The era of alternative facts were kind of started with Julian Assange. The video "Collateral Murder" was heavily edited by Mr. Assange. It was damning enough without his edits, he didn't need to add his personal soundtrack and audio edits to the video. How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me. Leakers should give "the facts" and "the truth" untarnished and free of modification.
Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
221–230 of 355 posts
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#222The 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…
> 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".
This is just not true. The Senate Intelligence Committee had multiple sources of information to conclude with little doubt that it was Russia and that Putin personally authorized the operation. They cited an investigation which found data had been exfiltrated to US based servers known to have been leased in connection with the GRU.
And I get it, people that would typically frequent hn including myself want to see the specifics of that investigation and how that connection was made to the GRU. Obviously that would involve revealing intelligence sources, which isn’t going to happen. So yeah, of course you can choose to believe that everyone is lying about everything and that the Republican led committee chose to pass up an opportunity to embarrass and discredit the DCCC and DNC by telling the truth, but that seems a bit unlikely to me.
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> And their have been hostilities between the two since 2014 when the US formented a revolution there. This is just another conspiracy theory. In 2014, a pro-Russian president of Ukraine backed down from a very favourable trade deal with the EU at the last minute due to Russian pressure, people came to streets to protest, he ordered snipers to shoot unarmed protestors, after which the unrest only grew, he fled the co…
The Association Agreement also included sections on political and security cooperation. More importantly, Ukraine was pretty evenly split on Maidan and the signing of the Association Agreement. [0] This split, also seen in elections was largely geographic. [1] Unsurprisingly, toppling the (democratically elected) president tore the country apart, and independent on which government you personally prefer, I think it is really hard to argue that Ukraine wasn't the victim of Big Power politics in this case.
[0] https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Ukrainian_parliamentary_e...
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#224The 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…
Yeah, they have numerous exposed war crimes, cover ups and mass surveillance schemes. Which inherently meant that they took their info wherever they could get it from. But that's not enough to make up for harming the candidate you were backing in an election 7 years ago. They could've made sure to not embarass our side, that's the redline where they got too political!
Take a breath. Who said anything about whether one thing “makes up” for another?
Despite the harm that I believe they had a hand in doing to the US electoral process in 2016, I’d still accept that their contributions have been net positive over their history. It’s just a shame to expose war crimes then go out of your way to help elect a guy who gleefully pardons war criminals.
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, they have numerous exposed war crimes, cover ups and mass surveillance schemes. Which inherently meant that they took their info wherever they could get it from. But that's not enough to make up for harming the candidate you were backing in an election 7 years ago. They could've made sure to not embarass our side, that's the redline where they got too political!
Take a breath. Who said anything about whether one thing “makes up” for another? Despite the harm that I believe they had a hand in doing to the US electoral process in 2016, I’d still accept that their contributions have been net positive over their history. It’s just a shame to expose war crimes then go out of your way to help elect a guy who gleefully pardons war criminals.
You didn't, you are right. Sorry for implying that. It's just a sentiment that I actually encounter very often online. I guess I'm also biaised, as a muslim, to care way more about the iraq war than the US electoral process. So for me it's just such a non-issue (especially since the documents weren't forged or fake) but I guess everyone cares more about their own backyard ;)
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#226Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course Russia has vital interests all around it: everyone does. But it doesn't follow that "therefore Russia should be allowed to annex everything around it". Again, we know that playbook, it has played out before in Europe. Today it's Ukraine, tomorrow it's Poland, and your arguments will still be exactly the same: Russia has vital interests in Poland, Russia has occupied Poland before, Poland is outgunned, and w…
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Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#228Earlier 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.
> III.B.3 of the Mueller report The 'Russian collusion case' has been thoroughly discredited so why do you bring it up here, other than to muddle the issue? If you want to have a clear case of meddling with presidential elections I'd point at the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee funding of the Steele dossier. Should that be brought up here as well? The 'dossier' was also discredited but it w…
> The 'Russian collusion case' has been thoroughly discredited
No, "collusion" doesn't exist as a crime. It wasn't discredited it just doesn't exist as a criminal thing.
And it turns out that "conspiracy" is something that requires the participants to understand that they're doing something wrong, and Mueller couldn't find any evidence of that. When you're rich and committing white collar crimes then the defense of "I didn't know it was illegal" apparently works, unlike us plebs when we get pulled over by the traffic cops.
There was plenty of evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russians. Just none of it was considered crimes by the Muller investigation. Wikileaks was actively lending support to the Trump campaign in order to attempt to get Trump elected and defeat Hillary. So were the Russians. That is on solid factual ground. But Mueller didn't find anything there that the DOJ could charge him over.
It is also pretty clear that Mueller thought that the revelations would be shocking enough that Congress would impeach and remove Trump for what he had done and that "high crimes and misdemeanors" (which really has no legal definition) would cover it, but he didn't expect Congress to abdicate its responsibility in favor of partisan politics.
This is the same President that bragged he could "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and get away with it, and that is precisely what the Republican led Congress allowed him to do.
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
The timeline is actually a bit different. The US espionage charges came into the light after Ecuador revoked his asylum and Assange was arrested by the UK police. He was hiding on the suspicion that Sweden would extradite him to the US and everyone made fun of him and called him paranoid for 7 years.
As I said, he was hiding from rape and espionage/computer hacking charges. There's nothing fishy about either of those, conspiracy theories not withstanding. "Everyone made fun of him" is a large overstatement. He didn't want to face any of the three or four justice systems he was dealing with (Uk, Sweden, US and Australia) so he opted to go into Asylum in that embassy. He could have been convicted (or acquitted) of…
You're rewriting history. When he asked for asylum Assange was only seeking refuge from being questioned on Swedish soil about the rape allegations from 2010. When he was granted asylum however, he breached the bail conditions from the UK and there were indeed two governments after him. But, I repeat, no espionage/computer charges were known until 2018.
Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course Russia has vital interests all around it: everyone does. But it doesn't follow that "therefore Russia should be allowed to annex everything around it". Again, we know that playbook, it has played out before in Europe. Today it's Ukraine, tomorrow it's Poland, and your arguments will still be exactly the same: Russia has vital interests in Poland, Russia has occupied Poland before, Poland is outgunned, and w…
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You're making assumptions about me based on your projections. They're wrong.
I don't profit from any weapon sales, and it's the Ukrainians who want to fight. I'm certain especially Western Europe would've been much happier if Ukraine hadn't resisted and Russia could've swallowed them (your preferred option), because it would've meant no annoying break with your main provider of gas and oil.
But here we are, and some people are still claiming that Russia has the right to terrorize its neighbors because hurr durr Red Army strong.