- cross-posted to:
- globalnews
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews
A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) software engineer who was convicted for carrying out the largest theft of classified information in the agency’s history and of charges related to child abuse imagery was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday.
The 40-year sentence by US district judge Jesse Furman was for “crimes of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography”, federal prosecutors said in a statement. The judge did not impose a life sentence as sought by prosecutors.
Joshua Schulte was convicted in July 2022 on four counts each of espionage and computer hacking and one count of lying to FBI agents, after giving classified materials to the whistleblowing agency WikiLeaks in the so-called Vault 7 leak. Last August, a judge mostly upheld the conviction.
Okay, so consider these things also being true:
Also? You aren’t at work, your boss isn’t reading this. Use emojis, have fun, embrace the lower classes 😘
Russia has, by the overwhelming evidence, interfered the most in recent history. Casting it off as, “bUt EVEryOnE DoES iT” doesn’t stop us from recognizing the chief offender.
That seems awfully convenient. Though when state secrets are leaked to Russia and said individuals flee to Russia, those connections… Well, they’re tangible and in plain-sight.
Repeating your first point regarding whataboutism – kinda of strange – is a race-to-the-bottom mindset. Admission that Russia does interfere only lends credence to my points. Neither does “many countries interfere!” make it right.
Such a peculiar cognitive dissonance between:
and
I want a source for this. What I know is that Russia spent $300 million since 2014 to influence foreign elections. That’s a lot of money! But, spread that out over multiple countries and multiple election cycles and it seems very clear that Russia has not interfered the most. The 2024 presidential race has, so far, already surpassed $300 million. What it looks like is Russia, like every oil&gas company, influences US elections. It’s bad, it’s not special.
US’s elections are pay-to-play thanks to clownish Supreme Court decisions like Buckley v. Valeo (which found that money is speech and limiting speech is a violation of the 1st amendment), the Bennett decision (which found that public campaign financing is unconstitutional because it dilutes the value of private spending and thus private “speech”) and, of course, the Citizens United decision which I’m sure you’re already familiar with. We have a problem and blaming it all on Russia is unserious.
Also, in the course of looking things up for this argument, did you know that AIPAC is set to spend more than $100 million this election cycle to defeat US candidates opposed to the genocide in Gaza. In one election! In one country!
You’re talking about Snowden? State secrets were leaked to the world and then he fled to Russia to avoid going to US prison. That doesn’t really imply he leaked secrets on behalf of Russia, merely that Russia was willing to shelter him for political gain.
When did I ever say anything about it being right? My only point is that Russia isn’t unique and blaming everything on Russia is 🤡
It’s amazing what you can do when your Ruble is worth a penny to the US Dollar; to have spent that much money relative to Russia’s economy is quite substantial, really. Besides, it wouldn’t take that many Russian trolls paid cheaply to yield an impact, as our own department of justice said. But regardless, the evidence speaks for itself – for I inquire: Is there anyone you know of who has spent more or is of a greater concern to Federal agencies? Good luck with that.
Sure, Buckley v. Valeo, SpeechNow vs. FEC, Citizens United – I don’t disagree these are monumental issues just the same. None legalized foreign interference, however. So I’m not sure what the point is you’re trying to make. Why should we downplay Russia’s outsized influence fanning the flames of right-wing extremism in America (Funny, The Base right-wing militia leader fled to Russia, too) and clearly taking a page out of what Nazis did exactly during in 1930s America? Besides, we can walk and chew bubble-gum at the same time.
I agree, that is terrible.
Either way, Russia benefits. I don’t have much sympathy and don’t view him as some noble martyr when you flee to country with objectively-worse human rights and corruption records but we may just have to agree to disagree on this. Still I can simultaneously recognize the merit of what he leaked as being productive for domestic dialogue and the debate of privacy vs. security.
Where did I say I blamed “everything” on Russia?
And sure, Russia may not be unique, but it’s by far the biggest fish in that category until proven otherwise. (China likely second).
The Biden Victory Fund was over $650 million. That’s just one political action fund for 2020, just for a single candidate.
The Trump Make America Great Again Committee? Over $880 million, for one candidate, in one election.
The Republican National Committee: $320 million in 2020
ActBlue: $350 million in 2020
Please, Russia is a gas station with guns. They’re not primarily responsible for America being a shithole.
Also, please remember, that’s not Russia spending $300 million in America alone. That’s spread out all over the world. It’s also not in any one year, it’s spread out over several election cycles! In all likelihood their focus on America is over half of that total fund, but not much more than that. They have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies and it’s absurd to claim they’re the worst offender in American elections.
That’s just wrong. America has a higher prisoner-per-capita ratio and kills far more people. Russia isn’t good, but America is literally the greater evil. Gaza vs Ukraine puts this into stark relief. One is an illegal war. That’s bad! One is a genocidal extermination campaign. That’s clearly worse! Yet, America has no problem with funding the genocide as long as it takes.
Yep, and these things are legal. Not foreign interference attempting to alter the outcome to their own gain. Not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but Russia is not a foreign citizen and thus cannot play the game of SuperPACs, let alone directly fund campaigns as domestic individuals can.
Whether that’s right or wrong is another topic but clearly beside the point. As I said, the two issues are not mutally-exclusive. But that you would basically say it’s A-Okay that Russia is trying to undermine our elections because of internal domestic spending is… Peculiar at best. What, should we wait for when Russia spends billions upon billions? Perhaps we should nip this in the bud now.
The answer is: “No, there is not a greater concern to Federal agencies than Russia in foreign election interference.”
Again, a straw-man fallacy; please cite where I said this. Yes of course Russia isn’t responsible for everything; and sure, domestic Republicans and corporations are corrupt enough in their own right. But Russia has certainly amplified this internal division and should absolutely be a talking-point going into the elections as to why a foreign corrupt dictator wants Republicans to win so badly.
Citation needed. Unless you have some seriously selective date ranges for considering murder counts and think the Russian Gulags are actually going to publicly document their torture – I’m just going to laugh this one out of the park. As with most things, it’s far more complicated than these absolutist terms one can conveniently armchair from their Lemmy account. It’s no wonder one isn’t in a political position or high level advisor or an expert in… Well, really much of anything I surmise. But feel free to go live in the bastion of freedom and human rights that is Russia, apparently, LOL.
Thanks for the laugh; looks like we found who was the clown all along!
Corruption being legal isn’t good lol
Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.
As for incarceration rates, the numbers vary depending on how you count it, but here America is as the worst on Earth
As for murder, aside from the 1000 people murdered by cops every year, I was talking internationally. The War on Terror? Operation Condor? The Dirty Wars? The Jakarta Method? America is responsible for millions of deaths around the world from its direct meddling. And now we can add the genocide in Gaza to the list.
Did Russia do that too?
Let me just be clear:
Incarceration rates don’t prove worse corruption; while the drug laws need changed, that in itself is not proof of a corruption on the scale of Stalin lol.
War on terror, Condor, Dirty Wars, etc. - None come remotely close to Russia, both foreign and domestic. Sorry. Soviet-Afghan War, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, not to mention Red Army atrocities, or Stalin executions and domestic oppression with millions dead. Or the blatant assassination and silencing of dissidents within Russia from Nemtsov to Nevalny and tightening of laws where one cannot even speak publicly about the war without 15 years imprisonment lol. People dragged away for protesting with a blank sign LOL. I protested the Iraq War very early on and I was never at risk for 15 years imprisonment simply for being opposed to it LOL. Yet here you are purporting false-equivalence fallacies.
You lose on the numbers and severity. This is just a fact.
Sure, but the fact that there are more people in US prisons than in Stalin’s gulags should tell you something about America.
Now let me clarify something. The Russian Federation didn’t exist before the USSR fell, so we can only really talk about the period from 1991. That’s the “selective time range” I’m using. When I say America is the worst on Earth, I’m saying it’s currently the worst on Earth.
I’m not talking about countries that don’t exist anymore. You’re the one that brought gulags up, I just wanted to mention a disturbing fact about America’s carceral system. This doesn’t even get into the history of chattel slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans, this is just about the fact that modern America has the worst prisoner-per-capita ratio on Earth and also the largest prisoner population on Earth. Worse than Russia, worse than China, the worst.
US prisons are torture centers where people get raped and murdered all the time, are used for extremely cheap slave-like labor, and have mass graves like the 215 people have been buried behind a Mississippi jail since 2016. US prisons are comparable to gulags and in some cases worse.
Now globally I imagine there might be worse prisons today, so I won’t say that US has the worst prisons on Earth. They’re pretty fucking bad, though, and when combined with having the highest prisoner-per-capita ratio and highest number of prisoners its a monument to human suffering that is unparalleled in the modern world.
That’s just wrong. The Great Purges may have seen 750,000 executions. That was certainly excessive, not something I’m defending, and that’s literally not genocide. He didn’t target an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. He killed perceived enemies of his state and he did so along class and political lines.
The War on Terror is estimated to have caused 4.5 million excess deaths.
Now, maybe it was unfair of me to bring up Operation Condor & the Dirty Wars (60,000–80,000 deaths in Central and South America) and Jakarta (between 100,000 and 1,000,000 deaths in Indonesia) because those were before the Russian Federation even existed. I just finished reading The Jakarta Method and it was on my mind, I shouldn’t have let that distract me from my point. Apologies.
And that’s not good!
Its not like protesters haven’t been assaulted and arrested by cops in the US since before our parents were born, and I can point out that the US is trying to extradite Julian Assange for doing journalism and prosecuting the Cop City protesters on RICO charges, but you’re right that Russia is still definitely worse on this front. I think the mass incarceration and global imperialism are worse problems.
Pretty sure you lose on the numbers. Severity is arguable, but I think quantity is a quality all on its own.