[HN Gopher] Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
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Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange
Author : yesenadam
Score : 203 points
Date : 2023-03-19 12:51 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| yesenadam wrote:
| What a sorry, shameful saga. I found this story linked to on rms'
| home page:
|
| > Our next rally for Julian Assange is Saturday, March 4 at 11:30
| to 12:30pm. We will gather at Park St. Station on the Boston
| Common to speak out for Assange and gather signatures on our
| petition to our senators. (See how the media failed Julian
| Assange at Harper's Magazine.)
|
| https://stallman.org/
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Is there a problem?
| starkd wrote:
| No, no problem. Just an observation.
| [deleted]
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.or...
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Mirror:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.o...
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The efforts to discredit Assange are a primary example of a
| successful smear campaign. It's not surprising that people are
| gullible to make such campaigns easy, character assassination
| always works when large government agencies are behind it for
| many years. I was actually surprised how long it took.
| 206lol wrote:
| Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated
| figures who have done good and evil things. They are fair
| targets for criticism, and it's genuinely ok for someone to
| draw the conclusion that, "given the criticism, I cannot
| support them".
|
| Yes, a deliberate smear campaign exists, but also these are
| institutions with complex histories. You cannot simply call
| anyone critical of them "gullible".
| snehk wrote:
| They did thing an and thing a was considered to be okay when
| one political party benefitted from a. The exact same thing a
| was then considered to be bad when it didn't benefit that
| party anymore. It's quite simple. If you didn't criticize me
| when he first started doing a and even cheered him on and
| then turn around when the exact same things don't benefit you
| anymore, don't claim that you were ever cheering him on for
| the action itself.
| naasking wrote:
| > Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are
| complicated figures who have done good and evil things
|
| What evil things, specifically?
| monetus wrote:
| _"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.democrac
| ynow.org/2016/7/25/exclusive_wikileaks_j...
| naasking wrote:
| 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?
| monetus wrote:
| 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.
| naasking wrote:
| Retribution for what? I'm just not sure what relevance
| any of this has anyway.
|
| The only questions that are relevant for journalism are,
| "is the information correct?", and "is the information of
| interest to the public?".
|
| Every source has their own motives, as does every
| journalist, and no story is so detailed as to paint the
| full picture. These questions are ultimately all
| irrelevant.
| monetus wrote:
| Hosting things like the snowden and manning leaks caused
| a lot of fallout for him, iirc. He was rightly pissed off
| at the administration. The information he had in 2016 was
| of interest to and was used against the public - those
| weren't mutually exclusive.
|
| How this affects a legal precedent is infuriating beyond
| text, and it is incumbent on good people to defend him
| now.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Okay, so the "evil" he did is having a preference you
| don't like?
|
| I mean, I don't like that preference either, but the
| documents he leaked were real. It's true that the
| documents were one-sided, but do we know that Wikileaks
| had documents it could have published on Trump and
| didn't? Can we agree that maybe Clinton shares some of
| the blame for, you know, _breaking the law_? Or the
| Democrats for even choosing her as a candidate?
| mint2 wrote:
| What did wikileaks reveal that showed Clinton broke the
| law?
|
| They revealed the DNC was trying to tip the scales
| towards her in their primary which was unsavory but I
| don't recall wikileaks having anything to do with the
| classified emails...
|
| although the main purpose of their release timing was to
| bury, drown, and distract from a certain other piece of
| info that had come out - bye bye claim to like
| transparency lol.
|
| And the email server in hindsight also seems quaint - a
| scandal from a time of innocence and naivety. At the time
| it seemed overblown too, but now it's downright quaint.
| Non stop private email and encrypted messenger app use
| followed that, and then we all know how classified docs
| have gone lately.
| naasking wrote:
| > although the main purpose of their release timing was
| to bury, drown, and distract from a certain other piece
| of info that had come out - bye bye claim to like
| transparency lol.
|
| This is a conspiracy theory intended to discredit Assange
| and link him to Trump. There is zero evidence that the
| leak was timed to distract from anything, or that he and
| anyone close to Trump were in contact. In fact, Assange
| had announced an imminent release of information before
| that "other piece of info" had come out, so if you want
| to make a causal claim, it would make more sense that
| that info was timed to distract from Assange's release.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > he did achieve his specific goal of tanking Clinton's
| campaign.
|
| I read thru that interview and wasn't able to suss out
| where Assange asserted he had a goal of tanking the
| Clinton campaign. Could you repost those lines here for
| us?
| monetus wrote:
| There is no confession if that is what you are asking
| for. His credibility relies on that not being his goal.
| Thanks for the polity - the undertone of your question
| implies he has to confess that word for word for that to
| be his intent.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > There is no confession if that is what you are asking
| for.
|
| Your parent said:
|
| _but he did achieve his specific goal of tanking Clinton
| 's campaign [here is an] Old interview of him talking
| about it: (link)_
|
| That seems to clearly imply that Assange would talk about
| his specific goal of tanking Clinton's campaign.
|
| >Thanks for the polity - the undertone of your question
| implies he has to confess that word for word for that to
| be his intent.
|
| The article fairly well debunks the source for those
| narratives (that Assange tanked the DNC on behalf of
| Russia). Here is the relevant quote.
|
| _Outraged the Clinton campaign swiftly ascribed the
| leaks to Vladimir Putin 's intelligence apparatus as part
| of an operation to secure Trump's victory. The accusation
| was fueled by forensic analysis from the DNC's
| cybersecurity consultants, from CrowdStrike, detailing
| the potential links between the leaks and the Russian
| government.
|
| Testifying under oath in a closed-door session before the
| committee in 2017, CrowdStrike's chief security officer
| Shawn Henry admitted that he had no "concrete evidence"
| that the Russians had stolen the emails, or indeed that
| anyone had hacked the DNC's system.
|
| This crucial interview remained locked away until 2020.
| The press did little to acknowledge it; the testimony
| failed to attract even a passing mention in the New York
| Times, the Guardian, or any other mainstream outlet that
| had previously charted the Russian hacking story._
|
| Do I think Assange targeted the DNC? Perhaps in the
| larger context of targeting powerful entities who hide
| details that directly affect the non-powerful. As to
| claims that Assange was directly working for the
| Russians, I strongly recommend reading the article all
| the way through.
|
| sidebar: I like the work polity, btw. I can't recall
| coming across it before.
| monetus wrote:
| I re-read the article, and they have a single sentence
| about the Mueller report - which claimed that they know
| the IP address of the specific GRU network which hacked
| the DNC, iirc. Crowd strike is a private company, I
| wouldn't expect them to have Pwned the GRU. Think that is
| how the Mueller report was able to say they have an IP?
| You should at best find a proxy IP when looking from the
| DNC's servers right? The article mocks this, putting
| exfiltrated in quotes. Sources and methods won't be
| publicized to be verified, so we are left with the
| fricken intelligence community's word (I'm assuming).
| Crowd strike is hilarious, in that they were so useful
| for creating political narratives, in more than one way.
|
| I am curious if he thought he was targeting the DNC,
| because his public presence was disproportionately about
| things related to them. _Notably, Daniel hale chose not
| to leak to them._
| zzzeek wrote:
| 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 doesnt
| like Assange. He is extremely biased which makes the
| "journalist" angle look pretty weak. there's your answer
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Having a preference you don't like is pretty different
| from "doing evil".
|
| I mean, I don't like that preference either, but the
| documents leaked were real, and I haven't heard that
| Wikileaks/Assange had equivalent dirt on Trump they could
| have leaked and didn't.
| zzzeek wrote:
| well a lot of us think Trump was pretty much the
| definition of evil, i mean, extorted an entire country
| with the threat of illegally withholding US military aid
| unless they made up political campaign propaganda for
| him, sometimes you have to just draw a line, like when
| it's blindingly obvious Assange preferred helping to
| install a corrupt grifter to run the US government into
| the dirt. He hates the US government. A lot of us USians
| think "try to wreck the US government by installing a
| mobster as president" is evil.
| naasking wrote:
| Responses like this are just so bizarre to me. Do you
| think other Presidents didn't extort other countries for
| various concessions, even selfish ones that help their
| political ambitions? Do you think other Presidents were
| not grifters? Perhaps you should look into Obama's and
| the Clinton's net worth before and after their
| presidency.
|
| What really broke people's brains about Trump is that he
| was openly rude and obnoxious and unapologetic about it,
| and so didn't hide the self-serving behind a polite
| facade that preserved the collective fiction that
| politicians were looking out for the people and not
| themselves. That's what people both love and hate about
| him.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > Do you think other Presidents didn't extort other
| countries for various concessions, even selfish ones that
| help their political ambitions?
|
| illegally withheld US military aid unless the country
| fabricated a story to help the candidate's campaign? No
| Democratic president in modern times has done such a
| thing. Obama had a fully Republican congress for 6 years
| and they would have impeached him for such a thing. But
| that didn't happen. Nor for Clinton, who was of course
| impeached, but not for extorting another country; just
| for lying about sexual favors. that's the best they could
| come up with. If either president had some something 1%
| as evil as what Trump did in _just that one incident_ ,
| we of *course* would have been hearing about it for
| years.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| Reagan had Contra, so there's definitely precedent. I am
| reluctant to file it under "normal business" though.
| naasking wrote:
| Even if he did have dirt on Trump and didn't publish it,
| I'm not sure why that's evil. Discussion of the Hunter
| Biden laptop was held back before the last election and
| most journalists still think that was perfectly
| justified. Either both are evil, or neither are, we
| should not apply double standards.
| pydry wrote:
| Clinton expressed a thinly disguised desire to see him
| assassinated. Of course he preferred $not Clinton. Any
| journalist in the same position would.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are
| complicated figures who have done good and evil things.
|
| Are they? What's the "evil" you're accusing them of? If
| you're going to accuse people of things, don't be vague.
| EngManagerIsMe wrote:
| I assume things like:
|
| a) Alleged sexual assault of staffers (which again,
| alleged, but could be considered evil)
|
| b) Leaking of personal information that is of no public
| interest, e.g. unredacted SSNs
|
| c) Leaking private medical records of otherwise ordinary
| individuals, including e.g. medical records of teenagers
| who were raped
|
| d) Leaking the names of people who are LGBTQ+ in
| dictatorial countries where that's illegal, putting their
| lives in danger
|
| e) Timing the release of DNC hack is arguable, but I could
| see how someone might consider the _timing_ of that release
| to be evil
|
| f) There's some antisemitic stuff happening with
| Assange/Wikileaks. There's nothing like, _glaringly_ out of
| line, but there 's a whooole lot of stuff that's just over
| the line. (e.g. use of (((name))), calling his opponents
| "Jewish" media, employing holocaust denier and denying it,
| etc)
|
| g) Assange himself is quoted as saying, "[We might] have
| blood on our hands" due to their editorial policy of
| publishing everything, unredacted, about potentially
| vulnerable people
| varjag wrote:
| Handing over the advance file of leaked cables to
| Belarusian KGB.
|
| Rot in prison, Julian.
| headsoup wrote:
| I think that's why people need to look past the character and
| heresays and look at the facts and processes.
|
| Ignore Assange's character, make him an anonymous person
| instead and think "is the process X person has gone through
| for Y actions reasonable/legal/supportable?"
|
| Should whistleblowers be supported or vilified?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Ignore Assange's character, focus on leaks of dubious,
| probably state actor origin, precisely timed in their
| release. Focus on which state propaganda network hosted his
| show, whom he met with in the embassy, etc.
| headsoup wrote:
| Got non-circumstantial evidence for that? I mean there
| certainly should be some for the seriousness of his
| pursuit.
|
| I don't like the guy, but I also don't like arguments
| based on political narratives.
|
| Is the evidence Assange released factual?
| mhh__ wrote:
| The Nazis spent a lot of time acquiring factual
| information about the Katyn massacre, it's worth knowing
| the motives.
|
| Assange has certainly played with outright lies e.g. Seth
| Rich.
|
| Most of WikiLeaks output as far as I'm aware is mostly
| truthful to what was given to them, with the caveat that
| they are telling a story (e.g. bellingcat have no issues
| finding dirt on Russians, WikiLeaks don't).
|
| They are also very happy to cause collateral damage of
| their own, IIRC they're very happy to leak personal
| details & CC numbers of people associated with those they
| dislike (iirc it was democratic donors in some US state,
| the data was leaked unredacted).
| vntok wrote:
| If (1) you have acquired documents on both the DNC and
| the RNC, (2) they are both damaging and (3) you choose to
| only leak the ones about the DNC... well then it's not as
| clear cut and ethical as leaking both troves. Even if
| what you do leak is factually true.
| headsoup wrote:
| Sure, that's a moral judgement. What's that got to do
| with the government's reaction and pursuit since, based
| on what was released?
|
| I mean, if Wikileaks did (I wish they did, political bias
| ruins everything) release both troves, would your
| thoughts on the current situation change?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > What's that got to do with the government's reaction
| and pursuit since, based on what was released?
|
| Nothing - but that moral judgment has a lot to do with
| some people deciding the cause is not worth supporting
| after realizing what the cause truly is about.
| pydry wrote:
| If the USA were the source of a leaked Russian war crime
| would that discredit them?
| masfuerte wrote:
| There is an important missing detail. The Swedes agreed to
| interview Assange about the rape allegations in London but the
| British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) put pressure on the
| Swedes not to. The CPS deleted the emails they sent to the Swedes
| and we only know of their existence because of a FOI request on
| the Swedish side. Why were the supposedly politically independent
| CPS so keen to get Assange extradited to Sweden? FWIW, the CPS
| was led at the time by Keir Starmer, current leader of the
| opposition.
| pydry wrote:
| There was also the released GCHQ emails declaring it "an
| obvious fit up" because of the timing of the prosecution.
| foldr wrote:
| This is fairly meaningless. It's just some random people at
| GHCQ saying that they think it looks like a fit up, on the
| basis of the same publicly available information that
| everyone else had at the time.
| DANmode wrote:
| > random people at GHCQ
| foldr wrote:
| Not sure what your point is. It's clear from what's
| quoted in the emails that some GHCQ employees are simply
| speculating based on the timing of the rape allegations.
| That's something that a bunch of people outside GHCQ were
| also doing at the time.
|
| The emails were handed over because they weren't
| considered to be classified information. So it's quite
| unlikely that they reveal discussions among people who
| had any inside knowledge about the Assange case.
|
| > The records were revealed by Assange himself in a
| Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme
| Salvados in which he explained that an official request
| for information gave him access to instant messages that
| remained unclassified by GCHQ.
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/20/julian-
| assange...
|
| I don't know anything about the internal workings of
| GCHQ, but one would hope that information is shared on a
| need to know basis. Assuming this to be the case, the
| vast majority of GHCQ employees would know no more about
| Assange than you or me.
| 93po wrote:
| The entire "had sex with a broken condom" saga is ridiculous
| and built up to be an Assange smear campaign. Neither women
| went to the police to report a rape, they only wanted him to
| get tested for STDs, neither wanted charges pressed against
| Assange, and they both later retracted their stories.
|
| If Assange did what was alleged, then that's awful and horrible
| and abusive and those women are victims. However the entirety
| of the reporting around this is wildly biased and dishonest and
| clearly manufactured to get him extradited, which worked.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| As long as we remember both things can be true at once.
| 93po wrote:
| Yes
| seagullz wrote:
| The same machinery and MO that treacherously took down Jeremy
| Corbyn apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It's not who the media failed, but who the media protected.
|
| It's the same page from the same playbook...repeat X enough times
| - regardless of accuracy - and perception becomes reality.
|
| Nearly every major news organization practices this, shamelessly.
| It's a biz model based on eye-ball not journalism standards. It's
| a biz model that protects the few and the expense of properly
| informing the many.
| stillbourne wrote:
| 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.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > 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)
| petesergeant wrote:
| > [Belmarsh] dubbed "Britain's Guantanamo."
|
| 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
| psychlops wrote:
| 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
| petesergeant wrote:
| It's 21 years later now
| psychlops wrote:
| Perhaps there should be a time limit when people should
| forget that their government imprisoned people without
| trial or charges, however I suggest it should be greater
| than 21 years.
| fmajid wrote:
| There are some signs new Australian PM Albanese has been quietly
| working to secure the release of Assange, but he is now a broken
| man after a decade of effective imprisonment and the last few
| years of torture. The deterrent effect against any would-be
| whistleblowers has been achieved.
| TheHappyOddish wrote:
| Are you joking? He used it as a talking point during his
| campaign, now he's hand waving every time he's asked about it.
|
| Please prove me wrong and show me these signs.
|
| Albo's no different to the last 6 who had the job.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Cockburn's story is not the full story.
|
| Assange is not charged only for doing journalism, such as
| revealing secret information. Assange is also charged for
| conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiring to do so.
|
| Journalists rightfully defend Assange only in the the first type
| of charges, but not in the second type. He should go to US and
| face charges. Assange stopped being journalist at some point and
| started actively participating in crimes not covered by
| journalist ethics.
| superkuh wrote:
| >Assange is also charged for conspiracy to commit computer
| intrusion, and conspiring to do so.
|
| But if you read all the detailed reporting from Wired (and
| others) at the time, including interviews with the rat (Adrian
| Lamo, https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/ ,
| https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/) who made up that claim to
| save his own butt, it's clear that that charge is false as
| well. Assange never commited computer intrusion himself and he
| also never encouraged others to do so. That was a lie the FBI
| forced Lamo into during the case against Manning.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Okay, so he can make his case in court then. Honestly he has
| a pretty good chance of being found not-guilty. I hate the
| guy, but he is certainly incredibly charismatic and will an
| have all star legal defense.
| superkuh wrote:
| If you think Assange will get a fair trial, or even trial,
| in the USA I have a bridge to sell you. He'd get a closed
| military tribunal, or, a "national secrets" closed trial.
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/julian-assange-usa-
| justi...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the problem is most of the evidence for that second charge is
| significantly lacking. most of it has already been proven fake
| (as shown by the article)
| nabla9 wrote:
| Cockburn is just presenting Assange's side. He is leaving
| stuff out.
| headsoup wrote:
| That's not a response to the comment above's point.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Weird that the only method which would allow you reveal
| government crimes happens to itself be a crime! Almost
| convenient, really.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| almost like a coincidence
| fmajid wrote:
| The best Catch is Catch-22.
| wunderland wrote:
| Framing this as they do continues to "fail" him! It wasn't bad
| journalism that "failed" Assange, it was a concerted effort to
| assassinate his character and distract from his reporting.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Julian Assange has not been charged with exposing secrets or
| being inconvenient for the powers that be. He has been charged on
| the quite plausible accusation of helping Chelsea Manning
| illegally acquire these secrets. There are lines journalists (and
| you can debate if he is a journalist) are not supposed to cross,
| this is one of them.
|
| Most of the negative consequences in his life stem from him
| running from this accusation, and from the rape charges in
| Sweden. He'd like to frame it in a different light,
| understandably...
| mariusor wrote:
| 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.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| 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 those charges and gotten pardoned
| by now.
| mariusor wrote:
| 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.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| He assumed, and rightly so, that the US government was
| after him. Otherwise he wouldn't have stayed in the
| embassy past the charges in Sweden getting dropped. It is
| immaterial if the indictments were known or even already
| existed.
| awill88 wrote:
| [flagged]
| realjhol wrote:
| For all their claims to be intrepid truth seekers, the media
| today are simple weather vanes and mouth-peaces of regime power.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| [flagged]
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Let's assume everything you've said is true.
|
| Do you believe it's acceptable to revoke journalist's
| protection for the reasons you've listed and jail them for the
| reasons you've listed?
|
| Are there any journalists you might agree with, that don't
| share any of the traits of your rant, that are going to suffer
| downstream from you being okay with revoking journalistic
| protections on these conditions?
| headsoup wrote:
| You, like so many, are focusing on the ad hominem rather than
| the merits of the evidence and exposure. Why are we talking so
| much about Assange being in jail or not instead of those the
| information implicates?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| 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's confirmed by the way
| they released the information--spaced out for maximum effect
| right up until the election. At that point, any claim they had on
| being simply a force for transparency was given up.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > That's confirmed by the way they released the information--
| spaced out for maximum effect right up until the election.
|
| Did you miss this part where I gave a reason for why I don't
| believe it?
|
| As far the rest of your personal diatribe--maybe consider for
| a second the possibility that you might not be able to
| reliably deduce the subtleties of person's politics by
| reading between the lines of a single comment on hn? Jeez,
| get over yourself.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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!
| bandyaboot wrote:
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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 ;)
| bandyaboot wrote:
| No worries. I do understand the point that the
| information wasn't faked. Believe me, if we had a
| Wikileaks like organization going after the dirty little
| secrets of both parties, I'd be enthusiastically onboard.
| barbacoa wrote:
| 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 happened, but what may have happened was
| that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China, or
| [insert foreign adversary] because the FBI panicked when trump
| was elected after using the Steele dossier to spy on his
| campaign and needed a narrative to justify their actions.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > 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.
| mint2 wrote:
| Is it really a mystery why people turned on assange?
|
| In his later years his work became similar to that of breitbart,
| James okeef, and tucker Carlson. Regardless of what one thinks of
| those, There's no question that their publications and intentions
| are extremely slanted.
|
| No surprise most of the country dislikes him
| [deleted]
| yucky wrote:
| You mean Wikileaks released info that was incorrect, or just
| that they released info that makes people you support look bad?
| gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote:
| Remember this?
|
| > "We do have some information about the Republican
| campaign,"
|
| And then they never actually released it.
|
| https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-
| races/2934...
| yucky wrote:
| Hard to put out useful info on Trump when the Democrats
| already had the Steele Dossier, Russian pee tapes and other
| fake things out in the news cycle, to go along with the
| Access Hollywood tapes which were real and quite
| sensational as well. If you read about the info Wikileaks
| had on Trump it just wasn't sensational enough for anybody
| to care.
|
| All the good stuff on Trump (along with some good dirt on
| down ballot Republicans and Democrats) was leaked through
| DC Leaks.
| ip26 wrote:
| Are those the only possible reasons you can imagine to
| dislike or mistrust a source of information?
| yucky wrote:
| The sad reality is the people who hate Assange most now are
| the ones who loved him for Collateral Murder, because it
| was damaging to their enemies. Once he released information
| that was just as accurate, but damaging to their political
| allies, all bets were off.
|
| Those are the facts.
| antibasilisk wrote:
| The media did not fail Assange, failure is unintentional. The
| media actively colluded with interested parties in order to smear
| him, because he created a problem for them.
| calibas wrote:
| There's authoritarianism, where government knows what's best for
| everyone and keeps secrets to "protect" its citizens. Then
| there's democracy, where the government is open and honest so the
| people can make informed decisions on how best to run their
| government.
|
| In my opinion, one of the best ways of identifying an
| authoritarian is to ask them their opinions on Snowden or
| Assange.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Isn't Putin nowadays for Assange and definitely for Snowden?
| This is a stupid test.
| DANmode wrote:
| OP is blatantly obviously referring to populace in Western
| nations.
| wunderland wrote:
| Which governments would you consider "open and honest"
| democracies?
| calibas wrote:
| It's a spectrum, and certain countries embody the ideal more
| than others. I don't think a completely open and honest
| democracy exists yet though.
| fmajid wrote:
| Iceland or Switzerland?
| ip26 wrote:
| Congratulations, you've managed to construct this into a
| classic _"with us or against us"_ framework, a popular tool
| among authoritarians.
| calibas wrote:
| It's two diametrically opposed political ideals, with most
| people (and governments) falling somewhere in between the two
| extremes. That's the framework that already exists, not
| something I've constructed to divide people.
|
| If you truly support democracy, then you accept that even the
| authoritarians should be given a voice, and you just pray
| they're not in the majority. That's very different than the
| "with us or against us" paradigm that's popular among
| authoritarians.
| justinclift wrote:
| > If you truly support democracy, then you accept ...
|
| Heh Heh Heh
|
| That _sounds_ like you just did the "with us or against
| us" thing the commenter above you just pointed out.
|
| Very ironic. ;)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _one of the best ways of identifying an authoritarian is to
| ask them their opinions on Snowden or Assange_
|
| These are complex situations. If you're basing your binary
| judgement of an even-more complex political spectrum (it isn't
| really a spectrum) on these cases, your model is mis-tuned. I'm
| sure, for example, Putin would find both exemplary figures.
| That doesn't make him a Solon.
| superkuh wrote:
| 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.
| mhh__ wrote:
| 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.
| throwwwaway69 wrote:
| > They've never really claimed to be neutral
|
| they do and they inarguably are. there is not any evidence at
| all that they have received reputable and material
| information and declined to report on it
| mynameishere wrote:
| Why would the Russian state want to help Trump? How did that
| ever make sense? "Bwahaha, let's connive to get a patriot
| into the White House rather than a bought-sold-and-enslaved
| traitor!" Unless they thought someone with an "America first"
| attitude would be less likely to start WWIII, it's a
| ridiculous conspiracy theory.
|
| Those boring leaks probably came from the inside.
| zopa wrote:
| Trump is, at minimum, lukewarm on NATO. If you think that's
| good policy that's your business, but surely it's not hard
| to see what the appeal to Russia could be.
| 93po wrote:
| > Why would the Russian state want to help Trump?
|
| Especially because Trump was objectively pretty anti-
| Russia, and did a lot of things that pissed off Russia. But
| there is too much hysteria around "OMG RUSSIA AND TRUMP"
| and general FUD propaganda for anyone to see the forest for
| the trees of "orange man bad"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why would the Russian state want to help Trump?
|
| Their _main_ objectives for the 2016 election was to
| prevent Clinton from being elected and to maximize internal
| division in the US; Trump was the _main_ recipient of their
| support, but they also used their influence operations to
| support candidates to Clinton's left (with varying
| responses from the candidates themselves) including Sanders
| (who publicly addressed it after being briefed on it,
| telling Russia to get out of US elections).
|
| > How did that ever make sense?
|
| Weakening NATO and Western unity alone was a pretty good
| benefit; its hardly the only place in the West where
| Russia, around the same time, backed nationalist political
| movements to disrupt internal or international unity in the
| West.
| 93po wrote:
| > 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).
|
| Assange has a 100% truthful track record in matters of
| Wikileaks and was extremely explicit that the source of the
| Hillary leaks was _not_ Russian in origin. This is more
| propaganda that people keep spreading and is exhausting. It
| 's also exhausting that the narrative continues to be about
| Assange instead of Hillary for actually doing illegal and
| fucked up things.
| kornhole wrote:
| That is part of the false narrative you and many were fed and
| believed. Assange repeatedly explained that documents you are
| referring to were leaked from someone inside and alluded
| without exposing that the source could have been Seth Rich
| who was shot in the street.
| yclept wrote:
| That is part of the false narrative you and many were fed
| and believed. Investigations, reporting from many parties,
| and the vicitm's own family weigh against this drivel.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > 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 was used in the same
| way the data from Wikileaks was used to target Clinton. The
| difference here was that the data on Clinton was true while
| the 'Steele dossier' was fictitious.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > 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.
| 93po wrote:
| > There was plenty of evidence of coordination between
| the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russians.
|
| There is zero reputable evidence of this
| mhh__ wrote:
| There's no evidence at all it was from anyone else.
|
| Where is the evidence that it was Seth Rich for example?
| Alex Jones?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.)
| zopa wrote:
| Some of people's wilder imaginings about Trump and Russia
| didn't check out, sure, but I certainly consider the
| Mueller Report itself accurate.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| 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
| don't see how we're better than liars.
| rdiddly wrote:
| 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.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Release the information when you get it and say, "do with
| this what you will." Not at all what they did. They
| released in batches, for maximum effect, right up until the
| election. They knew exactly what they were doing.
| 93po wrote:
| > They released in batches, for maximum effect, right up
| until the election. They knew exactly what they were
| doing.
|
| There is absolutely no way to know the intent here, and
| there are plenty of rational reasons to release things in
| batches.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| The first of the batched releases being on the eve of the
| Democratic National Convention and proceeding daily if I
| remember correctly right up until shortly before the
| election. Get real.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| That is more or less what the New York Post did with the
| information on the "Hunter Biden Laptop". It did not work
| out very well for the New York Post, nor for what is now
| finally being admitted as "the truth" - this being that
| the device was his, that the material on the device was
| his, that the material was not "obtained by hacking". It
| _did_ work out quite well for Hunter Biden and his family
| which seems to have been the intended result.
|
| Had Wikileaks done the same they would have met with the
| same fate: they would have been accused of being in bed
| with whatever enemy-du-jour could be concocted and the
| material would have been buried under miles of
| accusations.
| leereeves wrote:
| Or consider what the Clintons did to the many women who
| truthfully (we now know) accused Bill of sexual
| harassment.
|
| There is no way to publish damaging information about the
| Clintons without being attacked for it.
| lyubalesya wrote:
| [dead]
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I may be missing context here, but you're referring to the
| fact that they leaked the Russian-state-hacked DNC emails,
| right? Could you elaborate on why you think it's "selective"
| to have leaked those?
|
| Otherwise, it seems like you're saying "they're bad [via an
| unsupported claim like 'selectively truthful'] because they
| hurt my $politicalside"
| 93po wrote:
| > Russian-state-hacked DNC emails, right?
|
| They weren't Russian state hacked, this is propaganda.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Lots of private companies (there's a list on Wikipedia)
| performed their own analysis and came to the conclusion
| that Guccifer 2.0 was/is Russian, what says you?
| 93po wrote:
| Private companies paid by who?
|
| CrowdStrike - paid for by the DNC
|
| Fidelis Cybersecurity - paid for by the DNC
|
| FireEye's Mandiant - CEO at the time was Kevin Mandia,
| who's a known associate of Hillary Clinton and also
| publicly a democratic financial supporter.
|
| SecureWorks - owned by Michael Dell, a known donator to
| the Clinton Foundation
|
| ThreatConnect - not much info, but also explicitly only
| said "likely"
|
| Trend Micro - Hillary and DNC are customers of Trend
| Micro, and they also did not actually say anything at all
| about a connection to Russia.
|
| Additionally, the reports don't say it was Russian. They
| say the tools are ones that Russians have been thought to
| use, with no context into whether _everyone_ uses these
| tools, to what confidence level they believe that
| Russians actually use these tools, no context as to
| whether someone would deliberately use these tools to
| make it look Russian, or virtually anything at all that
| substantiates this argument. They also almost universally
| use phrases like "likely" or "points to". Trying to
| characterize this situation as confirmed is just outright
| wrong.
|
| Anyway, this is exhausting. Hyperbole becomes fact and
| I'm tired of having to disprove hyperbole.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If you are smart, and Assange isn't an idiot, then you
| should not allow yourself to become a tool of a foreign
| government. Having an open pro-information stance is all
| well and good, but when it is obvious that the people
| sending you information are doing so according to their own
| timetable, you have to take a higher stance. This is where
| journalistic ethics come into play. You must ask your
| source, why today? If you had this why did you not give it
| to me months ago? A good journalist isn't a mouthpiece for
| one government as it attacks another.
| jstanley wrote:
| Are you suggesting Wikileaks should refuse to leak
| something just because they don't like the motivation of
| their source?
| lyubalesya wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > Having an open pro-information stance is all well and
| good, but when it is obvious that the people sending you
| information are doing so according to their own
| timetable, you have to take a higher stance. This is
| where journalistic ethics come into play
|
| I think this is a well-articulated representation of a
| specific (and much more common) journalistic ethos, but
| he quite explicitly holds a different ethos that is much
| more radical about transparency.
|
| Plus, this answers the opposite of my question: I asked
| how GP comment supports his claim that Assange's is
| "selectively truthful", and you responded by saying that
| he's not selective enough!
|
| GP could have made an argument like the one you made,
| disputing the very foundations of Assange's open-
| information philosophy. What piqued my curiosity was his
| novel claim of unprincipled selectivity, and I charitably
| wanted to avoid the assumption that his comment was
| simply word-salad covering up a politically-motivated
| dislike of WL.
| throwwwaway69 wrote:
| > you have to take a higher stance
|
| I think the higher stance is to report as a journalist
| and not exercise your own bias into when _you_ choose to
| publish. And regardless, if you choose to delay it, your
| source will simply go to someone who won 't. There's
| never an instance where it makes sense to delay, and it
| never makes sense to decline to write on reputable
| information, since it's not like wikileaks has a monopoly
| on journalism
| mardifoufs wrote:
| The US was a foreign government to him. So why does it
| matter? Again, this is sort of weird blue-ultra-
| patriotism post 2016 is just extremely weird coming from
| the democratic voter base. It's almost as repulsive as
| GWB era "you're either with us or with the terrorists". A
| foreigner has absolutely no allegiance to the US
| government. In fact, he is much much more threatened by
| the American government. In huge part because he exposed
| a series of crimes and war crimes that were committed by
| said government. So why in the hell would you expect him
| to spare any kind of "courtoisie" to such a government?
| leereeves wrote:
| > I find it very hard to view them as anything other than
| selectively truthful at best.
|
| Is that a purely partisan view or do you know of some true
| information they had and refused to publish?
|
| I suspect what happened is simply that the Clinton campaign
| had no use for Wikileaks because most of the media was
| working with them, so only Trump supporters sent info to
| Wikileaks.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing
| to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state
|
| The article addresses this belief and fairly well debunks
| it's origins.
|
| _Outraged the Clinton campaign swiftly ascribed the leaks to
| Vladimir Putin 's intelligence apparatus as part of an
| operation to secure Trump's victory. The accusation was
| fueled by forensic analysis from the DNC's cybersecurity
| consultants, from CrowdStrike, detailing the potential links
| between the leaks and the Russian government._
|
| _Testifying under oath in a closed-door session before the
| committee in 2017, CrowdStrike's chief security officer Shawn
| Henry admitted that he had no "concrete evidence" that the
| Russians had stolen the emails, or indeed that anyone had
| hacked the DNC's system._
|
| _This crucial interview remained locked away until 2020. The
| press did little to acknowledge it; the testimony failed to
| attract even a passing mention in the New York Times, the
| Guardian, or any other mainstream outlet that had previously
| charted the Russian hacking story._
|
| Something I personally observed (after 2006 and before 2020)
| is that we had 4 cybersecurity companies that frequently
| served as mouthpieces for US NatSec agencies - Mandiant,
| Fireeye, Crowdstrike and Cylance. They'd be called in to
| assist in some cybersecurity event and would unfailing parrot
| that agency's FUD, without ever providing any meaningful
| evidence. During these same events, non-gov cybersecurity
| experts were commonly casting doubts on US Gov's official
| narrative.
|
| The above event seems like Crowdstrike acting is it's usual
| capacity as a Gov-adjacent mouthpiece - that is until the
| House committee compelled the CSO to supply evidence of
| Crowdstrike's parroted claim.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The press is not to have sides. Its to be a loose cannon in a
| democracy, firing at all and everybody who has power.
| mjklin wrote:
| A similar thing happened when Alexander Solzhenitsyn defected
| to the US from the USSR. As long as he was blasting the Soviets
| everybody listened, but when he started critiquing the US as
| well...his speaking invitations dried up.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Solzhenitsyn was famously full of shit, according to most
| historians and his own wife.
|
| Not exactly a good comparison, the only similarity is the
| reaction of the US press.
| psychlops wrote:
| I don't really think you can lay the blame here on people or
| perceptions and I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from
| the article. He was targeted by people in power and they laid
| an effective smoke screen and got rid of him.
| psychphysic wrote:
| This is precisely it.
|
| My pet theory is that the true effect of "cancel culture" isn't
| really on rich/popular people. But the public cancelling means
| on an individual level social groups eventually become
| homogeneous in their views.
|
| The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source
| which doesn't 100% align with the current group values.
|
| The outcome is that entities which don't take sides are the
| real victims of cancel culture. Why is does CNN always come to
| the same conclusions and cover the same things? Why does Fox?
| It's because if they stray they are goners.
|
| WikiLeaks was truly neutral dumping all info it got. That was
| in no one's interest other than the diminishing open minded
| groups.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think it's a little more complicated.
|
| By far the biggest piece is that WikiLeaks' relevance has
| declined over the past several years. When Assange was first
| summoned to appear in Sweden I think there was an enormous
| spotlight on him. This might not have saved him from being
| convicted for the crime he was accused of, but it might have
| been enough to dissuade the Obama administration from seeking
| to extradite him. That administration had already expressed
| concern about the impact a prosecution might have on
| journalistic freedom, and (at the time) extraditing him on
| arrival in Sweden would have made both governments look like
| that were colluding to use a sexual assault accusation as a
| pretext for political retribution. I'm not saying they
| wouldn't have done it: I am saying it would had massive
| repercussions for the US administration, Sweden, etc.
|
| Instead of facing the charges head on, Assange chose to lock
| himself in his own prison. Years went by and the public's
| interest in him waned. A new administration came to power
| that had no specific concerns about the press, and saw
| Assange as nothing more than a criminal. Finally, he decided
| to intervene in politics in a way that many saw as an
| intentional effort to affect the election, which damaged the
| case that he was simply a publisher. Ultimately I think
| you're right that this damaged his sympathy with the people
| who would have been the most vigorous defenders, but the
| thing is: outside of those people he seems to have no base of
| support at all anymore.
| nico wrote:
| > But the public cancelling means on an individual level
| social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views.
|
| > The result is you must eject any idea, person or news
| source which doesn't 100% align with the current group
| values.
|
| That's essentially human society.
|
| We organize ourselves in races, countries, cultures,
| religions, sports teams, etc.
|
| We are constantly excluding others and trying to belong to
| certain groups.
|
| The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that
| all other groups should be exterminated.
| vuln wrote:
| > The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides
| that all other groups should be exterminated.
|
| In which given enough time all groups come to that last
| same conclusion. No group is safe once the extreme amass
| too much power.
| krunck wrote:
| > That's essentially human society.
|
| That doesn't make it OK. The degenerate groupists in human
| society are the ones responsible for oppression and mass
| slaughter(war) whereas individual free thinking people are
| not.
| Spivak wrote:
| Looks like you just divided humanity into two groups
| there you degenerate groupist.
| Spivak wrote:
| And even stronger we institutionalize it and enforce it
| with violence. Enforcing cultural norms is the whole basis
| of our legal system.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| 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 against
| Hillary for her pursuing Assange as Secretary of State. The
| fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released
| helped in this perception...
| 93po wrote:
| > 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.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse.
|
| Because WikiLeaks had become the Julian Assange show and
| published releases based on his whims. The DNC e-mails hurt
| his "enemies" while RNC e-mails did not.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| There was no need for villification. For whatever good
| Wikileaks did for "the truth" or people's curiousity, it was a
| danger to US troops and their allies from the first moments.
|
| That's got nothing to do with political views. And the charges
| against him are still perfectly legal. An "authoritarian"
| system would go about this completely differently.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It was well before the Trump election. Colbert told him that
| the authorities would come after him in his 2007 appearance on
| the Colbert Report.
|
| The minute he published Collateral Murder, a video maximizing
| publicity on a fatal error in America's war effort, that was it
| for Assange and Wikileaks.
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| mindslight wrote:
| It's not due to "questioning" what's going on in Ukraine,
| but rather repeating Kremlin talking points.
|
| Dragging it into the "both sides" empire-vs-empire context
| is exactly what Russia wants, as it justifies their naked
| imperialism while making it so their goal of Ukraine
| ceasing to exist could be some diplomatic middleground
| rather than the maximalist goal that it is.
|
| In reality Ukraine _wants_ to be part of the West, as it 's
| a whole lot nicer than the Russian empire that seems to
| still be running on the playbook from the 1940's. So
| talking about this as if it's two empires divvying up a
| country is nonsensical - rather it's the cold truth that
| world powers exist, and to defend a war against one you
| have to align yourself with a different one.
|
| And just so we're clear here, I say this as someone who
| wholeheartedly opposed invading Iraq.
| gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote:
| If your homeland gets invaded one day, I hope to be an
| apologist for your invaders.
| mrighele wrote:
| Or notice how those that are pissed off when they are
| called Putinists call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a
| "proxy war" and blame the death of all those Ukrainian
| people on anybody except the culprit, I.e. Putin
| starkd wrote:
| Not what I said. You can blame Putin AND recognize this
| thing could have been avoided. The prime minister of
| Israel said they had a deal but the US said no.
| driscoll42 wrote:
| Strange how you don't comment on the many more Russians
| that Putin has murdered by his unprovoked war of aggression
| as well.
| starkd wrote:
| Strange how you automatically feel the need to support
| one side and can't see the horrible outcome this has been
| for all parties. This could have been resolved through
| diplomacy. You never see the term even mentioned anymore.
| misnome wrote:
| 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.
| starkd wrote:
| 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.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > When people dig in and are stubborn
|
| Such as when you decide to announce a rushed annexation
| of your enemy's lands after your army suffers the biggest
| rout of the 21st century? While claiming that this war
| isn't about trying to annex your enemy's lands, after
| all...
| mindslight wrote:
| Please explain exactly what you think the Ukrainians have
| "dug into".
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Just curious, what are your primary sources of
| information that have shaped your opinions and
| perspectives shown in this thread?
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| starkd wrote:
| Quite a few. I try to listen to what everyone is saying.
| It always makes me nervous when the media seem to march
| in lockstep.
|
| Looks into what David Sacks has been saying. He got into
| it on the ALL-in podcast a couple of weeks ago, but you
| can find him on Twitter. He says the corruption in
| Ukraine right now is off the charts. Higher than anything
| in any corrupt Latin American country. Its difficult to
| decipher what is going on in Ukraine right now, because
| there's so much propaganda from all sides.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Quite a few.
|
| name a top three then, or can we assume that this is
| "random forwards on FaceBook or twitter" ?
| starkd wrote:
| No idea what a random forwards is.
|
| Look at what David Sacks has been saying. There are many
| benefiting from this war. Neither Russia nor ukraine are
| on that list.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Look at what David Sacks has been saying
|
| Is that your top 3, your "listen to everyone" ? One guy.
| That does not even answer the "top 3" question
| meaningfully.
|
| One guy: David Sacks; a Paypal and Thiel aligned guy, who
| unironically calls Russia's invasion "Woke War III" ? Not
| a geopolitics guy, just a a rich "culture war" guy? This
| has less than zero credibility to me.
|
| While I am sorry that your information diet is so poor,
| both in quality and in variety; but I have no interest in
| you recommending the same to me. Sort yourself out first.
|
| > No idea what a random forwards is.
|
| Do you follow the youtube algorithm then? That would
| explain this amateur hour.
| luckylion wrote:
| > This could have been resolved through diplomacy.
|
| Yes, by giving Ukraine to Russia.
|
| We know how it works if you try to appease fascists, come
| on.
| starkd wrote:
| This is a more complex than that. I don't like the
| invasion, but its not like Russia has no vital interests
| in the area that is right on their border. And they have
| occupied Crimea in the past going back to 1776. I'm just
| saying they have as much national interest as the West
| does. Israel Prime Minister claims they had a deal that
| was agreed to but Biden administration turned it down.
|
| It's also the responsible thing to do to look at the
| prospects of forcing a war though, when the Urkainians
| are so heavily outgunned. 200,000 Ukrainians have died in
| this fight. Maybe 50,000 Russians have died (its hard to
| find out specifics). The US wants to fight this war on
| the cheap with the Ukrainians taking all the casualties
| so that Americans won't have to. That is pretty
| deplorable to me.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Your casualty figures don't seem to line up with most
| other sources. Any citations?
| starkd wrote:
| The sources are all over the place, but they all seem to
| be horrific. There are estimates that Ukrainian deaths so
| far could be anywhere from 100K to 200K.
|
| Russians have lost a lot too. But the only thing we know
| is that they are depressingly high.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > The sources are all over the place
|
| You gave specific figures. From which source, and why
| choose that one?
| luckylion wrote:
| 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 why would we care about
| Poland, really?
|
| And then it's Germany, at which point, again, nothing has
| changed. Britain and France might use their nuclear
| deterrence when it's their turn, but if they listened to
| you, they'd probably say "do we want to end humanity just
| because we don't like Russia to rule over us? Surely not,
| humanity is too important to be destroyed over Russia's
| vital interest to annex whatever is next to Russia" and
| roll over.
|
| It would end only when Russia invades the US or China,
| because neither will allow it if their nuclear weapons
| are still available by then.
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| mopsi wrote:
| > _Ukraine is hopelessly outgunned._
|
| That hasn't been true since HIMARS arrived last summer.
| Now there's parity, and Russian war correspondents report
| that in some sectors Ukraine even exceeds Russian
| capabilities. In coming months, we'll see how the
| "hopelessly outgunned" army will do with more modern
| weapons in the upcoming spring counteroffensive. All we
| know right now is that the Russian winter offensive was a
| spectacular failure: worst casuality figures since the
| war began and nothing to show for it. Let's hope that
| Ukraine makes good progress and ends the war soon.
| luckylion wrote:
| 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.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| You've posted dozens of flamewar comments to this thread
| and broke the site guidelines egregiously. That's
| abusive, regardless of how wrong other people are or you
| feel they are or how right you are or you feel they are.
| We ban accounts that do this. I'm not going to ban you
| because everyone goes on tilt sometimes, but if you'd
| please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd
| appreciate it.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| Thank God no Russians have died in this "proxy war" they
| were so unable to avoid
| starkd wrote:
| I didn't say no Russians have died. There have been
| horrible deaths on both sides. No one is winning in this
| war.
| Eumenes wrote:
| US imperialism and the defense companies are winning this
| war
| starkd wrote:
| Exactly. I don't think they are being fairly open about
| that. They aren't even hiding it.
| [deleted]
| ramchip wrote:
| I... what? Around me, questioning the war gets you labelled
| as Putin critic, not an apologist. He literally started the
| war.
| yucky wrote:
| > He literally started the war.
|
| When do you think the war started?
| caskstrength wrote:
| > When do you think the war started?
|
| When do _you_ think the war started? Annexation of Crimea
| was ordered by Putin.
| yucky wrote:
| Do you remember what happened right before he annexed
| Crimea?
| caskstrength wrote:
| No. What? Ukrainian nazis invaded Belgorod or something?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| He's going to launch into his rote "Euromaidan was a
| coup" BS talking point. Again (1). Sorry, some trolls are
| just boring and predictable.
|
| 1) The last (but not only) time was here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34977835 While it is
| amusing to read the rhetorical beating that they took
| repeatedly in response, this does not stop them from
| trying it another time. If they're not well paid, then
| someone is getting value for money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine by Russian
| "little green men"?
| mopsi wrote:
| > _The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you
| are immediately labelled a Putin apologist._
|
| Because the insistence of calling it a proxy war to make
| the war appear larger than it is comes from Kremlin's PR
| canon. They can't bring themselves to admit that they are
| losing to Ukraine and hence emphasise how they are
| "acktshually fighting against the whole NATO". Allies have
| given a lot of support, but mainly in the form of obsolete
| military surplus equipment and equipment alone doesn't
| fight; see Afghanistan.
|
| > _No calls for diplomacy._
|
| April 1945 was too late for peace offerings.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Because the insistence of calling it a proxy war to
| make the war appear larger than it is comes from
| Kremlin's PR canon.
|
| The point of calling it a proxy war by the Kremlin is not
| to make it seem larger than it, as the largest post-WW2
| European war, is. It is to invert the responsibility for
| aggression. (Secondarily, it's to deny Ukrainian agency
| and make its existence and sovereignty an irrelevancy in
| discussing a war where that is the _entire_ issue.)
|
| There is a sense in which calling it now a proxy war
| between NATO and some other affiliated states on one side
| and, say, Iran, China, and North Korea on the other, is
| not entirely inaccurate. (Russia prefers to look to
| external sponsors of the direct belligerents only on one
| side though.) But, even to the extent that's accurate it
| doesn't change that the war (which started in 2014) was
| initiated by Russian aggression, and the 2022 escalation
| was a major upswing in Russian aggression, and the
| outside assistance (whether or not it also has ulterior
| geopolitical motives) for the other side is in line with
| the right of collective self-defense enshrined in the UN
| Charter.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _The point of calling it a proxy war by the Kremlin is
| not to make it seem larger than it, as the largest post-
| WW2 European war, is. It is to invert the responsibility
| fot aggression. (Secondarily, it's to deny Ukrainian
| agency and make the existence and sovereignty an
| irrelevancy in discussing a war where that is the entire
| issue.)_
|
| Yes, that's what I meant. The purpose of this talking
| point is to diminish Ukrainian achievements by leaving an
| impression that Russia is under attack and fighting the
| whole "collective West" (as they call it) and that the
| war is much larger in scope than it actually is: Russia
| vs Ukraine.
|
| Foreign military aid to Ukraine has so far barely
| sustained defense and I wouldn't call aiding countries
| belligerents in this war.
| starkd wrote:
| Many us legislators are openly admitting it is a proxy
| war. See Rep. Dan Crenshaw-TX comments on Ukrain support.
| He calls it a good deal that we get to fight a major geo-
| political adversary without any American deaths by just
| supplying Ukraine with weapons. He is not the only one.
| That is by definition a proxy war. Fighting a war on the
| cheap that isn't designed to ultimately win anything,
| meanwhile sending 200,000 of those Ukrainians to their
| deaths is despicable in my opinion.
|
| I am not on Putin's side on this, but this is not 1945.
| Russia does have some vital national interests in the
| reason, since its right on their border and they have a
| long historical relationship with Crimea. The prime
| minister of Israel claims they had a deal worked out, but
| the Biden administration nixed it. This is a result of
| strategic planning within the State Dept. to have this
| fight.
| starkd wrote:
| I will also note that the cash burn rate for this war in
| Ukraine is now exceeding that of Afghanistan in the early
| years. It is more money after nothing, because they won't
| even define what victory means. Just more war slogans.
| Zak wrote:
| I think the Ukrainian government has defined victory as
| driving the Russian military out of all Ukrainian
| territory, including Crimea.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _The prime minister of Israel claims they had a deal
| worked out, but the Biden administration nixed it._
|
| No he doesn't. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-
| bennett-walks-back-cl...
| starkd wrote:
| Yeah, noticed "walks back". He just said he is now
| "unsure". Why did he say it in the first place? Sounds
| like the US put the squeeze on him, so he "walked it
| back". Nevertheless, there was SOMETHING on the table
| that could have been the basis for talks. They ruled it
| out of hand.
|
| Business Insider is a rag, not credible.
| mopsi wrote:
| His words were initially taken out of context; he meant
| that allies stopped pressuring Ukraine into a peace deal
| after mass graves were uncovered in Bucha. That's the
| only source for this conspiracy theory.
|
| It goes against your whole narrative of how the US is
| forcing Ukraine into a war.
| starkd wrote:
| There was still a basis on which talks could have been
| opened up. The fact they were entirely nixed shows they
| are not interested.
|
| 200,000 Ukrainian deaths when they can't even define what
| victory looks like beyond slogans. They are trying to
| fight a war on the cheap so long as no American
| casualties happen, but they are perfectly fine so long as
| they are Ukrainian casualties. At least, they could at
| least define what victory looks like and provide the
| means to do so.
| mopsi wrote:
| There's nothing to negotiate at this point. Either Russia
| moves its guns and tanks and soldiers out of the whole
| Ukraine like they retreated from around Kharkiv, or
| Russia gets defeated on the battlefield. Anything else
| would leave Ukrainians in occupied territories to be
| wiped out by Russians. Russian hopes of a favorable peace
| deal is nothing but a coping mechanism, just like top
| Nazis hoped to reach a peace deal in 1945. Better prepare
| your cyanide pill.
| starkd wrote:
| 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.
| mopsi wrote:
| 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/1632282
| 407578611712
| yesenadam wrote:
| Geez, that is just chilling, horrifying.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > There was still a basis on which talks could have been
| opened up. The fact they were entirely nixed shows they
| are not interested.
|
| It is important to note that the party least interested
| in a workable peace deal at this point is Russia. After
| all, they annexed last October a large swath of Ukrainian
| territory in such a rushed manner they couldn't even
| properly explain _what_ they annexed. Given that Russia
| seems uninterested in any peace deal which does not
| include Russian annexation of at least some portions of
| Ukraine, any argument that what Russia really cared about
| was NATO enlargement is laughably incorrect.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Britain has historical roots to the US territory, going
| back to centuries ago. According to your logic, a British
| invasion and occupation of US would be justified.
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| mopsi wrote:
| > _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 country in panic
| and Russia used the unrest as a cover to invade Ukraine.
| starkd wrote:
| The manipulations within the state dept. by Victoria
| Nuland are well known. She was literally caught on the
| phone planning who was going to be pushed as the next
| leader. By labelling it a conspiracy, you are simply
| trying to disparage a very valid possibility.
| Conspiracies are nothing more than multiple people
| collaborating to make something happen. It does happen,
| and they should not be dismissed out of hand.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > by Victoria Nuland ... literally caught on the phone
| planning
|
| This false conspiracy theory is discussed at length here
|
| https://www.thebulwark.com/what-really-happened-in-
| ukraine-i...
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| 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_parliame
| ntary_e...
| caskstrength wrote:
| 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 about US invading Mexico, occupying and annexing
| its lands, killing bunch of civilians while
| simultaneously demanding Mexico to "respect" US "sphere
| of influence", speak English, stop "threatening" it by
| committing to neutrality, etc.
|
| > Their economies and cultures are intertwined.
|
| Let them rape and indiscriminately kill bunch of
| civilians in some Bucha or other towns because of similar
| languages and economical ties? How does that make any
| sense to you? Also, claiming that Ukraine doesn't have
| its own historical roots and cultural identity is one of
| the Russian propaganda talking points.
|
| > And their have been hostilities between the two
|
| "Hostilities"? Excuse me? Russia occupied and annexed
| parts of Ukraine repeatedly but you dubbing it
| "hostilities" make it sound like some kind of a border
| skirmish where both parties are culpable which couldn't
| be further from the truth.
|
| > since 2014 when the US formented a revolution there
|
| Another Russian propaganda talking point. People were fed
| up with Yanukovich and decided to remove him from power.
| Support from US was inconsequential.
|
| > I am not shilling for Russia
|
| Yes you are! Openly and brazenly.
|
| > peace agreement requires all parties to put everything
| on the table and deal openly
|
| Well, yes, Russia would love Ukraine to put its lands "on
| the table", commit to neutrality, make Russian language
| the second national language and a lot more. And what
| exactly are the offering in return? To maybe stop
| attacking Ukraine for some time? Am I missing something?
|
| > This could have happened.
|
| It still can. Ukraine has been offering to solve the
| conflict through diplomacy as soon as Russia withdraw its
| forces. It is not like Ukraine is going to push into
| Russian territory to occupy Moscow and kill Putin. You
| understand that, do you?
|
| Look, if you just prefer US to stop spending money on
| Ukraine you could just say so. Yes, this will lead to
| bunch of Ukrainians killed, raped or tortured in
| concentration (excuse me, "filtration"!) camps and you
| will feel somewhat bad for saying that, but at least it
| would be truthful. No need to play Tucker Carlson here
| with "border skirmishes" and "hostilities".
| yesenadam wrote:
| 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.o
| rg/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War
|
| TLDR: Map of Mexico in 1824 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /File:Mexico_1824_(equirectangu...
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Hmm I think they already did that
|
| I know. It seems US and Mexico have been having
| hostilities and border disputes for some time now, so
| annexing some more of Mexico's lands would seem like
| reasonable and expected course of action.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Ukraine is right on the russia's border. Their
| economies and cultures are intertwined
|
| So, according to your logic, a British invasion and
| occupation of USA would not be justified, but a British
| invasion and occupation of The Republic of Ireland would
| be?
|
| > 2014 when the US formented a revolution there.
|
| Propaganda nonsense. https://www.thebulwark.com/what-
| really-happened-in-ukraine-i...
| starkd wrote:
| The Bulwark is a neocon publication by Bill Kristol. He
| still refuses to apologize for the wars in Iraq and
| Afghanistan. He is part of the war machine that is
| perfectly happy to see perpetual war.
|
| He was a solid republican, but he was all too happy to
| ditch everything he said he believed in to embrace the
| cultural issues of the left. The only thing he kept the
| same was his hawkish views on foreign policy. That shows
| a lot about him right there. He is an untrustworthy
| source for anything.
| starkd wrote:
| That's the point. The people behind The Bulwark don't
| believe "this coup nonsense" because they are pushing for
| war there. All the writers there are always pushing for
| military solutions to everything.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > The Bulwark don't believe "this coup nonsense" because
| they are pushing for war there.
|
| It could be that. Or maybe, they don't believe it because
| the facts don't support it, and they believe in truth as
| a thing that is worthwhile regardless of if it personally
| benefits them or not.
|
| You have a very transactional view of truth. And frankly
| that says more about you than anything else.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I already know who Bill Kristol is, and the people
| (plural) behind The Bulwark are, thanks. It's not hidden,
| it's here https://www.thebulwark.com/about-us/
|
| I'm not a fan of their political project, my point is
| that even they don't buy this "coup" nonsense.
|
| I do not think either that he "ditched everything he said
| he believed in" when their political party changed and
| they did not, that's rather a specific framing from an
| extremist faction of that party.
|
| No doubt you prefer noted thinker, Dan Crenshaw.
| starkd wrote:
| Huh? Dan Crenshaw has been all in on this war in Ukraine.
| He even openly admitted that it was a golden opportunity
| because we could fight a major geopolitical adversary on
| the cheap by just sending weapons with no American
| casualties - completely minimizing any Ukrainian
| casualties.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| [flagged]
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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
| starkd wrote:
| 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) being glad the
| Nordstream pipeline being blown up.
| mindslight wrote:
| 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".
| starkd wrote:
| Its a proxy war because US is using Ukraine as an
| convenient excuse to take Russia down a few pegs
| militarily. US Rep. Dan Crenshaw-TX admitted it, saying
| that its a way to fight Russia on the cheap with no
| American casualties. Of course, that compeletely
| minimizes the Ukrainian casualties that it would take.
| Its not being done in the interest of Ukraine so much as
| the interest of fighting Russia. Ukraine is being used
| here, and they are likely to lose anyway. And even if
| they do win, and Russia is defeated, they will be so
| ravaged it, it will be little better than a pyrrhic
| victory. But BlackRock will have a great place to invest.
| Too bad for those who died.
| mindslight wrote:
| The motivations of the US are independent of the
| motivations of Ukraine. Ukraine is not fighting to
| benefit the US by taking down Russia, but rather to
| preserve their own independence. This is why it is not a
| "proxy war" - the US acting to help its own interests
| does not make it into one. Otherwise every single war
| would be a "proxy war", making the term useless.
|
| You continue to conflate the actions of Ukraine with the
| actions of its allies, by using the passive voice to
| remove Ukraine's agency. This is directly in line with
| the Russian imperial propaganda narrative that wants to
| brush aside the idea that Ukraine is an independent
| country.
|
| Also, appealing to the tyrannical nature of the US-led
| financial system is fallacious here, as being
| economically oppressed is much nicer than being
| militarily oppressed. You keep throwing out these
| "deaths" as if they've only occurred due to Ukraine not
| surrendering, while Russia's liquidations in the occupied
| areas demonstrate that Ukrainians are actually fighting
| _for_ their own lives.
| chpatrick wrote:
| And yet only one belligerent invaded the other. There
| aren't two sides to this.
| yucky wrote:
| Are you referring to the US invasion of Iraq or the
| Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's impossible to tell the
| difference anymore.
| starkd wrote:
| I am not denying the Russian invasion is unlawful. Reread
| what I wrote. You are proving my point.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Ok, I re-read it. It was just as violently stupid the
| second time around.
|
| "Diplomacy" doesn't mean "I break into your house and
| agree to take only 10% of your stuff if you don't fight
| back." And when the cops show up, that's not a "proxy
| war."
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Calling for diplomacy in a war of aggression where the
| aggressor has claimed annexation of the defender's
| territory means... what?
|
| What is there to negotiate?
| starkd wrote:
| [flagged]
| walls wrote:
| This comment is Russian propaganda:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-bennett-walks-
| back-cl...
| starkd wrote:
| 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.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yet you refuse to cite any sources at all, credible or
| otherwise. Interesting.
|
| As for peace talks, here's Putin's take on that: "I'm
| going to rob your house tonight. I'd like to take 25% of
| your stuff, but if you'll agree to leave the door
| unlocked, we can probably get that figure down to 20%. If
| you agree not to call the police, I might even go as low
| as 15%. Sound fair?
|
| "I mean, it's not like you have no culpability here.
| You're the one who threatened to join the neighborhood
| watch, after all. What am _I_ supposed to do, mind my own
| business and stay on my side of the fence? "
| beebmam wrote:
| The US is regularly engaged in diplomacy with Russia. Our
| secretary of defense and chairman of the joint chiefs
| just met with their Russian counterparts.
|
| Diplomacy is happening. That doesn't mean peace can be
| negotiated yet. Unless the commenter thinks Ukraine
| should surrender, it is unlikely peace is going to be
| realistic anytime soon.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're all for diplomacy, except during wars.
| rendall wrote:
| > _No calls for diplomacy._
|
| Because calls for diplomacy benefit only Russia. Instead,
| issue calls for Russia to leave Ukraine.
|
| > _Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their
| deaths._
|
| Leaving aside your dubious stat, here " _Meanwhile, Russia
| killed x Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in an illegal
| invasion of a sovereign nation._ " There. Fixed it for you.
|
| Your passive voice there betrays your pro-Russian
| sympathies, your protestations to the contrary
| notwithstanding. In other words, pro-Putin statements gets
| you labeled pro-Putin apologist. Stop doing that, and the
| problem goes away.
| JediLuke wrote:
| In this case it seems very clear cut, the Russian army
| invaded and attacked the civilian populace.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Wait what do you mean - the first fatal error was American
| soldiers murdering people - the second equivalent fatal
| error in the Russian invasion of Ukraine is?
| wazoox wrote:
| A "fatal error" in a totally unjustified and illegal war of
| aggression.
| psychphysic wrote:
| This video is likely to be the highlight of the decade for
| me.
|
| https://youtu.be/s1kwq52NKmo
| f6v wrote:
| I like how the audience laughs at the expense of a
| million ruined lives.
| croes wrote:
| Error is quite an understatement
| raincole wrote:
| The use of $theirpoliticalside as if it's a variable is pretty
| interesting. Because in this case, it's almost a const.
| gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote:
| 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...
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| I wonder where his animosity towards Hillary Clinton came
| from, I guess we will never know.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Maybe butchering Libyans has something to do with it? Or
| even just her husband cutting welfare?
|
| Both US parties are neoliberal war hawks, sadly.
| kornhole wrote:
| 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.
| kornhole wrote:
| In context of limiting the amount of war upon the rest of
| world, it is hard for me to disagree. Although the foreign
| policy is not much different between the party sides, the
| Democratic party is historically and continues to be the more
| war party. Look at the votes for sending $117B to Ukraine.
| The Democrats voted unanimously for it.
| jamincan wrote:
| Yes, and famously Roosevelt sent aid to and eventually
| joined Allied forces in Europe instead of being an
| uncompromising advocate for peace.
| namdnay wrote:
| I think the point of the Ukraine aid is to limit the amount
| of war being waged on the Ukrainians...
| kornhole wrote:
| Then why has Biden never had any talks with Putin to help
| broker peace talks, and why did the US and UK block the
| agreement brokered by former Israeli PM Bennet between
| Russia and Ukraine?
| giantrobot wrote:
| As we've seen since 2014, Russian "peace" overtures are
| "give us everything and you get nothing". They've also
| repeatedly proven that they won't honor agreements. They
| unilaterally broke the Minsk accords just last year with
| their invasion of Ukraine.
|
| There's no utility in "peace" talks with a dishonest
| party. All it does is provide the dishonest party with
| ammunition for propaganda. When the other side balls at
| their ridiculous demands they run to the press with "look
| how _unreasonable_ the other side is being! "
| dontlaugh wrote:
| The Ukrainian state has been breaking the Minsk accords
| for almost as long as they've each been in place, most
| blatantly by bombing the Donbas. Not that this would
| justify invasion of Ukraine proper, but let's not pretend
| this has ever been one-sided.
|
| Wars end through peace agreements. Deliberately
| preventing them is what war mongers do.
| phphphphp wrote:
| 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 a net good but
| despise Assange. Assange failed wikileaks, the media did not
| fail Assange.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Imho, if WikiLeaks had focused on being the Craigslist of
| information, without attempting to market themselves, they
| would have gotten a lot more public support.
|
| You can't transparently publish information _and_ have an
| opinion.
| psychlops wrote:
| Why not? Why is public support necessary for transparently
| publishing information?
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| Wasn't that the whole idea behind Wikileaks? To not only
| be a platform to upload and publish random documents, and
| instead to provide context and work with writers to make
| it understandable for a wider audience? That's how I
| understood it at the time, that Assange was unhappy with
| the limited audience existing platforms were reaching.
|
| /e: I see my reply was less targeted towards your comment
| but the one above.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Imho, if WikiLeaks had focused on being the Craigslist of
| information, without attempting to market themselves, they
| would have gotten a lot more public support.
|
| Turns out history has gifted you with a test case. :)
|
| What you are describing was literally the early version of
| Wikileaks[1]!
|
| The ostensible problem was that it generated little to no
| public awareness[1].
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Submissions
| kornhole wrote:
| 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.
| namdnay wrote:
| > Those of us old enough to remember their original releases
| (like "Collateral Murder")
|
| That was very very far from being "their original releases".
| wikileaks used to be a real "wiki of leaks". it was quite
| glorious, a real goldmine for journalists to work through
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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 even
| highlight the narrative building by the exposing party, when
| the actual events involved a cover up of war crimes from the
| Pentagon and an insane amount of damage control and PR. It
| just doesn't register for me, it's like saying you lost
| confidence in the NYT for covering war crimes in a way that
| highlighted that war crimes are actually... bad.
| phphphphp wrote:
| 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...)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| To me, there is no real difference. Or at least not
| enough to warrant any criticism of wikileaks (w.r.t how
| they handled Collateral Murder, not in general of
| course).
|
| Whatever they did was much more effective than american
| journalists were doing at the time. It was less so to
| push a narrative than to expose an event that would've
| been swept under the rug, just like many many other
| "oopsies" the americans ignored at the time.
|
| As to liberals being pro-hillary, I don't disagree that
| it wasn't true in 2008. But those liberals almost
| certainly grew to avidly support her in 2016.
|
| I guess I'm biaised since I have been exposed to the
| "other side" of the iraq war and the war on terror, as a
| practicing muslim in a pretty political family. But to me
| it still amounts to complaining or criticizing from a
| position of pure privilege (I'm referring to the
| criticism at the time of the video's publication, not
| your comments!), as Americans basically found it "yucky"
| to be exposed to the results of their own imperialist
| policies. In that context, I think WL would've been
| criticized no matter what because the actual issue wasn't
| that they were pushing a narrative, but more so that they
| were making some Americans uncomfortable.
| DANmode wrote:
| > From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project
|
| Which party were the Collateral Murder footages meant to
| benefit? (Is "partisan" the right word here?)
| yucky wrote:
| How could they be partisan when "both sides" have accused
| them repeatedly of being against them? Case in point,
| Collateral Murder was celebrated by Democrats and then when
| they leaked the Hillary emails now all of a sudden Democrats
| thought Wikileaks was evil. The information was true, the
| only thing that changed is they didn't like the what it
| showed.
|
| That's not Wikileaks fault, maybe we should hold those in
| power accountable regardless of how we feel about their
| stances on other issues.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| The truth _is_ a narrative. Not all narratives are true, but
| calling something a narrative doesn 't in any way disprove
| it.
|
| Would you like to actually call out anything in Collateral
| Murder that you think wasn't exposing the truth?
|
| I'm old enough to remember Collateral Murder. I'm old enough
| to remember it's video footage. Of members of the US military
| murdering people, and laughing about it. You can't dismiss
| that as "just a narrative", it's also _the truth_ , and it's
| a fucked up truth that the public deserves to know about.
| vuln wrote:
| That's the play, attack the person or how it was release
| but never acknowledge the contents of the release.
| fmajid wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO
| kornhole wrote:
| Wikileaks never published anything untruthful TMK. That is
| a far better record than almost any other publishing
| outlet.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I make no claim that collateral murder did not represent a
| war crime, I make no claim that the release of collateral
| murder was a bad thing, rather, I am claiming that Julian
| Assange was never a noble person releasing leaked footage
| to expose the truth, he was a political performer, creating
| the narrative that he wanted to create, using leaks as
| props. Julian Assange had no loyalty to the truth (as has
| been shown in the years since) and cares only for the
| "truth" when it's favourable to whatever agenda he has at
| the point in time.
|
| You can be glad that collateral murder was released while
| also being deeply unhappy with Julian Assange's motives and
| actions.
| DANmode wrote:
| > Julian Assange had no loyalty to the truth (...) cares
| only for the "truth" when it's favourable to whatever
| agenda he has at the point in time.
|
| To what end are these agendas?
|
| Being personally relevant? Paid? If one of these, how is
| he benefitting from those now?
|
| Surely he'd be expecting his demise,given his knowledge
| of the organization(s) he shone light on.
|
| We're talking about an ex-hacker type turned political
| leaker, not a talk news pundit.
|
| There are no shared assumptions about these agendas,
| besides the narratives he and WL have provided. If you
| have some assumptions, share them?
| lmm wrote:
| Everyone has an agenda, even if that agenda is only that
| they want to think of themselves as a moral person. What
| matters is whether the person's actions are good or bad.
|
| > Julian Assange had no loyalty to the truth (as has been
| shown in the years since) and cares only for the "truth"
| when it's favourable to whatever agenda he has at the
| point in time.
|
| He published the truth and spent over a decade in
| confinement for it. Isn't that enough?
| thefounder wrote:
| Ok, let's open some new positions for totally noble
| poeple to expose the truth. Anything less than noble
| should be put in prison regardless of the truth exposed.
| Any takers? Meanwhile let's see what b.s mainstream media
| is pushing. They are not less than noble and deserve the
| whole attention.
| this_user wrote:
| 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 any and all
| credibility and protection you might have some sort of
| journalistic organisation. At best, WL can be described as
| activists, at worst as useful idiots.
| 93po wrote:
| > 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.
| 93po wrote:
| 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.
| snehk wrote:
| It's really this simple. Shows that it was never about the fact
| that he provided information but about the fact that he
| provided information that could be used by $mypoliticalside.
| mhh__ wrote:
| They were working directly with them, not just leaving seeds
| for the birds to come for later.
|
| Make of it what you will but it's apparently an undisputed
| fact.
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