.
I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way. "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case for it. This happens all the time.
And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics
Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again, you can make the case for changing that but it seems pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and many HN participants are here because this one is slightly less yelly.
Yeah everyone gets self righteous about being on topic when it's something they don't like, meanwhile hacker news is filled with cheap self promotion and pop culture news that people use as a writing prompt to have a competition for who can claim it impacted them the most.
Feels like the flaggers aren't the ones being self-righteous here. We're just flagging and getting on with our day. One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you, and, well, (looks around).
One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you
They took their precious time and explained it just for me? I thought you said "We're just flagging and getting on with our day."
You might want to (looks around) and count up your, well, comments. Seems like you're trying to claim both not caring at all and benevolent enlightenment, which is, well, a little self righteous.
I do care! I'm just not feeling especially self-righteous about it. I can reliably report how the site works, without composing Rage Against The Machine lyrics in the process.
That was likely just a generic wave at the general level of histronic hairshirt brigading on either side of the aisle that threads of political nature can attract.
Admittedly I have little talent for extracting wasps from stings in flight.
The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang, if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off flagging for this submission which would likely bring it back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't know this yet.
It’s not about whether the person knows or not. It’s more about that the person can’t believe this is happening even if it follows all the norms that we’re all supposed to know about, apparently.
In other words, just because such a system could be used in this way, is it good that it is being used this way? That’s the energy this is coming from.
But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of us are stupid - we should already know.
dang has detailed this before. After so many flags vs upvotes, a post is pushed to the bottom of the third page or top of four page of results. This is is before the [flagged] state is reached. You can often find highly upvoted but "politically contentious" submissions at position 90 or above.
Again, it literally doesn't matter. Game's gone. No-one will get punished for this because everyone knows it's a waste of effort and they'll be pardoned.
Well, as it turns out it is frontpage news. And I think there will be some eyes on it. I'm not claiming this a non-issue, but I find it unfair to say that this is a particular replican problem. I think it's government in general.
And I also notice that when I ask here on HN a critical question about the Democrats, I get flagged and downvoted. And if I ask a critical question about the Republicans, I get answers like "obviously".
When I ask the same questions in a more Republican focussed community, it's interestingly not the opposite. The Republicans don't seem to censor people that are critical about them, but they rather respond to it in a mature and factual way. I find that interesting.
Really? This is the most libertarian/right-adjacent tech forum I've seen. Check out how many DOGE posts were "flagged" in Jan. Certainly felt orchestrated.
> Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.
I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps.
Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
A face to face meeting in a bunker. But seriously, we pondered the psychological damage of those who are drone operators. How is this different? There should be more ceremony when making decisions like this, not an afternoon group chat. Dress for it, look yourself in the face for it. Be present.
I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.
The smartest people who ever lived worked on mid-century Cold War strategy, which was non-partisan. Von Neumann, Thomas Schelling, etc. The Secretary of Defense is supposed to be the best possible communicator of those ideas to the President, at all hours of the day. You and I and everyone else in this thread know what crystal-forming pressure that meant for SECDEF in the 1960s. Nowadays, half of those potential qualities (for this President) come from just being seen on Fox News; he's already "dressed for it".
But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.
While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
The obvious follow up is what else do they illegally delete?
If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?
Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history', not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.
Nevertheless, the Democrats should move to impeach. The fact that they probably won't be able to get a vote taken (never mind win one) is beside the point.
Some people put their conscience above their party affiliation. There's a ton of Republicans unhappy with, and even infuriated by Trump. Not many of them in Congress though.
I'd hope those currently toeing the line but know deep down we're at the point of ludicrous egregiousness would shoot their shot, if given the opportunity. I'd like to believe at least 20% of elected Republicans lack brain damage.
There were several prime opportunities during his last term when those elusive "deeply concerned" (remember that meme?) Republicans could have chosen to act. We could have nipped this all in the bud, convicted him during his impeachment, and moved on from all of this. But those Republicans failed to act. Now even more congressional Republicans have been primaried and replaced by MAGA sycophants. I am, regrettably, past the point of having faith that the Republicans will do the right thing "this time"
At this point, it's blatantly obvious that no one should ever file articles of impeachment without a reasonable certainty that the votes to convict exist in the Senate.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
I strongly disagree. Even if the votes aren't there, the accusation can be put on the public record. Doing nothing until there are sufficient votes is far more 'stage management' that obscures the legislative decision-making process from the public. You are asking for the appearance of consensus and dismissing actual conflict/disagreement as 'theater'.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
But they are extremely transparent. All of their actions are clearly in furtherance of corruption, stealing, and helping Russia (and China) destroy the United States.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
>…all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding any criticism said by someone on the "other" team
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
It's not just social media. What enabled things to get to this point was Fox News, which was created specifically to do that.
"
In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
"
For sure there is a much longer sweeping arc to the rabid anti-American performative politics of the modern Republican party. My point was that social media now means that people are saturated in more media consumption than ever, with the double punch of much of it being cast as coming from many other people they know.
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
I think 'blatant is a better word to describe this than transparent. Not keeping records of government business makes accountability (political or legal) impossible. But yes, I basically agree with your view.
A corollary here is that maximum pressure is being put on DoD to find “leakers”. It now appears that to the normal people in DoD, what looks like evidence of regular leaking to the press might be incompetence at the appointee level.
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
What's the point of submitting a story like this if you're just going to play the "both sides" game?
Yeah, Democrats suck too. But you'd have to be extremely uninformed or naive to believe that there's no difference between a party that mostly does things the right way with some occasional missteps (and yes, corruption), and a party that happily, brazenly wears it's corruption on its sleeve and threatens anyone who dissents.
If you see no difference then you are simply ignorant
There is plenty to criticize the left for but they take out their own trash, often to their detriment. Al Franken for example lost his seat over a dumb pic of his hover hands.
Meanwhile the right will protect the same behavior, circle the wagons, and actually normalize bad behavior just like this most recent example
Hillary Clinton testified for over eight hours on the embassy attack years ago. When will the right even allow their people to take the stand?
There need to be hearing about this Signal leak. How much do you want to bet this will ever happen?
EDIT: by "there's no distinction between them" I was simply saying the two-party system is bad, not that there is no distinction between them. And anyone who disagrees must be partisan.
Agreed, as the political games the left and going radically too left brought him back into office.
Will there ever be a moderate who champions all people coming together and living their lives peacefully. It's a pipe dream but that's what this independent seeks and is tired of the division of the United States!
Let's use Wikipedia's definition, sure? "far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy."
>>forcible suppression of opposition
There's the revocation of citizenship, the deporting people to foreign jails without full due process, crackdowns on protestors generally, opposition to trans existence. Do you want links to where this has happened or can we agree these are actions and policy the state has taken recently?
>>subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation
"We need an economic reset, so don't worry about the inflation", DOGE cutting services, tariffs as a means to...whatever the fuck the tariffs are supposed to fix?
A fascist is not “far right”. I think the dictionary definition is more accepted.
So far the people in power have not used violence to suppress opposition. They have not promoted one ethnicity or race above others. They have not made trump a dictator. Trumps authority has remained scoped to the executive office of the government…
I mean come on. Just because the party in power across the board is effective at pushing policies you don’t fully agree with does not a fascist regime make.
Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse. These aren’t new soundbytes. Everyone is just up in arms when it’s not their party getting shit done.
> So far the people in power have not used violence to suppress opposition.
Forcible deportation for opposing views is exactly use of violence to suppress dissent.
> Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse.
And none of them have usurped Congressional spending power and mass violated civil service protections in law using that has a pretext, until the present Administration.
It is extremely disingenuous to redirect from the controversial action to the less controversial pretext here.
Let’s see what the courts say. I will respect whatever outcome happens there. I sympathize with not continuing to grant visas to people who lead protests that involve crimes like trespassing as part of their demonstrations in support terrorist organizations. We are not obligated as a country to keep guests who are not supportive of our national interests and feel the need to commit crimes to make points. But I also recognize the chilling effect that has and believe in extending some level of freedom of expression even to non citizens and believe in civil disobedience. If the protesters were not occupying private buildings after being told to remove themselves and attempting to “negotiate” with authorities the whole situation would be benign. I have pretty low tolerance right now for demonstrations that turn criminal.
Centralized power, promises of historical greatness (literally in the campaign slogan), ostracization of the other. He speaks like a dictator, makes extra-legal threats to his domestic enemies and has surrounded himself with people who have repeatedly made strong endorsements for white nationalism.
I think you know this, it's just that you probably want all those things because, ding ding, you're a fascist.
Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition. You can’t just call all your political opponents fascists. We’re kinda over that by now.
Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
A lot of people have a really big problem footing the welfare bill required to sustain that type of policy.
The way I see it, it was incredibly irresponsible for the Biden administration to import a bunch of people without strong legal protections for their residency here. I mean seriously wtf. If your policy is “import immigrant labor” then at least do it legally. Otherwise you only have yourself to blame when reasonable people start asking questions.
"Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement..."
> Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
> I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition.
To be fair, as I read this I expected the punchline to be "this admin checks all the boxes" and not "I don't see it". Which is not to say that you're wrong, but it's not the dunk that you picture it as being
Your definition is a fine one; I can agree on that as terminology.
> I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition.
… I read that same definition, yet I cannot see which part you do not think he fits. Piece by piece:
> that exalts nation
Lit. MAGA, that anyone in his administration that is against him should be out (suppression of individual thought in favor of singular national identity), threats toward taking Greenland, Panama; most of the race stuff below ties in indirectly here too. Criticism of globalization. A general view of American exceptionalism and not "America is great because we're free (and that we show the world the power of what a free democracy is capable of)" but rather more "America is great because it is America." Christian nationalism ("I really believe it’s the biggest thing missing from this country, the biggest thing missing. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country."; the GOP is in favor of the destruction of 1A's church/state separation, in order to promote Christianity.)
> and often race
His policies towards immigrants; the party's overtly and directly racist comments on numerous occasions (e.g., the Springfield lies told at the national debate, or the "poisoning the blood of our country" comments); sending alleged gang-member immigrants to a concentration camp…
(I'd extend this to include "women", too; it's fundamentally the same problem: people who are members of certain groups are "lesser" than others.)
> above the individual
Again, suppression of individual critical thought within his own administration; the party's desire to ban books, freedom of expression, and basic human rights for minority groups.
> that is associated with a centralized autocratic government
Trump has stated numerous times that he believes the Presidency has full, unconditional power, even above that of the other branches of government, and has demonstrated plain contempt for both the legislative branch (e.g., destruction of legislatively-mandated departments) and the judicial branch (lies about "radical judges", threats to impeach judges he disagrees with).
> headed by a dictatorial leader
Literally, he's referred to himself as "dictator", and "king". His party has equated him to an emperor (CPAC, dipicting Trump as Caesar). "Third term and beyond".
> severe economic and social regimentation
Suppression of LGBTQ+ people, women, Vance's comments regarding women…
> and by forcible suppression of opposition
The attempted coup.
Threats to fire anyone in the executive who isn't 100% going to lick the boot, threats to impeach judges, kidnapping of protestors, threats towards journalists…
Every single word in the definition you've provided fits.
Concentration camps in El Salvador, with extrajudicial extradition and no due process?
Or, less dramatic, a drive for national autarky. A very much dirigiste economy. (Cf. massive tariffs). A drive towards a one-party state without a rule of law - explicitly punishing people with dissenting viewpoints to the point of economic exclusion. (Columbia. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton. Jenner & Block).
"While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not
have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time."
That's the official position of the US government, in a court filing - that some of those deported did not have a criminal record.
(Even their membership in the org is an assertion/allegation, not one that's been proven in court.)
I think Trump and his administration are patriots. Clearly to a fault at times, but everyone has faults. I do not step back and see America on a course to fascism with Trump at the helm. If we drown in debt we don’t have a nation. Full stop. Someone has to look at how we spend our money, ask fundamentally whether it serves the taxpayer’s interest, and make calls. Illegal aliens are expensive. Corruption is expensive. Unfair trade is expensive. Dependence on other nations for strategic manufacturing is expensive. Exporting labor is expensive.
I mean what actually is the outrage here? I do not see it. I see patriots trying to defend taxpayer interests. Taxpayers are the in group. That’s not racist or ethnic. It’s nationalist. Defending its citizens is what nations do. Since when is that equal to fascism?
As long as you keep convincing yourself that this is just a phase of right wing crazies, it will keep happening. Support for the democrats has never been lower. There is bipartisan support for the current administration. It’s not just right-wing personalities. Take it or leave it, but I’m not living in a vacuum.
I don't understand the spending argument. Trump raised the deficit by 3 trillion in his first term and plans to raise it again during this term as well. Of course, he's not the only president to do it, but it seems strange to me that people defend Trump with this line.
Unfortunately the kind of people who support Trump aren't smart and only see adjectives as either complementary or as a pejorative. They don't care about what the words actually mean. See: "woke".
I think it is pretty obvious that trump doesn't have any real political ambitions besides being popular and powerful, and seeking personal retribution against those who tarnish his reputation. In fact, he increasingly just seems like a tired old man fulfilling his political obligations he made in his last campaign. Even when he was running, he would pretty much cosy up to any political group that held him in high regard. He has always been a sleazy businessman who takes advantage of his brand name — not much has changed.
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
The word "fascist" still applies as a descriptive term, even if Trump doesn't identify with or intentionally pursue it.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
It's like a Chinese Room of fascism: Trump has the cult of personality and the power, Stephen Miller has the fascist ideals. Neither has to individually implement fascism in order for it to be reality so long as they are working together.
I hope you're right, because his dopey supporters have destroyed any balances or opposition to him other than the courts (which he is also busy attacking and undermining).
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
Please elaborate. From what I know fascism has components like having the collective prime over the individual, and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
(Before you think I'm a Trump supporter/fascist, I'm not even American, and my great-grandparents fought Nazis)
I can't think of anything trump has done in this term which is that authoritarian. Maybe that's just the "tan suit" syndrome where the media reports on every little thing it drowns out the big picture, but nothing really comes to mind for me.
I'd consider discharging an entire minority group from the military on the basis of their identity to be pretty damn fascist. Also the whole y'know, threatening to invade and annex Canada thing.
How does it match the definition of facism? From what I know fascism has components like having the collective prime over the individual, and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
(Before you think I'm a Trump supporter/fascist, I'm not even American, and my great-grandparents fought Nazis)
> and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at...
One of my takeaways is that "national security secrets" really aren't that important. The Secretary of Defense was in on this. Whatever was in that chat just doesn't matter, except to manage the reporting on it.
I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.
It only "didn't matter" because the journalist had the good sense to keep quiet until after the operation was complete. And continues to keep some of the conversation secret. Imagine if Hegseth had accidentally CC'ed somebody aligned with Iran?
„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
<tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true
"Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this."
"I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this."
..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
[Main comment by me - technical outlook]
This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
-From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff-
But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal
So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially.
Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling.
A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be compromised, any one single person in the group chat using Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that.
The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems.
Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages-
Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps.
(I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)
(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
I has long been fashionable with the kids to use screenshots for "proofs" - I don't believe there is any screenshot protections in signal.
The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to daddy when they are in trouble next time.
It's not that secure. If someone has a desktop signal client it has been possible to just access attachments via the file system; they were stored with obfuscated names but no encryption. They may have fixed this since I tested it ~6 months ago.
><tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this."
Even worse, Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. And instead of promising an investigation, the best he can do is throw some weak insults at The Atlantic.
> Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today.
Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
Well I think it's very common for representatives to not directly reply after a certain incident, because they don't have all the details yet and they want to take time to form a proper response. Don't see how this is specific to Trump.
I didn't say being evasive immediately after an incident (either to gather facts or put together a strategy) was specific to Trump, I said feigning ignorance including of material he has previously demonstrated awareness when he doesn't want to talk about something is a repeated pattern for Trump.
Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
Aha ok, but I don't think it's very applicable to this situation. The people he has denied to know he might have met them once or twice, but it's not like part of his administration. This situation is different.
Separately, he'll not-infrequently claim he doesn't remember recently saying something insane/stupid when a reporter asks him about it a day or two later. Sometimes he'll kinda smirk when he does it, so I'm pretty sure this one's also him lying, not genuinely forgetting, at least much of the time (if he's really forgetting all of these, that's a separate serious problem). In these cases, also, he rarely gets much push-back, so it's another example of "yes he's bullshitting, but also we're letting him get away with it and get what he wants, so why would he stop?"
> “I don’t know who Putin is,” “I have no relationship with Putin” and “I don’t know Putin.”
Good examples and I believe that’s a Bill-Clinton-under-oath use of carnal “is”. Nobody has the patience to wonder whether it’s true or false that Trump knows of the existence of Putin. Bill Clinton didn’t get away with it, so I’m willing to say this is specific to Trump.
To circumlocute his habitual evasion, try offering an active phrasing: “Do you have a replacement in mind for Secretary Hegseth?” would be one way to prevent the passive-aggressive “I don’t really know Peter B. Hegseth”. When Trump “doesn’t know” someone, it’s a very final thing.
By the revealed content of the chat, Trump wasn't aware of the decision his subordinates made. They just intuited Trump's wishes and dropped bombs based on that.
I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported conversation appears to be authentic.
I am ideologically neutral in this pissing match you and anigbrowl are projecting. Is Hegseth dumb enough to make such a mistake? Yes. Is Goldberg a known fabricator? Yes. I reminded people of the latter, since most of you already accept the former. If the tables were turned, I'd have asked a similar question about Hegseth.
Distorting a "gentle reminder" of a fact (not an argument) into a fallacy is a slime ball move, worthy of the most shameless press operatives; only real difference being that the aforementioned operatives are smart enough to demand a dear price for their shamelessness, whereas anigbrowl does it for free!
edit: and to answer ipython since i've been rate limited:
As previously stated, it was not an argument, but a fact, and a signpost to the "Jeff Goldberg is a POS" monument, commonly referred to as his wikipedia page.
I guess I don't understand the point of your argument, if even the administration admits that this conversation was genuine? Please avoid the ad hominem attacks.
Why are you accusing me of projecting? If you feel skeptical of Goldberg over his journalism leading up to the Iraq war, that's fine. I do not consider him totally trustworthy either, for my own reasons. I find this story credible because he appears to have the receipts.
My point about fallacies was that there were a lot of people advocating for the Iraq war at the time, it's ridiculous to argue that it was caused by one article written by Goldberg. Your original post was not a 'gentle reminder', it was a simplistic attack that distracted from the topic. If you had made the same point without the drama I would have had no disagreement.
Because you are. You are reaching so hard and so far to tar me with words that I have not written. I wrote that he "lied us into Iraq". In no way does that imply sole causation. It goes without saying that he had plenty of help, but he was a participant, and a key one at that.
Greenwald's quote in the Wikipedia article matches my recollection precisely. That "one article" was tinder for a media blitz. It was discussed, cited, and amplified--ad nauseam--and it was a pack of lies. And there was nary a disclosure of his interest as an ex-IDF dual-citizen at the time. Just article after article, show after show, passing lies off as truth, pointing to Goldberg as the citation. Skepticism is "doubt" as to the truth of something. Doubt involves uncertainty, hesitation, etc. When it comes to Jeff and Iraq in 2025, there is no doubt.
As for the present business... Is anything in that text chain a surprise to you? I think everyone knows who these people are, what they are capable of: Ivy-leaguers who graduated to mass-murder--just like every other administration. "The People" will not tolerate anything less. Team Blue will howl that Team Red's mass-murderers are 2nd-rate. Team Red will shrug. Nothing will change. Neither side really cares about the mass-murder, as long as their bellies are full, and the correct opinions on women's restrooms are upheld.
the person that i was in 2002 did not—and would not—spin a story out of whole cloth into the national press—especially one that would contribute to the deaths of over 100k innocent people
There were many people on the rowing team, but as someone who lived through it, Goldberg was one of its most vigorous members. One expects that there is a special place in hell for all of them.
That is what you are imagining I am saying, but it is not what I said. I think everyone who lied us into the Iraq mess should have been civically un-personed decades ago. They should be limited to unclean jobs, and be required to walk a few steps behind their un-tainted betters. Yet as the Osho once said, "the people are retarded," so the architects of that catastrophe still hold prestigious positions. I will not waste an opportunity to remind people of what they did. The children do not understand how badly their futures have been diminished by this shedding of innocent blood.
> Is this the same Jeff Goldberg who lied us into the Iraq War?
Does not mean "we should doubt this article" but actually means
> I think everyone involved in the Iraq mess should have been civically un-personed decades ago. They should be limited to unclean jobs, and be required to walk a few steps behind their un-tainted betters. Yet as the Osho once said, "the people are retarded," so the architects of that catastrophe still have jobs. I will not waste any opportunity to remind people of what they did. The children do not understand how badly their futures have been diminished by this shedding of innocent blood.
I mean I lived through it too. So did many others on this site. And my most memorable image is of Colin Powell giving his speech about "yellow cake" to the UN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhWlPo3qxak.
I don't even remember Goldberg or anything he wrote about it, fwiw.
You must've not sat with the old people watching the talking heads all day. Goldberg was ubiquitous. Per the wiki:
Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg "one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq," saying Goldberg had "compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact".
Greenwald's assessment harmonizes with personal experience.
1,433 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 485 ms ] threadNo, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.
Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.
Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.
Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
No, they can't.
> And have it on the record who votes against it.
They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as close as they can come.
Democrats can introduce bills of impeachment, but those would simply die without consideration given GOP control of the House. So far as I'm aware, none have done so since 20 Jan 2025.
There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).
The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.
the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).
the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.
do you have anything of substance to share, or is this what passes for intellectual discourse on HN these days?
This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.
> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics
Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.
i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc, though. in federal politics sure but in local politics they're more active and there's much more alignment with Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(This is not a comment on the current story, or any story.)
Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?
If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted with all messages and contacts
But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto crowd after all.
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
"Good enough for me!"
If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it for history?
When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.
Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.
The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.
Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal implications of using a self-destructing messaging channel.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=bonhoeffer
So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".
> At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole qualification for applicants for important positions in any organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss other important data points: for example, if they can use messaging apps correctly.
Oh who am I kidding.
Less than 8h later: “it’s just an oopsie right? No harm no foul- nothing to see here folks” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/24/congress/mi...
Oh, much worse than that. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904309995019411933
Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against the "discredited, so-called journalist".
Of course, we don't live in that world.
This incident was an accident.
“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” - Waltz
“Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is,” -Rubio
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-officials-warn-egypts-m...
https://www.jns.org/israel-challenges-egypt-on-secret-sinai-...
Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fcpa-anti-bribery-law-exe...
Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-...
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And today, confirmation from Trump:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
what I noticed is that even at the highest level people think prayers can be effective:
> JD Vance
> I will say a prayer for victory
Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.
Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.
Also...but her emails!
Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often daily.
The guy is sending plane loads of who-knows-who to a country that they have no association with, based upon zero charges or due process, where they are imprisoned into basically slavery. This is so outrageously beyond the pale illegal, both in US and international law, that it is just mind-blowing, but it's just another day. Good god. Despotic, banana-republic autocrat behaviour is now just...accepted.
I saw a complaint by a right wing figure noting the increased number of injunctions Trump has received versus prior presidents. Instead of rationally thinking "gosh...maybe he shouldn't contravene the constitution and/or break laws so frequently", they actually think it's unfair and needs to be balanced. It's a shocking collapse of norms or reason.
It is incredibly dark times.
It’s not that weird when you consider where they get that opinion.
But Democrat engagement was somehow negative marginally higher, at huge expense by independent voters.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250114165808/https://projects....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_president...
Directionality is short term and simplistic, Does it change how someone will vote or poll.
Substance explains why they vote or poll, and is relevant because it has downstream consequences in an evolving world.
Simply incredible. This is wild.
"My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this position"
[Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
Now I guess, should this be made transparent?
What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin. The quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.
The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.
Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.
For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.
But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the SLS rocket. It's all politics.
Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue for the US or international community of the site.
'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are tired of this crap.
I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time greats, but there are lots of different moderation arrangements that can work, and different goals for forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this forum.
I'd much prefer it be replaced by something led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those other regions...
If anything it'll be from some middle ground in that it will originate from a country like Estonia that has a lot going on with startups and the whole digital democracy thing figured out.
Have any of these topics managed to be censored via flagging?
They are all still present, a good many are still active .. you seem to equate "not on front page" with "censored".
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
and (for example DOGE, last month): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping.
I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way. "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case for it. This happens all the time.
And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics
Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again, you can make the case for changing that but it seems pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and many HN participants are here because this one is slightly less yelly.
Like c'mon.
I'm pretty sure that your pretentiousness just invited a shitstorm of people who are going to flag your posts from now on.
You have about, well, 30 comments in this thread.
One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you
They took their precious time and explained it just for me? I thought you said "We're just flagging and getting on with our day."
You might want to (looks around) and count up your, well, comments. Seems like you're trying to claim both not caring at all and benevolent enlightenment, which is, well, a little self righteous.
These don't seem to have any relevance to what I've said, are you getting me mixed up with someone else?
Admittedly I have little talent for extracting wasps from stings in flight.
number 30 is 38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
number 7 is 13 points | 3 comments
This one has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is neither on the first or second page.
What is the logic?
The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang, if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off flagging for this submission which would likely bring it back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't know this yet.
In other words, just because such a system could be used in this way, is it good that it is being used this way? That’s the energy this is coming from.
But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of us are stupid - we should already know.
It's not linked from the homepage though.
If literally storming your government building, threating your representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable any more what is?
Hunter never worked in the Biden Admin though, so it is completely irrelevant.
When I ask the same questions in a more Republican focussed community, it's interestingly not the opposite. The Republicans don't seem to censor people that are critical about them, but they rather respond to it in a mature and factual way. I find that interesting.
To anyone, I recommend you give this a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also -
> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
And what is?
I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.
But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.
While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.
If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?
Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
Likely everything they can. Rules are for fools in this admin.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
" In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "
https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
* https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
Yeah, Democrats suck too. But you'd have to be extremely uninformed or naive to believe that there's no difference between a party that mostly does things the right way with some occasional missteps (and yes, corruption), and a party that happily, brazenly wears it's corruption on its sleeve and threatens anyone who dissents.
There is plenty to criticize the left for but they take out their own trash, often to their detriment. Al Franken for example lost his seat over a dumb pic of his hover hands.
Meanwhile the right will protect the same behavior, circle the wagons, and actually normalize bad behavior just like this most recent example
Hillary Clinton testified for over eight hours on the embassy attack years ago. When will the right even allow their people to take the stand?
There need to be hearing about this Signal leak. How much do you want to bet this will ever happen?
Signed an independent whose just stating that fact.
Will there ever be a moderate who champions all people coming together and living their lives peacefully. It's a pipe dream but that's what this independent seeks and is tired of the division of the United States!
>>forcible suppression of opposition
There's the revocation of citizenship, the deporting people to foreign jails without full due process, crackdowns on protestors generally, opposition to trans existence. Do you want links to where this has happened or can we agree these are actions and policy the state has taken recently?
>>subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation
"We need an economic reset, so don't worry about the inflation", DOGE cutting services, tariffs as a means to...whatever the fuck the tariffs are supposed to fix?
So far the people in power have not used violence to suppress opposition. They have not promoted one ethnicity or race above others. They have not made trump a dictator. Trumps authority has remained scoped to the executive office of the government…
I mean come on. Just because the party in power across the board is effective at pushing policies you don’t fully agree with does not a fascist regime make.
Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse. These aren’t new soundbytes. Everyone is just up in arms when it’s not their party getting shit done.
Which dictionary?
Oxford (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...) and Collins (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/fasc...) say right-wing.
Forcible deportation for opposing views is exactly use of violence to suppress dissent.
> Every single president back to Clinton and probably beyond, including Obama, has spoken out against government waste and spending abuse.
And none of them have usurped Congressional spending power and mass violated civil service protections in law using that has a pretext, until the present Administration.
It is extremely disingenuous to redirect from the controversial action to the less controversial pretext here.
No, it factually wasn't, though all opposition to the Israeli polciy of genocide is being characterized that way to justify it.
I think you know this, it's just that you probably want all those things because, ding ding, you're a fascist.
Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition. You can’t just call all your political opponents fascists. We’re kinda over that by now.
"populist political philosophy, movement, or regime" > appeal to populist rethoric, check
"exalts nation above individual" > mass deportations and gov firing, "means justify the ends", check
"centralized autocratic headed by dictatorial leader" > executive orders, disregard for federal laws, DOGE, check
"economic and social regimentation" > "nationalists" vs left, woke or whatever it is this week, check
"forcible suppression of opposition" > no-process deportations, name-calling opposition, incentives to war against neighboors, check
It's all fascism MO; you probably learned fascism in school by only learning the last days and steps before WWII, not how it started.
I mean, "America First" is even openly their slogan.
Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
A lot of people have a really big problem footing the welfare bill required to sustain that type of policy.
The way I see it, it was incredibly irresponsible for the Biden administration to import a bunch of people without strong legal protections for their residency here. I mean seriously wtf. If your policy is “import immigrant labor” then at least do it legally. Otherwise you only have yourself to blame when reasonable people start asking questions.
Not all nationalism is fascism, but fascism is nationalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
"Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement..."
> Ffs they aren’t ethnically cleansing the nation. They are removing illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, and they’re open to those removed people coming back legally.
Yeah, that's how it tends to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
To be fair, as I read this I expected the punchline to be "this admin checks all the boxes" and not "I don't see it". Which is not to say that you're wrong, but it's not the dunk that you picture it as being
Your definition is a fine one; I can agree on that as terminology.
> I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition.
… I read that same definition, yet I cannot see which part you do not think he fits. Piece by piece:
> that exalts nation
Lit. MAGA, that anyone in his administration that is against him should be out (suppression of individual thought in favor of singular national identity), threats toward taking Greenland, Panama; most of the race stuff below ties in indirectly here too. Criticism of globalization. A general view of American exceptionalism and not "America is great because we're free (and that we show the world the power of what a free democracy is capable of)" but rather more "America is great because it is America." Christian nationalism ("I really believe it’s the biggest thing missing from this country, the biggest thing missing. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country."; the GOP is in favor of the destruction of 1A's church/state separation, in order to promote Christianity.)
> and often race
His policies towards immigrants; the party's overtly and directly racist comments on numerous occasions (e.g., the Springfield lies told at the national debate, or the "poisoning the blood of our country" comments); sending alleged gang-member immigrants to a concentration camp…
(I'd extend this to include "women", too; it's fundamentally the same problem: people who are members of certain groups are "lesser" than others.)
> above the individual
Again, suppression of individual critical thought within his own administration; the party's desire to ban books, freedom of expression, and basic human rights for minority groups.
> that is associated with a centralized autocratic government
Trump has stated numerous times that he believes the Presidency has full, unconditional power, even above that of the other branches of government, and has demonstrated plain contempt for both the legislative branch (e.g., destruction of legislatively-mandated departments) and the judicial branch (lies about "radical judges", threats to impeach judges he disagrees with).
> headed by a dictatorial leader
Literally, he's referred to himself as "dictator", and "king". His party has equated him to an emperor (CPAC, dipicting Trump as Caesar). "Third term and beyond".
> severe economic and social regimentation
Suppression of LGBTQ+ people, women, Vance's comments regarding women…
> and by forcible suppression of opposition
The attempted coup.
Threats to fire anyone in the executive who isn't 100% going to lick the boot, threats to impeach judges, kidnapping of protestors, threats towards journalists…
Every single word in the definition you've provided fits.
We're just gonna pretend Jan 6 never happened, eh?
Only one party's supporters has seriously attempted to overturn an election by force.
https://www.keene.edu/academics/cchgs/resources/presentation...
Or, less dramatic, a drive for national autarky. A very much dirigiste economy. (Cf. massive tariffs). A drive towards a one-party state without a rule of law - explicitly punishing people with dissenting viewpoints to the point of economic exclusion. (Columbia. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton. Jenner & Block).
Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
Which is a fundamental element of, at the very least, autocracies.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278...
"While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time."
That's the official position of the US government, in a court filing - that some of those deported did not have a criminal record.
(Even their membership in the org is an assertion/allegation, not one that's been proven in court.)
I mean what actually is the outrage here? I do not see it. I see patriots trying to defend taxpayer interests. Taxpayers are the in group. That’s not racist or ethnic. It’s nationalist. Defending its citizens is what nations do. Since when is that equal to fascism?
"That's why I voted for the guy who added 1/3 of it in just four out of ~250 years!"
(And plans to do it again. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce81g9593dro)
Yikes.
> Taxpayers are the in group.
The in-group is right-wingers, such as farmers[1] and Likud[2].
[1] https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/03/...
[2] https://www.state.gov/military-assistance-to-israel/
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at...
I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.
„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
(Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)
WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top Secret.
Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
[Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
-From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff-
But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal
So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially.
Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling.
A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems.
Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)
(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to daddy when they are in trouble next time.
The lack of reproducible builds for Signal’s apps has been a topic of discussion for quite some time:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641
except that the conversation in question, and similar such conversations, are required by federal law to be archived.
So explicitly choosing a communication channel that violates federal law for conducting federal business is, umm, sketchy?
That is some seriously selective memory
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4cdmmc/wtf_is_going_on...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4dvoj5/sma_diplosleade...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4f3epd/a_different_kin...
And here's some more recent ones
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1f6t1vw/your_relays_ar...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1g3p232/alcoholic_sata...
Major alliance infrastructure and security is probably better than most US corporations but doesn't come close to secure government systems, obviously
Point taken though , the commenters who said that were ...obviously..anecdotal, -though possibly still more the norm...)
BUTTERY MALES indeed.
Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
Good examples and I believe that’s a Bill-Clinton-under-oath use of carnal “is”. Nobody has the patience to wonder whether it’s true or false that Trump knows of the existence of Putin. Bill Clinton didn’t get away with it, so I’m willing to say this is specific to Trump.
I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported conversation appears to be authentic.
Distorting a "gentle reminder" of a fact (not an argument) into a fallacy is a slime ball move, worthy of the most shameless press operatives; only real difference being that the aforementioned operatives are smart enough to demand a dear price for their shamelessness, whereas anigbrowl does it for free!
edit: and to answer ipython since i've been rate limited:
As previously stated, it was not an argument, but a fact, and a signpost to the "Jeff Goldberg is a POS" monument, commonly referred to as his wikipedia page.
My point about fallacies was that there were a lot of people advocating for the Iraq war at the time, it's ridiculous to argue that it was caused by one article written by Goldberg. Your original post was not a 'gentle reminder', it was a simplistic attack that distracted from the topic. If you had made the same point without the drama I would have had no disagreement.
As for the present business... Is anything in that text chain a surprise to you? I think everyone knows who these people are, what they are capable of: Ivy-leaguers who graduated to mass-murder--just like every other administration. "The People" will not tolerate anything less. Team Blue will howl that Team Red's mass-murderers are 2nd-rate. Team Red will shrug. Nothing will change. Neither side really cares about the mass-murder, as long as their bellies are full, and the correct opinions on women's restrooms are upheld.
> Is this the same Jeff Goldberg who lied us into the Iraq War?
Does not mean "we should doubt this article" but actually means
> I think everyone involved in the Iraq mess should have been civically un-personed decades ago. They should be limited to unclean jobs, and be required to walk a few steps behind their un-tainted betters. Yet as the Osho once said, "the people are retarded," so the architects of that catastrophe still have jobs. I will not waste any opportunity to remind people of what they did. The children do not understand how badly their futures have been diminished by this shedding of innocent blood.
My mistake.
A simple question is sufficient to direct intelligent people to his wikipedia. That is enough.
I don't even remember Goldberg or anything he wrote about it, fwiw.
Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg "one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq," saying Goldberg had "compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact".
Greenwald's assessment harmonizes with personal experience.