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Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

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Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#141

Post by pessimizer »

bandyaboot wrote: post #105

The impact Assange and Wikileaks have had in exposing nefarious government secrets shouldn’t be forgotten. But, the damage that they’ve suffered to their reputation is entirely deserved. I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know what they were doing when they partnered with Russia in 2016 to help draw as much attention as possible to the DNC emails—that is, engaging in an asymmetric political operation. That…

> I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know what they were doing when they partnered with Russia in 2016 to help draw as much attention as possible to the DNC emails

I don't know why you would talk like this. This is just a big lie wrapped in a sarcastic and condescending tone substituting for evidence. What you believe is not interesting to people, they care why you believe it because you may have an argument they haven't thought of.

The only thing that you're explaining to us is that you accept every anti-Assange argument proffered by the Democratic Party, and that the fact that the release was damaging is enough information to "confirm" for you that they are all true. If the release weren't damaging, there'd be no reason to talk about it, therefore you're citing the reasons you're having a discussion of Assange's guilt as evidence of Assange's guilt. It's weaker than circumstantial, even; you've simply decided that the DNC emails were released optimally for mysterious Russian interests, and are making a secular intelligent design argument.

I can't be read as anything but a public statement that you'll accept any charge against anyone accused of damaging your party, and over the subject of the safety of a journalist exposing government corruption no less. The scariest part of the whole thing is that the DNC emails exposed corruption. We should be celebrating their release because they exposed as true what was only suspected before. The Democratic Party fired people over it. But the current zeitgeist is about suppressing information from enemies and boosting information from friends, and Assange is a designated enemy. If the Democratic Party weren't so horrifically undemocratic internally, it would be celebrating the exposure of corruption in its own ranks, but instead it mourns the financial losses of the insiders who missed out on a H. Clinton presidency.

I will never get over Democrats supporting Trump in his prosecution of Assange because they decided that Assange supported Trump. Convincing people to support Trump prosecuting a journalist in order to avenge H. Clinton's loss to Trump is a real knot of a thought process to be twisted into.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#142

Post by phphphphp »

mardifoufs wrote: post #74
phphphphp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is…

What's the revisionism? The collateral murder video was actually especially popular and impactful to the demographic (democrat young white liberal) that is now almost comically against Assange. Also, there's literally no difference in the way they did "narrative building" with Collateral Murder than , say, the NYT does in covering war crimes in Ukraine. I mean to be honest it's a bit hard to understand why you would…

I disagree with your characterisation, there was a lot of criticism of Collateral Murder from young white liberals! Assange and wikileaks, at the time, were presented as apolitical truth-seekers, not as journalists. Journalism is very different from what Wikileaks claimed to be, and Collateral Murder was not presented as a piece of journalism, it was presented as a leak. You cannot conceivably compare what Wikileaks claimed to be at the time, to what the New York Times claimed to be at the time.

Go back in time to when Assange was first accused of sexual misconduct and you’ll find that a lot of people disliked him: it’s revisionist to claim that he was perceived a noble hero by the left until he was accused of sexual misconduct or until he started his crusade against Hilary Clinton (as if any young white liberal liked Hilary Clinton…)

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#143

Post by mindslight »

starkd wrote: post #123
misnome wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One side could unilaterally end the war in one word. Strange that it’s only in the interests of that side that people call for this.

that's not how the world works. Peace deals can happen, but everyone has to put everything on the table. When people dig in and are stubborn, that's when we get hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Please explain exactly what you think the Ukrainians have "dug into".

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#144

Post by rdiddly »

kerkeslager wrote: post #86
mhh__ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WikiLeaks arguably helped people to do that quite effectively. They've never really claimed to be neutral but especially around 2016 they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state (at best as a messenger). III.B.3 of the Mueller report I don't know if they are evil but I find it very hard to view them as anything other than selectively truthful at best.

Put yourself in Wikileaks' shoes for a second: you have information, you might even know that the source is malicious, but you also know the information is true . Your mandate as an organization is to release truths. Are they really supposed to not release the truth because it hurts the Democrats? I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but the truth is the truth. If we only care about the truth when it favors us, I…

Agreed. Corruption was exposed. How did we ever let the exposed corrupt people control the narrative? They unsurprisingly would rather talk about (and malign) the source of the info, rather than answer to the charges. RE the source, whoever that hero whistleblower is, they deserve thanks, even if it were Russia, which it wasn't. MOVING ON, torpedoing the Sanders campaign for example is a prime example of perverting and undermining democracy in a completely boring and plausible way that doesn't involve exotic foreign bogeymen and deserves way more attention from the justice and legislative systems.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#145

Post by starkd »

walls wrote: post #98
starkd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This comment is Russian propaganda: https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-bennett-walks-back-cl...

Business Insider is not credible. Its a rag.

They had the basis for peace talks to begin. Biden Administration decided to use it as a cheap way to damage Russia militarily with no American deaths. But massive Ukrainian deaths they find acceptable.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#146

Post by monetus »

naasking wrote: post #103
monetus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told Assange “on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange ... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC [Democratic National Committee] leaks,” The Daily Beast reported. He got stiffed in that respect, but he did achieve his specific goal of tanking Clinton's campaign. Old interview of him talking about it: https://www.democracynow.org/201…

I'm aware, I'm just curious what the OP specifically finds "evil" in these or other actions. Most journalists preferred Hillary, Assange likely did not, and his journalism hindered her campaign. OK, where is the "evil" specifically?

I can't speak for op and evil is subjective - If I have to take a stab at their thoughts, it would be along the lines that he was being a useful idiot for an entity whose goal was to harm a society. You can debate those points; what questions he should have asked, if what the Mueller report says about his sources is true, if he had any actual malice - evil is too strong a word for my taste, as I use it for sadism. He certainly went for retribution however. I don't think we'll know his motivations for sure while he still has legal exposure.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#147

Post by pydry »

zzzeek wrote: post #27
naasking wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated figures who have done good and evil things What evil things, specifically?

He preferred the election of Donald Trump and worked to make that happen. His preferences in specific political outcomes are well known: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... So yes, that would be why $politicalside doesn't like him, because he aligned with a very specific, pro-fascist $politicalside (whether or not he is actually a fascist). downmod away folks but that's why $politicalside…

Clinton expressed a thinly disguised desire to see him assassinated. Of course he preferred $not Clinton. Any journalist in the same position would.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#148

Post by petesergeant »

psychlops wrote: post #70
petesergeant wrote: post #64

> [Belmarsh] dubbed “Britain’s Guantánamo.” Oh come the heck on, it’s a standard British Category A prison. Any comparison to Gitmo are prima facie ludicrous and makes the rest of the article suspect

Not entirely: "Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the "British version of Guantanamo Bay"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Belmarsh

It’s 21 years later now

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#149

Post by mindslight »

starkd wrote: post #59
raverbashing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Russia invades a country but somehow it's a "proxy war" I don't know why you question the Putin apologist moniker, the alternatives are way worse. At least own it up

I think its pretty obvious this is a proxy war. Many legislators (both republican and democrat) are openly admitting it. See Dan Crenshaw-TX openly claim the benefits to the Ukraine war being able to fight a major geopolitical rival (Russia) with no American casualties by supplying weapons to Ukraine. That is a proxy war by definition. Looks at comments from Victoria Nuland (state dept officials from both parties) be…

I had thought there was some merit to the term "proxy war" here. But actually no, it's just another bit of specious nonsense. Thank you for making me look it up!

Wikipedia: A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors, one or both of which act at the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities

Calling this a proxy war ignores the part of the defintion about motivation. The only instigator here is Russia, and Ukraine is mainly fighting for its own interest of not being liquidated by Russia. Supplying allies does not make a country a combatant, nor does it make the supplied party a "proxy".

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#150

Post by pessimizer »

barbacoa wrote: post #134
bandyaboot wrote: post #105

The impact Assange and Wikileaks have had in exposing nefarious government secrets shouldn’t be forgotten. But, the damage that they’ve suffered to their reputation is entirely deserved. I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know what they were doing when they partnered with Russia in 2016 to help draw as much attention as possible to the DNC emails—that is, engaging in an asymmetric political operation. That…

To be fair to WikiLeaks there is very little evidence that Russia had anything to do with the DNC hacks. The FBI never had access to the servers and the the whole Russia hacking narrative relies on the DNC's claim of "trust us when we said this is what happened". Similarly the recent Twitter revelations on Hamilton68 showed that the Russian bots on manipulating social media was more or less BS. Who know what really h…

> Who know what really happened, but what may have happened was that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China

Or it could have been leaked by someone who liked Bernie, or by some other naive fantasist with a pipe dream that the Democratic Party could hypothetically one day run a fair primary again.

People are encouraged by the media to simply forget about the subjects of these leaks, and focus on the leaker. That's a tactic.

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