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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

#231

Post by yesenadam »

starkd wrote: post #189
luckylion wrote: post #135

Earlier 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…

[flagged]

> Stupid comment.

Please don't talk anything like this in future on HN, thanks, regardless of what the other person says. You wrote similar things several other times on this page.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#232

Post by yesenadam »

stillbourne wrote: post #221

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 "t…

> How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me

So, who do you think it should be instead? (genuine question)

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#233

Post by dragonwriter »

lamontcg wrote: post #228
the_third_wave wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "…

> And it turns out that “conspiracy” is something that requires the participants to understand that they’re doing something wrong,

Another problem was that the investigation was obstructed (in the broad sense, including crimes like obstruction of justice, witness tampering, etc.), both by people who were charged for that (some convicted and some remaining beyond the reach of US justice), and by Trump, who could not be charged under Justice Department policy which, regardless of its legal correctness, Mueller was bound by.

(And charging Trump after he left office for crimes related to the 2016 campaign would, given the general 5 year statute of limitations for federal crimes, have been difficult – it might be possible to argue that OLC memo on Presidents being beyond federal prosecution was correct and that the same logic tolled statutes of limitations, but that’s a dicey argument to make; obstruction would have been less problematic, but the Trump pardons and other things would also complicate that.)

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#234

Post by yesenadam »

caskstrength wrote: post #205
starkd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a Ukrainian I find your comments in this thread insulting. You should educate yourself a little about history of Ukraine before you start spewing such nonsense. I would suggest you to start with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rN... Now, I will assume you are just a misguided westerner who watches too much Fox news and indulge you: > Ukraine is right on the russia's border. So? How…

Thank you so much for this comment. Until I read it, I was regretting having submitted this story, after seeing it marred by starkd's sickening 27-comment barrage of Russian propaganda and insults.

> How about US invading Mexico, occupying and annexing its lands

Hmm I think they already did that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

TLDR: Map of Mexico in 1824 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_1824_(equirectangu...

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#235

Post by kornhole »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #213
gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was easy to do all that because he actively put his thumb on the scale for the Republicans. > “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.” https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...

I wonder where his animosity towards Hillary Clinton came from, I guess we will never know.

Imagine the amount of documents they reviewed from the cable leaks to the emails and more. If anybody had the most information from which to judge how dangerous a leader would be, it was probably Julian. He did want to impede the war machine by sharing truth to the world, but the volume of data could not be absorbed by most.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#236

Post by kornhole »

phphphphp wrote: post #56
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

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…

His publications were inconvenient for one party, and then they were inconvenient for the other. He exposed all parties which helped us all become a little more independently minded, but the partisans were in power and exacted revenge.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#237

Post by 93po »

this_user wrote: post #110
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…

The failure of WL is that rather than focus on doing journalistic work, it became the Julian Assange show with Julian Assange about Julian Assange. And then it becomes much more questionable that WL was only publishing information that might harm the Clinton's campaign while he was simultaneously in talks with her opponent's campaign about obtaining a pardon from Trump. When you start operating like that, you lose an…

> The failure of WL is that rather than focus on doing journalistic work, it became the Julian Assange show with Julian Assange about Julian Assange.

This not a failure of WL, this is the American establishment and elites who were doing everything possible to smear Assange, even to the point of nothing-burger stories about how he was a bad house guest and didn't clean his cat's liter box enough. They were really grasping at straws.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#238

Post by 93po »

phphphphp wrote: post #56
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

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…

The history of online-left public opinion on WL is proof that your argument is not true.

> Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist

This is 100% true, though. Trying to say it isn't without any substance doesn't really help your case at all.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#239

Post by 93po »

BashiBazouk wrote: post #170
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

I thought the disillusionment around here with wikileaks had more to do with the way they had changed from careful curation, removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. Less that Hillary's emails were leaked and more that the personal information of lesser figures in and donors to the DNC were also released in mass. They had changed in perception from journalism to personal revenge ag…

> removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps.

This is often repeated anti-WL propaganda that isn't true. There is a vast amount of effort that goes into censoring leaks and it's by far the most time consuming part of the process. They spend literally months on it. Just because they chose not to censor something that you would have preferred for them to censor doesn't mean a tremendous amount of time and thought didn't go into that decision.

> The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception...

This is also not true. Why would WL refuse to publish something if the source could go to literally thousands of other journalists? It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#240

Post by yesenadam »

mopsi wrote: post #176
starkd wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that completely ignores how the world really works. You are perfectly content to risk WWIII. It is not 1945 anymore. You are risking a nuclear conflict that would be absolutely horrific.

What difference would a nuclear strike make anymore, several Ukranian cities have already been hit with more TNT equivalent than Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wiped from the earth: https://twitter.com/OstapYarysh/status/1632282407578611712

Geez, that is just chilling, horrifying.
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