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> I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this

> I doubt that here, on HN, most of us would go so deep with conspiracy, but rational thinking did not lead me to the conclusion that Putin is responsible this time. Putin is given far too much credit. But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack. > shouldn't people like Assange reveal it? Largely Assange has been an anti-liberal democracy apologist for the last 5+ years. A sad turn for someone starting at a radical anarchist position, but it's been pretty obvious. He's also largely destroyed any of Wikileaks rep as a honest broker and reduced it to the reputation of "anti-US intelligence". AFAICT, he's operating as a (probably unwitting) Russian front these days.

dleslie 9y ago
The two books from his earlier self, Cypherpunks and When Google Met Wikileaks, are well worth the read for anyone who comments here on HN, I think. I agree, he changed dramatically sometime around or during the Trump campaign; I hardly recognize him any longer.
- alasdair_ 9y ago
  When he disappeared from view for a few weeks before the election and the wikileaks twitter drastically changed tone was what did it for me. There was something really weird going on there - as an example, the twitter refused to sign anything with their public key to prove it was still controlled by the same group.
  - dleslie 9y ago
    I suspect that at some point he met the nasty end of a rubber hose.
roenxi 9y ago
> But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack. There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010? Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.
- ficklepickle 9y ago
  He kept working against the Russians after the exchange. Lately, he was seeking permission to return to Russia. His phone was off for 4 hours before he was found unconscious.(can't find the sources right now, on mobile, but you can trust me ;) ) He took a meeting, hoping to be allowed back, and instead was poisoned. Sounds plausible to me, but then again its really similar to the plot of McMafia. But it just as easily could be a false flag. I don't trust the Orwellian British anymore than I do the ruskies. There is just too little public info to say for sure. For example, how are the Brits so sure it was a Novochik agent? Especially since they are designed to be untraceable.
  - openasocket 9y ago
    Novichok agents are hardly untraceable. Like pretty much every other compound, you can detect them using mass spectrometry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry).
    - fit2rule 9y ago
      .. and in order to do so, you must of course have access to the materials first of all, in order to create the spectrometric signature upon which your comparison - and thus, evidence - is made. So, no. You can't claim its only available in Russia, if you've positively identified it using these signatures .. since you'd have had to have the material to compare with, yourself ..
      - openasocket 9y ago
        I didn't claim that only Russia was able to make the chemical agent. I don't entertain the false flag narrative because it is so difficult to disprove. If the UK was willing to kill this man and endanger the lives of their citizens to destabilize Russian relations, then pretty much anything is possible. Even if this was some special nerve agent that only Russia is able to make, the UK could simply kill the man with a similar nerve agent and claim it was the special Russia one. If you can't trust the UK government here, than they could easily fabricate or claim they have hard proof of Russian involvement. You also have to ask yourself what hard proof of Russian involvement would even look like, and how realistic it would be to find such a thing even if Russia were to be involved.
gorbachev 9y ago
It's not even about anti-US intelligence, but intelligence against parties Assange feels personally slighted in some capacity. He's turned Wikileaks into his own personal vendetta machine.

dleslie 9y ago

The two books from his earlier self, Cypherpunks and When Google Met Wikileaks, are well worth the read for anyone who comments here on HN, I think. I agree, he changed dramatically sometime around or during the Trump campaign; I hardly recognize him any longer.

alasdair_ 9y ago
When he disappeared from view for a few weeks before the election and the wikileaks twitter drastically changed tone was what did it for me. There was something really weird going on there - as an example, the twitter refused to sign anything with their public key to prove it was still controlled by the same group.
- dleslie 9y ago
  I suspect that at some point he met the nasty end of a rubber hose.

roenxi 9y ago

> But the Russian wetworks division, under Putin's authority, has its fingerprints all over the Salisbury attack. There is strong circumstantial evidence, but proof is a slightly different game. It would be nice, for example, to have a clear motive for why Russia might have poisoned the man. According to the wiki article the Russian justice system had sentenced him to 13 years in a penal colony in 2006, and then handed him over in a prisoners exchange in 2010. What happened to upgrade that to a death sentence in 2018 that the GRU didn't know about in 2006-2010? Evidence should be a high bar. We might suspect the Russians, but lets not pretend there is any clear public evidence beyond government say-so. The government can be wrong, just like the rest of us.

ficklepickle 9y ago
He kept working against the Russians after the exchange. Lately, he was seeking permission to return to Russia. His phone was off for 4 hours before he was found unconscious.(can't find the sources right now, on mobile, but you can trust me ;) ) He took a meeting, hoping to be allowed back, and instead was poisoned. Sounds plausible to me, but then again its really similar to the plot of McMafia. But it just as easily could be a false flag. I don't trust the Orwellian British anymore than I do the ruskies. There is just too little public info to say for sure. For example, how are the Brits so sure it was a Novochik agent? Especially since they are designed to be untraceable.
- openasocket 9y ago
  Novichok agents are hardly untraceable. Like pretty much every other compound, you can detect them using mass spectrometry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry).
  - fit2rule 9y ago
    .. and in order to do so, you must of course have access to the materials first of all, in order to create the spectrometric signature upon which your comparison - and thus, evidence - is made. So, no. You can't claim its only available in Russia, if you've positively identified it using these signatures .. since you'd have had to have the material to compare with, yourself ..
    - openasocket 9y ago
      I didn't claim that only Russia was able to make the chemical agent. I don't entertain the false flag narrative because it is so difficult to disprove. If the UK was willing to kill this man and endanger the lives of their citizens to destabilize Russian relations, then pretty much anything is possible. Even if this was some special nerve agent that only Russia is able to make, the UK could simply kill the man with a similar nerve agent and claim it was the special Russia one. If you can't trust the UK government here, than they could easily fabricate or claim they have hard proof of Russian involvement. You also have to ask yourself what hard proof of Russian involvement would even look like, and how realistic it would be to find such a thing even if Russia were to be involved.

gorbachev 9y ago

It's not even about anti-US intelligence, but intelligence against parties Assange feels personally slighted in some capacity. He's turned Wikileaks into his own personal vendetta machine.