By my reckoning It's really hard to know what to even believe about a guy who might credibly be targeted by that.
You might check out this[0] extremely detailed write-up from Andrew O'Hagan, the author who was hired to ghost-write Assange's autobiography, and wound up hanging around his inner circle for some months. It's a pretty sympathetic account, but it's hard to come away from it sympathetic to the man. While O'Hagan praises Assange's ideals and seems to like him personally, he doesn't gloss over his flaws, and the portrait he paints is ultimately of a supremely self-interested guy who spends much of his time scheming against his closest allies and lying to pretty much everyone.
One exchange that stuck in my mind:
> There are few subjects on which Julian would be reluctant to take what you might call a paternalistic position, but over Snowden, whom he’s never met but has chatted with and feels largely responsible for, he expressed a kind of irritable admiration. ‘Just how good is he?’ I asked.
> ‘He’s number nine,’ he said.
> ‘In the world? Among computer hackers? And where are you?’
> ‘I’m number three.’
So much for sticking it to the man, when we have to live the rest of our lives with the risk of identity fraud just because they're dicks.
It was disturbingly easy to find tbh
- The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape.
- The supposed CIA connection of the accuser is a laughable 10-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection involving her attending a two-day seminar by a Cuban feminist organisation whose leader supposedly was connected to the CIA in the 1970.
- Does anybody believe the CIA has covered secret agents stationed at Swedish feminist literature departments for eight years, just in case some target comes along that needs her couch to crush on?
- Assange was travelling all over Europe and other parts of the world in those times. Why not just wait until he is in a country with the perfect extradition treaty and have him arrested at the airport?
- Indeed: what exact purpose is the rape accusation, which would have come with probably a few months in jail max, in this scheme?
- If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him? Just look at the prevalence of "obviously fake"/"not rape" and various other character assassination in this thread.
- At the time of the supposed rape incident, the most prominent leak was the "Collateral Murder" video. The war cables and Snowden leaks came later. That video was somewhat embarrassing, but in no way important enough to warrant such adventures in diplomatic subterfuge as alleged.
- All subsequent leaks, i. e. Snowden, Diplomatic Cables, were published in partnership with media organisations such as the New York Times, Guardian, or Spiegel. Why invest so much ressources and potential risk into going after Assange, and not those organisations that were arguably more important going forward? The Times may be immune because they are domestic. But the Spiegel or Guardian could certainly suffer an embarrassing loss of, say, all their subscriber data?
- Assange's credibility isn't actually that important. There is nothing Wikileaks published that I consider fake. The Clinton leak was just... underwhelming? There was nothing even remotely illegal in there, and not even much that made her look bad. The Snowden leaks were important. The earlier, lesser-known stuff from Africa etc. was fantastic. The diplomatic cables were already borderline.
- Why would the Obama administration go through the risk and difficulty of organising a breathtaking conspiracy to get at him, yet commute Chelsea Manning's sentence?
- Why would the Trump "I love Wikileaks" administration continue that adventure, instead of exposing it, damaging Obama's reputation, and helping their friend?
- Removing Assange, or even Wikileaks, doesn't actually help: leaks have become a well-known tactic now, and traditional media has actually done a better job than WL to publish them, c. f. Panama Papers.
- Hiding in that embassy for seven years is almost definitely worse than whatever may await him in the US. It's just an extraordinarily stupid move. Especially considering the endgame was always that he would face those charges someday. It's just not the decision-making process of a sound mind.
For example: there were many illegal, suggestions of illegal, and offensive things in those, and related, email leaks, for supporters and detractors of HRC.
> If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him?
That was not the intent. More likely for discrediting him to the social-progressives (potential new fanbase) who are outspoken and active enough to make a huge uptick in the even larger viral explosion that Wikileaks deserves/ed.
Such as? Have there been any prosecutions? Wasn't she vindicated by an investigation?
I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!
> In her new book, former party chairwoman Donna Brazile calls out the Clinton camp for the "unethical" arrangement it had with the Democratic National Committee
An arrangement that directly lead to DWS stepping down in the first place.
Can you provide some examples? I went out of my way to find the source of the fervor surrounding the leaks, but I personally couldn't find anything worth getting up in arms about.
So the existence of doubt is proof of invalidity of the said doubt. That is some Olympic level mental gymnastics.
That's not what was written at all, and you've made an extremely uncharitable interpretation of their statement to come to the response you did.
Ultimately, the parent poster wasn't saying this is proof of invalidity, they were saying it was one potential piece of evidence. Your conflation of a small point of evidence as "total proof" is where I think you've been relatively uncharitable to the parent poster.
Also, their point wasn't that any doubt existed. Their point was that the level of doubt for this type of crime is often relatively higher than for some other types of crimes. This would make it slightly less effective at the alleged purpose, therefore it should slightly lower our confidence in the hypothesis that this was done as a character assassination.
Neither of the parent posters points were absolutes, but you took them to be. It's about the relative level of doubt being slightly larger, and that results in a small lowering of our confidence.
it's so common that people from my region have a special affinity for detecting Russian propaganda. we see it from a mile away. even so, the Russians know which buttons to press and where. see Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/13/russians-hil...
Email? Nope, it might go to the spam folder.
Phone call? What of the time zone difference?
Blinking morse code? Too obvious!
Secret gesture? The FSB may miss it!
Literally giving out the order on international TV during debates? Sounds like a plan!
We also know that the release was politically motivated, because it was the only time ever that Wikileaks has drip-fed a release over the course of a month, and it just so happened to be the 30 days prior to the 2016 election, and each release came with the promise that juicier and more scandalous things were coming later (which, btw, never came: the emails were totally benign). If that isn't politically motivated, what is?
1. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/29/18117777/...
It’s international Watergate.
Also I found it quite funny how the emails clearly show that Clinton ordered the media to focus on certain people from the Republican side as "credible" leaders and they included (but were not limited to): Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
If the Republican party has the word Republic in it, why don't they use representative electors?
See, doesn't really make sense.
Just select your candidate if that's what you're going to do anyway.
I voted for Bernie Sanders but pop over to the Wikipedia page and you'll see that he lost the popular vote by 3 million and change in an election 30 million people participated in. Not the narrowest of margins. In a perfect democracy, he'd have also lost. The superdelegate system was irrelevant in this case.
Do you have an argument as to why this should fit within my definition of corruption?
The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks The transparency organization asked the president’s son for his cooperation—in sharing its work, in contesting the results of the election, and in arranging for Julian Assange to be Australia’s ambassador to the United States.
The guy is a paid actor for a murderous totalitarian regime. Literally:
"Assange became a star on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s state-funded English-language propaganda outlet."
"Assange used the WikiLeaks Twitter account to attack the 2016 Panama Papers leaks, which disclosed a $2 billion overseas account of Vladimir Putin’s. Assange labeled the leak a US-sponsored plot to undermine Putin and Russia."
If that doesn't scream "I have no ethics" to you, I'm not sure what will.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-strik...
Let me offer you another theory: she's almost certain that she didn't say it, but she couldn't remember every word she's said.
Which theory do you think is more likely?
Now I am not saying you are wrong, but you'd need external evidence to support your theory, until then, Occam's rule apply. If you agree that my theory is more probable but do not like it, then it's possible your current belief is skewed by your prior belief.
If so, when would have been a good time for them to release the evidence of DNC corruption?
There's no reason whatsoever to assume WL has any information about anything at any given time, unless they've publicly suggested that they have.
this is not clear. A sufficiently small organization needn't have whistleblowers. The extreme level of confidentially practiced in the relevant organizations ensures that the number of people privy to the knowledge and capable of leaking is very small.