[thatlongthrow1]

>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything that has been proven false.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760

He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

[nickysielicki]

A one-off tweet from a wikileaks twitter account about some other organization publishing something questionable is not at all the same as the document dumps that wikileaks publishes and puts their name behind. I'm obviously talking about the latter.

I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.

[travmatt]

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/9/9/12864328/wiki...

Assange censors whistleblowers against the Russian government who he openly collaborated with. Do you think this is ethical behavior?

[thatlongthrow1]

>I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.

Hi I can basically see you sneering with a "gotcha" face through that text. Sorry but Assange's history of leak revisionism, favoring Russia specifically, is deep.

When Assange was working with "Anon" who was really an FBI snitch, he accepted files hacked from Syria. When they were released they were missing information about Russia including bank transfers of billions of dollars. Assange's selective leaking based on his biases has been documented for years:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...

>The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.

>But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.

We know this because the courts showed the data that Assange personally held back.

[dijit]

Ugh, don't make me do this:

Selectively releasing documents is not the same as releasing something later proven to be false, which is what the GP asserted.

FWIW you could play devils advocate here and say that wikileaks could not independently verify the omitted things; but I'm not going to go there because it's conjecture. Just as your suggestion that it's collusion with Russia, however likely, is also conjecture.

[fsloth]

Selectively releasing everyone else's dirt except for Russia is a strong indicator of non-neutral stance.

[dijit]

Sorry I must have missed where anyone in this thread-chain has asserted that statement at all.

[uep]

Lies of omission are still lies.

To use an extreme example, if a reporting organization writes a story about one nation launching missile strikes against another, and leaves out that they were retaliatory strikes from a previous attack, that dramatically changes the perception of those events. If this sort of thing is continually done to benefit one entity, it is reasonable to question the honesty of the reporter.

Even if the released documents are all accurate, the previous lies of omission would cause a reasonable person to question whether or not the released documents provide adequate context.

[dx87]

There's this from the top level comment.

> Stand up for journalists. Real journalists.

I wouldn't think that "Real journalists" would selectively choose what to report based on who their friends are.

[thatlongthrow1]

WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...

>In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records.

>WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68 gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry, according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.

>The logs, which were provided to FP, only included WikiLeaks’s side of the conversation.

>“As far as we recall these are already public,” WikiLeaks wrote at the time.

>“WikiLeaks rejects all submissions that it cannot verify. WikiLeaks rejects submissions that have already been published elsewhere or which are likely to be considered insignificant. WikiLeaks has never rejected a submission due to its country of origin,” the organization wrote in a Twitter direct message when contacted by FP about the Russian cache.

Assange would later go on to propagate and distribute manipulated leaks sent by Guccifer 2.0 and other known Russian fronts like the "CyberBerkut" promotion of his I linked at the thread top.

[wyck]

What most people seem to fail to realize is that in of itself is not necessary proof of collusion. There is the "street" theory that publishing records on powerful Russians ends with a bullet in your head( or worse) and not jail or any legal proceedings. Something to think about.

[fsloth]

Well, yes, getting to Russia's shit list is a nasty experience even for non-Russians, as well known examples show, such as that of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessikka_Aro

[stx]

Is it really necessary to leak information on Russia? Outside Russia we already know that they have done bad things. Besides was the information he leaked untrue? As an US citizen I am most interested in when is going on inside my own country not only because it affects me but also because I have the ability to push for change.

[thatlongthrow1]

Assange asking Guccifer 2.0 for Hillary leaks: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt6BBwBXcAEL-Fj?format=jpg&name=...

Assange helping Guccifer 2.0 distribute manipulated Hillary leaks: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/764256561539735552

How the leaks were taken from other sources and manipulated: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkjevd/guccifer-2-is-bull...

>Guccifer 2.0 — believed to be a misinformation campaign operated by Russian intelligence — posted an 860-megabyte file on Tuesday afternoon that he claimed was donor information he hacked from Clinton Foundation servers.

>A sampling of the posted documents include a spreadsheet of big bank donations, a list of primarily California donors, an outdated spreadsheet of some Republican House members — and a screenshot of files he claimed to have obtained, one of which was titled “Pay to Play.”

>But there are a number of red flags that suggest the documents are in fact from a previous hack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), not a new hack on the Clinton Foundation.

>A spot check of some of the people on the donor list against FEC filings found that they all lined up with DCCC contributions.

[koheripbal]

This does not alter the claim that info released by Wikileaks was never fake.

[DaniloDias]

It is not worth engaging. I have met powerful people who have an unreasonable bug up their ass about Assange.

These are Americans who state that this Australian is a traitor who should be prosecuted and executed for treason over the collateral murder video. It is the same exact moral and ethical rot that has corrupted our police forces.

Edit: These downvotes are enlightening.

[fit2rule]

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Ask yourself this: why is it so important to leak information that is being held in secrecy by a state that is committing war crimes at an alarming rate?

The answer is: because the 5-eyes War Coalition is committing war crimes at an alarming rate. It literally started what it hoped to conflagration into World War 3, by invading Iraq illegally and on false pretences in 2003. And every day since that invasion, the world has been on fire.

The world has not forgotten the victims of these wars. Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration. The sheer SCALE of the war, of which the Western public are indeed extremely ignorant, is staggering.

If you had two criminals in the room, one of them was thieving the cutlery and the other was burning a pile of dead bodies in the corner, which would you want to deal with, first?

The USA and its War Coalition has a lot of criminal activity going on. Like, a lot. And every twenty minutes for twenty years, it has been dropping bombs - mostly on innocent people - for its own economic purposes.

That is a fire that the leaks will put out.

(The leaks will continue, because the crimes are huge.)

[lordlimecat]

> And every day since that invasion, the world has been on fire.

Obviously things were peacable around the world beforehand, and every conflict or human rights violation since then can be blamed on the Iraq invasion.

Never mind that civilian casualties by coalition forces are absolutely dwarfed by those by the opposition, or that US in general gets an extremely high degree of scrutiny and commits relatively few war crimes / civilian casualties.

This is a brilliant attempt at distraction from the incredible corruption and human rights violations from other countries such as Russia. Should the US get a free pass? Of course not, but it's rather tiresome to hear Chinese and Russian agitators say "but what about the 10k civilian casualties over 10 years" while asking the world to please ignore the Uighur genocide or the invasions of Ukraine.

The fact is that Wikileaks has a well established bias. They publish things that are true when it harms the US, and often leave out as much exonerating context as possible. Collateral murder for instance specifically tried to downplay the aspects where the gunner provided a rationale for engaging and sought approval, instead using voiceovers and editing to imply a lack of ROE.

>Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration.

I'd love to see a source on this. The most critical estimate I've seen (Iraq Body Count) has coalition innocents killed around 30k, Over 15 years. While opposition are over 300k. Please source your facts.

[fit2rule]

"The world is always at war" is not an excuse for the following illegal military murder and death campaigns waged against innocent people: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen.

The bombing must stop. The drones must be denied.

>Body Count:

https://www.psr.org/blog/resource/body-count/

2 million people lost in one war 'arena' is one thing. Another war arena, is another thing. 12 of them, for 20 years, is shear lunacy.

Iraq lost 5% of its population to US war.

[lordlimecat]

You should probably read the source you provide. Like many of these body counts, they make no attempt to differentiate US-caused, coalition-caused, Russian-caused, or opposition-caused deaths--or even whether the rise in mortality was actually caused by the war!

So, as is reasonable, you are just blaming them all on the US.

[mapgrep]

Selective leaking and selective redaction do not correspond to any US crimes and if they did could be leveled against many publishers.

What is the point of raising this in the context of a criminal indictment? I haven’t even examined what you are raising for accuracy, I’m merely asking, what does this have to do with throwing someone in prison?

[ClumsyPilot]

This is a politically motivated perversion of Justice , you here are implying he is loyal to Russia and therefore deserves it.

You know, even if you were right, you are not helping your case?

Its not just my opinion, its the UN opinion. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...

[thatlongthrow1]

>Its not just my opinion, its the UN opinion.

From the article you linked:

Mr Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; is part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

>they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

[ClumsyPilot]

I see two possible interpretations:

A - This is a special process meant to assure that reports are truly independent and neutral. These conclusions are even more trustworthy.

B - UN Special Rapporteur can't be trusted, it's is a random nobody that can publish untrue allegations and slap UN logo on top.

It appears you are implying B is the correct interpretations. If so, why? Additionally, can you suggest a more trustworthy, unbiased party than the UN?

[thatlongthrow1]

OK I'll be explicit.

You attempted to spin the opinion of special rapporteur into that of the UN. In every special rapporteur article they have to put the disclaimer I posted because of people like you attempting to frame something in false or malicious ways.

To recap your claim:

>Its not just my opinion, its the UN opinion.

UN's actual position as stated in the article you posted:

>The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures' experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

That line is meant for you:

>they are not UN staff

[DiogenesKynikos]

Any proof that WikiLeaks actually had the emails about that particular Russian bank transfer?

The theory you're promoting is that Assange leaked a huge trove of emails on Syria, a Russian ally, including large numbers of emails detailing Syria's relationship to Russia. But then, because Assange is secretly a Russian agent, he removed one particular set of emails.

The obvious question is: why did he publish the emails in the first place?

[himinlomax]

Was the info false, or do you just object to the sourcing?

[thatlongthrow1]

Yes the info was false.

>A few hours later, the assessment worsened: a friendly source from CNAIPIC was telling them that some of the documents had been forged. One document number, when checked against CNAIPIC’s system, reportedly corresponded to a wholly unrelated matter. The remaining real documents didn’t seem to have come from CNAIPIC either. Instead, police were apparently investigating “a small IT company that has worked for CNAIPIC in the past and that apparently some of the stolen data were on a machine they took to repair in Rome.” There was an immediate suspicion that it was “a giant op by the police to [discredit] anonymous and to tarnish our reputation and credibility.”

[monocasa]

A) The CNAIPIC leaks weren't by wikileaks

B) Why do we trust the CNAIPIC to tell the truth that they weren't their docs?

[himinlomax]

So I did a brief Google search and it seems that, just like monocasa mentioned, this was not published by Wikileaks.

Are you going to change your stance or are you going to stand by your incorrect, if not slanderous, claim?

[jessaustin]

This is why they invent new greenbean accounts; they can lie without "consequences".

[dontfear]

He also tweeted this, saying the UFO story by the NY Times was a hoax. But then he deleted it-

https://imgur.com/gallery/XubrM3g

Despite the Pentagon and Navy’s recent actions, Julian was right — all of this is a sophisticated operation that uses bad actors to perpetuate disinformation. It is probably illegal but concerns national security with China.

[fwklein]

And how does that prove the published contents as false?

[xorcist]

Hello fellow concerned citizen!

Did you create that throwaway account in anticipation of yesterday's release of this story, or do you keep a stack to pick from?

[dang]

That crosses into personal attack and breaks HN's guideline against insinuations of astroturfing etc. You can't do those things here, regardless of how strongly you disagree with someone, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[thatlongthrow1]

Considering you only comment on my account age I'm assuming you've seen all my comments on my profile page as well.

That you cannot address any of the comments and only wish to speak of my account age says volumes about where you are coming from.

[dang]

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style and using HN for ideological battle? You've done these things repeatedly already, and it's not what this site is for. Indeed it's destructive of what the site is for, so we eventually have to ban accounts for doing it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

There are others in this thread arguing both sides of this debate respectfully and within the guidelines, so you needn't look far for good examples.

[raxxorrax]

The whole Russian story was a scam. We have documents saying that is was told to abuse FISA powers. Not that I like the persons it was employed against, but it is far larger than watergate if we had honest discussion about it.

If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.

You are spreading lies.

[AndyMcConachie]

But it worked. Look at how easily we can be manipulated once we're told we're under attack by a foreign power. Propaganda works.

James Comey knew this just as well as Senator McCarthy did. They didn't even need to change the protagonist.

[pessimizer]

This time the candidates are going to fight over which is more antagonistic to China. Turns out Russia is a weak country that has very little reach outside of itself other than the activities of its billionaire oligarchs. China is a far more believable big bad.

[thatlongthrow1]

>The whole Russian story was a scam.

Tell that to Adrian Chen or anyone that has actually investigated Russia's meddling in foreign affairs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

This was reported before the election detailing the agency that would go on to be fingered by the state department and others in their role in US election meddling.

This involved actual reported places, actual employees. Same with with "Guccifer 2.0" and "CyberBerkut" or any of the other Russian fronts Assange worked with.

>You are spreading lies.

You'll be able to find specific things I've said and detail how they are lies right? Because you have factual information about this yes?

[DiogenesKynikos]

Adrian Chen actually complained about how people were exaggerating and misusing his reporting on the Internet Research Agency.[1]

> The thing is, I don't really want to be an expert on the Internet Research Agency and Russian online propaganda. I agree with my colleague Masha Gessen that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. In the Times Magazine article that supposedly made me an authority, I detailed some of the Agency's disturbing activities, including its attempts to spread false reports of a terrorist attack in Louisiana and to smear me as a neo-Nazi sympathizer. But, if I could do it all over again, I would have highlighted just how inept and haphazard those attempts were.

Adrian Chen also gave an interview with Chris Hayes on the Internet Research Agency, in which he made the point that it was an unsophisticated marketing campaign, staffed by around 90 people with a poor grasp of the English language, American politics and culture.[2]

1. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-so-cal...

2. https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/inside-the-russian-troll-...

[raxxorrax]

Of course Russia meddles in election, the US does that too. That is not relevant to the FISA abuse wich let to severe surveillance of the current administration to find a straw to attach it to them. They didn't find one btw. which is unusual in politics. Trump may indeed be extremely clean and that is something quite hard to say.

[sanderjd]

I downvoted this comment because it is dizzying how quickly you moved the goal posts from "the whole Russia thing was a scam" to "of course Russia meddled".

[pessimizer]

Would admitting that the country of Russia exists be a goalpost move from "the whole Russia thing was a scam"?

The idea that if Russia had an opinion about a US election and utilized its diplomatic powers to encourage its preferred outcome, all of the endless conspiracies about Russian meddling have been verified - it's not good.

It's not as bad as the thing where if a Russian national ever spoke to anyone, "Russia" was involved.

[SuoDuanDao]

I've got to say, when I hear 'the whole Russia thing' I assume people mean that the Trump administration broke the law to co-operate with Russia. That is a very different question from whether Russia decided to throw it's weight behind a candidate. Doesn't look to me like a shifting of goal posts at all.

[hobs]

A reading of the actual facts seems to be in conflict with "The trump administration did not break the law" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

There's very little argument about whether trump broke the law (he did) - it was just a matter of whether his corrupt party would vote for impeachment (they didn't.)

[sanderjd]

Interesting. That is not what President Trump means when he talks about "the Russia scam". He still maintains (in conflict with his own intelligence apparatus) that there was no active campaign to meddle in the election at all. If he had been making the argument from the start that yes, there was meddling, but that his campaign was completely uninvolved in it, and that even if it may have benefitted him this time, we should take defensive steps for the future because that is in our nation's best interest, then I would be a lot more sympathetic to your argument here. But that is not what happened; he has maintained that the whole thing is a scam, so I think a more narrow reading of what scam we're talking about is extremely over-charitable.

[jerkstate]

Russia meddled on both sides of the political aisle in the 2016 election - The Steele dossier was primary evidence used in the FISA surveillance warrant application for Carter Page [1] despite earlier official statements from House Democrats that the dossier did not inform the FISA court [2]. We also have significant evidence in the form of State Dept official communication with Steele (released by FOIA) [3] that two of the sources for the Steele dossier information were Russian government officials, one a former head of Russian intelligence (summarized here [4]). This is not to mention the other malfeasance by the FBI including forging e-mails in order to obtain a FISA renewal. This is serious stuff.

So the one-sided reporting of Russia meddling is indeed a scam. Russia meddled on behalf* (originally said behest - wrong word as far as we know) of both candidates in order to sow discord. The meddling against Clinton is well known, probably the wikileaks emails and a bunch of Facebook ads. The meddling against Trump's campaign resulted in constitutional violations by a court which is only made accountable to the public by the Inspector General report - which the mainstream media has broadly ignored or mischaracterized because it does not support their narrative that Russia meddled only on behalf of Trump. As well as Russia, our own government also meddled against Trump's administration - and they appeared to coordinate to do so. See 18 U.S. Code § 2384.

[1] https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf (pp. vii)

[2] https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/redacted_minori...

[3] https://www.scribd.com/document/409446360/CU-FOIA-Document-R...

[4] https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/16/steele-dossier-sources-st...

[threeseed]

There is so much to talk about with Russia though.

a) Widespread evidence not just from US but from UK and EU of efforts to interfere in elections and referenda e.g. Brexit.

b) State sponsored propaganda via social networks which even as recent as last week was having to be removed.

c) Continued meetings between Trump and Putin where only translators are present i.e. no State Dept representatives.

d) 20+ years of Trump Organization taking loans from Russian oligarchs via Bayrock.

[raxxorrax]

Yes, if I need an explanation of governance failure, I would blame Russia too. I just don't get why you believe it without any evidence.

[0x8BADF00D]

Not only was it a scam, it was the first time in US history that a shadowy cabal of unelected federal government officials tried to invalidate the results of an election. It also led to the erosion of rule of law, which will impact the US greatly in the future.

[masteranza]

1. Why is your account just 2 weeks old? 2. Apparently the testimony is based on the story told by who are trying hard to get their sentences reduced.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/25/assa-j25.html

[dang]

New accounts are welcome on HN. Your comment breaks the site guideline against insinuation of astroturfing, shilling, etc. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do that. The rest of your comment is fine.

[jansan]

1. Why is your account just 2 weeks old?

Maybe he created his account two weeks ago? How old was your account two weeks after you created it?

[thatlongthrow1]

> Why is your account just 2 weeks old?

It was made then. This was a very dumb question. One that tells more about where the person asking it is coming from than what could possibly be put into the answer itself.

What did you expect?

"Oh yes I made this account for the purposes of manipulating public opinion about Assange in this specific thread. Muahaha and I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for someone looking at my profile creation date."