[bandyaboot]

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.

[barbacoa]

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]

> 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]

> 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.

[mardifoufs]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[pessimizer]

> 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]

> 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.