Actually... Yes, but only for saying that Julian Assange isn't a hero to be worshiped.

He had a good idea, but his ties to Russia taint everything.

Per the fact that he's repeatedly turned down leaks critical of Russia.

There's a certain type of person who strongly believes in binaries. They rightly see that the US is shit, and somehow believe that makes anyone who "stands up to the US" automatically good.

It's half of the Tankie mentality. The other half is actively cheering for dictators and the murder of "non-conformists", whatever shape they take.

On a final note, https://ddosecrets.com/ is what WikiLeaks looks like with protections for innocents mentioned in the leaks.

WikiLeaks has such a policy, but have leaked names of activists and whistleblowers several times now.

The ottoman empire is 600 years old it experience both systems

Re-quoting from my comment:

And they had to pick sides without knowing what the judgment of history would be.

Emphasis added. They were making the choice without the benefit of that Wikipedia page from 2025 to refer to.

And Stalin was right up there with Hitler in terms of total kill-count, which is why it was a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. There was no good option available.

My dad had a Latvian friend in his youth, and dad would tell me about how sometimes when they'd had a bit much to drink he'd tell stories about fighting on the front lines in Latvia. For the Germans, against the Russians. He was by absolutely no means a Nazi supporter, but he had to weigh the options and try to figure out which one was less likely to end with him and his family lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

It really sucks that Latvia didn't regain independence until 1991. I hope he lived long enough to see that.

There's a pretty clear description:

Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or corporations own the means of production (like factories, land, and resources) and operate them for profit, driven by market competition and supply/demand with minimal government interference, emphasizing private property, capital accumulation, and wage labor to generate wealth and economic growth.

Emphasis mine.

But yeah, the primary goal of capitalism is to extract as much wealth ("profit") as possible while reducing the number of people that wealth/profit benefits.

Up until the industrial revolution, almost all means of production was in the hands of the upper class (as per European/British definition of the term) - landed gentries, landowners, and the aristocracy (the three groups generally overlapping). The revolution itself allowed certain people to climb the social class ladder and become business owners (prior to that, most businesses were traders, merchants) and set up factories to manufacture much needed items.

So up until that point, capitalism as a system didn't really exist, not even in the US (up until that time, most of the US were private landowners who just wanted to eke out a life for themselves on new land, sans gold rushes and such). In fact I'd argue that the capitalist mindset of the US didn't really kick in until WW1, or rather, the handful of wars preceding it, mostly in Africa and South America, which provided an opportunity for US weapons makers to grow the industry beyond the country - and it really kicked off during WW1, then got raised to new heights in WW2.

Also, an integral part of capitalism is the beneficiaries lying to those who actually produce the value, the wealth, the profit, to keep them in line. One such lie is that capitalism existed for millennia, when in reality, the true forn of capitalism is mere 100-150 years old.