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Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

emma.best

161–170 of 227 posts

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#161
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The DNC does not function as a popular vote 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 m…

It is my view of the law that if you collect money under a stated intention of nonbiased party-backing and subsequently redirect those funds to Hillary Victory Fund, fraud has been constituted. Washing transactions between 50 different organizations to subvert campaign finance laws, as you referenced, also seems like an illegal redirection of funds. (federal lawsuit) Using DNC party funds for activities such as payin…

> deliberately infactual reports

You may want to spot-check your data.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12/a-new-report-puts-mi...

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that intelligence agencies would have ever needed to compromise WikiLeaks-the-organization. WikiLeaks' whole methodology was to publish, unedited and unredacted, any documents anyone handed them. Any intelligence agency that wanted a clean way to get some illicitly-obtained documents out into public view could therefore do so just by handing them to WikiLeaks, without needing to subvert the organ…

We can tell that wikileaks is now a front precisely because they have stopped operating in the way you describe. 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everything they have been given (Assange once claimed to have documents embarassing to Russia but they are as yet unpublished).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)…

I just assumed it was a false flag put out by Wikileaks, but what is their motive?

What is Assange’s motivation for not releasing proof of the signing key, because he can’t, but keeping that a secret?

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#163
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my view of the law that if you collect money under a stated intention of nonbiased party-backing and subsequently redirect those funds to Hillary Victory Fund, fraud has been constituted. Washing transactions between 50 different organizations to subvert campaign finance laws, as you referenced, also seems like an illegal redirection of funds. (federal lawsuit) Using DNC party funds for activities such as payin…

> deliberately infactual reports You may want to spot-check your data. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12/a-new-report-puts-mi...

The first two words of your link are "If true," and the report it is using four anonymous sources...

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.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#164
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, sweden has no investigation or request to interview Assange. 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.

Sweden has reserved the right to re-open the investigation; the investigation is no longer open because the only person of interest left for them to interact with is Assange, and since he's in asylum they can't. The closure of the investigation is procedural, not comment on his guilt or innocence. I was unaware of the leaked US charges from November however; that's news for me. Thank you for bringing it to my attenti…

I mean he targeted powerful people and put a lot of information out that they didn’t want exposed. I think to say he’ll get a fair day in court is something that’s easier to say when you aren’t the one with cannons pointed at you.

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.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#165
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is comically insane to clarify matters when lies are being spread about you?

Oh, yeah. Compare him to most other public figures. When's the last time you saw Obama or some other public figure release a 100+ long list of items people should not say about you, including that you smell? This is beyond ridiculous, it is sad and pathetic...

Obama has/has a lot of power. Obama may not have given a list like this, but he didn’t need to. He was able to say “this isn’t true” and he has enough followers that the message will have the effect of combating falsehood.

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.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I'm wondering as well. Is Assange just supposed to roll over and not defend himself? It seems like no matter what he does people just mock him. There have been lots of confirmed fake stories about Wikileaks over the years, what is the "proper" way for him to act when trying to debunk them?

> Is Assange just supposed to roll over and not defend himself? Defend himself from people saying that he smells? That he paints his hair? Really?

You're being disingenuous now. The core focus of this document is in regards to things that any other individual could justifiably sue for libel and defamation, but because this is a low point in Assange's image, we just laugh at him, which is ironic, considering his image itself has been damaged by these false claims.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#167
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't the role of every media organization to affect the outcome of elections, by revealing true facts to the public? democracy dies in the dark you know.

There's a difference between objectively revealing all relevant, true facts at your disposal and selectively releasing true facts that support your agenda or actively harm your opponent, at very specific times when its most advantageous for you to do it. There's also a difference between having legitimate complaints about the United States government and actively working with Russian Intelligence to destabilize weste…

If your criticism is about news entities cherry picking facts or making sensational headlines then you’re gonna have to target more than Wikileaks and alt-right journalism. Mainstream media, regardless of the political side, does this on the regular. I’d say it’s more this than “open objective news” by a large margin.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#168

Please try to suspend the snark-meter for a second and realize the truths being stated here by Wikileaks. For example, the supposed Manafort/Assange meeting was trumpeted by The Guardian to great fanfare, yet there is literally no evidence that it happened (ex. no security cameras inside or out showed Manafort entering the embassy). https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua... Clearly, we are being…

Exactly. There are way too many people here jumping on the “evil Assange” angle while defending their pet media outlets, or only condemning the media they don’t agree with.

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.

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#169
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which bad behavior are you referring to?

He's continued to claim asylum to dodge a credible rape accusation rather than face justice. [EDIT: his claims of fear of extradition to the US are credible; there was a leaked charge against him in US courts. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assang... ] 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'…

Without making a judgement on the seriousness of the charges, remember, the "rape" in this case is allegedly not stopping upon the tearing of his condom, not forced rape at knifepoint...

Re: Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks

#170

Please try to suspend the snark-meter for a second and realize the truths being stated here by Wikileaks. For example, the supposed Manafort/Assange meeting was trumpeted by The Guardian to great fanfare, yet there is literally no evidence that it happened (ex. no security cameras inside or out showed Manafort entering the embassy). https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-gua... Clearly, we are being…

Speaking of just reading the headline, The Intercept piece you linked has the facts wrong, apparently relying on readers like you not having read the original Guardian story. 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 the…

These points are apparently false and specifically addressed in the article, including the claim describing what clothing was worn.
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