[superkuh]

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.

[phphphphp]

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.

[kerkeslager]

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.

[phphphphp]

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.

[kerkeslager]

> I make no claim that collateral murder did not represent a war crime

Well, that's quite a change from: "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."

So you admit leaking Collateral Murder was about exposing the truth? A truth which was a war crime? It seems like maybe you made a vague accusation you couldn't back up specifically there.

> 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.

Make a real accusation instead of being vague. If Assange's lack of loyalty to the truth has been shown, I haven't seen it, so please, tell us what evidence you have. Otherwise, this is just another vague accusation that you'll shift away from when confronted for specifics.

If you're going to claim Assange is dishonest, I'd like to see a) evidence he knowingly leaked false information, or b) evidence he knowingly withheld true information. Be specific, stop this vague handwaving.

[lmm]

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]

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.

[boffinAudio]

Its a straw man argument. The thugs dropping bombs on innocent people every twenty minutes aren't good enough or honest enough, either. You only have to be marginally better than them - a very low bar - in order to effect change.

Which means, if you aren't interested in effecting change in the form of real justice for these war crimes and crimes against humanity, you're not one nanometer taller, in terms of moral authority, than the criminals dropping bombs on peoples heads - in your name.

[apercu]

Agreed. I find both of these things true:

People in government positions in the US and UK abused their power.

Julian Assange is not a good, or honest person.

[boffinAudio]

So you'll only accept evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and then take action about it within the context of your own democratic processes, if you get that evidence from a good and/or honest person?

Because honestly, this just keeps the door open for more crimes. Rarely is anyone ever good enough or honest enough - and neither of those conditions are required for addressing our heinous crimes against humanity, frankly. You just have to be good enough to know that war crimes and crimes against humanity are heinous, and honest enough to produce workable evidence that can be used to produce justice.

Assange is good enough and honest enough for that case, really - and if a person doesn't agree, they're a bootlicker thug. The WAR CRIMES have to stop. The CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY have to stop. It doesn't matter one iota what sort of person reports the evidence - the evidence is real. The crimes are real.

Assange's honesty doesn't change the enormous magnitude of the victims digging their loved ones out of the rubble, one bit.

[apercu]

Where did I say any of that?

War crimes are a serious problem, of course. But it's also quite possible that Assange's distribution of Russian propaganda affected elections in multiple countries and allowed for Russian human rights violations in Africa and Syria.

So you'll only accept evidence of war crimes if they are committed by the US?

And yes, I know you didn't write that but it's just as fair of a characterization as the one you provided.

[kerkeslager]

> Julian Assange is not a good, or honest person.

Good is subjective.

Honest, on the other hand is not, and if you're going to say he's not honest I'd like to see your evidence for that.

[apercu]

Intelligence analysis (at least those reported in US Senate investigations) show Russian-linked code and Russian language in the Wikileaks leak of the hacked DNC emails. Assange either lied (lies) about not receiving that content from Russian sources or is being disingenuous by sticking to a distinction that maybe there is a middle man in between the FSB/hackers and the individual(s) that uploaded the data/documents.

Completely ruins his credibility, no? That's not honest by any definition.

I am not a fan of US foreign policy, but also, have you noticed that, from the beginning (2011?), nearly every major Wikileaks release is US government or 5 eyes? Funny that.

Also, maybe look in to Assanges friend (and Russian antisemite) Israel Shamir. And look at Wikileaks activities (through Shamir) in Belarus.

Look, if Assange came out and said "I get a lot of my info from Russian intelligence sources and I want to further their agenda" he would be not necessarily a "good" person. But maybe an "honest" one.

[DANmode]

> 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?

[vuln]

That's the play, attack the person or how it was release but never acknowledge the contents of the release.

[fmajid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

[kornhole]

Wikileaks never published anything untruthful TMK. That is a far better record than almost any other publishing outlet.

[mardifoufs]

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]

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]

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.

[ethbr0]

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.

[jancsika]

> 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

[psychlops]

Why not? Why is public support necessary for transparently publishing information?

[thunfischbrot]

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.

[namdnay]

> 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

[kornhole]

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.

[yucky]

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.

[DANmode]

> From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project

Which party were the Collateral Murder footages meant to benefit? (Is "partisan" the right word here?)

[93po]

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.

[this_user]

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]

> 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.

[psychphysic]

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]

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.

[hulitu]

> but it might have been enough to dissuade the Obama administration from seeking to extradite him

Except that the reason they fabricated the Sweden case was precisely to make him an easy target for US.

[nico]

> 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]

> 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.

[Spivak]

And even stronger we institutionalize it and enforce it with violence. Enforcing cultural norms is the whole basis of our legal system.

[krunck]

> 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]

Looks like you just divided humanity into two groups there you degenerate groupist.

[mjklin]

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]

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.

[snehk]

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__]

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.

[psychlops]

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.

[BashiBazouk]

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]

> 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.

[BashiBazouk]

As opposed to your pro-WL propaganda that is blatantly false? Yes, what you describe is how I and I think many others generally viewed wikileaks up to 2016. With the DNC email leak, that changed:

https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/22/wikileaks_keep_fighti...

One example news story of many...

As to the RNC hack, I never said wikileaks had anything but the RNC was hacked and whatever was found was never released by the hacking organization. Whether this is intentional or just because what was found was not interesting or too old to matter, just the story circulating added to the perception wikileaks had changed.

[giantrobot]

> 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]

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.

[gWPVhyxPHqvk]

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...

[kornhole]

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.

[namdnay]

I think the point of the Ukraine aid is to limit the amount of war being waged on the Ukrainians...

[kornhole]

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]

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]

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.

[jamincan]

Yes, and famously Roosevelt sent aid to and eventually joined Allied forces in Europe instead of being an uncompromising advocate for peace.

[bakuninsbart]

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

[kornhole]

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.

[dontlaugh]

Maybe butchering Libyans has something to do with it? Or even just her husband cutting welfare?

Both US parties are neoliberal war hawks, sadly.

[mhh__]

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.

[93po]

> 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]

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]

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.

[kornhole]

The intelligence agencies and a paid contractor came up with the other story full of holes. Julian Assange has never lied to the public or published untrue information that I know of. So it is a matter of who do you trust: the government who constantly lies, or Julian Assange.

[the_third_wave]

> 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.

[zopa]

Some of people’s wilder imaginings about Trump and Russia didn’t check out, sure, but I certainly consider the Mueller Report itself accurate.

[lamontcg]

> 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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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.)

[93po]

> There was plenty of evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russians.

There is zero reputable evidence of this

[mhh__]

There's no evidence at all it was from anyone else.

Where is the evidence that it was Seth Rich for example? Alex Jones?

[93po]

The evidence is that Assange emphatically said it wasn't Russia, flatly said it was someone internal to the DNC, and he's never been shown to be wrong or dishonest about Wikileaks business.

Additionally, Assange has implied it was Seth Rich as strongly as he can without actually confirming he was the source, because he's bound by journalistic ethics and his agreement with his source to not reveal them.

Lastly, the Mueller report tries to discredit this and states as fact that Seth Rich was not the source. But it provides absolutely zero reasoning or evidence for this, and there is literally no way they could know this for sure. It claims it as fact regardless, and so does the entire establishment corporate media.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> 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]

The press is not to have sides. Its to be a loose cannon in a democracy, firing at all and everybody who has power.

[hulitu]

Are you sure ? Because the press instead of "firing at all and everybody who has power" is kissing the asses of "all and everybody who has power".

[wutbrodo]

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"

[sandworm101]

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.

[mardifoufs]

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?

[jstanley]

Are you suggesting Wikileaks should refuse to leak something just because they don't like the motivation of their source?

[throwwwaway69]

> 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

[wutbrodo]

> 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.

[93po]

> Russian-state-hacked DNC emails, right?

They weren't Russian state hacked, this is propaganda.

[mhh__]

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]

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.

[kerkeslager]

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]

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]

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]

> 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]

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]

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]

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.

[leereeves]

> 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.

[mynameishere]

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]

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]

> 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"

[CamperBob2]

"We get all the funding we need out of Russia," isn't objectively anti-Russia.

Believing Putin over his own intel agencies -- and publicly proclaiming as much -- is actively pro-Russia.

If Trump didn't want people to think he was a Russian asset, he might have tried not acting like one.

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[throwwwaway69]

> 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

[raincole]

The use of $theirpoliticalside as if it's a variable is pretty interesting. Because in this case, it's almost a const.

[barrysteve]

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.

[wazoox]

A "fatal error" in a totally unjustified and illegal war of aggression.

[psychphysic]

This video is likely to be the highlight of the decade for me.

https://youtu.be/s1kwq52NKmo

[f6v]

I like how the audience laughs at the expense of a million ruined lives.

[barrysteve]

Can hardly believe the audience is laughing at dead Americans. Even Bushites are not that callous.

They're laughing at his implied admission of guilt and the idea that Putin's unjustified wars are in George Bush's shadow.

[f6v]

> Can hardly believe the audience is laughing at dead Americans.

They’re not the victims who died by thousands.

[croes]

Error is quite an understatement

[starkd]

And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.

[chpatrick]

And yet only one belligerent invaded the other. There aren't two sides to this.

[starkd]

I am not denying the Russian invasion is unlawful. Reread what I wrote. You are proving my point.

[ethbr0]

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?

[beebmam]

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]

You're all for diplomacy, except during wars.

[CamperBob2]

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."

[yucky]

Are you referring to the US invasion of Iraq or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's impossible to tell the difference anymore.

[AutumnCurtain]

Thank God no Russians have died in this "proxy war" they were so unable to avoid

[starkd]

I didn't say no Russians have died. There have been horrible deaths on both sides. No one is winning in this war.

[Eumenes]

US imperialism and the defense companies are winning this war

[starkd]

Exactly. I don't think they are being fairly open about that. They aren't even hiding it.

[mindslight]

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.

[rendall]

> 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.

[mock-possum]

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?

[gWPVhyxPHqvk]

If your homeland gets invaded one day, I hope to be an apologist for your invaders.

[ramchip]

I... what? Around me, questioning the war gets you labelled as Putin critic, not an apologist. He literally started the war.

[yucky]

  > He literally started the war.

When do you think the war started?

[caskstrength]

> When do you think the war started?

When do _you_ think the war started? Annexation of Crimea was ordered by Putin.

[yucky]

Do you remember what happened right before he annexed Crimea?

[mrighele]

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]

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.

[raverbashing]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[JediLuke]

In this case it seems very clear cut, the Russian army invaded and attacked the civilian populace.

[driscoll42]

Strange how you don't comment on the many more Russians that Putin has murdered by his unprovoked war of aggression as well.

[starkd]

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]

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]

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.

[seattle_spring]

Just curious, what are your primary sources of information that have shaped your opinions and perspectives shown in this thread?

[starkd]

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.

[luckylion]

> 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]

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.

[mopsi]

> 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]

> 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]

> 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]

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.

[mopsi]

> 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]

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.

[cynicalsecurity]

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]

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]

I think the Ukrainian government has defined victory as driving the Russian military out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.