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>Literally nobody was buying that Iraq had WMD. You must be very young, because this is totally false. Both political parties, every network and every newspap

>Literally nobody was buying that Iraq had WMD. You must be very young, because this is totally false. Both political parties, every network and every newspaper was not only uniform in their belief and assertion that Iraq had WMD, they ridiculed and attacked everyone who denied this falsehood. >Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States; France's President Jacques Chirac told Time magazine last February, "There is a problem—the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right ... in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-l... There should be no doubt that disputing the official narrative on Iraq WMD would have been censored by Twitter and other big tech companies that use establishment narrative as the only benchmark for truth. >SOME THINGS ARE JUST TRUE AND SOME ARE NOT. There is no "two sides" to them. There is objective truth and objective lies. And just who should decide what these things are, you? Twitter? The US government?

tpmx 6y ago
From my perspective in Europe in 2002/2003: There was an incredibly harsh and damaging debate on this matter. Back then I was on the losing leftist side. We watched the Fox News broadcasts in horror. Nowadays I find myself on the rightish side. Fox News is still insane though. In my mind the current equivalent of the outsized influence of 2002/2003 Fox News programming is the political influence of employees of SV companies. Somehow the common factor here is americans imposing their misinformed view of the world to the rest of the world with force, be it physical or cultural.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > the political influence of employees of SV companies Maybe employees have power in Europe, but here in the United States employees have almost no power. Employment is at-will, and anyone who causes trouble for management is summarily fired. Even management itself can be summarily fired by the board of directors of publicly owned corporations, like Twitter. Jack Dorsey is answerable to the stockholders, and also to the advertisers who generate Twitter's revenue. Not to the employees, who could all be eliminated and replaced if necessary. Jack too could be eliminated and replaced if necessary. The only exception is Mark Zuckerberg, who set it up so that he has total voting control over Facebook and is untouchable by the stockholders. But that also means Zuck is untouchable by the employees. The idea that SV corporations are run by the employees is a strange one.

tpmx 6y ago

From my perspective in Europe in 2002/2003: There was an incredibly harsh and damaging debate on this matter. Back then I was on the losing leftist side. We watched the Fox News broadcasts in horror. Nowadays I find myself on the rightish side. Fox News is still insane though. In my mind the current equivalent of the outsized influence of 2002/2003 Fox News programming is the political influence of employees of SV companies. Somehow the common factor here is americans imposing their misinformed view of the world to the rest of the world with force, be it physical or cultural.

_qulr 6y ago
> the political influence of employees of SV companies Maybe employees have power in Europe, but here in the United States employees have almost no power. Employment is at-will, and anyone who causes trouble for management is summarily fired. Even management itself can be summarily fired by the board of directors of publicly owned corporations, like Twitter. Jack Dorsey is answerable to the stockholders, and also to the advertisers who generate Twitter's revenue. Not to the employees, who could all be eliminated and replaced if necessary. Jack too could be eliminated and replaced if necessary. The only exception is Mark Zuckerberg, who set it up so that he has total voting control over Facebook and is untouchable by the stockholders. But that also means Zuck is untouchable by the employees. The idea that SV corporations are run by the employees is a strange one.