Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russian Spy
wikileaks.org
wikileaks.org
Ironically, the former actually serves as an authentication of the material itself.
As Tyrion Lannister would say, "when you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say".
Edit: to clear up confusion, by 'source' I mean wikileaks and Julian Asssange, how it seems they're pulling out all the stops to try and discredit him, with 'they' being whoever is afraid of what he has to leak.
the way they could do this correctly is to contradict assange's claims with evidence... do that, and if their evidence is valid, assange's claims collapse.
but they aren't doing that; they can't do that.
here is the recipe upcoming from the clinton campaign:
1. attack source
2. escalate attacks on source
3. deny claims of source categorically
4. deny context of facts that source puts forth
5. deny specifics of facts that source puts forth
6. deny involvement of high level people
7. throw scapegoats
8. deny witting involvement of high level people
9. admit item numbers 3 through 8, sequentially, as separate steps
10. media "loses attention" of the story before reaching the point where high level people admit that the allegations of the source are correct
this cycle will take a while, maybe a year or so.
The original dailykoss article cites a report, removed by the UN for defamatory reasons, that only exists now on google cache.
toddandclare.com registered name also matches:
equal-pac.org (2014) (Other equalpac website is Hillary backed)
Other Todds (?) but still interesting: http://viewdns.info/reversewhois/?q=Todd+Hammond
PC SECURITIES Scam
Has same address as domainsitestats.com/ratings-reviews/toddandclare.com/
Address:10685-B Hazelhurst Dr. #10138 Houston, TX 77043 USA
All very very shady.
"Toddandclare" is, rather blatantly, a front company for some organization. There is no doubt of this fact. They probably want to be able to claim that "a UN conspiracy is silencing them", but their attempt to set this up is so ludicrous, I'm having trouble imagining who would even think of such a thing.
And probably want you to go to Wikileaks.com and look for embarrassing stuff about Hillary Clinton instead.
You've got a one presidential candidate claiming that the other is Bad Guy because he might have ties to The Russians.
It sounds like something from McCarthyism, or from the height of the cold war.
And now the mainstream attempts to discredit what is effectively a whistleblowing service seem to center around The Russians.
It's creepy.
Something's definitely fishy about the resurgence of the anti-Russia propaganda in the United States.
I recently found a copy of The Soviet Achievement (1967) [1] in a library's discarded booksale. From the jacket:
"... This is a study of the deliberate creation of a new industrial society from a relatively backward, underdeveloped and basically rural country. Mr. Nettl illustrates the shifting balance between theory and practice, the attempt to apply Marxist ideology to practical problems, and the evolution of those distinctively Soviet solutions which have made the USSR one of the two dominating world powers. ..."
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=z81BAAAAIAAJ
My impression is that the Soviets were never the villains that they were portrayed to be in the West. They knew they were behind, couldn't keep up with the US, and were quite afraid of western efforts to subjugate them.
I like Scott Adams' take on 'blaming the Russians':
When Clinton’s surrogates respond to questions about
Wikileaks by saying the Russians are behind it, that’s an
acknowledgment of guilt. Guilty people almost always
question the source of the information first. Innocent
people start with a clear denial, or sometimes confusion
as to why the question is being asked.
> "My impression is that the Soviets were never the villains that they were portrayed to be in the West. They knew they were behind, couldn't keep up with the US, and were quite afraid of western efforts to subjugate them."
Well, the Stalin government killed millions of people, had massive propaganda campaigns, and was rife with corruption. They certainly felt there was an existential threat, as did the US and other western nations, but that's not surprising in that sort of political environment.
Were they villains? Well, not necessarily. Undoubtedly there were a lot of officials who truly believed in the cause they were supporting, but there was also a lot of self-serving abuse of power that started at the top and worked its way down, at the expense of the citizens (to a larger and more extreme extent than what happens in the West).
TL;DR very few people are truly evil but it's hard to imagine the soviets as good guys either; the same is true of the current Russian government, which is very apparently corrupt and frequently abuses its power and, lately, starts wars it knows it can get away with, so there's a very tangible sense that Russia's current motives are bad for the majority of people, including Russian citizens.
And while it's ironic to watch the media that could not have been more supportive of Wikileaks when the reveals focused on Bush-era scandals (at least some of which deserved the attention as abuses) now discovering that Assange is as self-interested as they come now that his dumps concern Clinton, who they're clearly much more supportive of than Trump (justifiably), but he's been known to despise Hillary for a long time now, and the recent dumps have been far less carefully redacted this time around. Wikileaks should be a whistleblowing service. Unfortunately, Assange won't let it be that simple.
Perhaps this sounds harsh, but consider the possibility that US intervention in conflicts among and within other sovereign nations may do more harm than good. "Team America: World Police" is a fun movie. It may not be the best of foreign policy goals.
I would suggest to you that the world is more complicated than the soundbites vomited to you by the as of lately, largely discredited media and Obama administration.
The accusations against Assad change as necessary. It used to be Sarin, until that was disproved, for example. Bottom line, they just really want Syria to be destroyed like Iraq and Libya were, and will make up accusations as necessary. Did he drop some barrel bombs (home made bombs)? Probably. Did some of them hit civilians? Probably. The US has killed it's share of civilians also, hasn't it?
You don't know anything, but you want a nuclear war with Russia. Seems appropriate.
EDIT: just want clarify that I don't necessarily disagree that Iraq and Libya were disasters, and that the Syrian situation seems to have devolved into a no good options situation, but that in no way excuses Assad's human rights violations.
Am I defending he may have killed civilians while bombing rebels? Well, not defending, but putting in perspective, since we kill civilians almost daily.
Am I saying that you have been lied to by an administration that destroyed Libya and wants nothing more than to do the same to Syria? Yes, I am.
1) It's a war. There is a fog of war where accurate information is not always available.
2) It's a common tactic to lie about your enemy to garner more money and weapons from your US sugar daddy.
3) The US government itself has an agenda to topple Syria for it's own reasons and those of it's Sunni ally, Saudi Arabia.
But hey, let's go to war with Russia based on unproven accusations. I wonder if you're old enough to remember Iraq, and the lies we were told about that? In 2003, we were told a lot of lies to get the population behind the destruction of Iraq. That was 13 years ago, so you were probably in high school or grade school. But it does happen that our government lies to the populous when it wants to destroy a country.
Nobody said you need to know every event in Syria to form an opinion. You just need to know about a single, proven event that supports the war hysteria narrative you have been fed.
Do you?
The US government paid out a pathetic $6000 to families of the dead civilians. I'm guessing that didn't quite break the bank.
If Assad's regime falls, the Al-Queda and ISIS affiliated groups move in. I'm not sure America wants that. Do we want that? Hard to say!
Saudi Arabia supports the Assad regime falling because the Assad regime is not Sunni.
If we set up a no fly zone in Syria, we are then in direct conflict with Russia's forces. It's no longer a proxy war.
I hope there's a way to be against US intervention in Syria(if only because of grim realpolitik reasons) and simultaneously not defend Assad.
I fully recognize that the Assad regime is terrible(I can pummel you with New Yorker articles). I don't quite believe the Assad people used poison gas, I think the jury is still out on that.
Iran and Syria support Hezbollah because they are unhappy with Israels expansion. Lots of people are unhappy with Israels expansion. How many UN resolutions have condemned Israel for it's actions? You count them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_con...
We are Israels big buddy, so we give scary names to the countries that support Hezbollah. But at the same time, we support rebel groups all over the world. Hell, we're supporting rebel groups in Syria right now. We also supported them in Libya.
Don't let the fact that Syria is on a list because of our unhealthy relationship with Israel, make you forget that we belong on that same list ourselves.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Sponsors_of_Terrorism#Sy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6mARUrPtXk&feature=youtu.be...
"There’s been a lot of misquoting of me and WikiLeaks publications. In this particular case, the misquoting has to do with that we intend, or I intend, to harm Hillary Clinton or that I don’t like Hillary Clinton. All those are false. They come about as a result it seems of this campaign and those who are trying to personalize our publications."
The jews suffered heavily from this in the early 20th century/late 19th century, they were constantly used by others for justifications of power grabs or used as distractions. Before that "Vikings" were heavily used as a constant abstract threat by the English government in the 13-15th century. The church used it to recruit and crown used it to justify authority. In public announcements and oratory they would often warn the population about the threat of savage invasion, spreading fake stories of previous invasions, even though there were zero significant viking events in those times. Much like how anti-semites spread a fake story of Jewish consipracy to take over the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of...
Russia is flawed, corrupt, has some backwards policies and cultural norms (see: homosexuality), and does pose some danger in a foreign policy sense, but largely they're a heavily weakened state with a far bigger bark than bite. Any serious conflict with them would turn nuclear fast so any large war is extremely unlikely. But for the people in question bark is all that's need to exploit the situation.
For example if you're an influential person with deep PR connections and embarassing papers come out, you can make the narrative about the Russia rather than the leaks. 75-90% of the recent coverage of Wikileaks has been about Russia instead of the leaks.
The US military dreams of having a modern military/navy like Russia as an adversary. The military industrial complex is hugely incentivized to promote this narrative and push it heavily in the press.
NATO recently released a statement warning of a repeat of the Ukraine incursion in places like Estonia/Latvia... even though the Ukranian thing was entirely a result of exploiting the crisis and near lawlessness that was already happening there. Russia didn't just randomly decide to invade a sovereign state. So it's so incredibly highly unlikely they'd invade stable NATO counties because they happen to have minor Russian populations.
NATO and other security organizations which are seemingly out of date in a world of modern terrorism warfare are also continuing to pump up the threat to justify their existence (NATO only THIS year opened a counter-terrorism department).
There's lots of other examples of people exaggerating the Russia threat for their own ends but this comment is long enough as it is.
> even though the Ukranian thing was entirely a result of exploiting the crisis and near lawlessness that was already happening there.
"We were just protecting Russian citizens" right?
I'm not saying they didn't do those things or were justified. But that was a very different scenario as Ukraine was very unstable.
The Syrian stuff is a whole other beast. US partners like Saudis and Qatar are supporting some pretty awful stuff in Yemen and Syria too. Even the supposedly moderate rebels the US is backing were apparently extremely hostile to US soldiers who deployed in a village recently, calling them invader devils. Aleppo is bad but if the rebels took the save exit to other towns as the UN chief offered then the horror the civilians stuck there are facing would end. The cease fire failed so I'm not sure what their plan is as the US isn't going to double down. Unless they are betting on Clinton being a war hawk.
Clinton's famous "reset button" was an effort to try to create an opening to reverse that (or, more cynically, merely to be seen as making such an effort.)
It all reads like the lowest budget attempt at framing someone possible.
Trump - If he wins, it's big. If he loses his brand is immensely toxic and no business/brand will want to do business with him. He'll have to go the Glenn Beck route and create his own media network and try to sustain and leverage the alt-right movement.
Alex Jones - Getting a lot more mainstream penetration in my view. He'll be selling a lot more seeds and prepper gear.
Julian Assange - Got a new lease on life after he started fading from relevance, especially after Snowden outscooped anything Wikileaks did.
Hillary Clinton - President of the United States
In any event, if she's elected, she will have 4 years to drop below 30%, its an easy goal.
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/31/a-... [1]http://www.pollingreport.com/BushFav.htm
It should be impossible for her to win re-election in four years. But it also should have been impossible for her to win this year. All the Republicans had to do was run somebody moderately competent. But...
4 years is a long time in politics. GWB was struggling in early 2001: his "compassionate conservatism" platform had been revealed for the religious fundamentalist welfare-slaughter program it always was, he was under fire for making backroom deals with energy-industry cronies and other serial polluters, was clearly stuttering in public appearances, and half the country thought he was just a rich brat who had cheated his way into the White House.
Then 9/11 happened and GWB became Fearless Leader. For a few years his power had literally no boundaries. He walked into re-election.
Hillary will need a bit of luck, but nothing that cannot be solved with a well-timed spat with North Korea or equivalent.
EDIT: uh, why the downvotes?
Second, one of the candidates in this election has previously stated that Assange should be killed.
To me that moves the motivation from founder's grudge to self-defense.
Is it really biased to expose lies and wrongdoings of a person who called for you to be executed without trial?
Claim does not hold up.
It seems highly likely that a Trump administration would give him immunity or a pardon.
Chomsky publishes his research and backs his arguments with innumerable facts, the man is practically a walking encyclopedia of US foreign policy, human rights violations and hypocrisy over the last 100 years.
The difference between an academic and someone with an 'agenda' is that one is interested in the truth and publishes cited analyses, the other is only motivated to impress a particular opinion.
Chomsky is voted by the global community of academics as a valued member of that community. Against that shadow, your assertions are valueless.
meaningless. what you mean to say is "something I disagree with"
As if the usual short-attention-span media and population will ever care about it. It'll be maybe until a couple of months after Clinton's inauguration and no one gives a f... about Trump any more. There's always something more newsworthy than the misery of a failed presidential candidate.
The only exception will be the GOP: they're in for a couple very nasty years, divided between a couple remaining "ordinary" conservatives, the Trump/Tea Party extreme-right-wing movement which surely won't be retreating even if Trump loses, and a society that is more and more moving towards the left end of the political scale - just look at marijuana, homosexual marriage, abortions... society is on a way towards progress and you just can't sell abortions and homosexual marriages to a party consisting of (extreme) Christians and right-wings. No one will vote for them any more.
The GOP will be shattered, the only problem is that there's no one to fill the gap yet.
By their volume and tone in shouting on the Internet, yes, for sure - but in numbers? I seriously doubt that the alt-right is capable of maintaining a nationwide powerful political party.
If there's one person that stands to gain most from a reported attempt at a hatchet job on Assange that's far too silly to have any basis in truth, it's probably a person who would really, really like you to (i) visit Wikileaks.com, preferably before November 9th (ii) not believe a word of all these - actually quite possibly not true - rumours floating around about Russians being prime movers behind Wikileaks.com (iii) not think too much about that interview he just postponed again because obviously allegations of sexual impropriety against Julian Assange are just part of a fiendishly stupid conspiracy.
Funnily enough in the last couple of weeks this person has also had his internet cut by a state actor... wait for next round of stories.... not the state actor you think... wait for next round of stories.... just kidding, it was American influence all along, and had to cancel a widely publicised balcony announcement because of apparently unanticipated security concerns.
(I can actually think of a second person that might benefit from people visiting Wikileaks before November 9th and people tending to suspect that all allegations of sexual impropriety should be treated as politically motivated until proven otherwise, but I think Ockham's razor and his campaign team's preference for blunter instruments rules that one out...)
It looks like Ecuador have also just published a press release about cutting his internet connection that's perfectly timed to distract from this too. So Clinton's in no way losing out here. She benefits from people believing that Assange is a pedo and no-one hears about part where it's an incompetent frameup. The taint from this will stick to anything Assange says about her in future.
There's no reason to do a dumb attempt at stinging a has-been like Assange. Literally all it could do is hurt her (if it backfired and people took Assange seriously).
http://election.princeton.edu/todays-electoral-vote-histogra...
Hanlon's Razor says that if it looks like some dumb idiot ("small business owner") who thought he could hire Assange for his TV commercial and then got his jimmies rustled that Assange said no then it probably is that instead of an international conspiracy. But even if we're moving into conspiracy territory, Clinton doesn't have the motive here.
Just because a few Clinton supporters on Twitter who really don't like Assange think the allegation is worth crowing about and the Daily Kos has no journalistic standards and will print anything if it's a scoop doesn't mean Clinton is anything but a little worse off if this news cycle is about Assange.
First post of this to hw news that I saw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736247
I noticed this post because it was pretty shitty source for such strong accusations.
Seriously, what the hell dating site claims to be "the first dating site ever to be integrated in a United Nations program."?
"The UN Declaration on Human Rights talks about citizens being able to live without state-level interference, yet here the UN is today, delisting and blocking a small company because we criticized their support for Julian Assange"
Which is a little odd form of argument, not only because it's an unusually highbrow line for a dating agency to take, but also because it doesn't make sense as the UN isn't really "state-level" and the UNDHR doesn't use that word either.
Almost like the person drafting it had interference by "state-level actors" on the brain. Wonder if anyone tweeted something which also used that rather rather arcane term to their 3.7M followers recently?
First, the backstory on this bizarre entanglement: https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-bizarre-story-o...
Second, who is the mystery Google engineer tied into this?
Really.
From https://www.toddandclare.com/datinglife/online-dating/united...
> The UN wants to have its headquarters in our country, but at the same time, doesn’t want to acknowledge its own American member’s constitutional rights, like freedom of speech.
Quite a political statement coming from a mere dating site :/
And
> Like the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s misguided support for a fugitive rapist
Well he has had that allegation hanging over him well before T&C started signing deals with him they are now trying to sue him over.
Kinda making me think its not? Don't the 3-letters routinely buy or start companies like this to use for their own purposes?
https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/final_report_t_c_17_oct_2016-2...
Does sound pretty sus.
But I was also interested in the quote they have from Noam Chomsky on the KATIA project...
“Very worthwhile project.” —Noam Chomsky on KATIA, 5/11/16
Can't find him mentioning it or anything like it online. Just circular references and none that lead back to Chomsky.
All very odd indeed.
I'll say it again: just move all those old 80s cyberpunk novels into the non-fiction section. Pretty soon we'll have Rastas in space.
seriously, if the allegations were crazy, they'd just say "nope, and here are the facts that are correct". all hands on deck for discrediting him speaks volumes about what is really going on.
the pedophilia smear is very predictable, also... i believe assange himself may have predicted this years ago.