Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks
emma.best
emma.best
It has reached comical levels of insanity, illusion of grandeur and narcissism.
What are you criteria for near certainty and what evidence-supported claims are there that satisfy those criteria?
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Their behavior is consistent with what you'd expect from an intelligence agency. Such as well-timed releases during the 2016 US Presidential Election which seemed to heavily favor a candidate with strong ties to a foreign government well known for their intelligence capabilities.
Alright... Help me understand how this does not reflect WaPo, CNN, NYT, and others in an identical way.
Emails which, by the way, were so boring and mundane and contained so little evidence of misconduct that people determined to hate Clinton needed to treat "pizza" as secret code for "child sex slaves", to extract a scandal from them.
Why were the podesta emails different if not to influence the election?
Unfortunately, it seems to have happened anyway.
Also wikileaks has done multi-part staged releases on many occasions before and after, including the russia files and vault 7.
If by "theft" you mean "the person who got the most votes got the nom," sure. That's not really news though. I mean, it is, but not for the reason you think it should be.
The DNC seat was stolen through illegal redirection of funds, manipulation of public debates, and a deliberate media smear campaign which led to the DNC chairwoman's forced resignation.
You could have stopped there. The major disconnect between public perception of the political parties and actual party function is the party ultimately nominates who it chooses. Votes are cast because it's assumed Americans wouldn't support a party that simply nominated a candidate via authoritarianism or autocracy, not because either party believes in the wisdom of the mob structurally. If anything, "wisdom of the mob" voting is more reflective of the Republican party's process (and with the nomination of Trump, it kind of showed).
You claim there was illegal redirection of funds. Was it actually illegal? Or merely in apparent violation of the party's charter (which could make the party less trustworthy but is not otherwise automatically illegal)? The best I can dig up is that there is a lawsuit alleging the DNC violated campaign finance law.
You may want to spot-check your data.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12/a-new-report-puts-mi...
Keep in mind, the company contracted to produce this report, Fusion GPS, was also paid to produce "evidence" that north korea was responsible for hacking Sony in 2014... so you may want to spot-check your evidence.
And the consensus appears to generally be that NK did hack Sony in 2014, so I don't know what you're on about. There are suggestions of alternatives but nothing concrete or in accordance with the known evidence.
No, the modern candidate selection process in each of the major parties isn't an abstract response to theoretical concerns about what Americans would respond to, but a concrete response to real issues identified through previous nomination processes.
> If anything, "wisdom of the mob" voting is more reflective of the Republican party's process
No, it's not; the Republican Party process is designed to artificially create an insurmountable perception of momentum for the early leader because of experience about how early lead usually favors the institutional candidate, and the set of early primaries and caucuses favor, more than the country generally, the establishment faction of the party, so that this provides both the right candidate and a short competitive part of the primary with an early shift to general election campaigning. The Democratic system through 2016 (changes are planned for 2020 in response to 2016) in general design (pushing committed superdelegate counts into horserace delegate coverage hasn't historically been the norm) favors a longer competitive period and broader geographic competition but provides a safeguard against a hung convention. Each of these has failure modes—if superdelegates commit early and the media included them in horserace coverage, the Democratic system gets the same kind of artificial inevitability as the Republican system. If a celebrity candidate sucks up early attention with a large but weak field where establishment support is divided, the Republican method work against the establishment and lock in the same kind of advantage for the celebrity it is designed to for an establishment candidate. And if a well-funded establishment decides to take that fight down to the wire with whoever it has standing after the early winnowing, it can drag out into a long primary fight if the type the system is designed to avoid.
Very few people would have considered Trump "the institutional candidate", although I guess the GOP conspiracy has maybe fooled us. Even fewer people would have considered all the DNC superdelegate crap to have been a broad geographic democratic competitive scenario.
The DNC does not function as a popular vote, but with a complex system of campaigning, finance, and ultimately delegate voting.
An anti-Clinton stance rather than pro-Trump would be more likely.
Several GRU officers have been brought up on charges related to the hacking of the DCCC and DNC, the subsequent dissemination of their findings to Wikileaks, and related payoffs. This suggests that there is concrete evidence that the GRU was collaborating with Wikileaks, it's just not yet publicly available.
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-manaforts-flip-may-...
And that's surprising how, exactly? Guess what, 4chan /pol/ supported the exact same candidate, rare pepes and all, purely "for the lulz". Would you expect Assange to behave any differently?
We do have this statement (and a little more detail inside) in a report by a joint report by the US Intelligence Community (regarding Russian interference with elections):
"We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks."
Source: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
But that doesn't explain whether Assange is either a "compromised front" for the GRU or someone else, or more a "useful idiot" to Russian intelligence for their goals.
Nonetheless, I will say, at minimum, Wikileaks and Julian Assange can no longer be seen as a neutral player, at minimum. And not a reliable narrator, either. For example, some of their tweets on the Panama Papers, which in theory I would think would be something they would in theory support, were rather strange, and actually stooped into ridiculous conspiracy theory involving USAID and George Soros (eg https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7176700566505308... and https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7174580643249643...). I generally don't treat sources that delve into conspiracy theory with a whole lot of respect...
It's a joint report by the US Intelligence Community. There is no “US National Intelligence Agency”; the position of Director of National Intelligence was created to specifically split the role of overall head of the intelligence community (the DNI) from the head of a particular agency (the overall head of the IC used to be the Director of the CIA.)
Just using the "George Soros" dog whistle should disqualify them as a reliable source
They no longer publish everything they have been given (Assange once claimed to have documents embarassing to Russia but they are as yet unpublished).
They no longer publish documents indiscriminately (Podesta emails trickled out over the course of October 2016 for maximum political effect on the election)
If that wasn't enough, everyone should've been convinced that wikileaks is compromised when Assange refused to demonstrate that he held the wikileaks signing private key during his reddit AMA
Allow me to amend: Wikileaks now publishes Russia and putin related material long after they aquire them and only after they are called out on it.
They sat on the "spy files" for a full year, and only published them after their source went around telling other publications about them. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
releasing some doesn't mean he released everything, or stuff Russia wasn't okay with him releasing.
What is Assange’s motivation for not releasing proof of the signing key, because he can’t, but keeping that a secret?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cabl...
Based on this statement, you don’t seem to be familiar with WikiLeaks and didn’t read the linked article that specifically addresses this claim.
... except that they couldn't, because they would be compromised and operating as a front. Wheels within wheels... ;)
they did change the outcome of a US election, and probably the course of world history, which is more than all of the anti-trump media combined, so that is a pretty big accomplishment ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
How much did Trump and similar non-Russian PACs spend on microtargetted facebook ads, compared to Russian intelligence? Your article contains no hint of this. I think we're all aware that Russian intelligence was buying a lot of ads on social media, but I'm trying to understand the relative scope of this. To be frank, the scope of Russian propaganda seems dwarfed by domestic propaganda. The propagandists who deserve the most blame are probably Americans, or were paid by Americans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/secret-ca...
At this point, he's dodging Sweden's justice system because he can and because Ecuador allows him to. And all of this distracts from Wikileaks' ostensible goal of shining light into the dark places of power; public trust in them weakens as they continue to refuse to cut ties with an accused rapist dodging charges.
He was never charged with a crime, but they were satisfied by their interview 2 years ago and dropped all investigations, as was requested by the alleged victim years prior.
Also the sealed indictment allowing for Assange to be extradicted has been leaked. It is very real.
I was unaware of the leaked US charges from November however; that's news for me. Thank you for bringing it to my attention (I've updated my original post). Given that, however, I don't believe it's credible to assume that even if he were extradited to the US, he wouldn't have a fair day in court. He's too famous to disappear. So my original contention that he's a stain on the organization due to the fact he's dodging justice because he can stands.
I’ve been profiled by cops various times in my life, and the overwhelming feeling was that if I didn’t do what they wanted (things which I had no legal obligation to do) that they could have found a reason to take me in. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. So if you’re doing something that many people consider wrong, I think there’s plenty of injustice in our history to warrant preemptive protection if ones self.
Maybe Assange isn’t innocent. Maybe he deserves to be locked up. I have no idea. But if I were him and I were innocent, I still wouldn’t trust that I’d get fairness.
The lone member of Obama's State Department who spoke out against that treatment-- P.J. Crowley-- had to resign the next day for doing so.
If you didn't know about any of those events I'd suggest reading up on them before commenting further on the subject.
She got off very easy for the deaths she (unintentionally) facilitated by deciding her conscience spoke more loudly than the expertise of thousands of State Department operatives trained to deal with delicate international political issues.
Assange did the opposite. He came out guns blazing. When you do that, the court system often will find a way to bone you. And that doesn’t usually result in repercussions because the system can say “well maybe we were a little wrong but he wasn’t helping his case!”. And tragically that’s often enough for the external watchers to let it go.
Defend himself from people saying that he smells? That he paints his hair? Really?
This is beyond ridiculous, it is sad and pathetic...
Assange doesn’t have that. This is an odd little release, but you’ve gotta consider more than “public figure” and look into what means the public figure has to get a message out.
Direct quote from the Panama Papers source[0], after which Wikileaks "slammed" the source for not releasing the full leak. That was such an obvious defamation attempt that Wikileaks disgusts me ever since.
That wasn't the only defamation attempt around Panama Papers that Wikileaks attempted. Check out this[1] investigative gem, in which they've used a secret technique called "scrolling to the bottom to see the donors". I worked at that organization at the time and specifically remember myself thinking "Fuck you Julian, we're supposed to be on the same side." Edited to add: Of course, Russian media picked up on that tweet immediately[2].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/may/06/panama-papers-s...
[1] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352
[2] https://www.rt.com/news/338683-wikileaks-usaid-putin-attack/
However this item is a statement of fact, no?
>> It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever "breached his bail", "jumped bail", absconded, fled an arrest warrant, or that he has ever been charged with such at any time.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/08/julian-assange...
1: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/201...
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua...
Clearly, we are being played by the media and whoever is putting them up to it, with the understanding that most people hear a headline and think they now 'know' the story. Another great example is teh high-tech sonic attack on Guantanamo US personnel which is now being revealed as.. crickets!
That was a fiction to fit the narative anti-normalisation proponents such a Rubio wanted to push.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/the-real-story-behin...
I think that's just a ruse to get more publicity, and it has worked.
rofl. you don't think there are video cameras both inside and outside of the embassy?
1. There is photo evidence, but the Guardian cannot publish it for one reason or another. They described the clothes he was wearing that day in detail.
2. There is an entry in the guestbook for him, it doesn't come up when you ctrl-f because they misspelled his name, it appears as "Paul Manaford".
This isn't "lack of transparency", it's protecting your sources.
But, then again, I wouldn't expect The Intercept to know how to tell the difference, seeing how they've burned Reality Winner and Terry Albury.
The Intercept isn't safe any more, and it's increasingly becoming sidelined, with the biggest leak since Snowden, the Panama Papers, being given to Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJ, by a source that is still anonymous 4 years later.
Including Reality Winner, right?
I currently trust The Intercept more than I trust most other news sources, and if your two points are true, then I clearly am trusting them too much. If you have have evidence that would move this beyond a "he said, she said" level (with the Guardian claiming one thing and The Intercept saying the claims are false), please point to it so I can update my beliefs. Currently it feels more like you are simply asserting that we should trust one source over another.
No, that was a "separate internal document" that claimed that, it wasn't in the guest logs.
As far as the photo, I don't recall anyone saying there was a photo, only that a witness claims they saw Manafort.
So, you've reviewed all the security camera footage inside and outside the embassy? Or, are you mistaking “no security camera footage has been leaked to the public showing this” for “none of the security camera footage shot shows this”?
I have footage of Trump and Hillary leaving a Motel together. Do you believe me? Why not - have you watched all the footage? Didn't think so...
(There's a web of trust so to speak, with journalism and investigative reporting).
At least you haven't caught me lying before, doesn't that count for anything?
Even most o the journalism prices don't mean much anymore. Here in Germany there was just a scandal of a journalist faking many stories, who had also won lots of prices with them (Claas Relotius). In some articles about him it was also mentioned that by now there is also a kind of "inflation" of journalism prices. I think they also serve the purpose of creating a fake aura of trust.
For someone so concerned with not being "played" by the media, you seem strangely happy to play exactly the same kinds of games with the facts.
Like it or not, and whether this list is tacky or not, there are fundamental truths that should be the focus of this discussion. The media manipulated and lies and as a result we have a severely misinformed population. We probably would anyway, but that should be a choice not a manipulation.
One has always had to be careful reading the media. Only those who don't understand history take refuge in feeling sorry for themselves about lying media.
I often have friends try to convince me of something they read. After examining the article the source, I demonstrate how the words in the article don’t actually support the headline. It’s not that they didn’t read past the headline - it’s that the article is set up in a way that makes you think it’s convinced you, even tho it fails to do that. There’s somewhat of a pattern, like: claim, talking around the claim, declaring that the claim was proven. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I’ve had doctors and researchers fail to pick up on this.
I mean... I feel like we've reach full self-parody at this point.
There's no question he was a tool of the Russian government.
The argument against them is the same, does the benefit outweight the damage that can also be done?
That said, I have no problem saying Facebook was a tool of Russian propaganda.
Accountable for what? In what way?
democracy dies in the dark you know.
Journalism is supposed to inform, not manipulate.
You talk about democracy dying. If Wikileaks had their way I don't think you'd like the NWO that Putin and China would build for us.
He told us factually about a progressive candidate being illegally silenced by the democratic establishment, and it has been transformed into a quasi-russo quasi-chino NWO conspiracy?
You're disingenuously oversimplifying the situation to imply that my position is ridiculous. When your ridiculous position is simply that "Wikileaks did a thing that I liked so that means they never did anything wrong and anyone that thinks its possible is just paranoid". Instead of being dismissive and condescending why not try to have a conversation?
It was an attempt to allow you to connect the dots for me, by starting from the (in my opinion) reasonable act which is implied to be the smoking gun.
When I mention NWO I'm simply referring to the fact that as the US has ruined its own reputation, Russia and China have developed a stronger position with the rest of the world. If we ever got to a place where Putin-led Russia was considered more of a leader in the international community than the US it would be bad for almost everyone. Likewise, although China has made slow and steady progress towards being less terrible, if they were suddenly more influential to the rest of the world it too would be bad for almost everyone. No one says "Man I wish the rest of the world would wake up and start operating like China and Russia, that's really the model that freedom loving people everywhere should aspire to." Russian and Chinese people are just as good as anyone else, but in spite of our government being pretty shitty in many ways, their governments are still atrocious in comparison.
Its not about communism. Its about Russia's obviously hostile intent towards western civilization and Wikileaks selling out their integrity to support it simply because they don't like the US.
Can we also likewise agree that the democratic party's misdeeds themselves hurt the democratic party and helped russia?
If so, why is it reasonable to connect "wikileaks getting their way" to a Russia/China NWO, but not reasonable to connect "the DNC getting their way" to a Russia/China NWO?
You're still oversimplifying it. I'm saying that they were trying to manipulate people with selective, perfectly timed releases designed to achieve a specific political goal while at the same time receiving information from and potentially coordinating with foreign intelligence agents and lying about it. You're trying to refer to that scenario as "I don't know why anyone's mad, all they did was tell us about a bad thing that happened."
I agree the information should have become public. I disagree that it needed to be intentionally weaponized in an active attempt to interfere with a sovereign nation's election by hostile actors.
>Can we also likewise agree that the democratic party's misdeeds themselves hurt the democratic party and helped russia?
I can agree wholeheartedly that any time anyone attempts to game one of our election systems that they are undermining the security of the US and helping the US' enemies. I don't think the US is even close to being a perfect country, but if it were successfully destabilized to the point where it could not be fixed it would be one of the worst possible outcomes for not only us, but almost every single country on the planet.
>If so, why is it reasonable to connect "wikileaks getting their way" to a Russia/China NWO, but not reasonable to connect "the DNC getting their way" to a Russia/China NWO?
Well, for one thing, Hillary is notably more hostile towards Putin than Trump. She's also infinitely more capable of coming up with adult solutions for dealing with them. Trump doesn't even believe all of the shit that we know for a fact Russia is doing to intentionally hurt us. His ignorance might not be legal treason but ethically its absolutely treasonous. And I say this as a person that didn't vote for Hillary Clinton or Trump. I voted for a fairly liberal libertarian (as far as libertarians go which is not very progressive) that I thought was terrible, but less terrible than either of them. If we had a decent moderate conservative that wasn't a religious nut or a decent progressive I would have voted for one of them, but unfortunately that was not the case.
Aside from that, if the DNC was doing something unethical (which IMO they were), its more than fair to call them out for it.
There is no evidence of this. it is pure narrative based upon what you perceive as motives.
> some hillary vs trump stuff, who you voted for
not relevant to this discussion at all...
There is plenty of evidence to suggest it. What you're looking for is a smoking gun that definitively proves it beyond a reasonable doubt, such as a leaked, signed email from Assange outlining his entire strategy or a video of him at a coffee shop with Russian Agents wearing nametags that say "Guccifer 2.0". When it comes to international espionage, that's a pretty high standard.
> Who I voted for.
So many people take sides on the Russian election interference issue based on whether or not they identify as a Republican or a Democrat. Perhaps it shouldn't be necessary, but because that's the way most of these conversations go, I thought it would be relevant to mention that I don't support either of the people that ran in 2016.
"taking sides" is a convenient diversion of narrative-based discussion
Yet you attribute that to WikiLeaks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18848920): "If Wikileaks had their way I don't think you'd like the NWO that Putin and China would build for us."
Compare and contrast the release of the State Department cables. Because the bulk dump took the politics of delicate international negotiations out of the hands of the SD and laid them bare for everyone to see, the Libyan people saw how what they were told by their government about international perception of them was a lie, and they followed their anger about that lie into civil war... And the country has not recovered stability. It's still unclear whether a world where Libyans unseated their government is going to shake out to be better for Libyans or the rest of the international community than the world that came before.
International politics is a delicate process full of egos and carefully-chosen words. It does not lend itself well to open-government-style action. This is irrelevant to Wikileaks, and (lacking any counterweights) it's quite possible that the end result is a shift in the balance of power to the nations that are still capable of running their international policy with their cards held close to their chests.
Frequently, they leave things out or use deceptive wording to change the meaning/context of events. Even when they cite facts, they often do so in ways that make telling what actually happened difficult.
I bet what you call "deliberate manipulation" I would describe as "telling a story."
There is often no such thing as "the truth"; two people who saw the same thing happen will often interpret and describe it very differently.
It's unavoidable, and if you see the world in black and white you're blind to most of the details.
Not because there isn't enough honesty in journalism or whatever.
It's because even if you just published raw video footage, that would have to eventually be lossily disseminated by somebody in the form of a "story" before it reached 99.99+% of the world, and that lossy compression is going to be biased by worldview.
You can't achieve a perfect level of objectivity, but if you put an honest effort into attempting to be objective by employing techniques to minimize bias, you can do a hell of a lot better than most journalists are doing today.
When people say they want "open objective news" they are fully aware that perfect objectivity does not exist. So it should be pretty obvious to anyone reading a statement that news should be open and objective that the person making the statement doesn't intend to hold journalists to an impossible standard. They just want them to do the things that we and the journalists already know will work to minimize partisanship and bias. Instead they almost universally decide to manipulate the public and promote their respective ideologies.
anyone can claim this about any media report that is negative to them. bottom line is: don't do dirt if you don't want it brought to the light.
> actively working with Russian Intelligence to destabilize western civilization
if there was any actual evidence of this I am sure we would have seen it by now.
> If Wikileaks had their way I don't think you'd like the NWO that Putin and China would build for us
this is nothing but evidence free conspiracy theorizing.
After it was leaked WL released their edited version.
> It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange stinks.
> It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange does not use cutlery or does not wash his hands.
> It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange lives, or has ever lived, in a basement, cupboard or under the stairs.
What on Earth…?
For example:
"Julian ate everything with his hands and he always wiped his fingers on his pants. I have never seen pants as greasy as his in my whole life."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/02/23/ten-thin...
The misbehavior at issue was hosting members of the Catalan separatist movement and releasing messages endorsing it shortly after the declaration of independence, which prompted diplomatic protest from Spain to Ecuador.
they are legally required to do this because to make a public statement would be a violation of the gag order he is under.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/16/ecuadorian_embassy_... http://www.codigovidrio.com/code/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/...
Going through his lawyers and explicitly saying that this is a confidential legal document is a way to get press for his case while not technically violating the conditions.
On the other hand, I'm doubtful that there is sufficient incentive for Assange to try such a workaround. My Spanish is weak, but it looks like the last few lines of the agreement say that it can be unilaterally modified by the Embassy at any time. This would seem to negate any advantage of adhering to the word but not the spirit of the agreement.
I would love to hear their explanation for why they think this isn't true.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-12005930
And here's how the people who posted the bail were ordered to pay the remainder when he breached the terms:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/08/julian-assange...
Absconded: To leave quickly and secretly and hide oneself, often to avoid arrest or prosecution.
He left his house arrest location quickly and secretly to avoid arrest and prosecution.
Version 1.3 of the document says: "It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever "breached his bail", "jumped bail", absconded, fled an arrest warrant, or that he has ever been charged with such at any time."
And yet we have a decision by a UK judge that Assange "failed to appear in accordance with the conditions of his bail" and that "the associate sureties should be forfeited": https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Ju...
So while I can see why Wikileaks might try to argue that seeking asylum instead of appearing did not "breach his bail", there is a clear UK legal judgment saying that he did. It's a lie for Wikileaks to claim otherwise.
Nice job. I'd suggest passing it on the author of the post (Emma Best) to see if she can publicize this clear example.
Is this in version control somewhere? Github?
That doesn't mean I agree with it, but if you operate in a commonwealth country and do anything controversial, I'd say it's pretty much mandatory.
If the statement(s) are shown to be views anyone could be expect to hold, ie including truth, the defendant can countersue for fraud. I don't know if the changes to the law during the coalition removed all the grounds for libel tourism, but that was the intent.
Some cyclist, I forget who, did against one of our newspapers about some doping scandal. He won significant damages. It sticks in the mind as he was later found guilty of doping and ended up admitting it and compensating the newspaper.
so no dictators have read any documents on WikiLeaks?
Also I think Assange is not in control of Wikileaks anymore.
... which is one of the reasons it's so sad to see the org falling into the trap as well, instead of recognizing the mission exceeds the man and cutting ties with this albatross.
Since the truth of them is in dispute, it comes off more as a list of nerves the media has struck on a very vain man.