That's why the conspiracy accusations and labels and downvotes for the current thing shouldn't faze anyone, it's par for the course and then people pretend it never happened and that "we were always at war with eastasia".
I can't believe this narrative is still repeated. "influence" can mean almost anything. In the headliner 2016 story, it meant a few based Russian organizations bought several million dollars of targeted Facebook ads. That's what broke democracy I guess.
In Assange's case it means he released existing emails which reflected negatively on a candidate. In that past most of his released material has negatively reflected on republicans.
The US has an interest in, and is "influencing" foreign election 24/7 365.
I've been watching Assange's odissey quite closely and I don't remember seeing anything about withholding data "on the RNC". Do you have an example?
Both things happened around the same time, both sourced to Russian hackers. It is unknown if Assange was offered the RNC emails for release. It is pretty clear this was done for political ends to aid Donald Trump, less clear if Assange was personally "in" on it.
If the theory that the hacks and the leaks of the DNC documents come from Russia to sabotage Clinton's chances holds water, it would make more sense that the Russian sources release to WikiLeaks only the dirt on the DNC, doesn't it?
So this is a typical bullshit thing for democrat-party aligned people for whom the ends justifies the means and there's no bad tactics, only bad targets. The very same types that tell you "twitter files are partisan nothing burgers" and that people like Matt Taibbi are "right wingers".
I don't care what the FBI tries to pull to muddy the waters. Or the government toppling CIA, for that matter.
Assange has been pursued and illegally imprisoned for exposing corruption and doing journalism, nothing more.
"twitter files are partisan nothing burgers"
Glenn greenwald and taibbi are not republican sycophants but true left but, just like criticizing Hillary made you "russian" or trumpist, seeing the truth about censorship makes you "right winger/republican".
Edit: hypocrisy at its finest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927153
It's so hilarious. You can't even come up with an original dismissal. It's the same old tired labels. Try harder.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/4125603-facebook-fi...
fun how the nothingburger even applies to jokes.
Begone, troll.
" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Secondly, there is no debate here. I am merely witnessing the equivalent of a person screaming uncontrollably for no reason at an intersection in a big city.
Your comment is just muddying the waters with a strawman: "someone being a saint" to avoid the very true fact that Assange is persecuted and imprisoned for being adversarial to the government and exposing corruption. It's very simple.
As for influencing US elections, you should look into the CIA/FBI and your own corrupt political parties that censor left and right when truths that are inconvenient appear. Oh, who would've thought, exactly like in Assange's case.
The whole accusing someone of Russia is just so disingenuous and time and time again (russiagate, Hunter's laptop, etc) it's shown to be absolute bullshit, that is happily reproduced by the bought and paid for media, who has ex CIA people happily being panelists and commentators.
It's so ridiculous and your comment extremely low effort.
and yours is extremely high in brain worms. Not sure why you're still beating this horse.
You're talking about accusations of conspiracy theories.
Anything a gov or an ideology doesn’t like often gets labeled conspiracy theory, [foreign] disinformation/collusion, terrorism, fascism. Some times throw throw more than one accusation at the idea they despise. Obviously sometimes those accusations are true in order to work, but it’s getting ridiculous now.
>This trick has been played dozens of times but somehow people still fall for it...
and will keep falling for it. They can keep doing it because it keeps working, and people won't bother thinking a little bit deeper about the issue.
A whole lot of issues could be solved or on a good path to being solved if more people did that.