How ... convenient all of Wikileaks were damaging to the government of the USA and somehow never to the government of Russia. And, of course, Mr Assange had his show on RT (Russia Today). No way he is a Russian agent. No way.
Wikileaks releases documents it claims detail Russia mass surveillance apparatus https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documen...
> It’s the _first_ time the organization has leaked (what it claims is) material directly pertaining to the Russian state.
So... first time for how many years? And as, article points out, the leak itself is rather minor.
He was getting low on funds, and then was cutoff from the credit card system for contributions. shortly after that, he started getting RU appearances. RUS influence likely a combination of providing critical funding and also developing Kompromat - compromising, coercing information, whether true or not.
In short, he's not a free, independent agent working to strengthen democratic principles and institutions.
(note that 'asset' does not mean necessarily the classic willing spy, could be merely duped or coerced)
It sounds like you're describing a game with two players where one is being disproportionally punished for breaking the rules.
There is a good chance that reviewing all that Iraq war footage resulted in some good old radicalization.
Assange basically did what he could to damage the interests of the USA, and probably succeeded wildly beyond his dreams. He's made a whole bunch of stupid calls and he's blown his own credibility and that of WikiLeaks by showing an overt agenda instead of just being a 'dumb pipe'.
Funny though, the one time that he did act as a dumb pipe everybody was screaming blue murder about how irresponsible that was.
If Assange is a Russian asset, he is one that it is critical for Russia to conceal it's connection to if he is to continue to have value. Not running to Russia's embassy has helped him continue to spread propaganda that serves Russian interests, so it's not incompatible with him being an (even actively managed) Russian asset.
In this case: Assange/WikiLeaks have an agenda: to hit America where it hurts, by exposing their actions on the world stage and by creating as big a rift between the different political sides in the United States as they could manage. In that they are no different from Al Queada or the Russians, their goals align and so you get some pretty strange bedfellows.
Assange is a 'useful idiot' to Russia when he's go between for content hacked from US servers by the Russians that they can't be seen to release directly.
I agree with you that it is not incompatible but it is too paranoid for me to take into account until there is some actual proof. He could be a double agent too, he could be anything. But my money is on him being an idealistic, narcissistic hacker with a political agenda that amounts to 'Reduce American Influence in any way possible'. And if that involves cooperating with the Russians (knowingly or otherwise) that does not necessarily mean he is a Russian agent.
By contrast, Paul Manafort, who made many millions of dollars working for the Russians and who has his hands all over the 2016 election cycle and the damage done to Ukraine to me would qualify as a Russian agent.
I'm pretty sure if there was any proof that Assange was an actual Russian agent it would have been used to pressure Ecuador to turn him over since the Ecuadorians would definitely not want to be seen as 'harboring a Russian agent' versus 'harboring a left wing anti-American hacker'. The former doesn't play nearly as good at the home front as the latter.
Australian.
EDIT: Nevermind, I managed to miss the "anti"
'jacquesm, I have a couple of extra hyphens if you're running low.
Let me see if I can source them locally, if not I will be happy to take some of your hands.
That might explain Assange’s US-related actions, but not those related to Catalonia or a number of other issues, all of which align with Russian interests and Russian propaganda conducted through other channels.
If Assange isn't a Russian asset, he simply has an amazing coincidental multidimensionsl confluence of interests with Russia. At some point, collaboration becomes more plausible than coincidence.
The whole Spanish argument that secession is 'against the constitution of Spain and therefore invalid' doesn't hold much water with me, obviously no country will be happy about a part of it wanting to break away and the Spanish government handled the whole affair about as heavy handed and wrong as they possibly could.
Keep in mind that Spain is afraid of something that it doesn't want the general public to realize: that the Basques and the Catalans have as much claim to wanting to be independent as the Irish, the Scots, the Slowaks, the Czechs and so on had, and that Europe to a large extent managed to accommodate these smaller chunks of larger entities because it made the dominance of Germany and France all that much stronger.
And that circles us back to Germany, which is why it is funny how Germany is now 'damned if they do and damned if they don't', if they extradite then they will alienate the Catalonians (which, incidentally is going to cause a lot of trouble for German visitors to Catalonia this summer) and if they don't then they will be at loggerheads with Spain which they need badly in the EU.
So this is quite the little clusterfuck and Assange/Russians role is just bit players, anything to fuck up the various houses of power is to their advantage so I'm not too surprised to see Assange do this.
Neither Snowden (living in Russia), Manning nor Assange strike me as 'Russian agents', though they definitely did as much more more damage to US interests than if they had been.
"Damaging" Russia makes no sense. They don't make the rules!
This criticism only makes sense if they are sitting on a pile of leaked material that is unflattering Russia. There’s no reason to believe that is the case.
So, you mean, WikiLeaks is merely a useful-but-innocent tool of Russian intelligence, rather than an active collaborator?
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-le...
So there is a huge amount of hypocrisy there. But that does not excuse Russia for meddling in the affairs of The USA or Europe either.
They're all guilty of this, some more than others.
In fact, less so, given the historial record. Funding revolutions, killing 100 000 civilians in another country on other side of the planet from them, was not on Russias list of deeds for past 25 years.
Yemen.
How about judging the information on its merits, not its source? Why does it matter one wink if you don't like the leakers?
There's a difference between a whistleblower wanting to expose things that violate the constitution because they want those things to stop, and a foreign agent exposing the same actions, but with the intent to destabilize people's trust in their government.
The end result might be the same. But to say it doesn't matter where a leak came from, is to also say that whistleblowers are no different from foreign spies.
Update to add my bias here: This is why I can respect the actions of Edward Snowden, but find Julian Assange completely untrustworthy.
Well I guess we have to agree to disagree then. If a "foreign spy" reports that Dow Checmial is dumping pollution in the river, I'm gonna question Dow first, not the spy.
No one is saying the information is false or should be ignored. To use your example, if there were reason to believe that this spy was revealing this information on behalf of Dow's competitors to influence the market and shield/draw attention away from their own malfeasance, that's a concern. The source and the intent of the source does actually matter.
That was precisely the intention behind characterizing Assange as a Russian spy during the election.
More broadly, it's that Assange uses the guise of a seemingly-neutral Teller of Truths to dole out information for the purpose of manipulation, either for his own or other people's agendas.
Exactly. This accusation was intended to be equal parts distraction from the contents and ad hominem.
They also mooted the idea that he was a pedophile for a while, but it didn't really take.
>either for his own or other people's agendas.
But of course. She literally expressed a desire to see him murdered because of him doling out secrets. Who would take kindly to that?
I full support Russia Today (RT) despite being obviously backed by the Russian government because they are willing to talk about things that no US media outlet will touch. It's despicable that Google publicly and vocally denounces them and de-rates their results in search and news.
Go ahead and question it.
Have you come up with any evidence that it's fabricated?