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> "[...] support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party" Wikileaks re

> "[...] 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
      How exactly did the DNC "kneecap" Bernie's campaign?
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        The following list of links literally took one minute on DDG. However, you should know this already, since these reports about her anti-democratic shenanigans were the only reason that Clinton lost to Trump. [EDIT:] The whole premise of this thread is that there must have been RNC emails that would have harmed Trump's campaign as much as the DNC emails harmed Clinton's. One could simultaneously feel that the DNC emails shouldn't have harmed Clinton's campaign, but one can't simultaneously feel that the emails did and did not harm it. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-dnc-primary-rigged-bernie-sanders-a8034716.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496/leaked-democratic-party-emails-show-members-tried-to-undercut-sanders https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496... https://time.com/4422715/bernie-sanders-dnc-apology-leaked-emails/ https://time.com/4422715/bernie-sanders-dnc-apology-leaked-e... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_n_579381fbe4b02d5d5ed1d157 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/debbie-wasserman-schultz-booed-dnc-fbi-email-hack https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/debbie-wasse... https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-robbed-sanders-dnc-brazile-699421 https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-robbed-sanders-dnc-brazile-...
        myko 5y ago
        Nothing in here supports the claim that the DNC kneecapped Bernie. All it shows is that Democrats heavily favored HRC, who also happened to receive many more votes than Bernie (who I voted for) in the primary. This gives more insight into the nuance lacking from statements insinuating the only reason Bernie lost to HRC was because the DNC made it happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/04/no-the-dnc-didnt-rig-the-democratic-primary-for-hillary-clinton/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/0... The biggest issue with wikileaks release is that the media failed to report on it properly.
  - PicassoCTs 5y ago
    You shouldn't argue for prosecution of a biased reporter then, but for a similar good reporter biased on your side, a 2nd wikileaks.
- dexterdog 5y ago
  You mean like how they just happened to announce the vaccine the day after the election?
  - jtgeibel 5y ago
    The election was on Tuesday November 3rd, and Pfizer announced their results on Monday November 9th. They were only notified of the results the previous day. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz... > Dr. Jansen said she learned of the results from the outside panel of experts shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, and that the timing was not influenced by the election. “We have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves — no politics,” she said. Edit: It would be nice if the people downvoting this could explain why you disagree.
slg 5y ago
Assange has also stated that he had documents related to the Trump campaign that he wouldn't publish because they were no "more controversial... than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day"[1]. Meanwhile they posted thousands of totally mundane emails from Democrats that included things like office lunch orders and automatic out of office replies that were not controversial and served no public good. Wikileaks clearly had a different standard for publishing documents that hurt Democrats and documents that hurt Republicans. [1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293453-assange-wikileaks-trump-info-no-worse-than-him https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...
- the_optimist 5y ago
  We saw this same idea earlier as though it merits analysis. It doesn't. You being right or not has no bearing on the story at hand.
  - slg 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you consider "the story at hand", but this conversation was kicked off with "One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue". The explanation for why support of Assange became partisan is because Assange's actions started having partisan bias. That is extremely relevant to the conversation at hand in my book.
    - the_optimist 5y ago
      This meme you keep trying to make happen is a logical fallacy called “begging the question.” petitio principii. It is not explanatory. Why don’t you just outright say, “I think they are partisan because I suspect there are things they could have published that they chose not to because of partisanship.” Instead you’re trying this dance about evidence that you cannot see and reasoning on others’ behalf that you cannot know.
      - slg 5y ago
pugets 5y ago
The public is partisan if it dislikes damnatory but true information when the timing of it is inconvenient to a political party. It's sort of similar to the Brett Kavanaugh ordeal. Going from memory, the first accuser told her story in private to a Congresswoman in the summer of 2018, I believe it was in July. That politician sat on the information for the rest of July, the entirety of August, and the first few weeks of September. Only when it was closer to the midterm elections and the confirmation process did the Democrats launch their attack against Kavanaugh's character. They urged Congress to delay the vote until after the midterms, which they were hoping to win in a landslide, so that they could deny Kavanaugh a seat. In either case, we have politically-minded people deliberately timing the release of information. As regular voters, we have to decide what's more important: what the information reveals, or how it is being weaponized.
- dTal 5y ago
  The point is that journalists are not supposed to be "politically minded", especially when they're leaking damaging confidential information. Revealing information that hurts one party, but deliberately withholding information that hurts the other, is lying by omission and downgrades you from "brave whistleblower who needs protection" to "low-life partisan information warrior who deserves to have the book thrown at them".
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    I've read lots about the charges filed against Assange, and "timing his release" was not among them. If you want that to be a law, contact your legislators.
    - afthonos 5y ago
      The first comment on this thread was lamenting that the issue became partisan. The rest explained why. The partisanship is precisely what makes discussing the fairness of the charges and laws difficult. In other words, he isn’t on trial for the timing. But he’s friendless because of it.
leto_ii 5y ago
I think it's fair to imagine that had Wikileaks not published the emails they would have been accused of favoring the democrats. In a highly ideologically polarized climate you can't win.
- 8note 5y ago
  Considering they had and did not publish Republican emails, I'm not sure that would apply. Then, they'd be treating both republicans and Democrats equally. Bad for the libertarians or the greens though
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Didn't they release things against Republicans when they were in power I remember a bomb dropping video that made Republicans against Assange. Not sure what type of equality you need == or ===
mikem170 5y ago
> Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign of one party Do you mean the emails concerning attempts to steal/fix the Democrats primary? Why would wikileaks sit on those emails? Would you prefer they waited to release them until the primary was over?
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > Why would wikileaks sit on those emails? They did sit on them, until a timed moment.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    > They did sit on them, until a timed moment. I looked it up, and apprently this could be true, assuming that wikileaks were given the emails ahead of time. Some of those emails were first posted to a DCLeaks website, then Wikileaks announced they'd be posting some, then DCLeaks posted more a few weeks later, then Wikileaks posted some, then Wikileaks posted more just before the election. It makes sense to time these things for impact, assuming you want to punish corruption, and that's the motivation behind these kinds of leaks, right? People seem to focus on the part Assange and the Russians played in this instead of the actual corruption - how Bernie Sanders and millions of his supporters were screwed by Clinton and the DNC. I don't think it's partisan to expose the truth. To do otherwise serves those in power at the expense of the general public.
    - deviledeggs 5y ago
      > I looked it up, and apprently this could be true It is true. One of the findings from the Mueller report identified the very day that the emails were sent from Russian intelligence to WikiLeaks
      - mikem170 5y ago
        I believe it. I just don't see the big deal, given the fact that Clinton and the DNC were exposed trying to steal an election. That's why this happened. Assange and the Russians didn't screw Bernie Sanders. Truth is truth, right?
propogandist 5y ago
are you suggesting that corruption should have been ignored and such people should be in power? Wikileaks did the right thing, else imagine what they would be doing now. Also, who killed Epstein?
makeitdouble 5y ago
If journalists that timed their articles for maximum effect or didn’t willingly impact both parties the same way are to be thrown at the lions, I think we’ll all end in a bad place. A way to look at this is that we should have more Assange and Wikileaks, and get leaks of problematic facts from all over the boards. If you feel Wikileaks was biased, it means we need different shades of it, and to get there we first need at least one shade of it. And currently we’re not even there.
Thorentis 5y ago
Releasing information about a political candidate during an election is exactly the right time to release it. People should have as much information as possible when trying to make an informed decision when voting. Trying to make this into a partisan issue is just shifting the goal posts.
- deviledeggs 5y ago
  Disagree. Releasing unverified slog about your opponent days before an election when there's no time to find out if the claims are even true is the definition of a smear campaign.
  - jerkstate 5y ago
    The emails contain DKIM keys, you can verify them yourself if you like
    - deviledeggs 5y ago
      They're also completely out of context and dumped on the media so close to election that nobody had a chance to go through them. When they did, they found nothing wrong. But it didn't stop the pure FUD cloud around them from affecting Hillary's reputation. When something is leaked, people automatically assume it's bad. Republicans rode that high through election day. The emails got dumped the same day extremely damaging "grab em by the pussy" video evidence of Trump was release. The whole thing screams political hitjob. It's like when Trump's lawyer magically got his political rival's son's laptop and paraded it around, even though nothing damaging was on it. Republicans are resorting to banana republic style hacking and theft against their political enemies, which should terrify everyone
      - Thorentis 5y ago
        Completely out of context? It is not Wikileaks job to provide context.
anonymouswacker 5y ago
The best thing to do would have been to hold onto this information (to not affect the sacred election), and release it when it lacked any relevance whatsoever. ... Or perhaps your perspective is partisan.
mleonhard 5y ago
Assange clearly stated his purpose for starting Wikileaks [0, 1]: to make people in government fear that their corruption and incompetence will be exposed and therefore encourage them to act properly and carefully. Consistent with that purpose, Wikileaks timed the information release for maximum negative impact on the offender. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endg... [1] https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf
- harywilke 5y ago
  He might have had those reasons at the beginning, but by the time the 2016 elections came around, he was, wittingly or not, a stooge with a grudge. He exposed himself as the corrupt, incompetent political hack when he went spouting conspiracy theories abuot Seth Rich.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    I don't think you actually refuted the parents suggestion that timing the release alongside an election would have maximum negative consequences, and that that would be in line with their stated objectives. Further I think this is what the root post was alluding to about attacking "your favorite political party."
  - slg 5y ago
    >when he went spouting conspiracy theories abuot Seth Rich. I have noticed that the people who support Assange never want to talk about how Assange implied that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source which resulted in repeated harassment of the family of a murder victim. Assange knew Rich wasn't the source of the DNC leaks because Assange was still in contact with the source after Rich was murdered. There is no journalistic justification for that behavior.
    - mleonhard 5y ago
      Your comment seems to imply that I support Assange. Please read my comment again, carefully. You will notice that I said nothing about whether Assange or his actions are good or not. I tried only to refute the parent's claim that Wikileaks acted with partisanship when it released the emails. "Simple people talk about people. Common people talk about events. Highly intelligent people talk about ideas." Government transparency is necessary to prevent a never-ending dark age of fascism and suffering. Organizations like Wikileaks support democracy and thereby support human progress. Assange is not a nice person and that doesn't matter. Julian Assange started and ran Wikileaks, and thereby contributed massively to the welfare of humanity.
Mizza 5y ago
The idea that journalism shouldn't be "partisan" is a bizarre American fantasy, not an international standard. From day one, Wikileaks had a stated policy of trying to achieve "maximum impact" for their publications. For instance, the same claim is also made at the release of the Afghan War logs in 2011: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wikileaks-files-may-reveal-thousands-war-crimes-2035681.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wikileaks-file...
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Certainly not a US ideal. The only place I have ever seen this talking point echoed is by Democrats explaining why they want Assange to be extrajudicially persecuted by secret intelligence agencies. Wouldn’t at all be surprising if the idea of Wikileaks as a partisan organization started as an CIA/FBI plant in the WaPo.
admax88q 5y ago
Imagine how partisan it would look the other way if they waited until _after_ the election. Just imagine that Clinton won in a landslide and then right afterwards WikiLeaks comes out with the podesta emails saying they waited until after the election to share it so they wouldn't hurt her chances. In a democracy the people have the right to decide which information they care about, it shouldn't be decided for them by the media. WikiLeaks expressly says that they time their releases to get the most coverage. It's why a whistleblower might choose them over other outlets that may publish their story to get minimal coverage of it would hurt the powers that be.
boublepop 5y ago
The idea that this was partisan because it hurt the Democratic party is bizarre. Releasing information will hurt either side without discrimination. You can’t applaud it when it hurts republicans and boo it when it hurts democrats and still claim you support releasing the truth to the public.
klyrs 5y ago
Food for thought... Obama literally ran on a platform of transparency and whistleblower protection. What did he actually do in office? The exact opposite. Did Assange lash out at the Democrats? Yes. Did he throw the first stone? Not even close.
TeeMassive 5y ago
The only opportunity to keep elected officials accountable from a normal citizen point of view is to vote them out; and very damning stories get memory holed from corporate news organizations all the time. Otherwise, as we have seen with multiple hearings and official inquiries, elected and non-elected government officials are immune from consequences. Wikileaks did the right thing timing their release right before people are making their final decision when casting the ballot.

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
    How exactly did the DNC "kneecap" Bernie's campaign?
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      The following list of links literally took one minute on DDG. However, you should know this already, since these reports about her anti-democratic shenanigans were the only reason that Clinton lost to Trump. [EDIT:] The whole premise of this thread is that there must have been RNC emails that would have harmed Trump's campaign as much as the DNC emails harmed Clinton's. One could simultaneously feel that the DNC emails shouldn't have harmed Clinton's campaign, but one can't simultaneously feel that the emails did and did not harm it. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-dnc-primary-rigged-bernie-sanders-a8034716.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496/leaked-democratic-party-emails-show-members-tried-to-undercut-sanders https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496... https://time.com/4422715/bernie-sanders-dnc-apology-leaked-emails/ https://time.com/4422715/bernie-sanders-dnc-apology-leaked-e... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_n_579381fbe4b02d5d5ed1d157 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/debbie-wasserman-schultz-booed-dnc-fbi-email-hack https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/debbie-wasse... https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-robbed-sanders-dnc-brazile-699421 https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-robbed-sanders-dnc-brazile-...
      - myko 5y ago
        Nothing in here supports the claim that the DNC kneecapped Bernie. All it shows is that Democrats heavily favored HRC, who also happened to receive many more votes than Bernie (who I voted for) in the primary. This gives more insight into the nuance lacking from statements insinuating the only reason Bernie lost to HRC was because the DNC made it happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/04/no-the-dnc-didnt-rig-the-democratic-primary-for-hillary-clinton/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/0... The biggest issue with wikileaks release is that the media failed to report on it properly.
- PicassoCTs 5y ago
  You shouldn't argue for prosecution of a biased reporter then, but for a similar good reporter biased on your side, a 2nd wikileaks.
dexterdog 5y ago
You mean like how they just happened to announce the vaccine the day after the election?
- jtgeibel 5y ago
  The election was on Tuesday November 3rd, and Pfizer announced their results on Monday November 9th. They were only notified of the results the previous day. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz... > Dr. Jansen said she learned of the results from the outside panel of experts shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, and that the timing was not influenced by the election. “We have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves — no politics,” she said. Edit: It would be nice if the people downvoting this could explain why you disagree.

slg 5y ago

Assange has also stated that he had documents related to the Trump campaign that he wouldn't publish because they were no "more controversial... than what comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth every second day"[1]. Meanwhile they posted thousands of totally mundane emails from Democrats that included things like office lunch orders and automatic out of office replies that were not controversial and served no public good. Wikileaks clearly had a different standard for publishing documents that hurt Democrats and documents that hurt Republicans. [1] - https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293453-assange-wikileaks-trump-info-no-worse-than-him https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...

the_optimist 5y ago
We saw this same idea earlier as though it merits analysis. It doesn't. You being right or not has no bearing on the story at hand.
- slg 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you consider "the story at hand", but this conversation was kicked off with "One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue". The explanation for why support of Assange became partisan is because Assange's actions started having partisan bias. That is extremely relevant to the conversation at hand in my book.
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    This meme you keep trying to make happen is a logical fallacy called “begging the question.” petitio principii. It is not explanatory. Why don’t you just outright say, “I think they are partisan because I suspect there are things they could have published that they chose not to because of partisanship.” Instead you’re trying this dance about evidence that you cannot see and reasoning on others’ behalf that you cannot know.
    - slg 5y ago

pugets 5y ago

The public is partisan if it dislikes damnatory but true information when the timing of it is inconvenient to a political party. It's sort of similar to the Brett Kavanaugh ordeal. Going from memory, the first accuser told her story in private to a Congresswoman in the summer of 2018, I believe it was in July. That politician sat on the information for the rest of July, the entirety of August, and the first few weeks of September. Only when it was closer to the midterm elections and the confirmation process did the Democrats launch their attack against Kavanaugh's character. They urged Congress to delay the vote until after the midterms, which they were hoping to win in a landslide, so that they could deny Kavanaugh a seat. In either case, we have politically-minded people deliberately timing the release of information. As regular voters, we have to decide what's more important: what the information reveals, or how it is being weaponized.

dTal 5y ago
The point is that journalists are not supposed to be "politically minded", especially when they're leaking damaging confidential information. Revealing information that hurts one party, but deliberately withholding information that hurts the other, is lying by omission and downgrades you from "brave whistleblower who needs protection" to "low-life partisan information warrior who deserves to have the book thrown at them".
- jessaustin 5y ago
  I've read lots about the charges filed against Assange, and "timing his release" was not among them. If you want that to be a law, contact your legislators.
  - afthonos 5y ago
    The first comment on this thread was lamenting that the issue became partisan. The rest explained why. The partisanship is precisely what makes discussing the fairness of the charges and laws difficult. In other words, he isn’t on trial for the timing. But he’s friendless because of it.

leto_ii 5y ago

I think it's fair to imagine that had Wikileaks not published the emails they would have been accused of favoring the democrats. In a highly ideologically polarized climate you can't win.

8note 5y ago
Considering they had and did not publish Republican emails, I'm not sure that would apply. Then, they'd be treating both republicans and Democrats equally. Bad for the libertarians or the greens though
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Didn't they release things against Republicans when they were in power I remember a bomb dropping video that made Republicans against Assange. Not sure what type of equality you need == or ===

mikem170 5y ago

> Wikileaks released all of Clinton's/DNC/Podesta email at a timing chosen specifically to inflict damage on the campaign of one party Do you mean the emails concerning attempts to steal/fix the Democrats primary? Why would wikileaks sit on those emails? Would you prefer they waited to release them until the primary was over?

UncleMeat 5y ago
> Why would wikileaks sit on those emails? They did sit on them, until a timed moment.
- mikem170 5y ago
  > They did sit on them, until a timed moment. I looked it up, and apprently this could be true, assuming that wikileaks were given the emails ahead of time. Some of those emails were first posted to a DCLeaks website, then Wikileaks announced they'd be posting some, then DCLeaks posted more a few weeks later, then Wikileaks posted some, then Wikileaks posted more just before the election. It makes sense to time these things for impact, assuming you want to punish corruption, and that's the motivation behind these kinds of leaks, right? People seem to focus on the part Assange and the Russians played in this instead of the actual corruption - how Bernie Sanders and millions of his supporters were screwed by Clinton and the DNC. I don't think it's partisan to expose the truth. To do otherwise serves those in power at the expense of the general public.
  - deviledeggs 5y ago
    > I looked it up, and apprently this could be true It is true. One of the findings from the Mueller report identified the very day that the emails were sent from Russian intelligence to WikiLeaks
    - mikem170 5y ago
      I believe it. I just don't see the big deal, given the fact that Clinton and the DNC were exposed trying to steal an election. That's why this happened. Assange and the Russians didn't screw Bernie Sanders. Truth is truth, right?

propogandist 5y ago

are you suggesting that corruption should have been ignored and such people should be in power? Wikileaks did the right thing, else imagine what they would be doing now. Also, who killed Epstein?

makeitdouble 5y ago

If journalists that timed their articles for maximum effect or didn’t willingly impact both parties the same way are to be thrown at the lions, I think we’ll all end in a bad place. A way to look at this is that we should have more Assange and Wikileaks, and get leaks of problematic facts from all over the boards. If you feel Wikileaks was biased, it means we need different shades of it, and to get there we first need at least one shade of it. And currently we’re not even there.

Thorentis 5y ago

Releasing information about a political candidate during an election is exactly the right time to release it. People should have as much information as possible when trying to make an informed decision when voting. Trying to make this into a partisan issue is just shifting the goal posts.

deviledeggs 5y ago
Disagree. Releasing unverified slog about your opponent days before an election when there's no time to find out if the claims are even true is the definition of a smear campaign.
- jerkstate 5y ago
  The emails contain DKIM keys, you can verify them yourself if you like
  - deviledeggs 5y ago
    They're also completely out of context and dumped on the media so close to election that nobody had a chance to go through them. When they did, they found nothing wrong. But it didn't stop the pure FUD cloud around them from affecting Hillary's reputation. When something is leaked, people automatically assume it's bad. Republicans rode that high through election day. The emails got dumped the same day extremely damaging "grab em by the pussy" video evidence of Trump was release. The whole thing screams political hitjob. It's like when Trump's lawyer magically got his political rival's son's laptop and paraded it around, even though nothing damaging was on it. Republicans are resorting to banana republic style hacking and theft against their political enemies, which should terrify everyone
    - Thorentis 5y ago
      Completely out of context? It is not Wikileaks job to provide context.

anonymouswacker 5y ago

The best thing to do would have been to hold onto this information (to not affect the sacred election), and release it when it lacked any relevance whatsoever. ... Or perhaps your perspective is partisan.

mleonhard 5y ago

Assange clearly stated his purpose for starting Wikileaks [0, 1]: to make people in government fear that their corruption and incompetence will be exposed and therefore encourage them to act properly and carefully. Consistent with that purpose, Wikileaks timed the information release for maximum negative impact on the offender. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endg... [1] https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

harywilke 5y ago
He might have had those reasons at the beginning, but by the time the 2016 elections came around, he was, wittingly or not, a stooge with a grudge. He exposed himself as the corrupt, incompetent political hack when he went spouting conspiracy theories abuot Seth Rich.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I don't think you actually refuted the parents suggestion that timing the release alongside an election would have maximum negative consequences, and that that would be in line with their stated objectives. Further I think this is what the root post was alluding to about attacking "your favorite political party."
- slg 5y ago
  >when he went spouting conspiracy theories abuot Seth Rich. I have noticed that the people who support Assange never want to talk about how Assange implied that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source which resulted in repeated harassment of the family of a murder victim. Assange knew Rich wasn't the source of the DNC leaks because Assange was still in contact with the source after Rich was murdered. There is no journalistic justification for that behavior.
  - mleonhard 5y ago
    Your comment seems to imply that I support Assange. Please read my comment again, carefully. You will notice that I said nothing about whether Assange or his actions are good or not. I tried only to refute the parent's claim that Wikileaks acted with partisanship when it released the emails. "Simple people talk about people. Common people talk about events. Highly intelligent people talk about ideas." Government transparency is necessary to prevent a never-ending dark age of fascism and suffering. Organizations like Wikileaks support democracy and thereby support human progress. Assange is not a nice person and that doesn't matter. Julian Assange started and ran Wikileaks, and thereby contributed massively to the welfare of humanity.

Mizza 5y ago

The idea that journalism shouldn't be "partisan" is a bizarre American fantasy, not an international standard. From day one, Wikileaks had a stated policy of trying to achieve "maximum impact" for their publications. For instance, the same claim is also made at the release of the Afghan War logs in 2011: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wikileaks-files-may-reveal-thousands-war-crimes-2035681.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/wikileaks-file...

the_optimist 5y ago
Certainly not a US ideal. The only place I have ever seen this talking point echoed is by Democrats explaining why they want Assange to be extrajudicially persecuted by secret intelligence agencies. Wouldn’t at all be surprising if the idea of Wikileaks as a partisan organization started as an CIA/FBI plant in the WaPo.

admax88q 5y ago

Imagine how partisan it would look the other way if they waited until _after_ the election. Just imagine that Clinton won in a landslide and then right afterwards WikiLeaks comes out with the podesta emails saying they waited until after the election to share it so they wouldn't hurt her chances. In a democracy the people have the right to decide which information they care about, it shouldn't be decided for them by the media. WikiLeaks expressly says that they time their releases to get the most coverage. It's why a whistleblower might choose them over other outlets that may publish their story to get minimal coverage of it would hurt the powers that be.

boublepop 5y ago

The idea that this was partisan because it hurt the Democratic party is bizarre. Releasing information will hurt either side without discrimination. You can’t applaud it when it hurts republicans and boo it when it hurts democrats and still claim you support releasing the truth to the public.

klyrs 5y ago

Food for thought... Obama literally ran on a platform of transparency and whistleblower protection. What did he actually do in office? The exact opposite. Did Assange lash out at the Democrats? Yes. Did he throw the first stone? Not even close.

TeeMassive 5y ago

The only opportunity to keep elected officials accountable from a normal citizen point of view is to vote them out; and very damning stories get memory holed from corporate news organizations all the time. Otherwise, as we have seen with multiple hearings and official inquiries, elected and non-elected government officials are immune from consequences. Wikileaks did the right thing timing their release right before people are making their final decision when casting the ballot.