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Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

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Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#141

This makes no sense. Julian already stated that Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks. From wikipedia [1]: On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to prevent Hillary Clinton[11] from winning the presidency.[12] Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin gav…

It's true, as worded, it doesn't make any sense.

What would make sense is that in August 2017, Rohrabacher wanted to strike a deal for actual, solid evidence that would debunk the idea that the Russian government hacked the DNC (and with it, the idea that Trump worked with Russia), rather than just take Assange's word on who the source was and wasn't. Since his goal is to save Trump's reputation, Assange's word isn't enough.

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/3731570-rohrabacher-ma...

Of course Trump likely wasn't aware that Rohrabacher was trying to make this kind of deal at the time. Rohrabacher only spoke to Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who could have easily mentally filed their phone conversation directly in the trash, because the Trump administration was already busy secretly drafting up charges against Julian Assange at the time.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikil...

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fair bit of evidence in Mueller's report: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf . But probably the most damning evidence is still highly classified. There's evidence released by private firms, including ThreatConnect, FireEye, CrowdStrike, Fidelis, and Dell SecureWorks, who have been tracking Russian intelligence groups, including the ones that they allege hacked the DNC, for many years prior: * https:…

The evidence is so comprehensive, and yet we can't see it. Pages 36 to 51 of volume one of the Mueller report concern the hacking and dissemination of DNC emails. It has many detailed claims and conclusions, but what's notably missing: The actual evidence on which Mueller bases his conclusion that both DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 are cutouts for the GRU. He doesn't even indirectly allude to specific evidence, let alone…

>(Unless that's just to deviously throw us off their trail.)

This seems fairly probable.

But, yes, those are all valid points. The Mueller report does not contain the actual hard evidence of the attribution. It contains the full names of the people who registered the account and a lot of the things they did, but it doesn't state the proof of this. I suspect if we all had Top Secret clearances we would probably all be satisfied with the evidence they have, but that's blind speculation of course. A large percentage of it may be Dutch intelligence's findings, which have been widely reported on, but of course you still have to take Dutch intelligence's word for it that they really did compromise GRU computers and observe them.

There is some real evidence (especially released by private security firms) of GRU and SVR hacking the DNC et al., and Guccifer 2.0 is the only one who ever claimed to have the documents discovered during the hack. There's probably a lot of other circumstantial evidence, too. If I get around to writing a long post about all of this, I'll cover everything I can find.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#143
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's stronger than a mere association actually, at least w.r.t. this issue. The DNC was interested in deflecting criticism regarding the leaked information, and arguing "We're under attack by Russia!" is very useful to that end. So, the firm they hired reaches this conclusion, opaquely, and based on exclusive access to the machines, which are then not examined by any other party.

That's literally standard practice. It really sounds like you're accusing CrowdStrike of lying with zero evidence to back that up.

I'm not accusing them of lying, I'm just saying that CrowdStrike claims are not uninterested third-party claims. On this matter they are not much more trustworthy than their contractors; and they need to present evidence to make their case to the public.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#144
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. That link contains zero evidence. That's your best? Really? How gullible do you think we are? Colin Powell had satellite photos of trains! That was something, not evidence he said it was, sure, but something at least. This is nothing.

If you won't address the evidence in the article then you have confirmation bias.

Let me spell it out even more clearly. I have addressed the article in its entirety by pointing out it is NOT evidence or even close to being evidence.

It is an unsubstantiated claim on the internet from a very dubiuos source with clear ulterior motvie.

The bias comes in when one is determined to believe something it can be confusing as to whether some item or other in support of it is evidence or not. This isn't. When there's evidence I may change my mind but it's kind of idiotic to believe this stuff when we've been so roundly lied to before and by Colin Powell with so much more credibility, with so much more to lose. Anyway he did lose it all and on behalf of all such "trust me" claims and this kind of unsubstantiated claim can only work once when it turned out to be lies. Bet your life that this is not just another lie? The last one cost into 6 figures of deaths just spell out the stakes. (But obviously also a huge funding boost to the military industrial complex. Rising tides lift all ships and most probably believed the lie that incidentally was good for their careers etc.)

Demand evidence for incendiary claims. For me, I owe it my own self-respect. I owe it out of support for this "democracy experiment". We can't rule this out as a total and utter lie. We really can't. Maybe it isn't but damn. That kind of lie worked so well before. Colin took me in totally, I believed the hell out of that guy.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#145
post #33
post #25

The level of brazen corruption this administration has been getting away with is absolutely staggering. At least when Nixon did it people had the decency to be upset. There's not even a pretense of integrity any more; this is the new normal. Our democracy is crumbling.

I see it as a signal to noise ratio. Back during Nixon times, the traditional media had a captive audience. There are many more forms of media today spread out among many narrow niches. People get lost in their own worlds

> Back during Nixon times, the traditional media had a captive audience.

Possibly more to the point, Nixon attacked the traditional media and they were our sole source of news. So when he pissed them off he had no way of getting an alternative view point out there.

Trump has also pissed off the media of course, but now they no longer have a monopoly over what the the public gets to hear. He famously bypassed them with his tweats to get his own narrative out there.

That was enough to get him through the impeachment, because he it's allowed him to keep most of his base. Had he lost his base like Nixon did the republicans would have turned on him to put as much distance between him and their next election as possible, just as they did with Nixon.

But I suspect it may not be enough to get him past 2020. He has pissed off a lot of people. Pissed them off enough to make them want to vote. Using advertising targeted via the email leaks was enough get his voters to the ballot box while at the same time the other side of politics was asleep at the wheel, secure in the knowledge they would win, so they didn't bother putting a matching effort in. That ain't going to happen this time around. Trump has done all the hard work required to get the democrat voters to the ballot box.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#146
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the lack of thought that goes into saying something like that. Not just saying it but also believing it. You’re getting this data from a third party. One that may well have used a USB stick to copy the data AFTER exfiltrating it using some other method, but BEFORE handing it to wiki leaks. Some shoddy timestamp correlations don’t mean that the data was stolen via USB in any way. They are inherently mutable an…

Everything in the leak could be faked and nothing about it makes it definitionally due to a Russian hack either. But the evidence certainly seems to indicate a local copy done by somebody who wasn't trying to cover their tracks: https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-met... The only evidence pointing to Russians is the CIA says so. The NSA gave it about a 50% chance before joining the other agencies…

Yeah a guy working for an organization who would outright murder you for leaking sensitive information sure wouldn’t bother covering his tracks while leaking sensitive information.

Or, you know, this data was copied to a USB by Wikileaks at some point before publishing.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#147
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not convinced Assange would recognize or care to look hard enough to figure out if his source was a simple cut out.

1. Maybe not. WikiLeaks is a leaks publication outfit, not a counter-intelligence outfit. 2. Suppose it had been a "cut-out" (though I'm incredulous of that). Do you believe they should have refused to publish in that case?

No to 2, I'm just saying I have doubts that Asange/WikiLeaks would reliably know who was actually behind the hacks.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#148
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in the leak could be faked and nothing about it makes it definitionally due to a Russian hack either. But the evidence certainly seems to indicate a local copy done by somebody who wasn't trying to cover their tracks: https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-met... The only evidence pointing to Russians is the CIA says so. The NSA gave it about a 50% chance before joining the other agencies…

Yeah a guy working for an organization who would outright murder you for leaking sensitive information sure wouldn’t bother covering his tracks while leaking sensitive information. Or, you know, this data was copied to a USB by Wikileaks at some point before publishing.

That doesn't make any sense. The source of the archive isn't wikileaks and the timestamps originate a couple months before publishing in the EDT timezone, before being organized and packaged for release.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#149
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a guy working for an organization who would outright murder you for leaking sensitive information sure wouldn’t bother covering his tracks while leaking sensitive information. Or, you know, this data was copied to a USB by Wikileaks at some point before publishing.

That doesn't make any sense. The source of the archive isn't wikileaks and the timestamps originate a couple months before publishing in the EDT timezone, before being organized and packaged for release.

Wikileaks source giving it to them via USB makes a lot of sense, then the timestamps where altered after delivery if they were not placed there as a red herring

What does it make sense is the evil DNC murdering one of their own employees on US soil after a very public data breach.

If only we could think of a country that would profit from promoting this conspiracy theory! Then we might get closer to the truth.

Re: Assange offered pardon if he co-operated over email leak, UK court hears

#150
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after the nomination was stolen from Bernie in 2016 I personally helped steal it, by casting one of the 3.7 million votes Hillary had over Bernie.

Did you also hide thousand of ballot boxes or conspired with DNC officials?

Yes. I'm also the one who leaked CNN debate questions, like: "here we are in Flint, MI – tell us what you think about the Flint water crisis."

Also, I sent John Podesta that risotto recipe.

BernieBro conspiracies haven't changed much in the last few years, I guess.

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