The Guardian hit a new low in Amelia Hill’s report on Julian Assange’s appearance at the Oxford Union. Hill moved beyond propaganda to downright lies.
This is easy to show. Read through Hill’s “report”. Then zip to 20 minutes and 55 seconds of the recording of Assange speaking at the event Hill misreports, and simply listen to the applause from the Oxford Union after Assange stops speaking.
Just that hearty applause is sufficient to show that the entire thrust and argument of Amelia Hill’s article moves beyong distortion or misreprentation – in themselves dreadful sins in a journalist – and into the field of outright lies. Her entire piece is intended to give the impression that the event was a failure and the audience were hostile to Assange. That is completely untrue.
Much of what Hill wrote is not journalism at all. What does this actually mean?
“His critics were reasoned, those who queued for over an hour in the snow to hear him speak were thoughtful. It was Julian Assange – the man at the centre of controversy – who refused to be gracious.”
Hill manages to quote five full sentences of the organiser of the anti-Assange demonstration (which I counted at 37 people) while giving us not one single sentence of Assange’s twenty minute address. Nor a single sentence of Tom Fingar, the senior US security official who was receiving the Sam Adams award. Even more remarkably, all three students Hill could find to interview were hostile to Assange. In a hall of 450 students who applauded Assange enthusiastically and many of whom crowded round to shake my hand after the event, Hill was apparently unable to find a single person who did not share the Rusbridger line on Julian Assange.
Hill is not a journalist – she is a pathetic grovelling lickspittle who should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
Here is the answer to the question about cyber-terrorism of which Amelia Hill writes:
“A question about cyber-terrorism was greeted with verbose warmth”
As you can see, Assange’s answer is serious, detailed, thoughtful and not patronising to the student. Hill’s characterisation – again without giving a word of Assange’s actual answer – is not one that could genuinely be maintained. Can anybody – and I mean this as a real question – can anybody look at that answer and believe that “Verbose warmth” is a fair and reasonable way to communicate what had been said to an audience who had not seen it? Or is it just an appalling piece of hostile propaganda by Hill?
The night before Assange’s contribution at the union, John Bolton had been there as guest speaker. John Bolton is a war criminal whose actions deliberately and directly contributed to the launching of an illegal war which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet there had not been one single Oxford student picketing the hosting of John Bolton, and Amelia Hill did not turn up to vilify him. My main contribution to the Sam Adams event was to point to this as an example of the way people are manipulated by the mainstream media into adopting seriously warped moral values.
Amelia Hill is one of the warpers, the distorters of reality. The Guardian calls her a “Special Investigative Correspondent.” She is actually a degraded purveyor of lies on behalf of the establishment. Sickening.
Resident Dissident, 2.51pm
“Did Luke Harding ever say that said journalist was present when the remark was made – if not an affadvit saying that Assange never said the words quoted would be pretty meaningless.”
Um, Luke Harding was not himself present. Those present when the libellously alleged remarks were said to have been made were: David Leigh, Declan Walsh, Julian Assange, John Goetz. No one else.
“I believe that the right place for the evidence to be considered and judged in this case is in Court and I have a lot of faith that this would happen”
So, you believe that the police – say, even here in the UK – should have no discretion whatsoever to decide that there’s no case to answer if the UK’s national forensics lab proves that a rape complainant has handed in false evidence (alternatively, to bring charges of making false allegations or attempting to pervert the course of justice), and should be forced to take the non-existing ‘case’ all the way to trial? I see.
“I’m not sure that you understand that because there is uncertainty in this world the roles of defence, prosection and judge need to be separated”
You must have skipped the bit in my previous post where I explained that in Sweden there is no firm separation between the police function of investigation and the judicial function of deciding whether formal prosecution is warranted. Ok then, let me spell it out for you in plain English:
http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/The-role-of-the-prosecutor/Preliminary-investigation/
http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/The-role-of-the-prosecutor/Preliminary-investigation/Police-or-prosecutor/
http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/The-role-of-the-prosecutor/Decision-to-prosecute/
http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/The-role-of-the-prosecutor/Objectivity-demand/
Come back to me when you’re done reading and have absorbed the implications of the above for the points I make in my post of 1.06pm.
Disregarding what Assange may or may not have said over lunch with journos from the Gruniad Wikileaks did release Afghan war logs without redacting names. A move which prompted universal condemnation from human rights groups. I know the Apostles of St Julian will respond by pointing out that none of these people died but that’s no thanks to Wikileaks is it? Actions speak louder than words and this action showed a complete disgregard for life and limb.
It’s a fair assumption that somebody within Belarus hired the Swedish PR company to carry out the teddy bear drop but wisely they’re not saying who. Dissent in Belarus is not tolerated, one of those arrested for aiding and abetting the stunt is facing seven years in prison for posting a photo of one of the bears online. The main differences between Belarus’ request for extradition of those involved and Assange’s extradtion to Sweden is that Sweden is an open democracy with a transparent judical system whilst Belarus is a dictatorship (supported by Russia) with a tendency to show trials. It’s the only country in Europe which retains the death penalty and which is not a signatory to the ECHR.
Hi Kempe,
Were you aware that the division of labour in the working arrangements between Wikileaks and its media partners, the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Speigel, meant that it was the task of the media partners’ journalists working on the Afghan War Diaries to flag up all names in need of redaction? And, yes, unfortunately those journalists fucked up and 100 names slipped through the net. But – phew! – as you say, nobody died. I don’t blame you at all for being unaware of these facts if your source is from news report written by those same journalists.
“… one of those arrested for aiding and abetting the stunt is facing seven years in prison for posting a photo of one of the bears online”
That’s outrageous. Sweden is, of course, quite right to toss Belarus’s extradition request where the sun don’t shine if this is all it’s based on. If, however, the extradition request relates to an illegal intrusion into Belarussian airspace I guess that is a rather more serious allegation.
“Um, Luke Harding was not himself present. Those present when the libellously alleged remarks were said to have been made were: David Leigh, Declan Walsh, Julian Assange, John Goetz. No one else.”
You are correct about Harding not being there – but there was also another German journalist per the account in Leigh and Harding’s book. It is also interesting how although Assange threatened a libel case against the Guardian back in February 2011 nothing has yet come to fruition – apart from Leigh suggesting that there would be a Pressdram vs Private Eye response.
I was discussing the separation between the political and legal systems – not that within the legal system between police and prosecuting authorities – where Sweden has a different system from our own (contrary to what you say it is the CPS that usually make the decision to prosecute in the UK not the police)- the Swedish model is not dissimilar from many others in Europe and although I darfesay it has imperfections, I don’t think that it is one that has been picked up by Amnesty/HRW/European Court of Human Rights/ respected legal authorities as being one that is generically unsafe or abuses human rights.
resident dissident, you accuse me thus:
on the basis of me “misinterpreting” your typographic errors. Please get a grip. You then proceed to make yet more typographic errors. Charitably, I’ll assume you’re just a bit over-emotional about this matter, rather than setting up traps for your adversaries to fall into later. Please take more time and be more careful.
Various other points you attempt to make would be simple to refute, but life is too short and busy. If you familiarise yourself with the evidence you may make more convincing arguments, or even better,you might change your mind and start opposing the misuse of sex laws to discredit whistleblowers and publishers.
My opinion about the US is that it is behind a great deal of wrongdoing in this world, and my position is supported by the historical record. Partly, I think that the US does more wrong simply because it is the most powerful; it is hard to hold more firepower than the rest of the world put together without doing more damage than any other country, especially when your government is as thoroughly subverted by self-serving corporations as is that of the US. But I also have to wonder why the US should want such “full spectrum dominance” if it wasn’t abusing other nations and peoples. It doesn’t seem to need it for self-protection.
I asked you why you thought that I should hide my identity, not why you hide yours. You suggested that I need to “protect” my identity; “protection” implies some sort of threat. But you’ve produced a long list of why you hide your identity.
I am no longer a moderator here, and haven’t been for months. The very reason I gave it up was so that I could robustly engage contributors like yourself without being told to “moderate” my own methods of argument, or to be “neutral”. If you seem partisan and/or dishonest, I am now free to say so. I can’t see your (possibly fake) e-mail address, nor your (easily changeable) IP address. In any case, the only thing they are useful for is identifying sock-puppetry. Please calm down.
Your list of reasons for hiding your identity seems overly suspicious. “Many islamofascists”? What? I’ve lived in an area with one of the highest proportions of Muslims in the UK, and I have never encountered anyone like that. I’ve seen plenty of racist abuse in the opposite direction. Muslims are mostly very reserved and polite. We had one contributor on this site who posted a couple of comments like “Behead those who insult Islam”, but it turned out to be Larry from St Louis, an islmophobe troll who later referred to Arabs as “towelheads”.
Some technical insight regarding this:
Many attempts to interfere with computers are transmitted through JavaScript. This is computer code in simple text form, and as such it can be “embedded” into comments by people who submit comments to forums. I’ve inserted italics and bold into this text using the “HTML Tags”, examples of which are shown below the “Submit Comment” button; try it. I could attempt to insert JavaScript by enclosing the word “script” inside such tags, but this site would remove such “tags” before publishing the comment.
Not all sites are so secure, and malicious scripts get submitted and published, “embedded” in comments. The purpose of this stuff is not to upset you. Most of them are designed to steal your passwords or credit card numbers, or they are a first step towards compromising your system in that direction. Nearly always, these days, the incentive is financial.
I protect my system against malicious JavaScript by using the Firefox browser with the NoScript extension. There are other methods, but this is my favourite. This site is fully usable with all JavaScript completely blocked. NoScript does take a while to get used to, but it is well worth the effort and it is educational. I recommend it.
I’m sorry that I mistook you for a shill. Your earlier comments seemed to me to be designed to discredit Assange, but as you’ve become more emotional I’ve begun to believe that you are merely facing a set of inconvenient contradictions. The evidence that supports Assange is not well publicised in the corporate (mainstream) media. For instance, you may not know of the leaked Stratfor e-mails that reveal that the US has compiled a huge case against Assange and has convened a Grand Jury against him. None of this was ready to implement, and the extradition proceedings have enabled the authorities to pin Assange down while the US prepared.
Please, this is not just about protecting Assange, important though that is. Sexual offence laws are being misused, and the two women involved may also be being used by powerful political forces. This is about opposing injustice. I do not see it as a grand conspiracy. There is a lot of political opportunism involved, and structural and corporate forces at work. Wikileaks is a threat to unwarranted secrecy that threatens all humanity; Julian Assange is Wikileaks’ public face, and discrediting him was the only option left to those who require secrecy to pursue their anti-democratic agendas.
Best wishes to you.
Ooops, I just demonstrated how to muck up HTML formatting. I obviously left out a “slash b” tag (“b” for bold is equivalent to “strong”), and the whole of the rest of my comment has come out in bold.
Sorry folks. Moderator (Jon?), please fix when convenient.
Well said Kempe.
Lol @arbed. ‘Those journalists fucked up’. Nothing to do with JA’s intransigence and incompetence at all then. 🙄
@Resident Dissident, the only cult here is the one in your imagination ; long-time & regular Posters often do disagree here, but normally the debate is honest, with points taken and acknowledged, with an absence of sly-misrepresentations, and weasel semantics, time-wasting red-herrings & whatabouteries, etc, unlike conversing with trolls; although I haven’t had the dubious pleasure of engaging you enough to personally validate your troll –like status, the fact to you have made the most mild mannered, polite to the point of bending over backwards, and most important of all, one of the most rational posters here, namely Clark, to call you “a disgrace” , does not bode too well.
I find it hard to believe that people pretend that the case against Assange is not trumped-up & politically motivated, and that they cannot believe that he does have a very real & legitimate fear of being disappeared & imprisoned for life in the American Gulag prison system, but I prefer to leave debating the Assange saga to those who have invested untold time & effort in following all the details & murky shenanigans, indeed the arguments are getting so intricate, and legally complex now, with a lot of deliberate muddying of waters, that I wouldn’t be surprised if this case someday would become an academic discipline in its own right !
“Jeez – and to think those on the left used to believe in dialectical argument.”
On the contrary, nothing is more sacred for me than rational enlightenment, and I always give grateful thanks to anybody who manages to correct any illogical points of views that I may have.
Clark
This is pointless. I you continue to see what I am writing as a threat, then might I kindly suggest the problem is with you rather than myself.
Of course I see contradictions in the direction that the evidence points in the Assange case, especially since it is often provided by highly interested parties, and there are valid arguments from both sides. This is the nature of human life and certainly with most political arguments (this is also something that a certain Mr Marx recognised). But what I do is look at the quality of the evidence and then try and make a judgement using the basic values that I hold. I appreciate that you and others may hold different values – but what I don’t do is start with a world view, pick the evidence that supports that view and then seek to dismiss/rubbish the arguments pointing in a different direction, which appears to be the modus operandii of many commenters on this blog. Might I suggest that latter approach will do little to win friends and influence people – although I daresay that it will go down well with those who already agree with you.
“long-time & regular Posters often do disagree here”
Like where on the major issues in the world – where are those, apart from Trolls, who try and support the Israeli/Syrian Opposition/US/UK/ Iranian Opposition/ Arab Spring protestors or at least recognise that there are some positive points. And where are those who seek to identify, condemn and suggest ways to do something about the abuses conducted by the Islamofascists/Assad/the Iranian regime/Russia/China. I’m afraid I see an awful lot of black and white, precious little in terms of shades of grey, and next to no dialectical argument – perhaps there is an element of satire in my reference to a cult, but you must be blind if you don’t see that there is a germ of truth.
PS America does not have a GULAG prison sytem by any stretch of the imagination. Comeback and say something similar when you have read some Sozhenitsyn – 20 million political prisoners murdered, I think not.
“you must be blind if you don’t see that there is a germ of truth”
Generally, I try not to wade into water that is already occupied, but…………
I see your point, yet no one is preventing you from stating your contrarian position. Moderation is very low key here, to that end.
That fact does not compel others to subscribe to your pov. That said, I have expressed a similar opinion wrt to folks using Press TV and RT News to substantiate a position. The answer had to do with the hypocrisy of Western governments as the lead-horses of justice and democracy. They are bad examples, in many instances. The top-knot of their narrative often sinks below water level when put to the acid test. I agree with that perspective, and see them as chasing potential adherents from emerging democracies from adopting those principles of governing. It’s like when a parent tells his/her offspring to ‘do what I say, not what I do’. It does more damage than the obvious criminal state which no one (of sound mind) wishes to duplicate.
Elizabeth Farrelly at the Sydney Morning Herald:
“I don’t believe I’ve peed in earshot of a London bobby before. When after my chat with Julian Assange last week I asked for the loo, a sign on the toilet door warned of surveillance. Being watched is now so standard in London that it registered as no more sinister than having strayed onto the set of Spooks, until a pale glow outside the window brought it home.”
“Assange points out that Sweden’s is a culture of profound conformism; a population half the size of Australia’s with a language spoken (and a culture therefore scrutinised) by no one else on earth. A country that, unlike say Germany, ”never denazified” after World War II. Never pushed the reset button.”
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/held-in-a-gilded-cage-optimism-still-reigns-supreme-for-assange-20130206-2dykj.html
“I believe Aaron’s death was caused by exhaustion, by fear, and by uncertainty. I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a persecution and a prosecution that had already wound on for 2 years (what happened to our right to a speedy trial?) and had already drained all of his financial resources. I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a criminal justice system that prioritizes power over mercy, vengeance over justice; a system that punishes innocent people for trying to prove their innocence instead of accepting plea deals that mark them as criminals in perpetuity; a system where incentives and power structures align for prosecutors to destroy the life of an innovator like Aaron in the pursuit of their own ambitions.
Ask yourself this: If on January 10, Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz at the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office had called Aaron’s lawyer and said they’d realized their mistake and that they were dropping all charges — or even for that matter that they were ready to offer a reasonable plea deal that wouldn’t have marked Aaron as a felon for the rest of his life — would Aaron have killed himself on January 11?
The answer is unquestionably no.”
http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/42260548767/why-aaron-died
“Assange points out that Sweden’s is a culture of profound conformism; a population half the size of Australia’s with a language spoken (and a culture therefore scrutinised) by no one else on earth. A country that, unlike say Germany, ”never denazified” after World War II. Never pushed the reset button.”
Yet when he first decided Sweden was the best place for Wikileaks’ servers he was full of praise for Sweden and it’s people. Now it seems they’re a bit dodgy, unreformed Nazis with a culture in need of scrutiny.
Macky, to be fair, resident dissident claims that the contradiction that lead to my comment “you’re a disgrace” was a typing error. Resident dissident typed the word “not” when meaning “note”, thus inverting the meaning of a sentence and creating the apparent contradiction. I therefore withdraw that comment in light of resident dissident’s admission of error.
resident dissident, if you’re saying that you’d feel threatened by identifying yourself, fine, that’s your business. I do not feel threatened by the list of things that apparently alarm you, so if you’re not suggesting that I’m under some some additional threat, I accept that you were not threatening me.
I hope that you likewise withdraw your accusation that I could be threatening you or your computer system in some way, by use of moderator’s access that I no longer possess.
I hope that you now appreciate that malware arriving at your computer is unlikely to indicate that contributors at other forums, or the forum staff, have taken exception to your arguments, and I hope that you will re-evaluate the debate on those forums with that in mind; you may well have become over-defensive. I think you could also be suffering from a touch of islamophobia. I can relate to that, having suffered from it myself some decades ago.
Kempe, 7:19 pm, I think Assange may have learned rather a lot about Sweden since his earlier encounter. Don’t you?
resident dissident, a point I should have made; forums that don’t scan for invisibly embedded JavaScript indicate poor security by the forum staff. Such forums can be exploited by anyone with the know-how, merely by submitting a suitably crafted comment.
All users of the forum are then subjected to the embedded malware, no matter what sort of comment they submit themselves, or even if they just read and don’t comment at all.
Ben can you please stop posting comments like yours at 6.37pm. You might just start a cult of human compassion, which could be dangerous and threatening to the likes of Res Diss, CE and the Habitual Babbler ;-0
When it comes to Assange, it is telling that the two most eloquent, vocal and rational supporters he has here are women. Opponents like Res Diss and CE are a frustrated minority, MSM brain-washed establishment losers who God gave a brain to by mistake.
Friends, my fellow members of the human race, who have a ticking heart and conscience, take solace from this poll i link below from, of all places, The WashPo;
Should Wikileaks founder Julian Assange be allowed to leave Britain for asylum in Ecuador?
Answer:
A resounding Yes —- 88% (VOW what a cult!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/should-julian-assange-be-allowed-to-leave-britain-poll/2012/06/21/gJQAVQUlsV_blog.html
Now you trolls run for the EXIT doors just like your frickin beloved leader Obama and The World’s Policeman is doing in Afghanistan whipped by a rag-tag bunch of local fighters. In other places, the Islamists (and oh, yes, they are there, are taking them incl the Res Diss’s and Hababubba’s of this world from the back oh-so-smoothly, they don’t even know it until its over and a lot of of innocent children, women and men have died or had their lives disrupted.
Kempe, 3:23 pm:
Kempe, even if the journalists played no role in this, I think that you are being massively overly critical of Wikileaks.
Most people routinely trust the corporate media when they publish or choose not to publish certain matters. For instance, most corporate news media were supportive of the Iraq war, over-hyped the threat in Benghazi, continually push a false narrative regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, etc. On the whole, the corporate media is strongly pro-war. They hardly ever publish the sort of pictures that Mary linked to on the other thread, or the sort of thing we see here:
http://www.coia.org.uk/
By influencing the operation of democracy, this results in literally millions of lives lost, and a hugely greater number ruined. This, from large, well-funded organisations with decades of experience, who have existed easily long enough to see the effects of their pro-war bias.
Wikileaks, by contrast, was at the time of the Afghan war logs a tiny operation consisting of few people with vastly smaller resources, and very short experience. I hope you’re not objecting merely because Wikileaks’ publications tend to influence people away from supporting war.
Clark you too, please stop being rational and feeding into the cult with your:
“Kempe, 7:19 pm, I think Assange may have learned rather a lot about Sweden since his earlier encounter. Don’t you?”
What has these trolls pissed off is that Assange is too smart for them…..and they already think they’re too smart by half themselves. Headmaster Habby-doo is a prime example, although in fairness, i don’t recall if has an opinion on Assange, yet.
This Res Diss & Co lot will also soon pass. Let them be aware that Assange, one of the most courageous human beings on the planet, and in modern history of man is safe and sound. And another fact, whine as you dissenters will and whip him with your limp noodles, he will NEVER see the light of day in the US of A one way or another. Yes, eventually his name will be cleared. Life is long and full of twists and turns but we’re living in an age, which he is helping shape, where the truth will prevail.
I wish him godspeed.
I did preempt my comment about wading into unknown waters, Villager. I have put Hab in the dustbin, because he’s obvious, even to me :).
Clark and I often err on the side of seeking clarity, and compassion is occasionally an assist
The original sentence was as follows
“I have very good reasons for protecting my identity – especially on forums such as these – perhaps you should also not that in the past Assange and Wikileaks recognised that such legitimate reasons exist.”
Mistyping the “note” as “not” does not in my view invert the meaning of the sentence or make the sentence threatening – but I’ll be gracious enough to accept the withdrawal of your claims as an apology.
And yes I apologise for the “moderator” comment it was unreasonable accusation. I don’t believe that I ever suggested that you were under threat – that is specifically why I avoided answering your question as to why you were under threat, I just gave my reasons for anonymity.
Villager, thanks for the link to that poll. An encouraging result, but I’d point out that apparently only a few hundred people have bothered to vote.
A truly stunning amount of JavaScript and cookies from the Washington Post site. JavaScript from 22 or 24 different web domains (different results on different attempts), and 23 cookies from 11 different sources. All of the cookies, and probably much of the JavaScript, can be used to track you as you browse the ‘net. We owe Assange considerable gratitude for pointing out how much our privacy is compromised by such techniques. I must buy his book, Cypherpunks.
Villager – grow up – people of all levels of intelligence have different views on Assange and other matters than your own. Rather than the ad hominems, which to be honest are not clever, original or even vaguely funny – might I suggest that you just say you disagree and give your reasons.
resident dissident, I had to interpret your sentence; to me, it came across like this (my emphasis added for clarity):
So it seemed that you were advising me to hide my identity for some unspecified reason, and saying that Wikileaks used not to respect privacy.
“Most people routinely trust the corporate media when they publish or choose not to publish certain matters.”
I don’t think this is the case – in opinion poll after opinion poll the results usually show a pretty high level of mistrust of the news media and journalists. You are making this assumption largely because the the public does not as a whole hold views that are dear to your heart. You should look at polls of what people list as their main concerns – I’m afraid they will not match the ones you list very well. Perhaps the answer may be to develop your thoughts, engage in dialogue and come up with more convincing arguments that will convince the public rather than seeking to blame the messengers.
Mark Golding
When Assad gets buried hastily and anonymously, and the victors rewrite history according to Sunni Islam, no doubt there still remain some regional or tribal historians to try to restore his reputation. Assad belongs to a sect not of Islam, but raw polytheism. which has survived solely on their pretending to be connected to either Sunni or Shi’a traditions of Islam.
I go back to my example of Druids. Would you accept an alliance of Celtic nationalism in a coalition with EDL/UKIP Nazism holding power by oh so Democratic processes. How can a Sunni region tolerate being governed by a coalition of Zionist apartheid, neo-colonial greed, Shi’a state terrorism and a total polytheist dictator as a totem to satisfy the West’s detestation of everything Islam?
In fact those cheap dark glasses they issued you in the UK army gave you no UV protection and you have been blinded by violence in Iraq into thinking that violence was a Sunni Muslim, Saudi-style phenomenon, when it was in fact a Mossad organised UKUSIS false flag phenomenon with Iran leading.
Res Diss, was it you who made that point about there being a ‘cult’ lurking here? If so, it is you that needs to grow…a few inches taller. And if you want to discuss Assange–go back, carefully, through the Assange threads on this blog, then come back and talk. Not many of us have the time, you apparently have, to feed into your ignorance.
Btw which part of my comment was ad hom to you?
resident dissident, I do think that a lot of the hostility towards Assange is a fear reaction to his intelligence, especially from politicians, many of whom really aren’t very bright (just look at the mess they make).
Another reason is that Assange is a Hacker:
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is
“Hacker” is a much maligned term, now used by the corporate media almost exclusively to mean “cracker”; this pisses off Hackers no end, it’s like referring to a locksmith as a thief; sure, a locksmith could pick a lock, which is exactly what you want if you’ve locked yourself out.
Hackers are an infuriating bunch; impatient and intolerant of fools and people who don’t do their jobs properly. They also built the Internet (did a good job, eh?), and they created free (GPL) software. This site, and over half of all others, are built entirely from free software. The “free” in “free software” refers to freedom, not price, and the GNU GPL – General Public License – protects your freedom and the freedom of programmers to innovate:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
The corporate bigwigs also feel very threatened because they rely almost exclusively on that pile of proprietary rubbish, Micro$oft Windows, which has more security holes than a teabag. Like the authoritarian fools that they are, rather than admit to the poor quality of the product they use, they try to respond with a clamp-down.
If you want to feel secure as you browse the ‘net, get a free (GPL) operating system. I would be happy to help. Such a system is much less likely to pick up any malware from the forums that you visit. I’m running Debian here. My systems have never been infected with any malware.