The revelations from Winner's leak didn't seem subversive - rather they seemed to bolster arguments for RussiaGate and the new digital cold war - both of which were growing DNC talking points.
Does anyone else feel the same way? Or do I just have too much tinfoil on my head?
Anyway, it wouldn't really change anyone's pre-existing opinion if I directly made any kind of claim without evidence... teach a man to fish, etc. So with that in mind: can you think of any really silly stories, published by an American... uh, "science" magazine, that purported something totally impossible - and then never got brought up again? Something of the GWOT vintage? Something scientifically impossible, due to the way radio propagation works? Ah, I'm so tempted to do a "rhymes with"... but I know better.
Actually I can think of something I can openly discuss as an example - because it was pulled by those damn dirty ruskies, not our boys, and I was long out of the know when it happened: cell tower upgrades to combat cruise missiles [0], and super advanced ballistic calculators being used against ISIS [1]. Can you see what these things have in common? Despite technically impossible claims (15m CEP for unguided munitions dropped from 6km... lol, anybody know how Kalman filters work?) - the message is uncritically spread by western media.
[0] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-plans-turn...
[1] https://www.airrecognition.com/index.php/news/defense-aviati...
ps. I'm guessing you're referring to the silly "sonic embassy attacks" as the "science" story, but it could have been basically anything else published by the war media in the last several decades.
RE sonic attacks: nah - you have to consider it from an operational, boots on the ground, strategic perspective: what purpose is being served, what is being protected by way of misdirection (CI is primarily defensive in nature and misdirection is the absolute best way to lie). I can't think of anything useful to lie about in the sonic attack story... which wouldn't really have had anything to do with anyone outside of DoS. DoS hasn't gotten along with anyone but the CIA for a very long time - so I'd have a hard time trying to guess at their motives for anything anyway.
To spell it out, the entire thing is a lie from the top to the bottom. USA military murdering children on the other side of the world only ever harms USA interests and USA security. Our wars are evil, done for the sake of evil. We fear brown people so that we might enrich armaments manufacturers by murdering brown people. Dress it up however you want, but that doesn't change what it is and what any thinking person who has actually spent any time doing this evil knows it to be.
Well I guess it could be worse, you could be unaware of this self destructive tendency. Actually, that is the only thing worse - so not much of a silver lining.
> Of course we haven't left Iraq yet... Next you'll be telling us about the important work we've been doing there
You are really bad at this, presumably because your world model has been totally warped by a constant consumption of cartoonish misrepresentation. I'm pretty confident that your mental image of me is a complete inversion of reality. For things that actually matter anyway - like I doubt you imagine me to be an 86 year old black lesbian... so you've gotten warmer in that regard, but not much else.
> USA military murdering children... for the sake of evil ... We fear brown people ... Dress it up however you want, but that doesn't change what it is and what any thinking person who has actually spent any time doing this evil knows it to be.
This is the problem with going full emote psychobabble mode, it looks like you've just accidentally admitted to murdering some number of brown children in an evil racist killing spree. I suspect that is the opposite of what you intended to communicate.
I appreciate "Collateral Murder" and similar releases by Wikileaks and others because they opened my eye to the world as it really is. Maybe I should have known already, but in that case I would never have voted for Bush the Lesser. Somehow the history classes in my elementary and secondary public education left out the important parts.
>> (commence longwinded sermon about how murderous, racist and generally evil the US military is)
> I have no mental model of you.
lol, sure kid - I'm sure that is your default mode... if those last two sentences actually mean what I think. It would certainly explain a lot.
But the "radio propagation" part makes me think this isn't the right one.
What I have in mind is far more modest - like "We have a really effective, non-technical, targeting methodology against very loosely connected cells that are receiving foreign assistance but also exercising increasing more effective opsec. How do we keep them from accurately attributing their misfortune to the vulnerability we are exploiting?"
On a related note: you remember when the rebuilt Iraqi military insisted on going with NATO everything for personal equipment (M16, AT4, body armor, etc), against the advice of NATO military advisors? That is because they were convinced that their repeated defeats could only be ascribed to a technological outclassing that bordered on the magical. They weren't the only ones, and it was unhelpful in most instances - like civilians somehow getting it into their heads that our super conspicuous sunglasses weren't for protecting our eyes from tiny bits of flying concrete during firefights. No, they were x-ray glasses that we were using to peep on their ladies. Easy fix, right? Just let them try on the glasses themselves. Nope, we obviously disabled the functionality using the very same magical technology before handing over the porno-shades.
By deceitfully feigning hyper partisanship and misleading the public for years? I think we disagree on the fundamental definition of several words, including "certain", "decent" and "journalist".
The NSA might do many things, but it absolutely does not prosecute anyone (though it same-head military command might prosecute service members within its command.)
Wikileaks likely did spread information which was provided by and served the interests of Russia, but I've never seen a credible argument that false information was published.
The wikileaks approach of 'publish all the things' was just begging to be used by a state propaganda machine.
Are there any credible sources indicating that Wikileaks selectively edited or chose what to publish based on political goals? I think they have some sort of process to validate legitimacy of leaks before they publish them, but I've never heard claims that they intentionally edited or chose not to leak information for Wikileaks own political goals.
Certainly possible that Russia leaked true-but-incomplete information to Wikileaks, but isn't, like, all discussion of reality true-but-incomplete?
Edit: Sibling thread found a claim of selective editing I was not previously aware of. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...
> After the Soviet term became widely known in the 1980s, native speakers of English broadened the term as "any government communication (either overt or covert) containing intentionally false and misleading material, often combined selectively with true information, which seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass audience."[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
- March 16: Internal WikiLeaks messages indicate the purpose of the archive is to annoy Clinton and establish WikiLeaks as a "resource/player" in the election.[29]:44–45
- June 14: The GRU uses its @dcleaks_ persona to reach out to WikiLeaks and offer to coordinate the release of sensitive information about Clinton, including financial documents.[353][29]:45
- June 22: WikiLeaks reaches out to "Guccifer 2.0" via Twitter. They ask "Guccifer 2.0" to send them material because it will have a bigger impact if they publish it. They also specifically ask for material on Clinton they can publish before the convention.[256]
I'm not saying Assange is guilty of any crimes, or doctored evidence. But Wikileaks had an agenda beyond "the facts".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interferen...
I think the
>containing intentionally false and misleading material
portion of the definition is crucial.
By all means, call it foreign election interference or a foreign propaganda campaign. But in my opinion, accurate information can never be 'disinfo'. I think this is a slippery slope towards discrediting all information that embarrasses or threatens the state: whistleblowers, investigative reporting on war crimes and corruption, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/assange-embassy-excl...
[on edit:] And the second point is that Wikileaks, as free-speech ideologues, didn't actually NEED to be explicitly complicit to act as a vector for psyops. If you know your opponent is going to throw rock every time, you can win by throwing paper every time. If you're a Fancy Bear and know that Wikileaks will publish whatever you give them, then you can selectively choose what to hand them.
There are plenty of source links in the Wikipedia article[1].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...
I'm curious if we'll ever get an accounting of the internal organizational power struggles that occurred during the 2016 election. It felt like Assange and his proxies were seeking vengeance through Twitter (to be fair, its claimed Hillary Clinton joked "Can't we just drone this guy" about Assange - no lack of bad blood between them), but that somehow never seemed to bleed onto the Wikileaks website itself.
It's not clear that Wikileaks even knew who their source was.
Isn't the whole point that they supposed to play coy?
Plus it was more than "playing coy". For example, they promised a reward for people who came forward with info on Rich's death. Why do that if they had no relation to him?
>For example, they promised a reward for people who came forward with info on Rich's death. Why do that if they had no relation to him?
To try and uncover suspected corruption and leak it if there was more to his murder than met the eye. It was reasonable to suspect something was up.
Honestly the fact that this didn't occur to you is a little strange.
Who said they are the same thing? I repeatedly used "implied". You are framing it as if they were asked a direct question about Seth Rich and their only response was "no comment." They said stuff like this[1]:
>“Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There is a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, who was shot in the back. Murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington,” said Julian Assange appearing on a Dutch television program called Nieuwsuur.
>Assange added, “We have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources are, you know, our sources face serious risks that is why they come to us so we can protect their anonymity.”
He is directly implying that Rich was killed for political reasons, that he was a whisleblower, and then in the next sentence he says "our sources". Do you not see the implication in talking like that?
>To try and uncover suspected corruption and leak it if there was more to his murder than met the eye. It was reasonable to suspect something was up.
The problem, like elsewhere with Wikileaks, is the selective search to uncover corruption. I would have no complaint if Wikileaks made it standard to always offer a reward for information on the death of any political staffer. The problem is that they only offered the reward for this specific staffer already knowing that there was a conspiracy theory that he was their source. That gives them plausible deniability that they are "just seeking truth" while also reinforcing the perceived connection between Seth Rich and Wikileaks.
[1] - https://www.cbs19news.com/story/41466407/wikileaks-offers-20...
Oh, I'm sorry did you get upset because somebody inferred something different from what you said to what you actually meant?
That must be upsetting.
Nonetheless in spite of what you said I think maybe you were implying something different?
>He is directly implying that Rich was killed for political reasons, that he was a whisleblower, and then in the next sentence he says "our sources". Do you not see the implication in talking like that?
No, I categorically do not.
He was trying to illustrate the risks of revealing sources (i.e. people could get murdered) and he suspected something fishy was going on with the murder of Rich. As did a lot of people because it WAS fishy.
Once again, you KEEP ignoring that he said "WE DO NOT SHARE WHO OUR SOURCES ARE". You are deliberately ignoring that he stated that very clearly in favor of an incorrect reading between the lines.
>The problem, like elsewhere with Wikileaks, is the selective search to uncover corruption.
I honestly can't fathom the idea that uncovering corruption is just only if you manage to do it to every party equally.
It's essentially an endorsement of corruption.
>That must be upsetting.
There is no reason to be this rude. The conversation ended right there.
They also post a lot of misinformation to their Twitter account - falsely claiming Bob Beckel was a Clinton staffer, boosting the false Seth Rich story, boosting bogus Clinton health claims, and much more besides.
They also posted selectively edited leaks to hide information that made Russia look bad: https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/09/09/wikileaks-hi...
Their selective choice of leaks which they did and did not choose to accept also suggests a lot of bias: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
Their internal leaked chats from 2016 showed they were consciously and deliberately skewing their coverage to help the GOP and harm Dems: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
They're very biased, and their biases come out in what they choose to publish, what they refuse to publish, and how they choose to editorialize, and in one known case in selective editing of a leak, but in general the leaks themselves aren't "false information" but are documents which they're spreading to create a specific narrative, and in several cases like the Syria, Podesta, DCCC, and DNC leaks it's clear they're serving as a front for Russian intelligence agencies to spread a specific narrative to aid Russian goals rather than further the truth. Since they serve as a front for foreign intelligence agencies, it's totally possible they're getting drops from other intelligence agencies with similar agendas.
Short of evidence that they published falsehoolds, I'd still argue that "disinfo" is a misnomer. But your above points certainly demonstrate biased reporting, as is found in any other journalistic organization.
Where do you draw the line between what wikileaks did and other investigative reporting that uses information from whistleblowers? Were the pentagon papers disinfo?
It seems like your position taken to its extreme would disregard all information except info willingly broadcasted by the state, and make us blind to stories of war crimes, corruption, anything else that embarrasses or threatens the state.
You're trying to threaten a slippery slope wherein all information needs to be state sanctioned, but the definition of disinformation makes it clear that the only time information gains that moniker is when it's actively being spread to mislead for malicious purposes.
Quite the contrary to your 'extreme' extrapolation, the term disinformation allows us to identify the use of malicious state-sponsored information warfare. It FIGHTS state sponsored narratives. It doesn't support it.
There was a strange schizophrenia about those email leaks from DNC media outlets.
They routinely said that it held nothing of any interest (e.g. the story about the recipes - https://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13253852/wikileaks-john-podes... ) but that it was also done to serve the interests of Russia and derailed the election - https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-indictments-r...
The idea that truthfully informing voters about the views and actions of a candidate was reprehensible if it affected the outcome of the election was never actually justified, it was simply assumed.
Which do you actually disagree with, or do you simply not see how both can be true?
Affecting the outcome of an election is not inherently wrong. Foreign countries affecting the outcome of our elections is dangerous, and has historically been very frowned upon. There's reasons that only Americans are allowed to donate to election campaigns. Our elections are supposed to be for _us_. If whatever countries want a particular outcome start having an outsized voice, our elections will be even less connected to what's best for Americans than they already were.
I also disagree with the notion that a foreign power revealing truths about a candidate is wrong. If you reject a foreign truth over a domestic lie you reject the very heart of democracy itself.
It's all the more ironic given the amount of meddling the US has done in foreign elections, including Russia's.
Okay, but then you're welcoming well-funded nations to spend outsized money and effort on attacking whatever candidate they will get the least from. How does that not devolve into our elections just being playthings of our enemies?
What is ironic about this? I also do not think that the US should meddle in foreign elections, but that doesn't really have anything to do with this.
Those two are not contradictory because the first one is based off the substance of the documents and the second one is based off the perception of the documents. Nothing too substantial was revealed but the existence of the emails was enough to feed into the existing narrative that Clinton couldn't be trusted and it therefore harmed her chances of winning.
>The idea that truthfully informing voters about the views and actions of a candidate was reprehensible if it affected the outcome of the election was never actually justified, it was simply assumed.
Because partial truthfulness isn't that different than lying. Imagine two scenarios:
1. Clinton gets the debate questions ahead of time.
2. Both candidates get the debate questions ahead of time. (Just a hypothetical and not a real accusation)
Story 1 would lead you to believe the Clinton is corrupt and will abuse the system for her advantage. Those two traits were already two of the biggest criticisms of her.
Story 2 would lead you to believe that it is the debate system that is corrupt and no specific candidate was at fault.
Story 2 being true automatically means story 1 is also true. However if you knew that story 2 was true and reported it as story 1, are you still "truthfully informing voters about the views and actions of a candidate"? You are reporting facts but in such a way as to bias the story. I think that is certainly reprehensible from a journalistic standpoint.
Many journalists believed that almost everything in the substance of these docs would be true for other candidates, they just didn't have the documents from other candidates as proof.
There was the email, if I remember, about expressing a heartfelt desire to see a FTA stretching across the whole continent.
This was right after Hillary decided to rally against the TPP. This undermined that move and made it ring hollow.
>the existence of the emails was enough to feed into the existing narrative that Clinton couldn't be trusted
As opposed to diffing her public moves with what she said in the emails? You seriously think that the mere existence of leaked emails was enough to sway voters regardless of what was actually said in them?
Bizarre.
And yes, the existence of the emails played a role in how people voted or whether they voted regardless of the content. I mean there was the whole pizzagate thing that was obviously independent of the actual substance of the emails.
That's some hubris.
Clearly there were people who were turned off by the leaks without actually reading the entire collection or even any of documents. These people were more reacting to the perception of the leaks in the zeitgeist than the actual substance of the documents they didn't read. I don't know what to say to you if we can't agree on that.
Those same emails motivated someone to drive 300 miles to fire a gun in a pizza shop looking for a child sex ring in a basement that didn't exist.
How's that for bizarre?
The fact somebody concocted an utterly absurd story from the leaks and used it to justify a killing spree demonstrates very clearly that the leaks themselves weren't at all necessary for the shooting spree.
They could have concocted pizzagate out of something else. In fact, they probably would have.
And the guy clearly wanted to shoot someone up and was looking for reasons.
A large mass of swing voters can't be expected to behave as irrationally as one crazed Trump supporter with a gun.
It's not schizophrenic - the reality is that false editorializing about a leak can deeply mislead people even if the real content of the leak is completely innocuous (e.g. someone ordering a pizza).
And that they couldn't have come up with something equally harebrained without the emails?
It's dishonest, excessively partisan, wrong and a transparent attempt at redirection.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/20/the-intercept-reality-win...
I think she was a nice woman who got caught up in things that were a lot larger than her. I'm glad she's out.