3 ms·

Agreed. If the backchannel is news or surprising to you, you're probably just following and regurgitating someone else's propaganda. Agreed with the OP: read o

Agreed. If the backchannel is news or surprising to you, you're probably just following and regurgitating someone else's propaganda. Agreed with the OP: read original sources like Wikileaks.

DasIch 10y ago
Reading Wikileaks alone is essentially worthless because you will lack the necessary context. A good example for this is all of the discussion about reporters colluding with Clinton based on the leaked emails because reporters are making request for comments, which is standard journalistic practice. Several such situations came up as a consequence of these leaks. This is not to say you shouldn't look at the stuff released by Wikileaks at all but don't make the mistake of believing you get the entire picture from that or if you do, that you have the knowledge required to interpret it correctly.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  Sure. I don't think anyone, myself or the OP, has suggested reading Wikileaks as a sole source. A good example is understanding the role that Benghazi State Department officials (Ambassador Stevens) played in illegally internationally shipping weapons between war zones: from Qaddafi's weapons caches into Syria under the direction of then State Department Secretary Clinton. If you just read the emails you'll understand that Benghazi was important, that it was dangerous, that there was a secret CIA annex there. But when there's a big-to-do about Clinton emails and Benghazi, including her use of private email servers in violation of FOIA statutes that prevented journalists from investigating the breach of international law - if you just read Wikileaks you'd probably think that there wasn't really that much to the Benghazi thing. I agree with you completely: read a ton of Wikileaked documents. But understand that they are communications between people; and that to understand what they mean you need to understand who those people are, when they were sent, and what objectives and constraints those people were under.

Agreed. If the backchannel is news or surprising to you, you're probably just following and regurgitating someone else's propaganda. Agreed with the OP: read original sources like Wikileaks.

DasIch 10y ago

Reading Wikileaks alone is essentially worthless because you will lack the necessary context. A good example for this is all of the discussion about reporters colluding with Clinton based on the leaked emails because reporters are making request for comments, which is standard journalistic practice. Several such situations came up as a consequence of these leaks. This is not to say you shouldn't look at the stuff released by Wikileaks at all but don't make the mistake of believing you get the entire picture from that or if you do, that you have the knowledge required to interpret it correctly.

xnull2guest 10y ago
Sure. I don't think anyone, myself or the OP, has suggested reading Wikileaks as a sole source. A good example is understanding the role that Benghazi State Department officials (Ambassador Stevens) played in illegally internationally shipping weapons between war zones: from Qaddafi's weapons caches into Syria under the direction of then State Department Secretary Clinton. If you just read the emails you'll understand that Benghazi was important, that it was dangerous, that there was a secret CIA annex there. But when there's a big-to-do about Clinton emails and Benghazi, including her use of private email servers in violation of FOIA statutes that prevented journalists from investigating the breach of international law - if you just read Wikileaks you'd probably think that there wasn't really that much to the Benghazi thing. I agree with you completely: read a ton of Wikileaked documents. But understand that they are communications between people; and that to understand what they mean you need to understand who those people are, when they were sent, and what objectives and constraints those people were under.