Hahahaha. You have no right to a speedy trial if the Feds are involved. You either plea out or play the waiting game. My case took 2 and a half years to resolve before they finally dropped it. I paid $10k to retain an attorney only to hear "No word back from them yet" for almost 2 years straight, and I had a meeting with the DA once, at the beginning of the process.
To be honest, it's very unlikely Assange knows most of his own sources. That would be a very, very dangerous coupling of information in one person's head- a single point of failure for all of WikiLeaks and its credibility. I don't think he's that stupid. It's much more likely that he receives the leaks, forwards them to a trusted ally to verify that the information is consistent with other things that are being leaked, or have been leaked, and calls it a day.
Knowing someone's name wouldn't be of any use to him to begin with- anyone can lie about a leak being legitimate; a name doesn't mean shit, independent actors who can verify the data integrity are all you need. So I doubt he knows the names of most his sources; it's just unnecessary risk with no gain from an operational security POV.
Snowden did not betray the country. The country is US, the people. He betrayed the government. You seriously gonna cuck for Intel agencies? "They're rolling out social credit scores, but the real criminals are the people exposing it!"
Big reason is Mitch McConnell. Dude's up to his eyeballs in pharma bribes. I don't smoke either, but I don't think that the government has any business keeping a drug illegal that has more or less the same safety profile as alcohol. I do not want my tax dollars being spent locking someone in prison for an ounce of weed, and then shoveling welfare at them on release because the government just fucked up their entire work and education life.
With the Feds, taking a plea deal is pretty much the only option you'll ever have. I imagine "plea to this drug charge, or we'll plaster your face all over the news as a person of interest in a murder case and prevent you from traveling while the government takes 3 years to move your case forward" is how the exchange went, more or less. If they really wanna fuck with you, they'll come up with a reason to seize your phone and shit too- so whether you're running your own business or working for a company, you'll get hit pretty hard.
It's less about free speech and more-so "enemy of my enemy."
Long story short: The USSR had pretty great STEM education facilities, and dumped tons of money into tech literacy for their population, because they thought this was the key to military advancements that could obliterate everyone else. State collapsed before that happened, fast forward to modern day Russia: great technical literacy, almost no fucking jobs for it. Russia knows they have a huge black market for sketchy internet shit, but they generally let it slide as long as you're not doing anything to harm Russian citizens/government/institutions.
So yes, in this instance, Russia is pro-our free speech. But if Parler was advocating for the ability to speak out against Putin they'd get bopped.
I count the Amazon situation as a blessing- I'm honestly baffled Parler trusted them in the first place. It's like putting an Alexa device on your server and saying "Record away for the FBI, oh Master!"
The next play will entirely depend on what happens next. You can get a server in Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and they won't give a fuck what you host as long as it's not CP or something crazy. Then they might start targeting ISPs.
Reddit is a very low priority concern. I am much more concerned about industries overall. Amazon, Google, Facebook- globalists have been consolidating power into these giant companies for a while. Small businesses are in the path of destruction- they're either regulated out by bribery, out-competed by Chinese factories, or automated away. When the only big employers left will all scan your life history to make sure you never backed the evil orange man, some Conservatives will still fucking defend it because it's the "free market." I care more about protecting Conservative ideals, and if that means telling some billion-dollar globalists to fuck off and violating the Sacred Catechism of Capitalism, so be it.
That's the problem- there's not always competition. How do you compete with billionaire Liberal globalists who can bleed cash to censor people and deny them services, and then bribes the government to regulate US out of business? You can't. The free market will be a failure as long as most of the money is in the hands of people who hate this country.
Not sure what a specific fix would be, but all I know is that this government vs. private business distinction is approaching useless. Jobs are being automated into the tech industry, dominated by Liberal SJWs, and we'll all be in Jeff Bezos' reprogramming course for backing the President and triggering his SJW board members. But hooray, the fucking free market is doing it to us!
They shot one of our President's supporters in the fucking neck with no warning after letting everyone walk around the building. Police are only as good as the city/town/institution that employs them. I love the sheriffs here in my county. But places like DC? I wouldn't trust their city police, or the the fucking Capitol Police, for a second.
Always take note of your surroundings.
The President supports MANY things Conservatives support- and instead we get Lindsey Graham on TV talking about how Pakistan needs money for gender studies (wrong party buddy???), and Mitch doing NOTHING to help get this garbage removed from the bill.
Mitch McConnell can be an effective man. At the point he's no longer effective, check your back for the knife. Trusting the Senate seems like it won't end well. But I've known for a long time that Mitch was a snake, this stimulus pork and voter fraud denial never came as a surprise.
Felony-creep seems like it'll be the silent killer. Can't own a fucking gun if you're a convicted felon! Online gambler?! Can't own a gun! Movie pirater?! Can't own a gun. Holy shit where will it end? Maybe so-called 2A Republicans like Tillis (who attached this dogshit rider) will wake up and decide to stop making this problem worse, but I doubt it.
It's a fucking sad day that AOC says something correct. When the GOP is approving shit like funding for gender education in Pakistan, and granting free money PPP loans that have had total fraud and abuse, they're failing to stand out much from the Socialists here. They're profiting off of the lockdowns while they can.
Gee wiz, I sure am glad that my taxpayer dollars are eliminating the flu by funding gender programs in Pakistan and giving $700 million to Sudan! Covid never saw it coming!
Seriously what the fuck has happened to this country? They're rotting us from the inside out. The $600 I'm getting back, of my own money, is absolutely nothing in comparison to the PPP scams Congressmen's buddies are running.
Should've been Cruz for SCOTUS and should be Cruz here. Cut the fucking identity politics and appoint a strong, educated Conservative. Powell is good, but we need better than good, because we're on a timeline. I have a feeling the only reason ACB made it on the court was because McConnell went up to Trump and said "lol replace woman with woman and ur poll numbers go up." Pisses me off that the Democrats have no problem appointing their hard Left people and views, but the GOP will not grow a spine and appoint the best of their Conservatives.
Do you think any of the politicians opting to buy these machines are poll workers and are doing it save themselves time? No.
True, but I think a lot of people in government honestly don't care that much about what they're doing. If poll workers whined and bitched about there being too much work to a politician's office for too long, I could see them just throwing taxpayer money at the problem and saying "ok now go away."
That's just one theory though- I'm still torn on this. It's easier to accept that the GOP old-guard like GA's SoS are just morons, rather than actively trying to help the Democrats, because the former is much easier to fix. The latter is still likely, but means we really have our work cut out for us.
Here's the thing though: how often do you buy something, and it's more expensive than the alternative, but it makes whatever task you're trying to accomplish a lot easier? Might not be much faster, but takes some hands-on work off of your plate. Probably at least occasionally if you're in the middle class.
Either politicians are purposely wasting tax-payers money
Bingo. They don't like working, they don't care if the people they hire with other people's money do any work, so they buy whatever requires the least work. I think that's the likely explanation here. Alternatively, we got fucked by Republicans who pretended to be MAGA and kept these fraud machines anyway, knowing fully well they were broken- and I hope that's not the case; it could be, but if it is, it's time to focus on re-evaluating who are allies truly are and primarying the shit out of the GOP.
Barr: "We've investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."
I started to like the Republican Party a bit more since 2016, since so many have come around to MAGA. But now I'm thinking they were just playing the long-con to oust Trump and put in another line of neocon cucks. Their globalist billionaire donors can't depress American wages if they can't import millions of illegals anymore.
We have to stop them here; this is just the beginning. If the fraud is successful in this election for Sleepy fucking Joe, imagine how successful it'll be when Antifa and the Socialists finally get one of their own on the General Election ticket. Biden's their pawn for now, but as with other pawns: they're not meant for taking Kings. This isn't their endgame.
This election is their test to see which fraud methods work the best, get a timeline down for doing it efficiently and less suspiciously, find out how people come to know too much, etc. If it fails, the radical Left will say "see? you should've run one of us! Biden lost!" If it succeeds, Biden will be eliminated and replaced with one of their own, probably Harris. The radical Left comes out of this with a win/win in terms of inner-party politics.
Whether or not they'll actually win elections, comes down to if the courts are cucked or not and will expose the fraud this time.
No surprises there. And is anyone in our administration going to do anything about this? Nope. People like Graham and McConnell would rather play the game ad-infinitum, making sure neither side completely wins because they get richer that way. Pay attention to local primaries 'pedes. The President needs people beside him who won't fucking flake on every position
Was looking for info on this, and of course, it was a secret vote and the full text of the amendment isn't even available to the public yet. All we really know is Senator Inhofe approved it for a vote since he's Chairman and some RINOs had to bend over for it to pass.
Yep. President Trump can't veto this without vetoing the entire Defense authorization now. Fucking insane that Republicans are bending the knee to Pocahontas over this dumb shit. Most of them are ready to sell us up shit's creek the second anything of their own is on the line. None of them even bother to tank the bad press even though Dems have the attention spans of a sponge, they just throw in the towel immediately.
AFAIK they're still doing it and just refused comments to the press. Apple absolutely has the tech to mark individual phones as Stolen and remotely disable them. Whether they'll send the police to track each stolen item after this shit though, probably not. They'll just detain someone if they're dumb enough to bring it into a store to try to get it unlocked
It's more like a bitter "Fuck those guys" laugh. Lost $10k cash on the attorney retainer, ~$5k in equipment on a search warrant (phones, computers), only for the DA to say after 2 and a half years "Woops! We had the wrong guy! Sorry!" They showed up to my apartment at 6AM, I got to the door just in time before they used a fucking battering ram, they cuffed me and took me outside with a gun pointed to my head. Which I didn't know was illegal until after the whole thing ended. A Judge has to deem you a threat to the search execution for them to cuff you and keep you at gunpoint, no such thing existed on my warrant.
Still never got my shit back and they wanted me to do 8 months because I was in direct contact with someone they were investigating. Still no fucking clue what he did to this day, but I know he never went to prison, so my line of thinking is that they were upset that they had nothing on him and just started harassing everyone he knew for information. My lawyer agreed, the search warrant was some of the broadest language he'd ever seen. I don't remember the exact wording, but "Identities, current whereabouts, and record of communications of anyone who's been in contact with <person I knew> over Social Media, telecommunication services, etc." is almost exactly what one section said.
Wild fucking shit. I wouldn't trust them to give you a speedy trial unless you plea out. And keep in mind: the only reason I didn't have to take the deal was because my boss replaced my company laptop they seized (luckily he had my back, he's never trusted the FBI) and I had 10k+ emergency savings. Average person would get fucked here. You really need time and money to beat a federal charge, because if they're pissed off they will not play fair.