Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russian Spy

Re:Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile an... by makomk on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @06:58PM (#12739487)

Except that it was almost entirely Clinton supporters pushing this on sites like Daily Kos, Twitter, HN, etc. Wikileaks were really late to the party on getting a press release out about this, with Buzzfeed dismantling the whole thing shortly before they got their press release out and rendering it almost moot, and the attack was timed when the internet connection cut limited their ability to respond effectively. The fact that the whole hatchet job was ridiculous didn't matter, because Clinton's supporters just ignored this and accused anyone who pointed it out of being pro-pedo, and it got almost 24 hours of being spread around the internet unchallenged. Not only that, countering it tied up a bunch of time and resources that could've been used to post things damaging to her instead.

It looks like Ecuador have also just published a press release about cutting his internet connection that's perfectly timed to distract from this too. So Clinton's in no way losing out here. She benefits from people believing that Assange is a pedo and no-one hears about part where it's an incompetent frameup. The taint from this will stick to anything Assange says about her in future.

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Re:Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile an... by paulmd on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @07:10PM (#12739570)

Clinton doesn't need a conspiracy to win, it's as simple as that. She's polling at +8 nationally, if the election were held today she has at least a 75% chance of a landslide election (320+ EVs) if the election were held today, and there's zero indication that Trump's numbers have any upward mobility whatsoever at this point. In fact, the Republicans will be lucky to hold onto the House if things keep going the way they have the past couple weeks.

There's no reason to do a dumb attempt at stinging a has-been like Assange. Literally all it could do is hurt her (if it backfired and people took Assange seriously).

http://election.princeton.edu/todays-electoral-vote-histogra...

Hanlon's Razor says that if it looks like some dumb idiot ("small business owner") who thought he could hire Assange for his TV commercial and then got his jimmies rustled that Assange said no then it probably is that instead of an international conspiracy. But even if we're moving into conspiracy territory, Clinton doesn't have the motive here.

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Re:Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile an... by notahacker on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @07:35PM (#12739694)

She doesn't benefit from people believing Assange is a paedo, which I don't think any mainstream media source has bothered reporting as potentially true. She benefits much more from nobody talking about him at all, and focusing on all the nasty stuff coming out from basically everywhere except Wikileaks about the man she's running against (but apparently not comparable dirt on Pence; wouldn't she focus more effort on framing her opponent's running mate than some foreign journalist who's already got the not insignificant matter of a Swedish prosecutor wanting to charge him with rape hanging over him?)

Just because a few Clinton supporters on Twitter who really don't like Assange think the allegation is worth crowing about and the Daily Kos has no journalistic standards and will print anything if it's a scoop doesn't mean Clinton is anything but a little worse off if this news cycle is about Assange.

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