Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]
archive.org1479 points by lawlessone a day ago
1479 points by lawlessone a day ago
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/12/23/6...
Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence. No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen and unrelated ways like this. Every purchase carries potentially immense future costs that are almost completely opaque. Free market maximalists need to confront this fact before praying at the altar of complete deregulation, and every consumer should pay more attention to who they are buying from. What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds? There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else. Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas. I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.) Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things. The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat. The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction. Tariffs are not free market. A true free market would have zero tariffs. And it would quickly be destroyed by competing governments that don’t believe in free markets and actively subsidize their industries to capture market share. The US has been largely tariff free since the 1900s and it's the largest economy in the world. Remind me where I can buy a Chinese EV? And I assume there’s no government subsidies to allow US private sectors to compete globally because free market right? Right? I forgot to put in my comment "until recently". And the US auto industry does such so using that as your argument in favor of tariffs doesn't really work. The 1960s+ chicken tax would like a word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax Trump forced the UAE to buy $2 billion of his stable coin in order to avoid tariffs. He is making $80 million a year farming yields off that. The tariff nonsense was 100% just a backdoor for corruption. Edit: and I forgot he pardoned the binance guy for facilitating this corruption too. Trumps pardons are the most corrupt in american history but MAGA is still yelling about the hunter biden pardon even though Joe was absolutely right that trump would maliciously prosecute him It’s actually a lot of small to midsize manufacturers importing subcomponents that are getting hurt in the heartland. They can’t lobby for exemptions & don’t have the supplier negotiating power of the megacaps. I've said this before, but Trump's form of tariffs are basically a firewall and paying tribute opens specific ports and addresses. > There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way. The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably. I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will. Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted. The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election. > Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate), or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high). Edit: if the above are too extreme, another approach would be firm and consistent application
of anti-competitive laws, resurrecting the fairness doctrine, and stop pretending that artificial constructs have human rights. > or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high). This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control. > Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate) The reason why this worked is because FDR oversaw the US during a period of incredible change and after the Great Depression. It's not like the tax rate was responsible for his successes. Small government leads to big capitalism which is its own kind of tyranny. Our current problems are not because government is too big. Powerful regulation which answers to the people is the answer. Small government goes against the original and deepest Capitalist thinkers, who all pushed that strong government oversight was a REQUIRED part of Capitalism to keep it healthy and in balance. That's a solution. Another would be to enshrine in law independent watchdog agencies whose goal is to win trophies for rooting out corruption, reducing waste, preventing or breaking up harmful monopolies, etc. > win trophies for rooting out corruption Many a corrupt government has touted their anti-corruption activities that inexplicably seem to snare almost exclusively their political opponents. How valuable are those trophies compared to bribes, or the tacit bribes of cushy "consultancy" roles? How do you stop lobbyists from gutting those regulators - what use is a fiercely independent regulator that has no resources? Good governance is hard. Getting money out of politics is the hardest part. I am not sure how the US will find the political will short of getting burned badly enough for partisans to align on reform. How bad does it have to get? The apt question is 'How bad for whom does it have to get?' Because the 00s+ US government is in no way propped up by all stakeholding groups in equal amounts. That's no solution, since once someone has corrupted said small government, the obvious next step is to use the influence to increase its size and power. That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely. This solution is anti-capitalist. Capitalism by it's design, and as outlined by it's original and deepest thought leaders requires strong and decisive government oversight to keep it in check and keep it healthy. Being against strong government oversight is to be against a working, Capitalist system and against traditional Capitalist thought. But theres a balance to be struck there — keep the government too small and weak and it is susceptible to corruptive forces from domestic and foreign enemies alike. So imho it isn’t enough to simply keep government ‘small’ —it is also important to keep it the size proportionate to other potential threats. It’s also important to keep in mind that size is but one dimension and is only being used as a proxy for power which is the ultimate factor that matters — a government of one person with control of WMDs can be much more of a threat than a large government without WMDs. Which countries on the planet do you think are the least corrupt? What does their system of government look like? There's a lot of these lists, but it's interesting the differences in who tops the list: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-cor... There's more than one type of government that can resist corruption, since much that drives corruption is extra-governmental (populace education level, media environment, trust in institutions, wealth equality, etc). So it's unsurprising there are different optimal anti-corruption government types for different combinations of those qualities. > The solution is really to keep the scope of government small Of course. Politically active billionaires are always famously lobbying for large government and more regulations. I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces. Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch. For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D. These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich? The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies. However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections. As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen. Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government. This is true but he was nowhere near as wealthy as he is now, not even close. Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster. Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care and is corrupt? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent? Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of. I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane. Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could. The whole point of granting limited liability is that it enables things that benefit society. So if something doesn't benefit society, don't extend that grant to it. In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC. The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job. Agreed. Let's also not forget that a large part of the reason that the Skydance/Paramount merger likely went through in the first place was because Paramount paid off Trump to the tune of 16 million USD by settling a lawsuit in which he alleged deliberate deception during his Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-p... What existing regulation are you accusing the FTC of not enforcing? Is it illegal for a rich person to buy a company? It's not like he's cornering TV news or something. He's a minority player by any measurement (revenue, viewers, etc..). Not a fan of Trump, Ellison, or obviously this expose being buried, but I am just trying to understand what the FTC did wrong. > The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. But whatever, it just seems like what you want is not more regulation (Trump is adding lots of regulation on solar and wind, that's good right?), but different regulators. It sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then makes them governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. > I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. Okay well I basically copy/pasted from ftc.gov: The FTC’s Bureau of Competition enforces the nation's antitrust laws, which form the foundation of our free market economy. The antitrust laws promote the interests of consumers; they support unfettered markets and result in lower prices and more choices. https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi... The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation Were you saying the same thing in 2014 and 2015 too? According to data from Thomson Reuters, 2015 is set to be the biggest year ever (once the planned deals close) in worldwide dealmaking, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions—up 42 percent from 2014, and beating the previous record of $4.4 trillion in 2007. The year stands out, not just for the total value of the deals but for the number of so-called mega-deals, which refers to any deal that exceeds $5 billion. Just in the last three months, notable mega-deals include AB Inbev’s acquisition of SABMiller, creating a $104 billion beverage company; Pfizer and Allergan’s announced a $160 billion merger; and the chemical companies DuPont and Dow Chemical Company’s plans to unite as a $130 billion company. Thomson Reuters counted 137 mega-deals last year, which accounted for 52 percent of the year’s overall M&A value. Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all. That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way. And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way. Seems like a pretty convincing theory to me. Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story: Hi all, I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice. Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered. - At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record. - The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals. - Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add? - We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time. My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here. I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you. Yours, Bari The whole thing is poorly-conceived and obviously false but I just have to call this out- > Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. The story isn't that people found guilty of crimes went to jail, the story is that half weren't even charged with crimes! That's the whole point of the story! We should not be aiming for a balanced diet of criminals and not-criminals in our government-sponsored foreign death camps! The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say. > We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? What about charged? What does charged with a crime have to do with anything? Why bring that up at all? Do we send people to prison because they were charged with a crime? Is Bari Weiss a newborn baby who has never heard about the presumption of innocence? I feel sick. It’s not just that, it’s that the administration knew they weren’t guilty of any crimes and sent them to be tortured anyway. If you can stomach it, propublica has been covering stories like this since the summer [1]. Meanwhile, the MS13 has been cutting sweetheart deals with Bukele [2] and we have been releasing actual gang members for the privilege of sending innocent people to the torture facilities [3, 4], even in the face of reports of USAID being diverted to the gang for a money-for-votes scheme for Bukele [5]. [1]https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-inte... [2]https://www.propublica.org/article/ambassador-ronald-johnson... [3]https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ran... [4]https://www.npr.org/2025/10/21/nx-s1-5580555/why-the-state-d... [5]https://www.propublica.org/article/bukele-trump-el-salvador-... And Bukele joked about it on TV, even as he knew these innocent men were being beaten, raped, and tortured. Even the people who were convicted of crimes don't deserve this. There's this sick belief in parts of society that criminals (which becomes a permanent state of being) are valid targets for unlimited suffering. People should not be sent to torture camps where they have no hope of every leaving for the rest of their lives for committing crimes. [flagged] bringing down the murder rate doesn't excuse the torture of innocent people (or anyone for that matter) I understand your argument, but the problem with Bukele is that he is a bad human being, too. A gang leader with slightly less proclivity for torture and rape than the other gangs. He knows that he has many innocent people locked up in those jails. He knows that his deal with Trump is immoral and unnecessary for the safety of El Salvador, but does it anyway. His social media savvy relishes in his authoritarianism, rather than explains it. Unfortunately, the dire situation you describe is how Authoritarians gain power: desperate populations struggling for multiple years with widespread societal problems that government has seemed too inept or corrupt to fix. 1930s Germany, 2020s Trump, El Salvador. Her own excuse is either a complete lie or betrays the fact that she doesn’t understand the story. I invite her apologists here to choose which interpretation they prefer. I’m into the full meal deal theory. Her own excuse is a complete lie, she doesn’t understand the story and somehow doesn’t even understand journalism. In this case, 60 Minutes asked the White House for comment and they refused. If a party to a story can kill the story by not being involved, that’s not journalism it’s PR. People who don't understand the press don't get handpicked to run the press by the billionaires who own it. She understands that she's full of shit, and she's paid to be full of shit. The Ellisons aren't spending billions of dollars on this because they want you to be well-informed. We do unfortunately send people to long times in jail (sometimes over a decade) before their cases come to trial in the USA. And jails in the USA generally have vastly worse conditions than prisons (as they are "short term" facilities). CECOT is a whole different beast altogether, though :( You have to waive your right to a speedy trial. You cannot be held for years without trial I was a jurist on a murder trial. The defendant had spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting his trial. Then went back to jail after the hung jury did not deliver a verdict. 1.5 years is low for a murder trial. I would suspect the average is somewhere between 2 and 5 years. A lot of the time, if the defendant knows they are cooked, then they are just holding out for a better plea deal. I've personally met defendants on their ninth year awaiting trial, and during COVID a lot of jails were forced to publish their detainees lists, and I noted some who were over 11 years without a trial. Yes, but it does happen a lot. The case of Kalief Browder was one of the reasons for all the reforms around bail. [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/kalief-browder-c... Sure, that's true. Let's say you file a motion, though. Say the cops beat a false confession out of you. You file a motion to suppress. Now you've stopped the speedy trial clock for a year, maybe two, while the motion is responded to, witnesses and discovery are sought, hearings are had, etc. You're stuck in jail that whole time. Just like in theory the cops can't steal your stuff. But in reality there are more than enough ways around such little restrictions unless you are backed up by an expensive and powerful legal team. Just fyi, this is from 2021, not could, but did, some up until the day they were pardoned never had a trial. https://www.newsweek.com/accused-capitol-rioters-could-spend... Or, does this not count for ideological reasons? There are at least some people out there that may be consistent despite tribalism, I suppose. Well said, absolutely ridiculous framing keeps happening and you kept it grounded. It's worth highlighting that continually driving focus onto a few spectacular examples of criminal histories is exactly how this regime has been justifying its actions. > The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say. I think you don't understand MAGA mentality. Honestly, that's probably a good thing, but understanding MAGA would help understanding this whole situation. This is an embarrassing response. You don’t hold a story because you want to push the government harder to respond, especially when you have the executive’s official spokesperson giving a reason on the record already. And what does she mean that we should spend a beat explaining that half do have criminal histories? She wants them to give a cookie for that? And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged. Lastly she misstates the administrations legal justification for deportation. She doesn’t appear to be an unbiased actor here. The fact she sent that out publicly is a good indication of how prejudiced she will be with editorial content. You had a good run 60 Minutes. > And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged. Yup. I was charged with a felony of which I was materially innocent. But this is the right's spin on things, the "well even if you weren't found guilty, there was enough of an issue to arrest you and charge you". I was watching a Zoom meeting of one of our local Superior Court hearings - was a motion to revoke or modify bail conditions. The Judge actually rebuked the prosecutor, who had tried to explain why the motion should go their way. "Blah blah, in addition, the defendant has shown no signs of remorse or regret for the situation..." Judge: "I'm going to stop you there. The defendant pled not guilty and at this moment no verdict has been determined. In the eyes of the law and this court, they have zero obligation or requirement to show remorse or regret for their alleged actions." Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved. So as long as the government is united in its desire to commit horrible acts and stall justice, I guess we shouldn't bother reporting them? Not sure where the logic is there. And I guess since it's possible some bad apples exist, then we should just take the word of the government that everyone there is a gang member? I wouldn't ever call 60 Minutes cutting edge journalism, it's quality for sure but they are never the first on the scene. Who cares if other media companies have covered CECOT? 60 Minutes got first hand interviews with detainees that have good backgrounds. That's important, it lets viewers empathize with "good" immigrants just trying to create a better life for their families. This letter is weak. > Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved. Which is ironic, considering the actual video that Canadian broadcasters manage to send, it ends with basically "We requested a comment from US officials, but they referred us to speak with El Salvador instead", so even the finish video that got broadcast, acknowledges this basic fact that you need to carry on even if both sides don't want to be interviewed on camera. > Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story: That is not accurate. It's her excuse for spiking the story. Having watched the documentary yesterday, the questions Bari raises are suitable for a follow-up. There is nothing wrong with the piece as it stands. > The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add? The analysis shows another way in which the government is trying to be secretive about how it's treating people that were within its borders and subject to its laws and protections. I can only hope someone pointed this out because the question suggests a baffling level of ignorance despite the message overall sounding like some reasonable feedback on the story, despite coming far too late in the process to be considered reasonable. Here are the excuses Bari Weiss gave to bury the story. The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond. If you insist on holding off publishing until you have a comment you’ve just given the government the ability to block the story by endlessly delaying comment. More broadly the problem here is simply that Weiss has no legitimate authority to make calls like this. She’s never worked as a reporter. The 60 Minutes staff have decades of reporting experience. The only reason she has the job is because a billionaire who is trying to curry favor with the administration installed her there. That context hangs over every decision she makes. > The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond. According to the video itself (just finished watching it), that's not true. US officials did respond, telling them to ask El Salvador officials instead, so basically redirecting, rather than "no response". If that's worse or not I guess is left as an exercise to the reader. This seems dishonest, she couldn’t possibly think the administration is going to share more useful information here, and if they did it would have no value. These people were illegally sent to life in prison at a brutal torture camp with no charges or trial, at the expense of US taxpayers. There is no possible excuse or rationale that would make it anything but extremely illegal and unethical, and a betrayal of all of the values our country purports to stand for. It doesn’t matter what crimes someone is accused of or not. That explanation is days late, though. It's attested that she didn't even take a call from the episode producer before killing it. I mean, sure, if you put a bunch of people in a room and ask them to retcon a reasonable-sounding explanation for why you did something embarassing, you can do it! The world is a complicated place. It's abundantly clear why she spiked it. I know it. You know it. We all know it. She was brought in as a clearly partisan voice to put exactly this finger on exactly these levers at CBS. We all saw it when she was hired and we all warned about this. And she did. I mean, why bother stenographising the excuse? No one is fooled. "Partisan hack does partisan hackery" is like the least surprising line in this story. Thanks for posting. For those not familiar: there were five screenings in the prior week that journalists attended to discuss it. She was aware of those and did not attend. When she did look at it, her feedback was minor, and they made adjustments. Then she killed it a day after her delayed feedback, on the weekend it was to air. That context, combined with the response above, is telling. She is at absolute best, entirely unfit and amateur for this role combined with dangerous arrogance. More likely, she is the malevolent puppet of a billionaire ally of the current corrupt administration. This isn’t the real “why”. Holding the release back is a political decision. Why hold the story specially? Why not just issue any corrections later? It’s already gone through the same approval process other stories would. The choice to do something different here and treat Trump-damaging stories differently is by definition, biased. To me, Bari’s response is a manufactured cover up. I’ve followed Bari for years and seen the progression from someone who was a balanced moderate to someone who is slowly developing a strong bias and letting the mask off a little bit at a time. The recent Turning Point townhall was the first big revelation of her bias to the public. But as someone who subscribed to her for years, I’ve seen the progression over time. And the language in here feels less like her usual journalism and more like something carefully put together to deflect. As for the actual reason - here is what was shared by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stelter TLDR: Bari thinks the government should be able to quash any story it wants by simply refusing to "present the administration's argument." Exactly. You give people a reasonable chance to comment, but you can't let them veto your story if they decline. That would be a naive way to be fair and balanced. Honestly, the argument that CBS buried the piece to protect Trump is difficult to accept because, well, watching brown people being treated like shit or even tortured is MAGA porn. Innocence or guilt is meaningless - Dear Leader said they're all enemies! All the MAGAs I know on Facebook are posting about how the video is great ("It's about time someone does something!"), so I would think Trump would want the piece to air. Bari wisely points out that if the deportees are being tortured, then there must be a secretly good reason why if they dig a little deeper. Suggests asking Stephen Miller. The timing of this might lead one to believe Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery is a consideration in their editorial decisions. They and their competitor (Netflix) need regulatory approval for such a merger and the administration has already inserted itself into the deal. It goes deeper. The Ellisons want to replace Murdoch as the state media for Republican administrations. I'm sympathetic to this idea but Larry Ellison will likely be dead in under 10 years and David Ellison has only ever been a Democrat. It seems more plausible that David Ellison will bend in whatever direction the wind is blowing. Hard to imagine that's the a core part of it, and pretty naturally in America the clear ongoing and unprecedented (in modern times anyway) corruption on that front is the focus. But it probably doesn't hurt that she appears to just be a really big fan of that particular dictator and torture prison specifically. Earlier this year her site "the Free Press" was all over them [0]: >"The hottest campaign stop is this Salvadoran supermax: House Republican Riley Moore went to the super maximum security prison in El Salvador to take some photos in front of the inmates. “I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador,” he writes, with pictures of him giving a thumbs-up, shirtless inmates standing at attention behind him. Moore gave a double thumbs-up in front of the men, densely packed in their cold metal bunk. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took the same tour recently, posting a fun video in front of caged, tatted men." >"After Bukele left the White House, he thirstily tweeted, “I miss you already, President T.” Trump returned the favor, learning to say MAGA in Spanish: “¡America grande, otra vez!”" Etc. And she's been very positive on Bukele personally as well. Might be multiple reasons she'd gleefully want to spike such a story even if the commands of her owners take precedent. Edit: whew, this one sure triggered the technofeudalists and Baristans! From 3 to -3 for her own publication's and her statements. ---- I'm not sure how you can read that and think it is speaking favorably about the prison. Here are some parts you left out: > The El Salvador supermax prison is becoming the new Ohio Diner. It’s the new Iowa State Fair. It’s the new Jeffrey Epstein jet: It’s where every political leader needs to visit, the place to see and be seen if you’re ambitious and in politics today. > They agreed that there was nothing to be done about the mistakenly deported Maryland man, now in Salvadoran custody. Two leaders of two great countries simply cannot find that one random wrongly deported man, and everyone should move along (I’m assuming that means he’s dead, right?). I have a feeling this will get DMCA-ed off of Internet Archive in an attempt to suppress it. Here's the infohash of the archive.org torrent download for future reference, this should allow the file to be retrieved in any torrent client as long as someone in the world is seeding it still. 8105370ed7dba50dc7ec659fd67550569b4dd8a0 here it is, in magnet link form: I left the high seas many years ago, but I'm down to seed for a cause. What's the best torrent client nowadays? Qbittorrent, Transmission etc. The Transmission daemon can be installed headless with negligible system load on a vast number of devices, from Raspberry Pi-like and smaller SBCs to Linux/BSD NASes, then operated from remote through the web interface or a phone app. qbittorrent is still regarded as independent and safe, I think. I’m still using it happily on windows/linux. Don’t forget your vpn! That brings me to the next thing:
Taking VPN suggestions.
What's the best? I like secure. Edited to remove being a moron. Mullvad. The only VPN company I actually trust. It's important though that Mullvad doesn't do port forwarding; you won't be able to seed effectively I pay for proton. It works. I’m not as security conscious as I should be but it’s pretty much a set and forget thing aside from changing ports. Then you probably don't want a free service that costs money to run where they can only make money by converting most users to paid or monetizing your information in a country where you are unlikely to have an attorney whilst operating what amounts to a honeypot for every government on earth. That said protonvpn seems reputable That's a fair point that I arrived at once I put half a second of thought into what I was actually asking. For desktop use from within Plasma/KDE I'm happy with Ktorrent. Feels very intuitive, and has no problem saturating a 1GB/s pipe, and doesn't slow the system down, while doing so. (At least not mine, which are old and almost obsolete but have enough RAM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTorrent / https://apps.kde.org/ktorrent/ Otherwise follow the links from there to qBitTorrent, or its mentions from other commenters here. Am not fond of transmission at all. Feels slow and sluggish in comparison. I’m of the opinion that would be mullvad. RTings recently updated their reviews and seems to agree: Hey there seed buddy... I'm about to become the fourth web seed. We're not going anywhere. —Hydra Senator Corey Booker’s YouTube channel posted the archived video about 9am EST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiehEMlNiCI r/DataHoarder is already on it Yup, reddit subreddit sure seems like a good place for "anti-american" discussions. Where are the independent and non-VC fueled discussion forums when you need them? Bryan Cantrill, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728 The specific lines about Ellison and a lawnmower start at 38:28 in the linked video; the entire Oracle rant starts at about 34:00. We shouldn’t anthropomorphize any billionaires. They’re not even people at that point, just destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time. We need confiscatory taxation for a better future. Whilst true, it’s important to focus on the worst ones first, as with everything there is a scale. It's kind of saying we should only focus on the #1 mass-murdering dictator in the world, so while many of them are actively slaying people, lets just focus on #1 for now. No, we can have many targets. People who hoard money for the benefit of themselves with the detriment of society and the population at large are all "destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time" to borrow the words of parent commentator. If just 10% were slightly less evil and egoistic, it would lead to huge improvements, and only a slight reduction to their own lifestyles. That they don't, is a stain on the legacy of humanity. Nope. We need to bring the entire extraction class to heel. They are degrading, even destroying, society. The Ellison Cabal represent the primary enemies of freedom all over this earth. It's imperative to defeat them. Every time I see this video, I feel a strange tenderness for the new generations watching it. They do not really understand how bad Oracle used to be. This is us, old combat veterans, sitting by the fire, describing unspeakable battles to the youth...knowing full well that they think we are exaggerating. :-) And the most disturbing part is the realization that the Frankenstein monster itself, Larry Ellison, is still out there. Still roaming free. Still very much alive... An eternal, terrifying, lawnmower wielding zombie of enterprise software and government corrupting rent extraction. Fascinating how this got leaked. A TV station in Canada accidentally ran the original episode version, implying that this was pulled super late and the episode was completely in the can. It was completely finished. There's an article out today that says the main reporter on the story complained that the censor Bari Weiss had not bothered to appear at the previous five earlier screenings and reviews by the editorial team. Was it an accident? Probably as accidental as the people doing the censorship of the latest Epstein files released today that had "accidents" about how they censured stuff. Direct Download link if anyone needs it is https://archive.org/download/insidececot/60minutesCECOTsegme... I recommend everyone bookmark the archive.org link or download via the magnet link since HN is disappearing these. Also, any recommendations for a news site that doesn't suppress news? Asking for a friend. It looks like mods manually removed flags for this one (it was flagged). It's still already low on the front-page, when usually posts with that amount of upvotes would stay at the top for multiple days in a row. > Also, any recommendations for a news site that does suppress news? Asking for a friend. HN? HN regularly suppresses news, including this news. It doesn't feel like it's suppressing the news. Can you give examples of suppression? I'd say hacker news is very open to contrary ideas and disagreements. If it's political, there's a good chance it gets flagged. The problem is pretty much everything is political when you have a government that sticks it's grubby little fingers where it shouldn't. From what I've seen, they let the important stuff stay. just use reddit for the rest. i'd rather it be more focused here. Have you actually ever browsed the secret “active” page where you can see what people are actually voting for without the mods putting their thumbs on the scale? It’s constantly filled with dead posts because someone said something that was vaguely unflattering towards Israel, venture capital, capitalism in general, the United States or Apple. Literally happens dozens of times every single day. It's hardly secret—it's on the /lists page which is referenced in the footer of every page on HN. It simply isn't the frontpage, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. How you guys turn this into sinister suppression continues to escape me. Edit: perhaps this will help: HN is designed to downweight sensational-indignant stories, internet dramas, and riler-uppers, for the obvious reason that if we didn't, then they would dominate HN's frontpage like they dominate the rest of the internet. Anyone who spends time here (or has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) knows that this is not what the site is for. The vast majority of HN readers like HN for just this reason. It is not some arbitrary switch that we could just flip, if only we would stop being censoriously sinister. It's essential to the operation of the site. (copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46366656) The level of discrepancy between the rules as they are written and how things work in reality is miles apart. Every day. Edit: since I can’t reply because my account was throttled for “posting too past” with a whopping 5 comments in the last 24 hours. Allow me to paste it here… It would probably help if I were to bring a bit more specificity to my accusations here so we aren’t just talking about an abstract concept. I’m making the claim: 1. The active page (what people are actually engaging with) and the front page (mods choice) regularly are regularly out of sync not just in general but in very specific and consistent ways. 2. There is a small group of people who intentionally use the flagging functionality in ways that have absolutely zero to do with the rules as they are written. People are incredibly open about this on a regular basis. 3. We are left with a de facto situation where that same small group are able to effectively censor what the rest of the community is allowed to talk about. 4. The moderation team seems to operate on the idea that everyone is just acting in good faith despite evidence to the contrary. 5. When the discrepancies between the rules as they are written and how things work in reality occur they are very rarely corrected by the moderation team and I don’t know what other conclusion to draw other than you seem to think that things are going great as they are and there’s no need to change anything. 6. You say the active page isn’t a secret but people are always saying they had no idea it existed. Surely you have some actual hard analytics numbers to show what percentage of logged in users visit the active page? I presume it’s in the single digits percentage wise but I’m open to being told otherwise. That's inevitable, because consistency is impossible: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... How to interpret the inconsistency is a different question, of course. I'm curious what you see that seems most discrepant to you? The closest I can give to an account of "how things work in reality" is the 80,000+ moderation comments I've posted over the last 10+ years: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang&type=comment&dateRange.... You're free to decide it's all lies, of course, but if you (or anyone) randomly scroll back through that feed, I doubt you'll find much that's miles apart from the rules as they are written. As a matter of fact I'd be surprised if you found anything that could be fairly be described that way, because trying to apply the rules as they are written is a matter of integrity for us. If it weren't, we'd change the rules until it were. I had to rely inline above because of some questionable circumstances but not here to debate that part at all. But on the topic of this active page I do find it rather poetic that in this exact thread we have people asking what is this page they’ve never heard of. When I call it secret, I don’t mean it’s necessarily a coverup or something I mean that nobody seems to know that it exists or that the front page doesn’t actually represent what people vote for.
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(exported from my currently-seeding torrent client, then pasted into a separate torrent client, to verify that it works correctly) magnet:?xt=urn:btih:734abc77f48d11c78543c52004b6f57db71d6d92&dn=60minutes-cecotsegment&xl=1483256352&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&ws=http://ia601703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=http://ia801703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=https://archive.org/download/
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