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One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corru

One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. It's hard to put a finger on just how much the current form of western democracy differs from the 18th century ideal of western democracy. Let this concretize it: Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade in jail indefinitely on fictitious charges and virtually nobody cares. Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'?

chronicsunshine 5y ago
I think you are mischaracterizing why Julian Assange has lost support. He has not lost support because of exposing corruption in any political parties, he's lost support because its become clear he works with Russian intelligence services. People have leaked data on Russian corruption to WikiLeaks, which went unpublished. His leaks coincide with what is politically favorable to Russia, not with making all information free to the world. To the downvoters: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia-ties https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia... Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you disagree with me?
- ecshafer 5y ago
  If what he says is true, why does it matter that its politically favorable to Russia? As a liberal democracy we should strive to be more moral and upstanding, hiding those things for politics is the opposite of that.
  - chronicsunshine 5y ago
    Because he specifically refuses to leak information about Russia. He doesn't care about making society more moral or upstanding. He is a pawn of the Russian government to damage their opponents.
    - lajamerr 5y ago
      Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a country make it more resilient in the future against bigger attacks? So even if he is helping Russia spread their propaganda isn't it making us stronger to find this out and plan against it instead of an all out information war? How does Russia win here.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a country make it more resilient in the future against bigger attacks? Not necessarily, obviously. For instance: if someone leaks information to an enemy about a fatal flaw in their nation's military equipment, and the enemy nation attacks and exploits that flaw to victory; all the leak did was make their country weaker and more vulnerable. I'm not aware of any improvements in the resiliency of the US in response to Assange's leaks, except that the Democratic party has better opsec now (e.g. uses 2FA and has anti-phishing drills). They may have locked down their secret-level networks in response to Manning's activities, but that could arguably make the US less resilient.
      - the_optimist 5y ago
        Of course it does. In addition, it should true the course of the country to its ideals. Clearly there are some who wish to hide information from our own citizens, lest public opinion root them out of their sinecures.
    - SXX 5y ago
      Disclaimer: I dont have much of an opinion on the topic of Assange himself since years after in his "embassy prison" he certainly went nuts in a way. It's not the same person you could talk with on IRC years ago. He was also pretty much okay back in 2011 durign his iterview with Eric Schmidt. Yet here is the idea for your mind: all around the world including Russia political leaders of authoritarian countries trying to sell bullshit like every single problem their regime has is caused by some US conspiracy. They'll of course tell you that all independent journalist and activists work for US and spread only lies. Does Snowden going for asylum in Russia make what he exposed unimportant? What if famous Iraq civilians killing video would be provided not by someone from US, but Russian FSB or Islaeli Mossad? Will it make people less dead? So obviously any whistleblower or journalist can be biased and some country will benefit more than other. There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for whom - only facts are important.
- tomp 5y ago
  What’s the point of leaking “Russian corruption”? It’s not like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia is even a semi-democracy.
  - chronicsunshine 5y ago
    The hope that the Russian people can free themselves of Putin's tyranny?
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > It’s not like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia is even a semi-democracy. There's a reason they still conduct elections in Russia, to give the appearance of democracy. Yes, people still think it's a democracy… as long as their favourite leader is in power.
    - atomashpolskiy 5y ago
      Man... Every Soviet schoolboy knows that the existence of an electoral system does not necessitate a democracy. It's not Russia that is your existential problem in US, it's education.
    - sensanaty 5y ago
      There are precisely 0 slavs alive today who trust their government or politicians. We've been fucked over by our own governments for going on nearly a century at this point, and there's no reality in which anyone other than the old and senile believes elections are anything other than a scam. In Serbia's last elections, Vucic falsified COVID numbers on the days leading up to voting day so that his party could convince his voterbase, the elderly, to go out in droves to vote. After the election he stopped the reporting of false numbers and put the country into a lockdown because to no one's surprise, the numbers were sky high. There were massive protests because of the lockdown measures, where police brutality ran rampant, all on Vucic's orders. Expired tear gas was used on unarmed civilians protesting peacefully, cops in full riot gear were beating the crap out of unarmed protesters and chasing them down the streets. He goes around poorer regions of the country and bribes people with sandwiches and basic supplies like wheat and flower for a vote. His son is good friends with famous, high profile criminals, and Vucic himself was buddy-buddy with a bunch of the former guard, more than half of which either have been, or are currently standing trial for war crimes committed during the Yugo wars. This list goes on and on, and similar things happen in most balkan and eastern european country. Nobody sane trusts a single thing these "people" do, and people definitely don't trust elections, so what ends up happening is that people just don't see the point in participating in an obvious scam. None of us actually believe we're living in a democracy, we're all aware it's a farcical facade that dictators put up.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Scary reds! Be afraid!! Russia needs America and China to be able to scare their own populace into giving up more and more of their own personal freedoms, just like America needs China and Russia to do the same. No one country could “rule the world” in a way that wouldn’t immediately galvanize worldwide opposition. Capital claims no nationality, so nationality is one of the ways the very rich divide and conquer the populace at large. It’s a fake idea in an age of global instant communication when people have literally bought citizenships.
- the_optimist 5y ago
  The link says they didn't want to republish already public information. That makes sense. Why would they publish public information?
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Public information in a language none of their staff speaks. People say Wikileaks is wrong that all the information offered to them was public, but none of the published chat logs show anyone explaining to Wikileaks that there are unpublished leaks in there.
- yariik 5y ago
  This blaming Russia thing is way beyond ridiculous now. WHAT "Russian corruption" are you talking about? Is it the same as the "Russian interference in the US elections," i.e. something that has never existed in reality and was just invented by the US mass media for their purposes?
  - myko 5y ago
    The Mueller Report (https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download) details Russian interference in the 2016 election and led to 12 Russians being indicted as part of that. Is the report wrong?
    - pbak 5y ago
      Yes, mostly. The 12 Russians, and the 3 Russian companies all hired attorneys to represent them and counter sue for defamation. When their attorney went in front of the judge, all charges were dropped by the Justice Dept, refusing document discovery "on issues of national security". It's all political reality television, from both the right and the left. It's like a cable TV wrestling match. I've had trouble finding English language sources giving the full story with a 2 min search. They all just cite the dropping of charges against the companies. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-companies-mueller_n_5e7013c2c5b6eab7793b0036 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-com... Here's an RT link with a little more info, for whatever that's worth: https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dropped/ https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dro... . You might have better luck looking for a little longer.
      - myko 5y ago
        Those charges were dropped by Barr who did his best to quash the entire Mueller investigation and largely succeeded. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-russian-interference.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-... """ In January 2019, the federal government accused Concord of violating a protective court order designed to safeguard information shared among lawyers on the case. Prosecutors said a trove of nonclassified information they had turned over to Concord’s defense team had turned up on a website the previous October. A message on a newly created Twitter account read: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” """ RT's claim that these groups are not responsible for these troll farms is not credible. The claim that these organizations were attempting to use the court case to get detailed information on how they were investigated however, is.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  You're upset that wikileaks didn't report on a leak that was known for 2 years by major western media organizations, and was later forwarded to them? Despite their longstanding policy to not report on leaks that have already been reported on elsewhere?
  - justshowpost 5y ago
    This one is much more hot and... not at Wikileaks as well. https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveillance/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveill...
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get accused of being agents of Russia. It's a ridiculously and simplistically too convenient argument and therefore attractive to anyone with the slightest bias against 'information I don't like' (or a tendency towards being a 'shoot the messenger' type of person). That Assange / Wikileaks don't follow the same bias as the local US media, doesn't mean he's / they're an enemy agent. Thinking of the world in black and white like that is dangerously reductive.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get accused of being agents of Russia. I've never seen that about Snowden except in regard to activities after taking io residence in Russia, and even then its usually more “Snowden is subject to influence by Russia” more than “...an agent of Russia”. Assange is a different story, but the both the uncontroversial facts and the controversial detailed claims on which a conclusion about being a Russian agent might rest about Assange are different.
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Not to mention the chilling effect that comes with that sentiment. It reminds me of the Rick Rubin style of creating "fuck the system" propaganda. Only complain about the parts of the system that don't actively benefit me if you want to keep your record deal.
    - jjulius 5y ago
      I would actually be curious to hear more about that perspective on Rick Rubin. A very cursory Google doesn't come up with much, and I'll dig a bit harder soon, but if you want to elaborate or link to something about this, I'd very much appreciate it!
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        An article I read years ago blasted him for nepotism and using typical unethical manipulation tactics to get ahead. Unfortunately, ever since Amit Singha left Google, half of the things I look for are no longer accessible.
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  It's still a joke. Even if he is Russian (which is a very convenient boogieman), the fact is he DID expose corruption in US parties. He may be partisan, he may not be revealing damaging info about Russia. But if the information is true, so what? Shouldn't we be doing something about the corruption he revealed regardless of why he revealed it? I can't believe all you have to do is say the R-word and suddenly people are just willing to ignore everything he says, its ridiculous. Like uhh enemies of the US are more likely to expose damaging information about them as compared to allies, no shit?
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    What corruption? Some staffers saying mean things about Sanders? Invitations to attend avante garde art shows?
    - pacifist 5y ago
      4 or 5 people at the top of the DNC resigned because of saying mean things about Sanders and invitations to avante garde art shows? That's not how it works.
      - myko 5y ago
        It really is though. The appearance of impropriety is still important to some folks though, so when private emails (that didn't lead to rigging an election, something the DNC has no power to do anyway) that show that folks in the DNC favored one candidate over the other, they resigned. This isn't the same thing as admitting the impossible (that the DNC somehow got HRC ~4 million more votes)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- dordoka 5y ago
  Open your eyes...
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  >Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you disagree with me? From your second link "These incidents don’t prove, as some have alleged, that Assange is some kind of paid Russian agent, or that WikiLeaks is a Russian front organization" Your first link was addressed elsewhere. I can't personally blame Assange for liking Russia more than the country that has spent a decade making his life a living hell. Even if Russia's motives are obviously impure, they are more helpful to furthering Assange's goal.
- bardan 5y ago
  A link between Wikileaks and the Russian government has never been substantiated. The "didn't publish Russian leaks" smear is one of many. The "Russian leaks" that Wikileaks declined were sent to them during the DNC/Podesta/Hillary email release when their resources were obviously stretched. The "leaks" were mostly public, were deemed unimportant and were declined. As we know that didn't stop whoever anonymously submitted these documents from immediately using this to orchestrate a smear campaign against Wikileaks with full compliance of the media (funny timing during the DNC email release, wonder who it could have been?) A little later the "leaks" were fully published elsewhere and nobody cared (but let's not kid ourselves that anybody who claimed to care actually cared at all).
  - bsd44 5y ago
    I agree. It seems to me that even after the allegations against Assange were proven wrong, people still refuse to accept his innocence in this case and try to find something else to blame him for. As when you're proven wrong in an argument and then try to defend your ignorance with a fallacy; "yeah you're right about this problem, but you still smoke weed and voted for Trump".
mancerayder 5y ago
> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. There are many instances of this, and the corporate media does this on both sides of the aisle. Of course, there's one dominant one at the moment. There's a heavy-handed corporate media attempt to squeeze out compliance - from biased stories (that are later proven false) from mainstream outlets as the most serious, to the cover of Vogue as the most silly. What's disturbing is that if you point this out to people, what happens? Ah hah, they discovered someone on the other side of the political aisle. Their enemies. Again, this is true for both parties. Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary, categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as something with its own set of properties to explore.
- illusivesaint 5y ago
  >Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary, categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as something with its own set of properties to explore. I would slightly disagree. Americans are typically very moderate and I believe made to not understand the concepts of politics, when there's capitalism and liberalism involved it's just too complex to understand. The biggest and obviously evidence of this is the apathy toward voting, why even be engaged in something that isn't felt to be a democratic system? How many feel marginalized and the kinds of communities that say so. As impacftul Assange's work may be, the shakers and movers of the world are doing a good job at damage control sounds like.
- archsurface 5y ago
  "Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary" - not just Americans, but that aside, isn't that inevitable when parties compete for power - allegiances form to gain numbers, and mergers take places until there are only two competitors left with no groups left to merge with. The inevitable strategic optimum.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Hard to avoid. Some issues have little to no middle ground. Woman’s rights vs killing unborn children does not leave much moral middle ground.
TeeMassive 5y ago
> "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'? The "it's a private company they can do what they want" argument often thrown by those who claims to "fight fascism" is just plainly ignorant of how fascism and Nazism got and stayed into power in the first place. There were other news websites talking about this but they are algorithmically supplanted by "mainstream" news sites. For example it has gotten so bad that searching for the SpaceX's stream on YouTube yielded an entire page or results from "mainstream" outlets before the actual stream, even if the keywords were explicitly just about SpaceX. Censorship never yielded net positive results.
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  It happens on more sites than YouTube now. For example, do a normal google search for "assange ntlm xmpp manning" (without quotes) and you'll see a mere 8 results from: - justice.gov - forbes - abcnews - reuters - washingtonpost - newyorker - pbs - apnews Google needs to cut this shit out. The most appalling part is they don't even put a warning on the results to tell you that you typed a no-no keyword and that they've filtered the results. You might be lead to believe that only these news agencies wrote about it -- that the heterodox opinions don't even exist. It's completely Orwellian.
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    The first result is your comment. Yikes.
iammisc 5y ago
> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? Unfortunately, in general, the republican base is not going to protest anything, preferring to settle things legally and in court. The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to believe is apparently worse than the civil war. And yes, the sentiment to free assange is currently very common on the right.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to believe is apparently worse than the civil war. Taught? We don't need anyone to teach what happened, it was on national television. We have perfectly good eyes and ears. The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol.
  - rjbwork 5y ago
    Nor fly a traitorous flag in its halls.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I'm not justifying Jan 6. I'm merely pointing out that it was an expression of frustration and that it's not anywhere close to the civil war, as some politicians have put it. I think the same is true of other domestic terror violence we've seen. The Civil War is still the worst domestic insurrection in history. The two are not even comparable. That this comparison is even humored shows a major problem. > The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol. I'm sorry you're being ridiculous. The US capitol has been bombed and parts destroyed by domestic terror groups in living memory. Those attacks were way worse than this. US congressmen have been shot at by radicalized domestic terrorists as well. Considering (1) Jan 6 resulted in minimal property destruction (certainly no structural damage) and (2) no politician killed (the only person dying directly as a result being Ashli Babbett, a rioter), it's safe to say that the bombings were worse (due to worse property destruction) and the shootings were worse (due to imminent potential of death to the victims) Perhaps you have some learning to do.
Voloskaya 5y ago
> "[...] support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party" Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign of one party, and in concordance with the other party. Wikileaks became partisan, not the public.
- easterncalculus 5y ago
  This is the same problem that Comey had after writing the letter to Congress on October 28th. Like it or not it would have looked a LOT worse if either of them had waited until after the election.
  - tikiman163 5y ago
    The RNC was also hacked by the same people as the DNC, yet we're supposed to believe the Democrats emails which ultimately proved to contain nothing of major importance were the ones that needed releasing? Come wasn't writing a press release, he has doing his job and keeping Congress informed and a Republican congressman then chose to misrepresent the content and meaning of Comey's letter for the political gain of his own party. These two situations are only the same in that they both benefitted the Republican party by misrepresenting the facts in order to make the public think the Democrats were guilty of a major political scandal. The difference is that Comey didn't know that Congressman would do what he did, where as there is convincing evidence that Assange knew about the RNC hack and emails, possibly even had access to them and said nothing. Comey got used, but Assange knowingly helped Russians spread disinformation.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      If Republicans had done anything like the DNC's kneecapping of Bernie during the 2016 campaign, it would have come out by now, emails or not.
      - WoahNoun 5y ago
stonogo 5y ago
There are a lot of us who don't consider Assange a journalist, but some foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing secrets to injure the enemies of Russia. To call him "the most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade" is frankly laughable. I'm not sure how you can claim the charges are fictitious unless you haven't read them. The charging document for the superseding indictment is fairly straightforward and relatively short. What problems do you have with it?
- ben_w 5y ago
  As it is possible to be biased and misleading while still only saying true things, I think it’s possible to be both "the most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade"[0] and “foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing secrets to injure the enemies of Russia”. Likewise, I am of the opinion that the attempted extradition and prosecution for the sex offences would not have happened if he hadn’t upset the wrong people, while also being of the opinion that he did the crimes. [0] That’s said, I wouldn’t describe him that way. Plenty of other journalists doing fine work.
iso1631 5y ago
Assange maintained that he was fine in the UK, but worried about Sweden because it would be easier for the US to extradite from Sweden. That's quite simply a load of bollocks. The UK has been pally with the US, was involved in Iraq with the US, and willing to extradite far more than Sweden in the past.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Sweden has previously been happy to circumvent their own legal process and simply assist CIA operatives in kidnapping Swedish residents right off of the street in the middle of the night. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_and_Muhammad_al-Zery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an... The UK doesn't even typically allow rendition flights to even refuel, and absolutely requires all extraditions to go through the strict legal process. I think it's mainly a pride thing about not rolling over and letting a former colony run amok extrajudicially in your homeland. I can see why he didn't want to step on Swedish soil if he got a hint of US led shenanigans.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  The main difference is that the UK judicial system is much more open than Sweden's, and he explicitly stated that he feared being held incommunicado in that country.
wavefunction 5y ago
I'm just curious why Assange and Wikileaks have failed to release the GOP emails. Despite the lofty rhetoric about being journalists they seem to have "picked a side" in terms of their stance towards the US Government. That's my criticism of both Assange and Wikileaks, they seem to have an agenda beyond their stated one.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Where is your evidence that Wikileaks ever had access to the RNC emails?
  - wavefunction 5y ago
    You're right, I mis-posted that. I should have mentioned this instead: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      Why is him preferring the GOP an issue? He's free to have his personal opinions and it's easy to understand why he wouldn't want Clinton to be president as she, probably as a joke, called for him to be drone striked. And Assange seems like a misogynistic antisemite from what I've seen posted by Lee. Yet even he agrees that the US's attack is based solely on disliking his journalistic endeavors, and is an attack on a free press.
      - shapefrog 5y ago
        He definately doesnt have what you say he has, if he did that would be a problem. Ok so he does have it, but it is totally not a problem.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        By their own admission, "You're right, I mis-posted that," the link they posted was not evidence that Wikileaks was offered the RNC emails. They changed their argument, so I addressed their new one
leephillips 5y ago
Hard hitting journalist, or reckless narcissist who is either duped by or working for the Russians, and who thinks the Jews are out to get him?
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Seems like you have a lot invested in personal smears. What motivates you?
api 5y ago
> they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. No, that would have been fine. The problem is that Assange himself is clearly partisan. I doubt they would have leaked anything damaging to Trump. There are chat logs attesting to the fact that they timed the leaks to influence the election. Murky secretive organizations can't be trusted, period. It doesn't matter what they are or whether they are "alternative" or "mainstream." I don't see why I should trust Wikileaks any more than I trust the CIA or the FSB. There's no transparency. I have no way of knowing if Assange has an agenda or what that agenda might be. We need an entirely algorithmic / protocol driven leaker platform that verifiably removes human beings from the loop or at least chains their hands when it comes to when to leak things and whether to leak them. (For the record I am not a fan of either of the 2016 candidates. They were both awful, but Trump was worse largely because of the ideological fascists that surrounded and backed him. Trump himself is not ideological, just a power hungry narcissist who will ride whatever horse will take him further.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Obviously publishing cryptographically verified source data is not what intel agencies do. Wikileaks did that.
- sensanaty 5y ago
  I find it curious that this line of thinking has only recently cropped up. Assange and by extension WikiLeaks has literally never claimed that they weren't partisans. Their whole mission statement is basically leaking things when they would make the biggest impact, and they've pretty much always done their big info dumps at opportune times when they would make the biggest noise. Should they have waited on the emails until after the election? Why? Why does it matter who or what Assange sides with, if the things he releases are 100% true? I don't remember seeing these same criticisms back in 2010 during the cable leaks, curious that this is only an issue now, after the light is being shined on the democrats rather than the republicans for a change...
tw04 5y ago
> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. It became political when it became obvious that Assange was working with Russia. One party seems to care more about Russian money than their own country. https://dearmrputin.substack.com/p/wikileaks-russian-ties-julian-assanges-forgotten-trips-to-moscow https://dearmrputin.substack.com/p/wikileaks-russian-ties-ju... https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-july-4-in-moscow https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-...
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  "Obvious" is in the eye of the beholder. Can you describe why THIS smear campaign is valid while the others are crumbling? If you were a dystopic too-powerful media/state isn't this exactly how you would discredit your dissenters?
  - tw04 5y ago
    I guess you'd need to provide something more than a blanket "that's a smear Campaign" in response to a 4 page article with citations of all the connections to Russia and their intelligence agencies.
    - the_optimist 5y ago
      You're going to need to provide some actual evidence rather than a bunch of rambling babble from conspiracy theorists.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- the_optimist 5y ago
  The only "evidence" of Russia working with Wikileaks is the wholehearted assurance of the FBI/CIA. You're serious in crackpot land, or you're intentionally posting disinformation.
Gibbon1 5y ago
> "Fascism" You're not allowed to mention that ideology here. Except in a distant historical context.
0xcde4c3db 5y ago
> "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'? I'd say that the focus on party loyalty is more a feature of authoritarian parties in general and not fascism specifically. If there's any single tenet that can be called central to fascism (a debatable premise), it's probably the idea that "the nation" can reattain its former glory by forcefully purging various forms of "degeneracy" and thereby becoming "pure".
- hnick 5y ago
  Maybe we need new words? Someone had to invent the word "fascism" once upon a time too. The problem with using established words that almost fit is that people quibble over semantics.
wnevets 5y ago
> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption No, they became a partisan issue because Putin's intelligence apparatus took control of WikiLeaks
jude- 5y ago
> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? Why should anyone trust Julian Assange in the first place? Specifically, why should anyone trust that Julian Assange dumps all the data Wikileaks receives, when it receives it, instead of selectively disclosing whatever Julian wants whenever it suits him? The latter behavior, which has borne out, constitutes the actions of someone with a hidden agenda who should not be trusted. Like, what has Julian done to earn our trust, and demonstrate that he is being completely forthright and transparent?
tikiman163 5y ago
It's quite interesting you should mention political affiliation and facism. Did you know that when the DNC emails were hacked and released via WikiLeaks as if they were exposing a major scandal that the RNC had also been hacked by the same people, yet no emails were released at the time? Considering just how much information about Republicans meeting with corporate donors and just how directly that results in Republican legislation, it's quite hard to believe the DNC emails which exposed essentially nothing were the only thing worth exposing. Assange facilitated this partisan assault on the American political system. Do you have any idea how much Assange and WikiLeaks has cooperated/collaborated with Russian agents? The US 2016 elections were a shit show in no small part due to WikiLeaks releasing only the Democrats emails. Zero Republican emails were leaked, and the most damning part of this is that the released Democrat emails were completely innocuous, but when a website called WikiLeaks releases a huge bulk of emails they've labeled as suspicious or scandalous, stupid people jump to unsupported conclusions and you end up with unqualified politicians undermining democracy, and we're not the only country this happened to. Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of participating in Russian attempts to spread disinformation in support of the Russian's agenda at a bare minimum. Assange might not be guilty of being the kind of traitor we traditionally think of, but he's still a dangerous individual that will help overthrow legitimate governments by misrepresenting illegal activities as exposing scandals, none of which actually exist. So tell me again, how exactly is Julian Assange the single most hard hitting journalist of the last decade? Very little of what he claimed turned out to be accurate, and he participated in withholding information from the public which actually did have a chance of exposing serious political corruption. I might also remind you that despite essentially being a partisan shill for the Republicans (greatly helping them win in 2014 and 2016), they attempted to put him in jail as well. The problem isn't that a lot of Democrat rank and file want to see Assange in jail, it's that way to many Republican rank and file haven't seen him for the liar and yellow journalist he his.
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  >released Democrat emails were completely innocuous I was under the impression people lost their jobs due to the contents of some of the emails and that they definitely weren't completely innocuous.
ineedasername 5y ago
Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is Most American's probably don't actually know much about him. They may have encountered a few stories over the years-- in many cases just the headlines. There wouldn't be outrage & protests for a few reasons: 1) The news stories people have read would frequently have been about him helping hack US computers, often with the added context of his rape prosecution, so there wouldn't be a lot of automatic sympathy. 2) The testimony retraction is only a few days old, so not much time to get upset especially without greater media coverage. 3) The story is basically "Witness lies to FBI". People aren't going to take to the streets over that. If the DoJ still go after Assange, that would be worse, but I still don't think we'd see much protesting for 1 more main reason: 4) Americans have more than enough sources of outrage much closer to home. If something is going to overcome Americans' "outrage fatique", it isn't going to be recanted testimony in the prosecution of a supposed co-conspirator for an incident that occurred over 10 years ago. It's not even an issue of partisan politics: Whether you're to the right or the left, you probably have more immediate things to be angry about than this.
lonelysnake 5y ago
18th century ideal of western democracy was exclusionary, genocidal, pro slavery, misogynist, etc. We've come a long way.
tunesmith 5y ago
> exposed corruption in your favorite political party Yeah, if this is intended to mean the democrats, I'm going to need an unbiased source on that. If there was actual corruption in the Democratic Party uncovered in these leaks, I don't remember hearing anything about it. I remember hearing a lot of partisan and daffy trash about pizza parlors and a DNC conspiracy against Sanders, though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pacifist 5y ago
  4 or 5 of the top people in the DNC including DWS resigned because of revelations of corruption in the emails. How did you miss that?
  - jude- 5y ago
    What did they resign for, exactly? IIRC it was a nothingburger -- it was because they privately said mean things about Bernie Sanders, and not much else.
    - nickysielicki 5y ago
      https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/d... > Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who stepped in as DNC chair last year in the wake of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, published an excerpt of her upcoming book in Politico in which she disclosed the details of a fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign reached in August 2015. > “The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote in the story under the headline “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC.” > Brazile added of the deal: “[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.” > During the 2016 election, Sanders allies alleged that the DNC did not act as a neutral arbiter of the Democratic primary, favoring Clinton in its selection of debate times and fundraising. Their suspicions were only heightened when leaked emails published by WikiLeaks, and now reported to have been hacked by the Russians, appeared to show DNC staffers deriding Sanders and plotting ways to help Clinton. The accusations grew so heated that Wasserman Schultz resigned, which is when Brazile took over. > But now Brazile has provided explosive new evidence for the initial allegations. "The shocking news here is this idea they were exerting a level of control over DNC affairs that we didn't know about," said Kenneth Pennington, who served as digital director for the Sanders campaign. "If you had told me this during the primary — that they're using the joint fundraising committee to get veto power over DNC functions — I would have called you a conspiracy nut." The rigging of the primaries was bad, but that's only half the story. The bigger reason for the resignations probably had a lot to do with what they said about their donors and the way that people pretty clearly were buying federal appointments. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/leaks-show-dnc-asked-white-house-to-reward-donors-with-slots-on-boards-and-commissions/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/leaks-show-dnc-aske... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/here-are-the-latest-most-damaging-things-in-the-dncs-leaked-emails/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/he...
tootie 5y ago
It's absolutely his own doing though. He targeted Hillary in the 2016 election and supported Trump. Then told everyone the DNC leak came from Seth Rich. He is absolutely not a good person or an ethical journalist regardless of whether or not he's guilty of any crimes.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
The rape allegations managed to flip a lot of people. Turned out to be shaky and manipulated but the reputation damage was done.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Those rape accusations have soured me on "official" rape narratives. As in, I believe women, but I don't believe anyone speaking on behalf of women. When I heard about Matt Gaetz's thing, my first question was "what did he do recently to piss off the war pigs?"
- shapefrog 5y ago
  Tbh he and his ego (and probably mental problems) did it to himself. He hid out in the UK to aviod questioning in sweden because they were going to ship him off to america. This would be a legitimate concern if the UK were not the worlds most agressive at shipping people off to the US to 'face justice'. He was actually at far greater danger in the UK, which he had to know because he leaked the UK role in the extrodinary rendition programme, than pretty much anywhere else in the world.
root_axis 5y ago
> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. This is because Wikileaks is objectively partisan. Do you recall the leaked conversations between Trump Jr and Wikileaks where they suggest coordinating a controlled "leak" of Trump's tax returns in order to bolster their own credibility? In wikileak's own words: "if we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality". This doesn't invalidate the content of the leaked e-mails, but it does demonstrate that their goals were partisan in nature.
Tycho 5y ago
Is it really a surprise though: the mainstream media is totally permeated with “former” intelligence operatives turned pundits, run major stories based on “anonymous sources” within the intelligence community, etc. They are telling people what to think and it is working.
- rufusroflpunch 5y ago
  American mainstream media is completely sold out out to American intelligence. They are indistinguishable now.
ideamotor 5y ago
Not buying your bullshit.
irrational 5y ago
> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? I’ve been following the story since the Slashdot days. Why am I not outraged? Why am I not protesting? It’s certainly doesn’t have to do with some political party that I don’t belong to. I fundamentally feel that Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. They feel more like an anarchists organization than some sort of journalists organization to me. I certainly do not feel outraged nor inclined to protest.
- seventytwo 5y ago
  This is it. It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government. The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    >It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government Why not? >The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange. I don't want what I view as the US backed media outlets in jail either. This isn't irony, disliking something and state prosecution are drastically different.
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  Unfortunately, most of the replies I got are stuck debating Assange and his character. But it's wholly irrelevant if Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. This story is about the behavior of the unelected officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI that are making things up out of thin air by trading leniency for false statements with known criminals. If he's committed a crime, charge him with it and give him his day in court. If he hasn't -- like in the case of this story where he never asked anyone to commit any crimes against the Icelandic government, don't make charges up. I can't believe this even needs to be said. That's what you should be outraged about, and you don't have to like Assange or Wikileaks to be outraged about that.
plandis 5y ago
> Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade in jail indefinitely on fictitious charges Which country claims they want indefinite detention for Assange? Are you claiming that all of the DoJs indictment is fabricated? Have you actually read through the governments published information?
boublepop 5y ago
> purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. Purely because both parties needed some way of turning the people against Wikileaks. TFTFY. People act like it was just “randomly people decided he wasn’t sympathetic” all the while we had the government ov the most powerful nation doing everything in their power both legal and illegal to undermine him. It’s not accidental that you feel like Assange and “might be a bad character” it’s be design and the people behind it must have so much worse stories hidden away than the ones we already know of to go to this much trouble to kill freedom of information.
Taniwha 5y ago
I think it's hard to tell whether Wikileaks was a convenient patsy in this process being played to the best advantage of one side (likely the Russians) over others, or whether they actively played along either because of partisan bias or because they hoped to get more dirt to publish. The thing is we all used to love WL for their active transparency and independence, but when they started playing these games (or allowing themselves to be played) they lost that respect
deviledeggs 5y ago
Wikileaks is a hyper partisan Russian proxy. They straight up refuse to release information that doesn't support their agenda. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... > Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade Really? A lot of stuff they leaked wasn't even that damaging, like Hillary's emails, because it just showed that the DNC wasn't really up to anything. But they made sure to release them at the most politically damaging moment possible. While they sit on other documents for years. Trump's closest advisors had direct contact with WikiLeaks, which doesn't make sense unless they were collaborating https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-planned-wikileaks-dump-tried-acquire-clinton-emails-mueller-n996081 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign... > The special counsel’s office determined that hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta were transmitted from a Russian-government proxy, Guccifer 2.0, to WikiLeaks on July 14, 2016. > The report does not resolve the question of coordination between the campaign and WikiLeaks’ timed release of hacked emails from Podesta. The report does note, however, that the hacked emails were released on Oct. 7, the same day as the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was heard making vulgar boasts about women. > The report adds “the release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign.” Yeah, definitely not partisan
evgodmunsdottir 5y ago
Most Americans don't even know where Australia is, let alone whom one of its citizens is...

chronicsunshine 5y ago

I think you are mischaracterizing why Julian Assange has lost support. He has not lost support because of exposing corruption in any political parties, he's lost support because its become clear he works with Russian intelligence services. People have leaked data on Russian corruption to WikiLeaks, which went unpublished. His leaks coincide with what is politically favorable to Russia, not with making all information free to the world. To the downvoters: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia-ties https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia... Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you disagree with me?

ecshafer 5y ago
If what he says is true, why does it matter that its politically favorable to Russia? As a liberal democracy we should strive to be more moral and upstanding, hiding those things for politics is the opposite of that.
- chronicsunshine 5y ago
  Because he specifically refuses to leak information about Russia. He doesn't care about making society more moral or upstanding. He is a pawn of the Russian government to damage their opponents.
  - lajamerr 5y ago
    Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a country make it more resilient in the future against bigger attacks? So even if he is helping Russia spread their propaganda isn't it making us stronger to find this out and plan against it instead of an all out information war? How does Russia win here.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Doesn't leaking information that exposes flaws of a country make it more resilient in the future against bigger attacks? Not necessarily, obviously. For instance: if someone leaks information to an enemy about a fatal flaw in their nation's military equipment, and the enemy nation attacks and exploits that flaw to victory; all the leak did was make their country weaker and more vulnerable. I'm not aware of any improvements in the resiliency of the US in response to Assange's leaks, except that the Democratic party has better opsec now (e.g. uses 2FA and has anti-phishing drills). They may have locked down their secret-level networks in response to Manning's activities, but that could arguably make the US less resilient.
    - the_optimist 5y ago
      Of course it does. In addition, it should true the course of the country to its ideals. Clearly there are some who wish to hide information from our own citizens, lest public opinion root them out of their sinecures.
  - SXX 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I dont have much of an opinion on the topic of Assange himself since years after in his "embassy prison" he certainly went nuts in a way. It's not the same person you could talk with on IRC years ago. He was also pretty much okay back in 2011 durign his iterview with Eric Schmidt. Yet here is the idea for your mind: all around the world including Russia political leaders of authoritarian countries trying to sell bullshit like every single problem their regime has is caused by some US conspiracy. They'll of course tell you that all independent journalist and activists work for US and spread only lies. Does Snowden going for asylum in Russia make what he exposed unimportant? What if famous Iraq civilians killing video would be provided not by someone from US, but Russian FSB or Islaeli Mossad? Will it make people less dead? So obviously any whistleblower or journalist can be biased and some country will benefit more than other. There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for whom - only facts are important.
tomp 5y ago
What’s the point of leaking “Russian corruption”? It’s not like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia is even a semi-democracy.
- chronicsunshine 5y ago
  The hope that the Russian people can free themselves of Putin's tyranny?
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > It’s not like anyone still holds the opinion that Russia is even a semi-democracy. There's a reason they still conduct elections in Russia, to give the appearance of democracy. Yes, people still think it's a democracy… as long as their favourite leader is in power.
  - atomashpolskiy 5y ago
    Man... Every Soviet schoolboy knows that the existence of an electoral system does not necessitate a democracy. It's not Russia that is your existential problem in US, it's education.
  - sensanaty 5y ago
    There are precisely 0 slavs alive today who trust their government or politicians. We've been fucked over by our own governments for going on nearly a century at this point, and there's no reality in which anyone other than the old and senile believes elections are anything other than a scam. In Serbia's last elections, Vucic falsified COVID numbers on the days leading up to voting day so that his party could convince his voterbase, the elderly, to go out in droves to vote. After the election he stopped the reporting of false numbers and put the country into a lockdown because to no one's surprise, the numbers were sky high. There were massive protests because of the lockdown measures, where police brutality ran rampant, all on Vucic's orders. Expired tear gas was used on unarmed civilians protesting peacefully, cops in full riot gear were beating the crap out of unarmed protesters and chasing them down the streets. He goes around poorer regions of the country and bribes people with sandwiches and basic supplies like wheat and flower for a vote. His son is good friends with famous, high profile criminals, and Vucic himself was buddy-buddy with a bunch of the former guard, more than half of which either have been, or are currently standing trial for war crimes committed during the Yugo wars. This list goes on and on, and similar things happen in most balkan and eastern european country. Nobody sane trusts a single thing these "people" do, and people definitely don't trust elections, so what ends up happening is that people just don't see the point in participating in an obvious scam. None of us actually believe we're living in a democracy, we're all aware it's a farcical facade that dictators put up.
Lammy 5y ago
Scary reds! Be afraid!! Russia needs America and China to be able to scare their own populace into giving up more and more of their own personal freedoms, just like America needs China and Russia to do the same. No one country could “rule the world” in a way that wouldn’t immediately galvanize worldwide opposition. Capital claims no nationality, so nationality is one of the ways the very rich divide and conquer the populace at large. It’s a fake idea in an age of global instant communication when people have literally bought citizenships.
the_optimist 5y ago
The link says they didn't want to republish already public information. That makes sense. Why would they publish public information?
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Public information in a language none of their staff speaks. People say Wikileaks is wrong that all the information offered to them was public, but none of the published chat logs show anyone explaining to Wikileaks that there are unpublished leaks in there.
yariik 5y ago
This blaming Russia thing is way beyond ridiculous now. WHAT "Russian corruption" are you talking about? Is it the same as the "Russian interference in the US elections," i.e. something that has never existed in reality and was just invented by the US mass media for their purposes?
- myko 5y ago
  The Mueller Report (https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download) details Russian interference in the 2016 election and led to 12 Russians being indicted as part of that. Is the report wrong?
  - pbak 5y ago
    Yes, mostly. The 12 Russians, and the 3 Russian companies all hired attorneys to represent them and counter sue for defamation. When their attorney went in front of the judge, all charges were dropped by the Justice Dept, refusing document discovery "on issues of national security". It's all political reality television, from both the right and the left. It's like a cable TV wrestling match. I've had trouble finding English language sources giving the full story with a 2 min search. They all just cite the dropping of charges against the companies. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-companies-mueller_n_5e7013c2c5b6eab7793b0036 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-com... Here's an RT link with a little more info, for whatever that's worth: https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dropped/ https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dro... . You might have better luck looking for a little longer.
    - myko 5y ago
      Those charges were dropped by Barr who did his best to quash the entire Mueller investigation and largely succeeded. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-russian-interference.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-... """ In January 2019, the federal government accused Concord of violating a protective court order designed to safeguard information shared among lawyers on the case. Prosecutors said a trove of nonclassified information they had turned over to Concord’s defense team had turned up on a website the previous October. A message on a newly created Twitter account read: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” """ RT's claim that these groups are not responsible for these troll farms is not credible. The claim that these organizations were attempting to use the court case to get detailed information on how they were investigated however, is.
oh_sigh 5y ago
You're upset that wikileaks didn't report on a leak that was known for 2 years by major western media organizations, and was later forwarded to them? Despite their longstanding policy to not report on leaks that have already been reported on elsewhere?
- justshowpost 5y ago
  This one is much more hot and... not at Wikileaks as well. https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveillance/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveill...
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get accused of being agents of Russia. It's a ridiculously and simplistically too convenient argument and therefore attractive to anyone with the slightest bias against 'information I don't like' (or a tendency towards being a 'shoot the messenger' type of person). That Assange / Wikileaks don't follow the same bias as the local US media, doesn't mean he's / they're an enemy agent. Thinking of the world in black and white like that is dangerously reductive.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > One niggle I have is that both Snowden and Assange get accused of being agents of Russia. I've never seen that about Snowden except in regard to activities after taking io residence in Russia, and even then its usually more “Snowden is subject to influence by Russia” more than “...an agent of Russia”. Assange is a different story, but the both the uncontroversial facts and the controversial detailed claims on which a conclusion about being a Russian agent might rest about Assange are different.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Not to mention the chilling effect that comes with that sentiment. It reminds me of the Rick Rubin style of creating "fuck the system" propaganda. Only complain about the parts of the system that don't actively benefit me if you want to keep your record deal.
  - jjulius 5y ago
    I would actually be curious to hear more about that perspective on Rick Rubin. A very cursory Google doesn't come up with much, and I'll dig a bit harder soon, but if you want to elaborate or link to something about this, I'd very much appreciate it!
    - iratewizard 5y ago
      An article I read years ago blasted him for nepotism and using typical unethical manipulation tactics to get ahead. Unfortunately, ever since Amit Singha left Google, half of the things I look for are no longer accessible.
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
It's still a joke. Even if he is Russian (which is a very convenient boogieman), the fact is he DID expose corruption in US parties. He may be partisan, he may not be revealing damaging info about Russia. But if the information is true, so what? Shouldn't we be doing something about the corruption he revealed regardless of why he revealed it? I can't believe all you have to do is say the R-word and suddenly people are just willing to ignore everything he says, its ridiculous. Like uhh enemies of the US are more likely to expose damaging information about them as compared to allies, no shit?
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  What corruption? Some staffers saying mean things about Sanders? Invitations to attend avante garde art shows?
  - pacifist 5y ago
    4 or 5 people at the top of the DNC resigned because of saying mean things about Sanders and invitations to avante garde art shows? That's not how it works.
    - myko 5y ago
      It really is though. The appearance of impropriety is still important to some folks though, so when private emails (that didn't lead to rigging an election, something the DNC has no power to do anyway) that show that folks in the DNC favored one candidate over the other, they resigned. This isn't the same thing as admitting the impossible (that the DNC somehow got HRC ~4 million more votes)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dordoka 5y ago
Open your eyes...
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you disagree with me? From your second link "These incidents don’t prove, as some have alleged, that Assange is some kind of paid Russian agent, or that WikiLeaks is a Russian front organization" Your first link was addressed elsewhere. I can't personally blame Assange for liking Russia more than the country that has spent a decade making his life a living hell. Even if Russia's motives are obviously impure, they are more helpful to furthering Assange's goal.
bardan 5y ago
A link between Wikileaks and the Russian government has never been substantiated. The "didn't publish Russian leaks" smear is one of many. The "Russian leaks" that Wikileaks declined were sent to them during the DNC/Podesta/Hillary email release when their resources were obviously stretched. The "leaks" were mostly public, were deemed unimportant and were declined. As we know that didn't stop whoever anonymously submitted these documents from immediately using this to orchestrate a smear campaign against Wikileaks with full compliance of the media (funny timing during the DNC email release, wonder who it could have been?) A little later the "leaks" were fully published elsewhere and nobody cared (but let's not kid ourselves that anybody who claimed to care actually cared at all).
- bsd44 5y ago
  I agree. It seems to me that even after the allegations against Assange were proven wrong, people still refuse to accept his innocence in this case and try to find something else to blame him for. As when you're proven wrong in an argument and then try to defend your ignorance with a fallacy; "yeah you're right about this problem, but you still smoke weed and voted for Trump".

mancerayder 5y ago

> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. There are many instances of this, and the corporate media does this on both sides of the aisle. Of course, there's one dominant one at the moment. There's a heavy-handed corporate media attempt to squeeze out compliance - from biased stories (that are later proven false) from mainstream outlets as the most serious, to the cover of Vogue as the most silly. What's disturbing is that if you point this out to people, what happens? Ah hah, they discovered someone on the other side of the political aisle. Their enemies. Again, this is true for both parties. Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary, categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as something with its own set of properties to explore.

illusivesaint 5y ago
>Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary, categorical view of issues instead of looking at each issue as something with its own set of properties to explore. I would slightly disagree. Americans are typically very moderate and I believe made to not understand the concepts of politics, when there's capitalism and liberalism involved it's just too complex to understand. The biggest and obviously evidence of this is the apathy toward voting, why even be engaged in something that isn't felt to be a democratic system? How many feel marginalized and the kinds of communities that say so. As impacftul Assange's work may be, the shakers and movers of the world are doing a good job at damage control sounds like.
archsurface 5y ago
"Americans have been trained to have a strictly binary" - not just Americans, but that aside, isn't that inevitable when parties compete for power - allegiances form to gain numbers, and mergers take places until there are only two competitors left with no groups left to merge with. The inevitable strategic optimum.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Hard to avoid. Some issues have little to no middle ground. Woman’s rights vs killing unborn children does not leave much moral middle ground.

TeeMassive 5y ago

> "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'? The "it's a private company they can do what they want" argument often thrown by those who claims to "fight fascism" is just plainly ignorant of how fascism and Nazism got and stayed into power in the first place. There were other news websites talking about this but they are algorithmically supplanted by "mainstream" news sites. For example it has gotten so bad that searching for the SpaceX's stream on YouTube yielded an entire page or results from "mainstream" outlets before the actual stream, even if the keywords were explicitly just about SpaceX. Censorship never yielded net positive results.

nickysielicki 5y ago
It happens on more sites than YouTube now. For example, do a normal google search for "assange ntlm xmpp manning" (without quotes) and you'll see a mere 8 results from: - justice.gov - forbes - abcnews - reuters - washingtonpost - newyorker - pbs - apnews Google needs to cut this shit out. The most appalling part is they don't even put a warning on the results to tell you that you typed a no-no keyword and that they've filtered the results. You might be lead to believe that only these news agencies wrote about it -- that the heterodox opinions don't even exist. It's completely Orwellian.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  The first result is your comment. Yikes.

iammisc 5y ago

> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? Unfortunately, in general, the republican base is not going to protest anything, preferring to settle things legally and in court. The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to believe is apparently worse than the civil war. And yes, the sentiment to free assange is currently very common on the right.

mullingitover 5y ago
> The main exception was Jan 6, which we've been taught to believe is apparently worse than the civil war. Taught? We don't need anyone to teach what happened, it was on national television. We have perfectly good eyes and ears. The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  Nor fly a traitorous flag in its halls.
- iammisc 5y ago
  I'm not justifying Jan 6. I'm merely pointing out that it was an expression of frustration and that it's not anywhere close to the civil war, as some politicians have put it. I think the same is true of other domestic terror violence we've seen. The Civil War is still the worst domestic insurrection in history. The two are not even comparable. That this comparison is even humored shows a major problem. > The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol. I'm sorry you're being ridiculous. The US capitol has been bombed and parts destroyed by domestic terror groups in living memory. Those attacks were way worse than this. US congressmen have been shot at by radicalized domestic terrorists as well. Considering (1) Jan 6 resulted in minimal property destruction (certainly no structural damage) and (2) no politician killed (the only person dying directly as a result being Ashli Babbett, a rioter), it's safe to say that the bombings were worse (due to worse property destruction) and the shootings were worse (due to imminent potential of death to the victims) Perhaps you have some learning to do.

Voloskaya 5y ago

> "[...] support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party" Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign of one party, and in concordance with the other party. Wikileaks became partisan, not the public.

easterncalculus 5y ago
This is the same problem that Comey had after writing the letter to Congress on October 28th. Like it or not it would have looked a LOT worse if either of them had waited until after the election.
- tikiman163 5y ago
  The RNC was also hacked by the same people as the DNC, yet we're supposed to believe the Democrats emails which ultimately proved to contain nothing of major importance were the ones that needed releasing? Come wasn't writing a press release, he has doing his job and keeping Congress informed and a Republican congressman then chose to misrepresent the content and meaning of Comey's letter for the political gain of his own party. These two situations are only the same in that they both benefitted the Republican party by misrepresenting the facts in order to make the public think the Democrats were guilty of a major political scandal. The difference is that Comey didn't know that Congressman would do what he did, where as there is convincing evidence that Assange knew about the RNC hack and emails, possibly even had access to them and said nothing. Comey got used, but Assange knowingly helped Russians spread disinformation.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    If Republicans had done anything like the DNC's kneecapping of Bernie during the 2016 campaign, it would have come out by now, emails or not.
    - WoahNoun 5y ago

stonogo 5y ago

There are a lot of us who don't consider Assange a journalist, but some foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing secrets to injure the enemies of Russia. To call him "the most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade" is frankly laughable. I'm not sure how you can claim the charges are fictitious unless you haven't read them. The charging document for the superseding indictment is fairly straightforward and relatively short. What problems do you have with it?

ben_w 5y ago
As it is possible to be biased and misleading while still only saying true things, I think it’s possible to be both "the most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade"[0] and “foreign actor with a website collecting and publishing secrets to injure the enemies of Russia”. Likewise, I am of the opinion that the attempted extradition and prosecution for the sex offences would not have happened if he hadn’t upset the wrong people, while also being of the opinion that he did the crimes. [0] That’s said, I wouldn’t describe him that way. Plenty of other journalists doing fine work.

iso1631 5y ago

Assange maintained that he was fine in the UK, but worried about Sweden because it would be easier for the US to extradite from Sweden. That's quite simply a load of bollocks. The UK has been pally with the US, was involved in Iraq with the US, and willing to extradite far more than Sweden in the past.

monocasa 5y ago
Sweden has previously been happy to circumvent their own legal process and simply assist CIA operatives in kidnapping Swedish residents right off of the street in the middle of the night. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_and_Muhammad_al-Zery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an... The UK doesn't even typically allow rendition flights to even refuel, and absolutely requires all extraditions to go through the strict legal process. I think it's mainly a pride thing about not rolling over and letting a former colony run amok extrajudicially in your homeland. I can see why he didn't want to step on Swedish soil if he got a hint of US led shenanigans.
himinlomax 5y ago
The main difference is that the UK judicial system is much more open than Sweden's, and he explicitly stated that he feared being held incommunicado in that country.

wavefunction 5y ago

I'm just curious why Assange and Wikileaks have failed to release the GOP emails. Despite the lofty rhetoric about being journalists they seem to have "picked a side" in terms of their stance towards the US Government. That's my criticism of both Assange and Wikileaks, they seem to have an agenda beyond their stated one.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Where is your evidence that Wikileaks ever had access to the RNC emails?
- wavefunction 5y ago
  You're right, I mis-posted that. I should have mentioned this instead: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Why is him preferring the GOP an issue? He's free to have his personal opinions and it's easy to understand why he wouldn't want Clinton to be president as she, probably as a joke, called for him to be drone striked. And Assange seems like a misogynistic antisemite from what I've seen posted by Lee. Yet even he agrees that the US's attack is based solely on disliking his journalistic endeavors, and is an attack on a free press.
    - shapefrog 5y ago
      He definately doesnt have what you say he has, if he did that would be a problem. Ok so he does have it, but it is totally not a problem.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        By their own admission, "You're right, I mis-posted that," the link they posted was not evidence that Wikileaks was offered the RNC emails. They changed their argument, so I addressed their new one

leephillips 5y ago

Hard hitting journalist, or reckless narcissist who is either duped by or working for the Russians, and who thinks the Jews are out to get him?

the_optimist 5y ago
Seems like you have a lot invested in personal smears. What motivates you?

api 5y ago

> they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. No, that would have been fine. The problem is that Assange himself is clearly partisan. I doubt they would have leaked anything damaging to Trump. There are chat logs attesting to the fact that they timed the leaks to influence the election. Murky secretive organizations can't be trusted, period. It doesn't matter what they are or whether they are "alternative" or "mainstream." I don't see why I should trust Wikileaks any more than I trust the CIA or the FSB. There's no transparency. I have no way of knowing if Assange has an agenda or what that agenda might be. We need an entirely algorithmic / protocol driven leaker platform that verifiably removes human beings from the loop or at least chains their hands when it comes to when to leak things and whether to leak them. (For the record I am not a fan of either of the 2016 candidates. They were both awful, but Trump was worse largely because of the ideological fascists that surrounded and backed him. Trump himself is not ideological, just a power hungry narcissist who will ride whatever horse will take him further.)

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the_optimist 5y ago
Obviously publishing cryptographically verified source data is not what intel agencies do. Wikileaks did that.
sensanaty 5y ago
I find it curious that this line of thinking has only recently cropped up. Assange and by extension WikiLeaks has literally never claimed that they weren't partisans. Their whole mission statement is basically leaking things when they would make the biggest impact, and they've pretty much always done their big info dumps at opportune times when they would make the biggest noise. Should they have waited on the emails until after the election? Why? Why does it matter who or what Assange sides with, if the things he releases are 100% true? I don't remember seeing these same criticisms back in 2010 during the cable leaks, curious that this is only an issue now, after the light is being shined on the democrats rather than the republicans for a change...

tw04 5y ago

> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. It became political when it became obvious that Assange was working with Russia. One party seems to care more about Russian money than their own country. https://dearmrputin.substack.com/p/wikileaks-russian-ties-julian-assanges-forgotten-trips-to-moscow https://dearmrputin.substack.com/p/wikileaks-russian-ties-ju... https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-july-4-in-moscow https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626664156/gop-senators-spend-...

GenerocUsername 5y ago
"Obvious" is in the eye of the beholder. Can you describe why THIS smear campaign is valid while the others are crumbling? If you were a dystopic too-powerful media/state isn't this exactly how you would discredit your dissenters?
- tw04 5y ago
  I guess you'd need to provide something more than a blanket "that's a smear Campaign" in response to a 4 page article with citations of all the connections to Russia and their intelligence agencies.
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    You're going to need to provide some actual evidence rather than a bunch of rambling babble from conspiracy theorists.
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the_optimist 5y ago
The only "evidence" of Russia working with Wikileaks is the wholehearted assurance of the FBI/CIA. You're serious in crackpot land, or you're intentionally posting disinformation.

Gibbon1 5y ago

> "Fascism" You're not allowed to mention that ideology here. Except in a distant historical context.

0xcde4c3db 5y ago

> "Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'? I'd say that the focus on party loyalty is more a feature of authoritarian parties in general and not fascism specifically. If there's any single tenet that can be called central to fascism (a debatable premise), it's probably the idea that "the nation" can reattain its former glory by forcefully purging various forms of "degeneracy" and thereby becoming "pure".

hnick 5y ago
Maybe we need new words? Someone had to invent the word "fascism" once upon a time too. The problem with using established words that almost fit is that people quibble over semantics.

wnevets 5y ago

> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption No, they became a partisan issue because Putin's intelligence apparatus took control of WikiLeaks

jude- 5y ago

> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? Why should anyone trust Julian Assange in the first place? Specifically, why should anyone trust that Julian Assange dumps all the data Wikileaks receives, when it receives it, instead of selectively disclosing whatever Julian wants whenever it suits him? The latter behavior, which has borne out, constitutes the actions of someone with a hidden agenda who should not be trusted. Like, what has Julian done to earn our trust, and demonstrate that he is being completely forthright and transparent?

tikiman163 5y ago

It's quite interesting you should mention political affiliation and facism. Did you know that when the DNC emails were hacked and released via WikiLeaks as if they were exposing a major scandal that the RNC had also been hacked by the same people, yet no emails were released at the time? Considering just how much information about Republicans meeting with corporate donors and just how directly that results in Republican legislation, it's quite hard to believe the DNC emails which exposed essentially nothing were the only thing worth exposing. Assange facilitated this partisan assault on the American political system. Do you have any idea how much Assange and WikiLeaks has cooperated/collaborated with Russian agents? The US 2016 elections were a shit show in no small part due to WikiLeaks releasing only the Democrats emails. Zero Republican emails were leaked, and the most damning part of this is that the released Democrat emails were completely innocuous, but when a website called WikiLeaks releases a huge bulk of emails they've labeled as suspicious or scandalous, stupid people jump to unsupported conclusions and you end up with unqualified politicians undermining democracy, and we're not the only country this happened to. Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of participating in Russian attempts to spread disinformation in support of the Russian's agenda at a bare minimum. Assange might not be guilty of being the kind of traitor we traditionally think of, but he's still a dangerous individual that will help overthrow legitimate governments by misrepresenting illegal activities as exposing scandals, none of which actually exist. So tell me again, how exactly is Julian Assange the single most hard hitting journalist of the last decade? Very little of what he claimed turned out to be accurate, and he participated in withholding information from the public which actually did have a chance of exposing serious political corruption. I might also remind you that despite essentially being a partisan shill for the Republicans (greatly helping them win in 2014 and 2016), they attempted to put him in jail as well. The problem isn't that a lot of Democrat rank and file want to see Assange in jail, it's that way to many Republican rank and file haven't seen him for the liar and yellow journalist he his.

honkdaddy 5y ago
>released Democrat emails were completely innocuous I was under the impression people lost their jobs due to the contents of some of the emails and that they definitely weren't completely innocuous.

ineedasername 5y ago

Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is Most American's probably don't actually know much about him. They may have encountered a few stories over the years-- in many cases just the headlines. There wouldn't be outrage & protests for a few reasons: 1) The news stories people have read would frequently have been about him helping hack US computers, often with the added context of his rape prosecution, so there wouldn't be a lot of automatic sympathy. 2) The testimony retraction is only a few days old, so not much time to get upset especially without greater media coverage. 3) The story is basically "Witness lies to FBI". People aren't going to take to the streets over that. If the DoJ still go after Assange, that would be worse, but I still don't think we'd see much protesting for 1 more main reason: 4) Americans have more than enough sources of outrage much closer to home. If something is going to overcome Americans' "outrage fatique", it isn't going to be recanted testimony in the prosecution of a supposed co-conspirator for an incident that occurred over 10 years ago. It's not even an issue of partisan politics: Whether you're to the right or the left, you probably have more immediate things to be angry about than this.

lonelysnake 5y ago

18th century ideal of western democracy was exclusionary, genocidal, pro slavery, misogynist, etc. We've come a long way.

tunesmith 5y ago

> exposed corruption in your favorite political party Yeah, if this is intended to mean the democrats, I'm going to need an unbiased source on that. If there was actual corruption in the Democratic Party uncovered in these leaks, I don't remember hearing anything about it. I remember hearing a lot of partisan and daffy trash about pizza parlors and a DNC conspiracy against Sanders, though.

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pacifist 5y ago
4 or 5 of the top people in the DNC including DWS resigned because of revelations of corruption in the emails. How did you miss that?
- jude- 5y ago
  What did they resign for, exactly? IIRC it was a nothingburger -- it was because they privately said mean things about Bernie Sanders, and not much else.
  - nickysielicki 5y ago
    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/d... > Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who stepped in as DNC chair last year in the wake of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, published an excerpt of her upcoming book in Politico in which she disclosed the details of a fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign reached in August 2015. > “The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote in the story under the headline “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC.” > Brazile added of the deal: “[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.” > During the 2016 election, Sanders allies alleged that the DNC did not act as a neutral arbiter of the Democratic primary, favoring Clinton in its selection of debate times and fundraising. Their suspicions were only heightened when leaked emails published by WikiLeaks, and now reported to have been hacked by the Russians, appeared to show DNC staffers deriding Sanders and plotting ways to help Clinton. The accusations grew so heated that Wasserman Schultz resigned, which is when Brazile took over. > But now Brazile has provided explosive new evidence for the initial allegations. "The shocking news here is this idea they were exerting a level of control over DNC affairs that we didn't know about," said Kenneth Pennington, who served as digital director for the Sanders campaign. "If you had told me this during the primary — that they're using the joint fundraising committee to get veto power over DNC functions — I would have called you a conspiracy nut." The rigging of the primaries was bad, but that's only half the story. The bigger reason for the resignations probably had a lot to do with what they said about their donors and the way that people pretty clearly were buying federal appointments. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/leaks-show-dnc-asked-white-house-to-reward-donors-with-slots-on-boards-and-commissions/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/leaks-show-dnc-aske... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/here-are-the-latest-most-damaging-things-in-the-dncs-leaked-emails/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/he...

tootie 5y ago

It's absolutely his own doing though. He targeted Hillary in the 2016 election and supported Trump. Then told everyone the DNC leak came from Seth Rich. He is absolutely not a good person or an ethical journalist regardless of whether or not he's guilty of any crimes.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

The rape allegations managed to flip a lot of people. Turned out to be shaky and manipulated but the reputation damage was done.

jessaustin 5y ago
Those rape accusations have soured me on "official" rape narratives. As in, I believe women, but I don't believe anyone speaking on behalf of women. When I heard about Matt Gaetz's thing, my first question was "what did he do recently to piss off the war pigs?"
shapefrog 5y ago
Tbh he and his ego (and probably mental problems) did it to himself. He hid out in the UK to aviod questioning in sweden because they were going to ship him off to america. This would be a legitimate concern if the UK were not the worlds most agressive at shipping people off to the US to 'face justice'. He was actually at far greater danger in the UK, which he had to know because he leaked the UK role in the extrodinary rendition programme, than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

root_axis 5y ago

> One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. This is because Wikileaks is objectively partisan. Do you recall the leaked conversations between Trump Jr and Wikileaks where they suggest coordinating a controlled "leak" of Trump's tax returns in order to bolster their own credibility? In wikileak's own words: "if we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality". This doesn't invalidate the content of the leaked e-mails, but it does demonstrate that their goals were partisan in nature.

Tycho 5y ago

Is it really a surprise though: the mainstream media is totally permeated with “former” intelligence operatives turned pundits, run major stories based on “anonymous sources” within the intelligence community, etc. They are telling people what to think and it is working.

rufusroflpunch 5y ago
American mainstream media is completely sold out out to American intelligence. They are indistinguishable now.

ideamotor 5y ago

Not buying your bullshit.

irrational 5y ago

> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is? I’ve been following the story since the Slashdot days. Why am I not outraged? Why am I not protesting? It’s certainly doesn’t have to do with some political party that I don’t belong to. I fundamentally feel that Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. They feel more like an anarchists organization than some sort of journalists organization to me. I certainly do not feel outraged nor inclined to protest.

seventytwo 5y ago
This is it. It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government. The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  >It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government Why not? >The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange. I don't want what I view as the US backed media outlets in jail either. This isn't irony, disliking something and state prosecution are drastically different.
nickysielicki 5y ago
Unfortunately, most of the replies I got are stuck debating Assange and his character. But it's wholly irrelevant if Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. This story is about the behavior of the unelected officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI that are making things up out of thin air by trading leniency for false statements with known criminals. If he's committed a crime, charge him with it and give him his day in court. If he hasn't -- like in the case of this story where he never asked anyone to commit any crimes against the Icelandic government, don't make charges up. I can't believe this even needs to be said. That's what you should be outraged about, and you don't have to like Assange or Wikileaks to be outraged about that.

plandis 5y ago

> Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade in jail indefinitely on fictitious charges Which country claims they want indefinite detention for Assange? Are you claiming that all of the DoJs indictment is fabricated? Have you actually read through the governments published information?

boublepop 5y ago

> purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party. Purely because both parties needed some way of turning the people against Wikileaks. TFTFY. People act like it was just “randomly people decided he wasn’t sympathetic” all the while we had the government ov the most powerful nation doing everything in their power both legal and illegal to undermine him. It’s not accidental that you feel like Assange and “might be a bad character” it’s be design and the people behind it must have so much worse stories hidden away than the ones we already know of to go to this much trouble to kill freedom of information.

Taniwha 5y ago

I think it's hard to tell whether Wikileaks was a convenient patsy in this process being played to the best advantage of one side (likely the Russians) over others, or whether they actively played along either because of partisan bias or because they hoped to get more dirt to publish. The thing is we all used to love WL for their active transparency and independence, but when they started playing these games (or allowing themselves to be played) they lost that respect

deviledeggs 5y ago

Wikileaks is a hyper partisan Russian proxy. They straight up refuse to release information that doesn't support their agenda. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... > Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade Really? A lot of stuff they leaked wasn't even that damaging, like Hillary's emails, because it just showed that the DNC wasn't really up to anything. But they made sure to release them at the most politically damaging moment possible. While they sit on other documents for years. Trump's closest advisors had direct contact with WikiLeaks, which doesn't make sense unless they were collaborating https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-planned-wikileaks-dump-tried-acquire-clinton-emails-mueller-n996081 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign... > The special counsel’s office determined that hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta were transmitted from a Russian-government proxy, Guccifer 2.0, to WikiLeaks on July 14, 2016. > The report does not resolve the question of coordination between the campaign and WikiLeaks’ timed release of hacked emails from Podesta. The report does note, however, that the hacked emails were released on Oct. 7, the same day as the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was heard making vulgar boasts about women. > The report adds “the release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign.” Yeah, definitely not partisan

evgodmunsdottir 5y ago

Most Americans don't even know where Australia is, let alone whom one of its citizens is...