7 ms·

If nothing else, his persistence has been fairly impressive. I'm still bitter that he became so thoroughly partisan, though. Especially since his organization

If nothing else, his persistence has been fairly impressive. I'm still bitter that he became so thoroughly partisan, though. Especially since his organization has or had the motto: "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour".

yeahitslikethat 8y ago
He's certainly just exhibited some behavior true to that statement.
Despegar 8y ago
>Especially since his organization has or had the motto: "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour". I honestly can't believe why anyone thought this after he published the first thing that put Wikileaks on the map, the embarrassing Collateral Murder video. It's funny because before that came out, I considered donating money to Wikileaks because I thought it'd be more like an organization like Wikipedia. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people were seduced by the name "Wikileaks" piggybacking off the credibility and mission of Wikipedia. I guess no one had any critical thinking skills or were prone to conspiracy because everyone from progressives to libertarians started eating everything he did up. EDIT: Wow just did a search on HN to see what people said back then about it and it seems a few people had the same take I did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243842
- whamlastxmas 8y ago
  Wikipedia is extremely biased.
  - mikelward 8y ago
    [citation needed]
  - Despegar 8y ago
    Yes but that's inherent in how Wikipedia works. Wikileaks was just Julian Assange (and whoever else worked with him).
- fastball 8y ago
  You don't think Collateral Murder should've been released?
  - Despegar 8y ago
    No I don't think an organization that was ostensibly trying "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour" should have published the highly edited and misleading video which was packaged to go viral. That told me everything I needed to know about his intellectual honesty and what to expect from Wikileaks. I guess no one else had the same takeaway.
    - Myrmornis 8y ago
      That video clearly showed disgusting and murderous behavior of US armed forces. They opened fire on and killed a passing motorist who stopped to help a wounded individual. Are you aware that that is what happens in the video? It made it clear to the world that American armed forces could never be trusted to behave honorably in a very different country full of brown people that they think are “terrorists”.
  - antt 8y ago
    He editorialized that video to hell and back, removing audio which humanized the chopper pilots, condensing 40 minutes into 2, and a whole bunch of other editorial tricks to make the people getting murdered more sympathetic. The only difference was that it was under a Republican administration and Democrats were all for it.
    - trevelyan 8y ago
      They released an edited and unedited version, as you should know if you indeed watched it. As far as the ethics of it go, it is pretty typical for media not to air a forty minute video in a one minute news segment. Perhaps the other thirty eight minutes of the killers just chatting was more newsworthy though.
      - 8y ago
black-tea 8y ago
I mean, it's possible that he's lost his mind during the 7 years of imprisonment without trial.
- geowwy 8y ago
  The leaked chat logs don't sound like he's lost his mind https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4378830-Excerpts-From-Private-WikiLeaks-Twitter-Group.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4378830-Excerpts-Fro...
- idlewords 8y ago
  He lives in a diplomatic compound that he is free to leave at any moment. He's gone without trial by choice. The real victims here are the poor Ecuadoran diplomatic staff, and his ex-cat. Oh, and his victims, of course.
  - rishav_sharan 8y ago
    What victims?
    - Kiro 8y ago
      His rape victims.
      - polotics 8y ago
        This has been disproven, so: citation needed, please...
        rmc 8y ago
        No it hasn't, there hasn't been a trial. That's kinda the whole point of him being in the embassy.
        dragonwriter 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I'm still bitter that he became so thoroughly partisan, though. I don't think it's a matter of becoming partisan, I think it's more a matter of getting new opportunities for the orientation he's always had and pursued. > Especially since his organization has or had the motto: "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour". If you had an organization designed from it's inception to selectively leak information with a clearly biased perspective, it would defeat the purpose if you labeled it that way.
- cinquemb 8y ago
  >If you had an organization designed from it's inception to selectively leak information with a clearly biased perspective, it would defeat the purpose if you labeled it that way. For some reason, The Intercept comes to mind, and people here just love em…
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    I've always gotten the impression that people here mostly either disliked the Intercept for its perceived agenda or disliked it for it's perceived incompetence, such as that which burned Reality Winner as the source of the leak for which she was then imprisoned.
    - icelancer 8y ago
      > perceived incompetence, such as that which burned Reality Winner as the source of the leak for which she was then imprisoned. Yikes. Just read up on this. Pretty damning.
    - cinquemb 8y ago
      >I've always gotten the impression that people here mostly either disliked the Intercept for its perceived agenda From my experience commenting on the meta stories surrounding them and alluding to the bias always seems to illicit more downvotes than up votes. Though I would love if there was some kind of agreed upon sentiment analysis algorithm we could run we can go back through all of the meta Intercept posts on HN and calculate the percentage of comments weighted by upvotes for/agaisnt them as an organization.
chx 8y ago
He became something else as well. Maybe he always was, maybe he turned into a Russian pawn but by now there seems to be a huge amount of suspicious things pointing him working with Russia. This lists like six such things https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/donald-trump-julian-assange-and-russia-how-theyre-connected-and-how-they-changed-an-election/ https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/donald-trump-julian-assange... This one https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pussy-riot-member-assange-openly-works-with-russia https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pus... is particularly damaging because one of the arguments of the "Wikileaks is not a Russian org" is that it sympathetizes and works with Pussy Riot... https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks-inside-the-farage-assange-trump-connection https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks-inside-the-farage-as... https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-strongly-suggesting-1797954045 https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-stron...
- belorn 8y ago
  Being declared a terrorist, drone target, suggestion to thrown him into guantanamo, and talks about death penalty, it likely biased him a bit against the US and in particular against the former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I would not expect anyone to continue be neutral during such state of affair.
ryanlol 8y ago
Partisan? Hasn't he always been quite transparent about his desire to destroy the US? If Assange is partisan who is he partisan for?
- fastball 8y ago
  Russia?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Why Russia? Does being anti-US automatically make you pro-Russia? Does accepting aid from Russia against the US automatically make you pro-Russian? I'd imagine that WL just doesn't care very much about Russia, an insignificant, poor country with relatively little international influence.

yeahitslikethat 8y ago

He's certainly just exhibited some behavior true to that statement.

Despegar 8y ago

>Especially since his organization has or had the motto: "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour". I honestly can't believe why anyone thought this after he published the first thing that put Wikileaks on the map, the embarrassing Collateral Murder video. It's funny because before that came out, I considered donating money to Wikileaks because I thought it'd be more like an organization like Wikipedia. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people were seduced by the name "Wikileaks" piggybacking off the credibility and mission of Wikipedia. I guess no one had any critical thinking skills or were prone to conspiracy because everyone from progressives to libertarians started eating everything he did up. EDIT: Wow just did a search on HN to see what people said back then about it and it seems a few people had the same take I did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1243842

whamlastxmas 8y ago
Wikipedia is extremely biased.
- mikelward 8y ago
  [citation needed]
- Despegar 8y ago
  Yes but that's inherent in how Wikipedia works. Wikileaks was just Julian Assange (and whoever else worked with him).
fastball 8y ago
You don't think Collateral Murder should've been released?
- Despegar 8y ago
  No I don't think an organization that was ostensibly trying "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour" should have published the highly edited and misleading video which was packaged to go viral. That told me everything I needed to know about his intellectual honesty and what to expect from Wikileaks. I guess no one else had the same takeaway.
  - Myrmornis 8y ago
    That video clearly showed disgusting and murderous behavior of US armed forces. They opened fire on and killed a passing motorist who stopped to help a wounded individual. Are you aware that that is what happens in the video? It made it clear to the world that American armed forces could never be trusted to behave honorably in a very different country full of brown people that they think are “terrorists”.
- antt 8y ago
  He editorialized that video to hell and back, removing audio which humanized the chopper pilots, condensing 40 minutes into 2, and a whole bunch of other editorial tricks to make the people getting murdered more sympathetic. The only difference was that it was under a Republican administration and Democrats were all for it.
  - trevelyan 8y ago
    They released an edited and unedited version, as you should know if you indeed watched it. As far as the ethics of it go, it is pretty typical for media not to air a forty minute video in a one minute news segment. Perhaps the other thirty eight minutes of the killers just chatting was more newsworthy though.
    - 8y ago

black-tea 8y ago

I mean, it's possible that he's lost his mind during the 7 years of imprisonment without trial.

geowwy 8y ago
The leaked chat logs don't sound like he's lost his mind https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4378830-Excerpts-From-Private-WikiLeaks-Twitter-Group.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4378830-Excerpts-Fro...
idlewords 8y ago
He lives in a diplomatic compound that he is free to leave at any moment. He's gone without trial by choice. The real victims here are the poor Ecuadoran diplomatic staff, and his ex-cat. Oh, and his victims, of course.
- rishav_sharan 8y ago
  What victims?
  - Kiro 8y ago
    His rape victims.
    - polotics 8y ago
      This has been disproven, so: citation needed, please...
      - rmc 8y ago
        No it hasn't, there hasn't been a trial. That's kinda the whole point of him being in the embassy.
        dragonwriter 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 8y ago

> I'm still bitter that he became so thoroughly partisan, though. I don't think it's a matter of becoming partisan, I think it's more a matter of getting new opportunities for the orientation he's always had and pursued. > Especially since his organization has or had the motto: "to publish fact-based stories without fear or favour". If you had an organization designed from it's inception to selectively leak information with a clearly biased perspective, it would defeat the purpose if you labeled it that way.

cinquemb 8y ago
>If you had an organization designed from it's inception to selectively leak information with a clearly biased perspective, it would defeat the purpose if you labeled it that way. For some reason, The Intercept comes to mind, and people here just love em…
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  I've always gotten the impression that people here mostly either disliked the Intercept for its perceived agenda or disliked it for it's perceived incompetence, such as that which burned Reality Winner as the source of the leak for which she was then imprisoned.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    > perceived incompetence, such as that which burned Reality Winner as the source of the leak for which she was then imprisoned. Yikes. Just read up on this. Pretty damning.
  - cinquemb 8y ago
    >I've always gotten the impression that people here mostly either disliked the Intercept for its perceived agenda From my experience commenting on the meta stories surrounding them and alluding to the bias always seems to illicit more downvotes than up votes. Though I would love if there was some kind of agreed upon sentiment analysis algorithm we could run we can go back through all of the meta Intercept posts on HN and calculate the percentage of comments weighted by upvotes for/agaisnt them as an organization.

chx 8y ago

He became something else as well. Maybe he always was, maybe he turned into a Russian pawn but by now there seems to be a huge amount of suspicious things pointing him working with Russia. This lists like six such things https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/donald-trump-julian-assange-and-russia-how-theyre-connected-and-how-they-changed-an-election/ https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/donald-trump-julian-assange... This one https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pussy-riot-member-assange-openly-works-with-russia https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pus... is particularly damaging because one of the arguments of the "Wikileaks is not a Russian org" is that it sympathetizes and works with Pussy Riot... https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks-inside-the-farage-assange-trump-connection https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks-inside-the-farage-as... https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-strongly-suggesting-1797954045 https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-stron...

belorn 8y ago
Being declared a terrorist, drone target, suggestion to thrown him into guantanamo, and talks about death penalty, it likely biased him a bit against the US and in particular against the former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I would not expect anyone to continue be neutral during such state of affair.

ryanlol 8y ago

Partisan? Hasn't he always been quite transparent about his desire to destroy the US? If Assange is partisan who is he partisan for?

fastball 8y ago
Russia?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Why Russia? Does being anti-US automatically make you pro-Russia? Does accepting aid from Russia against the US automatically make you pro-Russian? I'd imagine that WL just doesn't care very much about Russia, an insignificant, poor country with relatively little international influence.