I don't think its enough for there to be 'any' honest, uncompromised mainstream media doing its job.
Once there's a critical mass of compromised media, they can crush the rest. To secure a free and fair democracy you need widespread support for its founding ideals, not lone dissenting voices that can easily be silenced.
You can go online and read reporting on the story if you want to search it out for now, but the gatekeepers are slamming the portcullis shut. You need only look at China to see how complete that can be.

It won't be just the media colluding to shut down one or two inconvenient facts. They've created the architecture to be able to censor all forms of mass communication, and tools like that never go unabused

My understanding of Goomshill's complaint is that social media companies have technology to identify videos, text, etc. so they can actively suppress information. Obviously, the two are quite different but the result is the same. Information that some people WANT to see is being suppressed. As for the whistle-blower's name, he is absolutely NOT in the center of this. He's by definition, fringe, because he heard everything via hearsay. Giuliani is at the center of this. Trump is too. So are people like Sondland. But the whistle-blower? He's basically an anonymous tip via the "hotline."

Again, I don't see how we're being betrayed here. The ONLY reason to release his name is to drag it through the mud. We all know that the strategy is to make him appear hyper-partisan, non-credible, etc. so that the process is tainted. Anyway, I'm less worried about censorship than I am about the population's ability to think critically. People have their heads so far up their own asses that there are very few people left who can call a spade a spade. The fact that Russia can run a low-budget psy-ops attack on our social media is incredibly embarrassing for this country. I don't dispute your claim that the media as a whole has acted irresponsibly for decades. But whose fault is that? Americans WANT to be entertained.

I don't know much about the Epstein story tbh, I'll have to read up about it.

The people who want their name are just like kids who want a toy because someone else has it. there's no functional reason to have it, they just want it because someone somewhere has it.

He's material to the story of Joe Biden's Ukrainian escapades and how the impeachment came about. If he was just some random bloke with an anti-Trump grudge who perceived wrongdoing and wanted to report it through proper channels, that would be one thing. But the fact he was involved in the original Joe Biden story in Ukraine, the very Euromaidan intervention in the first place, previous leaks and attempts to undermine Trump, and went outside proper channels to coordinate with Adam Schiff to bring about impeachment- all paints a story of palace intrigue very relevant to an impeachment inquiry.

Democrats trying to impeach Trump for talking to Ukraine about Biden's story in Ukraine can't divorce that from Joe Biden's story in Ukraine. And Ciaramella's involvement in both stories makes him a critical fact witness.
There are still plenty of relevant, unanswered questions that congress would have for him. What did he tell Adam Schiff's aides, and when? Did Schiff indeed break information sharing rules of the house committee? What did Ciaramella know about Joe Biden's efforts to extort Ukraine, having been in the email chains about withholding foreign aid. Who leaked the information to Ciaramella in the first place, was it indeed Vindman? What did Ciaramella know about Hunter Biden's position on the board of Burisma? What did Ciaramella know about Zlechnovsky? Did he know about the line of communication between Hunter Biden and Tony Blinken? Did he lie on his whistleblower form? Was his whistleblower form invalidated by going directly to Schiff? Was he responsible for previous leaks? What were the extents of his personal connections to Joe Biden?

This whole impeachment process is ultimately about swaying public opinion. And for the public opinion, it does matter whether the impeachment got rolling based on hearsay from a person with a strong and unabashed anti-trump stance.

And independent from impeachment, it has been a constant argument of Trump that he and his administration are undermined at almost every step. Undermined by career bureaucrats within the departments and agencies who are actively trying to work against his agenda and who are breaking their jobs' commitment to being an impartial servant of whatever administration the American people have put in charge. This Ciamarella guy fits the description perfectly, so that his identity would be a high profile confirmation for the argument Trump was making all along.



I dont see how the internet could be censored without implementing something similar to the great firewall of China. Yes, if google, yahoo, bing, duckduckgo, twitter, facebook and all mainstream media outlets work together, they can make sure that 99.9% of people dont stumble across inconvenient info. But they cant prevent people who are knowing what to search for from finding it on the internet without the censorship hardware. When it comes to true bombshell stories, someone will still see it on some obscure websites even if everyone else tries to suppress its spread, and the word will go around and the story will eventually still make waves, to the point where the "censorship through silence" approach falls apart.

My bigger concern is the media and how they refuse to serve their role as a check on power and investigator of truth. Investigative journalism requires time, effort, manpower and funding. If all the news outlets which possess these things are part of the "cartel of silence", a lot of bombshell stories that the public has an interest in knowing will simply no longer be investigated at all. Obscure and fringe left-/right-wing websites can spread important info even if the others try to suppress it, but they cant do all the investigation that comes first.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 11 2019 02:11pm

maybe i wasn't clear enough.

neither one of these will change how democratic majority voters vote in the house, nor how republican majority voters will vote in the senate.

unless the "whistle blower" is Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

literally any other person, and they could be a 40 year democrat supporter with 200 blue bumper stickers on their car, wont matter.



you guys dont like biden, you guys dont like the media (me too, so far). but you're using this as an excuse to out someone for literally zero gain to take out your frustrations with Biden/Obama and the media. its really that simple. if it doesn't alter impeachment (and we already know its dead in the senate), then it doesn't necessitate being released.

having sidebars about dangerous tech on the horizon? cool. but it doesnt change impeachment.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Nov 11 2019 02:33pm

As I said, even if we set impeachment aside for a moment, Trump still has a clear interest in presenting Ciamarella to the public, simply because it is a textbook example of the argument he has been making all along. (That his administration is getting undermined by unelected, renegade career bureaucrats.)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 11 2019 02:37pm

there's more to politics than an up or down vote.
impeachment is fundamentally a political power, and democrats are utilizing it for political purposes, seeking to shore up their election odds in 2020 (or more specifically, avert the consequences of a far-left rebellion). Republicans are seeking to undermine the Democrat's narrative to hurt them politically and therefore shore up their election odds in 2020. The outcome of the trial was never in doubt, but its not whats at stake here anyway. Why should we shy away from the political impacts of a political power? If Democrats want to try to embarrass Trump and appease their radicals by impeaching him before Christmas so they can wash their hands of it and move on, Republicans should try to take every opportunity to expose hypocrisy, affirm justification and embarrass the Democrats.

yes it does back of his narrative, at the potential threat of violence towards the person.

99% of the time when people say Trump incites violence it's bogus, this is a much more clear cause and effect case. he's recklessly pointing someone out to his supporters so that he can do what? prove he has been a target of democrats? wow, much progress. he finally "proved" it....



all true, and yet this is like someone holding a paint color strip up to the sky to "prove" the sky is indeed blue. except it puts someone's life at risk.

would anyone be shocked to find out this was a democrat that blew the whistle? no of course not, we already all assumed someone dumping info to Schiff is a democrat.

in the same sense that the media puts Donald Trump Jr's life at risk every time they publish his name.
I've always found this to be an exceptionally dull and facile talking point. Every time Ilhan Omar's wrongdoings get mentioned by conservative media outlets, the liberals will screech in with a chorus of "~You're putting her life at risk!~". Hell, this summer news of Ilhan's affair with Tim Mynett broke and she was confronted by reporters asking about it at the MN State Fair. A matter of seconds after running away from them with 'no comment', she tweeted a random threatening hate mail she had received and her sycophants in the media then posted articles about "Ilhan receives death threats" to blot out the stories about her affair, one of the most flagrantly transparent examples of hiding behind victimhood. I mean, it was literally a matter of seconds as she ran from reporters asking about her scandal. Every politician receives hate mail and threats. There have been many arrests for those targeting left and right alike in the past few years, mostly targeting Rand Paul over and over again. Hell only he and Steve Scalice should be allowed to complain at this point. Even I have a collection of death threats I've collected just from posting anonymously online.
It was the same thing with Katie Hill, with AoC, with Maxine Waters, with this whistleblower. Any time a (liberal) public figure has stories that could reflect negatively on them brought into the limelight, they will be defended by people screaming that you're endangering their life. Meanwhile back in reality-land, Donald Trump is 100x more likely to be assassinated than any of them. Who is gunning for this whistleblower? Maybe there's some crazy person out there in MAGA-sticker covered van creating hoax bombs as a scare tactic, but there's 10,000+ in Portland alone who would pull the trigger against any Trump official if they got the opportunity

This post was edited by Goomshill on Nov 11 2019 02:58pm