What I Learned About Julian Assange While Working Alongside Him
buzzfeed.com
buzzfeed.com
I'm not sure about Americans but I would say the majority of the the world mistrusts the US Government. While I'm not saying Assange doesn't have flaws, this isn't exactly a point in time I would believe anything I read about him, Wikileaks or his character, this is the time for character assassinations.
We also need to keep in-mind (as the article states) the guy is practically in jail, him and other whistle blowers are being seriously screwed over by the US Government, so IMO most of these profile pieces are going to paint a picture of someone who isn't in a great place right now. I often here people complain about the state of Wikileaks, but what do people expect?
On character assassinations, another example I could give right now is Trump, maybe it's just because he is low hanging fruit, but boy is the media giving it to that guy like I've never seen, it's to the point where I've pretty much stopped reading the news in Australia right now because there are just constant trump bashing articles, it feels like the work of "The Ministry of Truth" in 1984. Yeah he is controversial, but is he worthy of so much attention ? From what i understand Hillary is far from flawless also.
To conclude my rant, I'm taking this with a grain of salt :)
http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/23/1-americas-global-image/
Saying anything pro US today will make you a social outcast.
In ten years from now the EU will be run by the far right and you guys wont even be able to visit us out of fear from being attacked by random people on the streets. That's how popular the US foreign policy is.
It will be like visiting the Middle East, only that we have nuclear weapons.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/28/americas-international-i...
The only US war that Germany viewed as legitimate and thus supported was the Afghanistan war of 2001.
Which doesn't change the fact that the US had no business invading Iraq in 2003 and probably should have stayed out of Afghanistan as well, but pretending Europe -- Germany near the top of the list -- had no role in creating the situation there is silly.
That's like some Arabs retarded claim that every evil and barbaric thing they do today is justified because of the Crusades! (even though in reality the Crusades were a defensive move against the Arab invasions and thus absolutely justified but that's a different topic)
Also, I'm not really up on this kind of thing, but 57% seems pretty low for the land of the free?
I don't hear people from anywhere else doing that to be honest.
You don't get many Haitians saying "I'm ashamed of my country" or Russians saying "I'm ashamed to be Russian" It's predominantly a section of Americans who feel that way. I've met Mexicans who have become citizens of the US who still consider themselves "Mexican" in every way --except that they live outside Mexico, while they decry the corruption and lack of opportunity back home --but never ashamed.
The US itself definitely helped to paint this image of being better and more noble than other countries, even other freedom-loving western countries. And now they're falling so far short of that ideal, that it is really embarrassing to everybody who can see what's been happening.
I'm not even American, and I'm ashamed of the US.
Though I can imagine Belgians having been pretty ashamed in 1908.
He is running to be the most powerful political figure in the world...so yes.
The reason I used Trump as an example is because from what I've read and seen of Clinton she doesn't seem much better but is largely ignored in some media outlets in Australia.
The things Trump has done wrong, like the Trump University scam, not paying his contractors, opportunistic bankruptcies to get out of paying his debts, while he still gets to keep his own profits, and the rape case with a 13 year old victim against him, get barely any attention at all. Most of the attention he gets, is about things that he personally has actually said. And that's already bad enough for most people.
I'd certainly like the US to elect more progressive politicians, but that seems unlikely to happen. In any case, Trump is sub-par even for US standards. He should be completely unacceptable, and fortunately even people of his own party are finally starting to see that.
Speaking of that, a weird UN "partner" / extra shady porn site was caught doing something like that just last week with fake CP allegations that got picked up by a few media outlets:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/58o29r/text_summ...
I dare say a lot of people would probably take a similar approach if given the opportunity.
His claim that the rape allegations are a setup by the US make little sense. If the US were to set him up in order to have him extradited from another country Sweden would be far down the list of countries to chose. The terms of Sweden's extradition laws and previous court rulings on extradition cases make it very unlikely the US would be successful in extraditing him.
His behavior strikes me more as that of someone guilty and desperate to avoid punishment. Maybe I am wrong but he could have cleared the whole thing up long ago by returning to Sweden.
He's actually there because he will not be granted assurances he won't be extradited to the US for far more serious charges.
I'm not saying rape charges are not serious by the way, just that these rape charges seem ... odd ... and he will probably get off.
What has the US government done to Assange?
What does anyone mean by "trust the government"? And how does anyone think they could trust Assange more?
It's funny; when the brothers Dulles ran Washington, we were overthrowing governments. But people's trust of the government was at an all-time high. Some of that is just lag but ... what does it mean to "trust the government", anyway?
The Trump example fails on all counts: it's not malicious, he's running for President where character is critical; it's not unjustified, he's a piece of work; he doesn't HAVE a good reputation to begin with, even with his supporters.
As a Canadian observer, I've been gobsmacked by how much of pass Trump has been given for terrible behaviour until very recently.
Though it contains information I didn't know yet, nothing in this article seems out of character for him.
While the US government seriously screwed over Manning and Snowden (and I'd really like to see a pardon for both of them), they haven't actually done anything to Assange. He's only wanted by Sweden for rape. I don't doubt some people in the US want to see him hang, but it's doubtful there's even a good case against him, as he only published information, and didn't personally steal anything. And he didn't do so on US soil or as a US citizen either. (Though it's true that recent US governments haven't been overly concerned with the rule of law.)
On Donald: the media is mostly giving him a lot of free publicity. The worst things about him are coming out of his own mouth. He's worthy of so much attention because he's running for president. Clinton is hardly a saint, but her actual crimes and misconduct are rare and minor in comparison to those of Donald. There are certainly a lot of accusations flying about, but they've been investigated to death (excessively so, in the case of Benghazi), and little to nothing stuck.
Except as a practitioner, Trump is hardly a noteworthy example of character assassination. Bad press sometimes is a result of unfavorable facts.
This assumes a false dichotomy. Wikileaks was never not a bedroom operation - that's the very core component of the "information revolution" the author is pining for. A young queer kid in Boston stole some very shocking videos from his IT job and gave them to a man in a chat room, who published them online. That's all it takes to change the world now.
If anything, all of WikiLeaks' problems come from trying to stray from this model.
> "Building a network of aligned journalists and political allies would have increased visibility, attracted more leaks with localized impact, and made it much harder to shut down discussion of contents with "this was stolen", as the Democrats are now doing with complicity of much of the US media."
What you're describing is called "starting a newspaper." This happens all the time. The Intercept is a good example of what you're talking about, there are hundreds of others. BuzzFeed, HuffPo, Drudge, take your pick. It's not the same thing. I can explain the difference if you'd like me to.
Our media is like a sieve, only instead of finding the unusual and challenging thinkers it weeds them out and retains the unthinking dross whose only ambition is to join the establishment and kick back.
And what's the implied better alternative, anyway? When Wikileaks does a data dump, most people aren't poring over it all night, it's usually people in the same media you decry who bring important revelations to mass attention. Giving them a head start to potentially write a great story doesn't seem like something that should be wildly controversial.
When Wikileaks receives a data dump, it verifies and looks through the data, determines whether they can make a splash with it, spends weeks or months hyping the release while formatting and indexing the raw data, then releases it along with a flurry of tweets highlighting items that Assange views as most damaging to the target organization.
Where that goes wrong is not the logistics, it's the publicity model. With the DNC leaks, they released massive numbers of emails, forcing journalists to slog through at the same time as the DNC put out statements decrying theft and blaming Russia. Sure, @wikileaks might quickly tweet out some highlights, but they're all hot soundbites that mostly get retweeted by Trump fans, not compelling narratives. And that doesn't happen at all for non-English releases like AKP.
You say I'm proposing a newspaper-like model. A newspaper verifies and looks through the data, looks for a specific narrative to report on, collects background information and comments, and publishes one or more stories that they believe are good for the public. They don't typically work closely with other newspapers or release raw data to the public.
This isn't what Wikileaks is about. If someone with data wants to give it to a group that will use and spin it a certain way, as you say there are plenty of newspapers out there. Wikileaks presents itself as the choice for someone who hacked data from an organization outside their home country, or otherwise doesn't know who can report on it or who to trust.
So I'll try rephrasing what I want. A better Wikileaks focuses on its core competencies of securely receiving, verifying, and formatting large leaks. It works with newspapers instead of snarking at them on Twitter, and allows them to create some compelling, broadly relevant narratives before publishing all the data. It's effective. Collateral Murder got huge coverage because it was one video with one clear angle. Cablegate worked because the release was initially restricted to newspapers, allowing the stories to precede the blanket rebuttals and put large parts of the press on Wikileaks' side. Wikileaks should have moved to build on Cablegate instead of moving away from that release model. Instead, according to the article, Assange decided to control everything himself, mistaking misalignment of priorities with certain outlets for an all-encompassing conspiracy. Now much of the US media is parroting the PR line of a political party while the rest play catch-up and mostly deal in soundbites. Whatever the DNC hacker's motives, the impact is far less than I think it could have been.
Lenin is a great example, and the most illustrative for me because I spent so much time studying him. The man was factionalistic to the point of absurdity. Always he was dreaming of a new epithet to throw: economism, leftism, opportunism, etc. But because of this he insulated a radical minority and made them disloyal to anything but the ideology he was using to direct their political action. And in the end it worked.
Steve Jobs did a similar thing, but I'm sure I don't have to explain that one here.
While I have an idea of what you mean, I'd reexamine that conclusion. It worked for a while. IMO, the Soviet system wasn't sustainable until Khrushchev - Beria and Stalin were constantly trying to figure out when the other was going to murder them.
I think the pathology in play for Lenin and Stalin was akin to eliminationism on a smaller scale - once someone became "othered", they were pretty much destined for one behind the ear.
Sort of. They started as an organization whose site was designed to provide anonymity with the promise they had lots of people to process the stories and protect sources. That's already different than just randomly publishing something online with arbitrary site, maintainers, terms, etc. It's a narrow start. They were totally ignored, though.
Then, someone on the inside of a large bank bought into their claims after they did a lot of promotional work. That leak did real damage. This created a PR effect boosting them into consciousness of many parties. The highest-profile guy promising to be expert on anonymity, hacking, protecting sources, etc convinced that Boston boy to deliver documents to him. He published them to significant effect although I don't know about changing the world as America is still screwing up Middle East, people in power stayed in power, no convictions for proven fraud, and so on. That guy... later woman... did get put in prison, though. Organization got destroyed by U.S. banking elite when it was foolish enough to think it could target a major bank here without consequences. Turns out cash fuels Internet revolutionaries as much as the bad guys and cutting it off plus legal pursuit was all it took. Only still publishing because he was offered diplomatic protection in an embassy plus his opponents have little imagination.
So, the situation is much more complex than your post suggests with most people just publishing stuff on the Internet failing to get change and easily shutdown. The amount of misinformation that benefits establishment spreading the same way dwarfs anything activists are doing with recent elections showing establishment is doing great on social media keeping people fighting over two, dirty candidates. Conclusion is that Wikileaks' unique circumstances led to its significant leaks that had questionable effect before it was decimated by a simple funding block at banking level. And that was supposedly the greatest success story of anonymous, leaking organizations.
Gives me high hopes let me tell you...
I honestly feel that being suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the most notorious person in the world at the time put Assange in a position he was not physically nor mentally equipped to deal with, and everything that has happened since then is a combination of not being able to deal with the fame and notoriety he gathered and an ego that prevents him from asking for help. He had isolated himself in a self-created cocoon of paranoia and ego long before he did so literally in the Ecuadorian embassy.
In some ways, I feel bad for the guy, his intentions were well-meaning, and I respect the hell out of a guy who would stand up to the most powerful nation on earth and call them out for what they were doing, but Assange is his own worst enemy, and his current situation is of his own making.
And anyway, this article isn't really anti-Assange or pro-Clinton, as far as I can tell. It does seem to be anti-Russia, but not pro-US.
About Assange's anti-Hillary bias: it may be a personal affair, but there is something also of objective interest. Of course, Trump is a monster/clown. And probably Russia does not want Clinton. However, I am sure Saudi Arabia prefers Clinton. How many wars are going to worsen? That's not very comforting to me.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2175#efmAAGAAi - This is the Wikileaks email describing a strategy (bird dogging) you'll hear more about later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uMzYaO2syE - This video shows one Zulema Rodriguez who will appear in later videos around 17:36. She appears to be lying to the cops and blocking the road at the AZ protests. We'll see more of her later.
https://beta.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transactio... - This is FEC data showing Zulema on the payroll of MoveOn.org. Note how the dates correlate with the previous item. This casts quite a bit of doubt on the story she told cops in the previous video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=5IuJGHuIkzY - The infamous O'Keefe video contains a description of bird dogging that's a lot less innocent than the one above. They discuss getting people to cause violence at the Trump protests. Zulema, in particular, mentions being both at the AZ protests (which we've corroborated above), and at another, more violent protest.
https://i.sli.mg/dNBRek.png - This image shows that the person seen in the AZ protest videos matches the person in the O'Keefe video.
Note also that there was a fiasco over the ACORN videos some time ago from O'Keefe, causing some to suspect the video was edited. That said, it's interesting that the protests taken credit for were violent and that the information can be matched up with independent information and videos.
Finally, though it's not related to Podesta at all, there's also been a recent attempt to frame Julian Assange for CP by an extra shady porn site:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/58o29r/text_summ...
This part is just to show that weird stuff is going on. Note also that you can test the DKIM signatures on the emails yourself. There's too much crazy this election. I advise that you test things yourself, don't take anybody's word for anything. I don't claim to be infallible and things get weird as hell if you look very far into them. It doesn't help that a lawyer went on CNN to give a completely bogus claim that only journalists are allowed to look at Wikileaks. That claim is utterly false: https://popehat.com/2016/10/17/no-it-is-not-illegal-to-read-...
That aside, you could get in trouble if you have a security clearance. But that's due to the agreements you make in getting a clearance, not due to any law that gives "journalists" special privileges the general public does not also enjoy.
EDIT: One more thing. People are starting to spread totally fake Wikileaks images now on social media. I suggest adopting a links or GTFO approach to dealing with that.
Regarding my claim, I don't remember where I saw it, and a naive Google search didn't bring anything useful. But Natsu already did a more comprehensive job than I could, so follow him.
It's the corner stone of the PR industry.
These two statements can be unrelated. You can see the world differently from "average American" point of view, yet have intrinsic aversion to questionable rulers.
Sorry for nitpicking.
Oh and Assange is not a US citizen, why would anyone expect him to think like one, let alone make it a requirement.
There are mitigating circumstances, however.
1) Her opponent is totally unqualified for the presidency, and is basically a fascist, and a bigot, and obsessed with revenge.
2) The information was obtained via espionage by a foreign power, attempting to interfere in the US election. I can only imagine what kind of stuff we'd find in RNC emails.
As far as I'm concerned the correct course of action here is to elect Hillary, and then have congressional hearings into both the contents of those emails, and the methods by which they were obtained.
Hillary is a crooked in the usual way that politicians are. We can survive another crooked politician in the White House for four years. Trump would be the end of the republic.
That's not exaggeration? To me, it's insulting the people who founded this country to imply that all it takes to defeat an intricate system of governance they founded to ensure the preservation of their country is an uncouth man becoming president.
Not to mention the power of the surveillance state.
The good ol' USA has grown by orders of magnitude. And we're still trying to use the same rules that worked for horses and written letters and muskets. We've rarely even revisited the rules, much less rewrite them.
Yes I think its a fragile thing, that depends upon the good will of the people executing the processes. When they brag about how they're going to twist the rules for personal vendettas, then we should all worry.
Are you seriously considering what that'd even mean? What would "the end of the republic as the GP mentioned even mean?
The president has more power than ever, but Trump will not be the end of the United States because the system of governance we have limits the harm he could do.
I honestly think Trump would be less likely to bring about WW3 (the only barely realistic way I could see the fall of the US happening) than any other candidate if only for his lack of sophistication.
Presidents now wage war without Congress' help. Fire nuclear missiles. Enrage world opinion through careless remarks and insults, through instantaneous media (radio, tv, internet). Call out the National Guard. Declare martial law. Enforce or fail to enforce laws selectively. Appoint Federal judges exclusively by emergency appointment between sessions (started with Bush).
That's a lot of scary stuff.
Sorry... what?
Was there a unilaterally declared American nuclear strike I'm not aware of?
There should be an Onion article titled, "Challenger to status quo is racist, anti-Semitic, transphobic, misogynist, possibly gay, rapist, pedophile, terrorist, bogeyman."
Yawn.
Writers like that are why people are backing the republican nominee.
As we can see from the polls, if there was something damaging here people don't really care.
Besides could You show me any major news outlet that covered them really throughly (considering how damaging they are)?
Most people have no idea what was even in those emails and most of the media I read made a point to say that there was nothing damaging in there (cherry picking the most mundane things they could).
There wasn't anything too surprising to people who hate Hillary Clinton (yes, she's in the pocket of wall street) and supporters and most of the mainstream media (MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, etc.) didn't pay any attention.
tl;dr: There is no smoking gun. People say things in private emails they wouldn't discuss in public, NEWS AT 11!!!!!
P.S. It wasn't "that pussy thing". It was Trump bragging that he pushes women into sexual encounters he knows they don't want and gets away with it because he's famous and rich. I like how the right pretended everyone was upset about some foul language though or that it was just "locker room" talk. If Trump had said "oh she's so hot, I'd love to fuck her" no one would have cared because that is locker room talk. What Trump said was in a different league.
* She admitted to having a "private" (real) policy position and a "public" one (lies).
* Bits of her speeches to Goldman came out and she basically said "we were way too hard on you guys" and "we need to listen more to you guys to help prevent another crisis".
* She mentioned that she basically wanted a hemispheric free trade & freedom of movement zone.
Of course, apparently it's not the done thing these days to talk about policy scandals that actually affect us during a Presidential election.
...That sounds wonderful, if a bit too good to be true. Is it supposed to be bad?
Her ties to Wallstreet are hardly a surprise. It sucks, but we already knew that she's probably not going to do what needs to be done to Wallstreet. But there's no reason to believe that Trump is going to do any better, and on almost everything else, Clinton is still a lot better, or at worst less bad.
It's like asking a Republican in a primary debate if they want to control guns.
[1] https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/784484823717011456 & https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/784491543868665856
Exactly, and that's worrying.
Don't paint this as if it's just the media. It's Trump.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/no...
Since it's a piece by someone who has a personal dispute with Assange, it has to be taken with a grain of salt. I think its most interesting contribution at this time is its argument that Assange, for better or worse, hasn't changed, it's the world.
Wikileaks collaborators and repeatedly walked away on bad terms. At this point I'd be curious to know if there's anyone who actually gets along with him.
I suspect that the people who left Wikileaks did and still do agree with the original cause, but not with the cult of personality that Assange seems to have created around it.
True.
Why should he? America has much more "questionable democratic credentials" than Russia. At least the latter is constrained in its immediate back yard, it doesn't invade countries to "bring democracy", getting oil and leaving behind chaos, mayhem and civil war, nor does it bully or stronghold most of the world's governments.
Number of Russian overseas military bases: 2
I wonder why people paint Russia as if it was some aggressive power like the US.
So, when they meddle 10.000 miles from their borders it's their right and they do it "for democracy".
But when another country (let's call it R) tries to meddle in a place where actual pro-fascists toppled a voted-for government in a country in its borders, where tons of people with R ethnic origins live -- then they don't have the right.
People speak about communist countries propaganda art portraying their leaders as "heroes" -- and it's indeed idiotic. But then again, the US is the only other place where they can produce and watch movies and shows where the President is a hero fighting bad guys with his bare hands (from Air Force One to numerous tv/cable series).
And people watch that with a straight face -- in any other western country this would be considered only acceptable for comedy.
Neither is state produced and neither got the creators thrown in jail.
That's the difference.
That's my point exactly. People actually enjoy this former shit instead of finding it ludicrous.
(The villain one is OK -- and you can find all around the world. After all its an adaptation of a British series, and besides lots of politicians are villains and scumbags).
It's the fact that there are people that don't immediately see the former as ludicrous that's strange.
Ask the Poles, non-Slavic Central Europeans, people from the "stans" of Central Asia and others about their love of Russia.
In its borders, with ethnic Russian population, and with a long history of being together in the same trans-national entity (USSR), not to mention a history of Crimea being Russian.
>That's not something the US does
No, it did enough of that in the past. For the last 50+ years it merely invades countries, and intervenes whether it feels like all over the globe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_military_bases...
Anexation of the Crimea and fuelling of a civil war in the Ukraine?
It also had its voted-for government toppled (with the support of foreign powers), and pro-fascists coming into power. It was then that Russia intervened.
That's "fueling of a civil war"? How does a country that left places it had absolutely no reason to be, as hell-holes of civil war and destruction say that with a straight face?
% That's "fueling of a civil war"?
Russia also sent arms, volunteers and even regular troops into the conflict, it is a bloody damned proxy war.
For once, those are actual legit national "strategic interests", not "the world is ours so we have strategic interests all over the globe and we will crush anyone who steps on them" ones. The USSR used to do those too of course. But Russia is no USSR, and only a specific world player consistently does those the last 20+ years.
Countries that have actually invaded other countries (4 of them in the last 20 years), have countless proxy wars, and leave behind hell holes of civil war and destruction have little basis to criticize. And in general, anybody who criticizes the second case, without criticizing 10 times as strongly the first, is at best a hypocrite.
Sort of like Trump's elected republicans throwing out President Hillary and a few of her buddies, after weeks of protests by Tea Partiers who disagreed with what the actually elected government was doing and didn't want to wait 4 years for the next elections...
>Stepping in and annexing part of a country because your preferred candidate is no longer in power, on the other hand, is a huge affront to it
Better make it: because pro-fascists (literary: nazi sympathizers) are now in power after a coup, and they don't particularly like the Russian-ethnic population in their own country.
These 600 bases were welcomed by local governments. Have you noticed how the terms "first world" and "second world" used to designate US and USSR allies respectfully, but now just mean "countries that have it good" and "not so lucky ones"? Curious coincedence.
Sure, by the friendly lackeys installed in power.
>but now just mean "countries that have it good" and "not so lucky ones"? Curious coincidence.
Not that curious. Besides the bad politics of the USSR, those countries were also fought against with all the might of the "first world", not to mention they had a huge colonial history of being held down to boot.
It's not a coincidence at all, the US gained more and more power, and the USSR broke down. If you think there's a coincidence there you're not smart enough to be here.
You could ask Ukrainians about that.
America can be very democratic and aggressive. Bhutan can be autocratic and insular. Russia can be autocratic and (selectively) militaristic.
Russia has joke democratic credentials. You're a pawn or a fool if you think otherwise. Admitting the us is a more functional democracy doesn't stop you from disagreeing with our foreign policy.
Most of the complaints about Russian elections are from organizations working "Radio Free Europe" style -- "soft power" sponsored attacks to delegitimize a country and help install friendly lackeys like that Yeltsin figure in its early days. This has been going for over 2 centuries all around the world, so it's not really news.
Are there are actual issues with Russian internal politics / elections etc? Sure. But not something anybody outside of Russia should even care about. Whereas the caprices and "strategic interests" of other countries can exploit or completely fuck up every country in the whole world.
Most people agree on most things. Politicians are marketers who arbitrage differences to get elected.
But I, at least, strongly agree with you.
Like PJ O'Rourke said: America has one political party, and like everything in America it has two of them.
The fact that the US has two political parties is merely an exercise in excess, demonstration of waste.
Whoever gets in will continue to authorise extra-judicial drone killings, CIA meddling in others affairs, both internally and eternally, and generally fuck-over the average American.
I deleted it because I thought I was carried away and left too many comments in the thread, so left the main ones who get the same point across once (didn't want to trigger any itchy moderation).
On the rest, yes, that's the case.
This is simply prima facie false. I understand not understanding the context to "invading countries" but really?
There's a really nice book - "A Peace to End All Peace" and it should explain some of what you may object to. Before this round of festivities, the US was unsteady on its feet as the domain of the Cold Warriors.
The 2003 fun was as much about the U.N. process breaking down as anything else.
For example, Gavin MacFadyan, a WikiLeaks staffer, was diagnosed with an illness a while back.
A few weeks ago, WikiLeaks said as much, and sent him best wishes in a Tweet.
He died the other day.
WikiLeaks response was to go back and delete the tweet, and now the flames of his "mysterious and sudden death" are being fanned in those subreddits - "how long before JA dies from a sudden and mysterious illness?"
Not to mention the other wing nuts:
"There is a wireless telephone bug .This has been caught by my bug detector. Active on the frequency 400 kilo Hertz. Other people also have verified this. This needs stopped immediately check out my timeline. This signal is all across the U.S.A."
This is just after the claims of the military raid on the embassy in broad daylight that no-one could get photos of because (they couldn't decide): a) the military were telling people they'd be prosecuted if they did, or b) the military were using technology to "obfuscate" any photos people did take.
Edit: see below for reasons. I accidentally posted this sentence early before finishing more of a post. Now I've instead made a response to the question below
Some pull-outs that show thought over partisanship :
'Assange is routinely either so lionised by supporters or demonised by detractors that his real character is lost entirely. 'Far from the laptop-obsessed autist he’s often seen as, he’s a charismatic speaker with an easy ability to dominate a room or a conversation.'
'Assange often trusts strangers more than those he knows well: He dislikes taking advice, he dislikes anyone else having a power base, and he dislikes being challenged – especially by women. He runs his own show his own way, and won’t delegate. He’s happy to play on the conspiratorial urges of others, with little sign as to whether or not he believes them himself.'
'once you have fallen foul of Assange — challenged him too openly, criticised him in public, not toed the line loyally enough — you are done. There is no such thing as honest disagreement, no such thing as a loyal opposition differing on a policy or political stance.'
' Assange would not, in my view, ever knowingly be a willing tool of the Russian state: If Putin came and gave him a set of orders, they’d be ignored. But if an anonymous or pseudonymous group came offering anti-Clinton leaks, they’d have found a host happy not to ask too many awkward questions: He’s set up almost perfectly to post them and push for them to have the biggest impact they can.'
Why would he? That's the whole point of WikiLeaks, to publish information about those who have the power in so called democratic systems.
Someone could even choose to send WikiLeaks only the parts of the data they gathered that support their goals.
Absolute positions such as WikiLeaks against careful decision making on what to leak and when can have unintended effects. Even if entirely well-meaning, they've opened themselves up to being exploited.
And what I'm saying is that publishing everything as long as it's true, is not abuse, it's the actual goal.
By giving up that editorial control, they cede it to whomever provides them with documents. It's entirely possible they'll receive leaks that leave out compromising information about the leaker, or fake documents to impune an opponent.
If the problem with the mainstream media is that they just toe the line given to them by the US government, then wikileaks risks toe'ing a line they aren't aware of.
If WikilLeaks doesn't care about the authenticity of what it publishes, then what is its goal?
Even if the documents are misinformation, publishing them damages the ability of the organization to carry on its conspiratorial activities, eg, make and carry out secret plans. Internal, private communications (eg, emails), a powerful tool, also have a PR liability. Secrecy tax.
It didn't start out as a site for unfounded gossip about politicians. It started out to call out and address censorship. Then the Manning leak turned it into addressing government crimes, and only now is it suddenly about dirt on specific people.
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Could we expect him to focus more heavily on the Russian and Chinese governments in the future?
So your calls for Assange to specifically expose Russia and China to somehow "be fair" is quite senseless. I have to wonder how you think this actually works?
Are we to assume he's never been contacted by any Russian or Chinese dissidents? Maybe not, but if he has, I'd definitely like to see a proper release.
>>Now it is the darling of the alt-right, revealing hacked emails seemingly to influence a presidential contest, claiming the US election is “rigged”, and descending into conspiracy. Just this week on Twitter, it has described the deaths by natural causes of two of its supporters as a “bloody year for WikiLeaks”, and warned of media outlets “controlled by” members of the Rothschild family – a common anti-Semitic trope.
This critique curiously echoes the two main propaganda attacks on Jeremy Corbyn:
1) Insinuations and manufactured accusations of anti-semitism:
* http://news.sky.com/story/damning-report-condemns-jeremy-cor...
* http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37656197
2) "We used to support him but it's become clear that we can't any more":
* http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/zoe-williams-brands-je...
* http://labourlist.org/2016/08/i-used-to-support-corbyn-but-o...
* http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/billy-bragg-jeremy-cor...
I don't doubt the next anti-establishment figure will be met with the same response "yes, we used to think they were great until it became clear that they're an awful Jew hater".