It's a ridiculously and simplistically too convenient argument and therefore attractive to anyone with the slightest bias against 'information I don't like' (or a tendency towards being a 'shoot the messenger' type of person).
That Assange / Wikileaks don't follow the same bias as the local US media, doesn't mean he's / they're an enemy agent. Thinking of the world in black and white like that is dangerously reductive.
I've never seen that about Snowden except in regard to activities after taking io residence in Russia, and even then its usually more “Snowden is subject to influence by Russia” more than “...an agent of Russia”.
Assange is a different story, but the both the uncontroversial facts and the controversial detailed claims on which a conclusion about being a Russian agent might rest about Assange are different.
¹ Or maybe still is, presumed he's still alive and can move freely, which is highly unlikely.
He may be partisan, he may not be revealing damaging info about Russia. But if the information is true, so what? Shouldn't we be doing something about the corruption he revealed regardless of why he revealed it? I can't believe all you have to do is say the R-word and suddenly people are just willing to ignore everything he says, its ridiculous. Like uhh enemies of the US are more likely to expose damaging information about them as compared to allies, no shit?
The appearance of impropriety is still important to some folks though, so when private emails (that didn't lead to rigging an election, something the DNC has no power to do anyway) that show that folks in the DNC favored one candidate over the other, they resigned.
This isn't the same thing as admitting the impossible (that the DNC somehow got HRC ~4 million more votes)
The "Russian leaks" that Wikileaks declined were sent to them during the DNC/Podesta/Hillary email release when their resources were obviously stretched. The "leaks" were mostly public, were deemed unimportant and were declined. As we know that didn't stop whoever anonymously submitted these documents from immediately using this to orchestrate a smear campaign against Wikileaks with full compliance of the media (funny timing during the DNC email release, wonder who it could have been?)
A little later the "leaks" were fully published elsewhere and nobody cared (but let's not kid ourselves that anybody who claimed to care actually cared at all).
How and what information is being presented is an incredibly important part of "the truth" as a whole.
I don't think anybody on HN argues that option 3 is preferable over all the other options. You seem to think option 1 is preferable to both options 2A and 2B. GP and I seem to think the opposite.
I can understand your argument that half the truth can be worse than no truth at all. But as there are very few sources for information like WikiLeaks I think in cases like this, half the truth might be all the public can get and it at least gives you a basic idea of what is happening when nobody is looking.
Really? I think that’s probably the most popular option. Why do you say that?
From context, ITYM "disputes", not "argues". Or least that's the only way your comment makes sense; "argues" a position generally refers to supporting that position.
One by dnc and one by rnc. You have video of the dnc one and you don't show it because you lack the other video?
You hide the truth because it is not fair to the first murder that you don't have proof of the other?
> As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission.
This is simply not supported by the policies enacted during by the Trump Administration:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/09/25/o...
> So Russia has WikiLeaks post only the information on the candidate they don't like, securing the election for a politically favorable but perhaps even more corrupt person.
There are three answers for that: If Wikileaks has a bias than it can easily explained by the fact that Assange's woes were caused by the Obama admistration. And even if they didn't have a bias, most of their staff at Wikileaks do not speak Russian and they try to verify every piece they publish; as opposed to making claims based on partisan funded opposition research. It's also far harder to leak from Russia and other authoritarian/mafious states and also because their intelligence agencies use mechanical typewriters.
Yet here is the idea for your mind: all around the world including Russia political leaders of authoritarian countries trying to sell bullshit like every single problem their regime has is caused by some US conspiracy. They'll of course tell you that all independent journalist and activists work for US and spread only lies.
Does Snowden going for asylum in Russia make what he exposed unimportant? What if famous Iraq civilians killing video would be provided not by someone from US, but Russian FSB or Islaeli Mossad? Will it make people less dead?
So obviously any whistleblower or journalist can be biased and some country will benefit more than other. There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for whom - only facts are important.
This "bullshit" has a Pentagon-sized kernel of truth to it.
Washington is the only regime with hundreds of foreign military bases.
Washington is the only regime that directly funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in resources to foreign rebel groups through channels such as NED, DRL.
Washington is the only regime capable of unilaterally blockading entire economies through crushing sanctions.
So yes, it does really matter to 90%+ of the world population if the "journalists" they trust are actually paid couriers of Washington's foreign agendas.
I don't think so.
There's generally no such thing as 'individual blocks of truth' as independent things. The truth is always contextual.
New Orgs have biases that exhibit themselves in all sorts of ways, and they matter.
I'm not fully sure if either of these things are fully true but if 1) Assange was actively trying to help people steal sensitive information form the US and 2) has some kind of implied relationship with an American adversary whereupon they support him politically or with information - and whereby he returns the favour by suppressing leaks on their behalf - then what does this look like? This person basically becomes a foreign agent, intent on discrediting one party over another. The 'facts' released are ultimately selective. It'd be 'journalism' in the same way that Putin could use his powers to 'uncover' information and then frame and leak the information selectively. Again: I don't know if 1 and 2 are true.
I'm also not fully on board with the notion that information about Assange is suppressed in the conspiratorial sense it'd be interesting to see more behind the scenes mechanics of how that might work.
On the one hand, I absolutely agree with this statement in isolation. On the other, I don’t need him to be unbiased, as he isn’t the only journalist in the world — if he wants (or needs) to keep Russia happy, so long as he has a counterpart that doesn’t, between them the public is informed.
How about a little goddamn proof? How about a valid legal case that follows the laws of the USA? This whole Assange thing is just a streaming shit-show of nonsense and a shameful attempt to drive one man to ruin and worse.
Both Democrats and Republicans have other problems to worry about every day b/c they don't have their acts together. All this trouble comes b/c a cabal of jerks somewhere (probably the intelligence community) has a hard-on to fuck Assange over and is somehow tolerated.
Just for comparison: would it be ethical for the USA to bushwhack and extradite a street vendor in Egypt who cries "Kill the USA!" and burns Uncle Sam in effigy? Hell No! This stuff happens all the time. The USA bureaucracy is like an information sieve. If you wanna fix it, find a better way to work.
Give Assange his freedom. Drag into the sunlight those fools who are perpetuating this nonsense and terminate their employment. Brand their foreheads with a giant letter "A" so they're identifiable forever. Anything Assange has revealed is by now "water under the bridge". To use another metaphor, "the genie is out of the bottle" and you can't put it back. Grow up!
In theory, that’d be the job of the court case he’s fighting an extradition to not face.
And, to be clear where I stand, in the (unlikely) event that anyone’s secret services care what I think, they’d have to be a lot more open and honest about their mistakes for me to trust them when they say “we need X secret, trust us” — almost everything that people like me get to hear about them are their mistakes, and a whole lot of hubris to go with those mistakes; while I like to assume they can’t all be that bad, the fact is I can only form opinions by what I learn, and whatever good any of them might do is kept secret (or so vague it might as well be) and is unlearnable, while the bad stuff is writ large.
(None of this is relevant to the judicial systems in any country or Assange).
Because Assange was ostensibly helping someone steal classified information. These allegations are well known.
"How about a little goddamn proof? "
They literally have text messages of him encouraging and ostensibly helping someone to steal information. This is also well known.
"How about a valid legal case that follows the laws of the USA?"
That's what's happening: they are extraditing him so that the evidence can be put on the table and we can see what's what. This is well known.
"Give Assange his freedom. "
He has his freedom. He's possibly comitted a crime, which is why he's going to court.
I think your comment implies an general ignorance of the situation.
If we tried to arrest every person outside the USA who is trying to do something to/in the USA we'd have to put out arrest warrants for millions of people. We'd be, and are, the laughingstock of the diplomatic world.
Aside: we apparently assassinate hundreds of individuals outside the USA every year (something that Obama complained about IIRC ) with God-knows-what justification. We're well on our way down the Road to Ruin.
I'm hardly a bleeding-heart, but for the USA intelligence agencies to dog Assange to death is immoral, unethical and illegal even under our legal system.
Pursuing Assange is the worst of all causes: a fishing expedition, a routine overextension of international and national law, legal malpractice, and a giant fool's errand for every man involved in this.
Only a psychopath would put the pursuit of Assange on their resume. Of course we likely have plenty of those working for us. Apparently they float to the top, like shit.
jollybean says>"I think your comment implies an general ignorance of the situation."
Nope. But your reasoning above amply demonstrates a bit of how the powers-that-be twist language, logic and reason to justify contemptible behavior and justify crushing an individual. You should write an "Anti-Declaration of Independence" for spies that outlines their grievances against free agents and how they should be able to kill/maim/wound/harm anyone, anywhere just b/c they are irritated with those agents' behavior.
An honest leader would publicly fire with malice every asshole who participated in or encouraged this shitfest and make sure the government never employed them again. Of course, that would be a bit (but only a bit) similar to doing to them what is being done to Assange! Perhaps that would be justice. I'll have to think about it.
When a crime is committed, justice is pursued.
The nationality of the individual doesn't matter that much. American or not, if they've committed a crime against the US, then they will face justice.
If he possibly raped a woman in Sweden, then he's extradited to Sweden to face justice for that crime.
If he possibly robbed someone in Switzerland, then he's extradited to face justice there.
Since it looks like he conspired with Pt. Manning to steal classified data from the US Military, he's going to be extradited to the US to face trial.
" how the powers-that-be twist language, logic and reason to justify contemptible behavior and justify crushing an individual."
This is not some YouTube conspiracy story, for the most part it's really not that complicated.
There is already reasonable evidence in the public domain that a crime was committed, he's going to have to get a lawyer and face a judge so we can find out the truth.
The laws of the USA apply only within the boundaries of the USA with minor exceptions by treaty. Application of USA law outside the USA is illegal, delusional and megalomanical. Furthermore, other nations will either object (the only reasonable response) or expect full reciprocation. Imagine life in a country where USA, French, British, Scottish, South African, Russian, Chinese, etc. law all simultaneously applied? Your suggestions are nonsensical and self-contradictory.
(1) To sic, to attack (used especially in commanding a dog):to incite to attack (usually followed by on).
And indeed, the USA isn’t the only nation claiming universal jurisdiction for various offences.
And even if you knew for sure that Assange knowingly working for Russia you will never know why he doing it. After all US wants to get him on US soil and to put him in prison (for 300 years) to make him an example of US power and "justice".
And on other hand Putin's regime can just threat to kill his friends and family since they totally capable of doing it, no defending against it in UK court.
Oh, looks like i posted some funny conspiracy here. Conclusion: when we try to dig into information about specific people we end up with conspiracy mess. That information impossible to check and it doesn't prove anything.
On other side when activists or journalists publish stories about something like war crime, PRISM or Panama Papers facts can usually be verified because when it's leaked it's too big to hide.
Not necessarily, obviously. For instance: if someone leaks information to an enemy about a fatal flaw in their nation's military equipment, and the enemy nation attacks and exploits that flaw to victory; all the leak did was make their country weaker and more vulnerable.
I'm not aware of any improvements in the resiliency of the US in response to Assange's leaks, except that the Democratic party has better opsec now (e.g. uses 2FA and has anti-phishing drills). They may have locked down their secret-level networks in response to Manning's activities, but that could arguably make the US less resilient.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
People say Wikileaks is wrong that all the information offered to them was public, but none of the published chat logs show anyone explaining to Wikileaks that there are unpublished leaks in there.
There's a reason they still conduct elections in Russia, to give the appearance of democracy. Yes, people still think it's a democracy… as long as their favourite leader is in power.
In Serbia's last elections, Vucic falsified COVID numbers on the days leading up to voting day so that his party could convince his voterbase, the elderly, to go out in droves to vote. After the election he stopped the reporting of false numbers and put the country into a lockdown because to no one's surprise, the numbers were sky high. There were massive protests because of the lockdown measures, where police brutality ran rampant, all on Vucic's orders. Expired tear gas was used on unarmed civilians protesting peacefully, cops in full riot gear were beating the crap out of unarmed protesters and chasing them down the streets. He goes around poorer regions of the country and bribes people with sandwiches and basic supplies like wheat and flower for a vote. His son is good friends with famous, high profile criminals, and Vucic himself was buddy-buddy with a bunch of the former guard, more than half of which either have been, or are currently standing trial for war crimes committed during the Yugo wars.
This list goes on and on, and similar things happen in most balkan and eastern european country. Nobody sane trusts a single thing these "people" do, and people definitely don't trust elections, so what ends up happening is that people just don't see the point in participating in an obvious scam. None of us actually believe we're living in a democracy, we're all aware it's a farcical facade that dictators put up.
It is Russians' business, technically, but in practice regular Russians are no better equipped to act on information about it than we are.
From your second link "These incidents don’t prove, as some have alleged, that Assange is some kind of paid Russian agent, or that WikiLeaks is a Russian front organization"
Your first link was addressed elsewhere. I can't personally blame Assange for liking Russia more than the country that has spent a decade making his life a living hell. Even if Russia's motives are obviously impure, they are more helpful to furthering Assange's goal.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/18/russia-sorm-nokia-surveill...
The 12 Russians, and the 3 Russian companies all hired attorneys to represent them and counter sue for defamation. When their attorney went in front of the judge, all charges were dropped by the Justice Dept, refusing document discovery "on issues of national security".
It's all political reality television, from both the right and the left. It's like a cable TV wrestling match.
I've had trouble finding English language sources giving the full story with a 2 min search. They all just cite the dropping of charges against the companies. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justice-department-russia-com...
Here's an RT link with a little more info, for whatever that's worth: https://www.rt.com/usa/483279-concord-russiagate-charges-dro... . You might have better luck looking for a little longer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/politics/concord-case-...
""" In January 2019, the federal government accused Concord of violating a protective court order designed to safeguard information shared among lawyers on the case. Prosecutors said a trove of nonclassified information they had turned over to Concord’s defense team had turned up on a website the previous October.
A message on a newly created Twitter account read: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” """
RT's claim that these groups are not responsible for these troll farms is not credible. The claim that these organizations were attempting to use the court case to get detailed information on how they were investigated however, is.
Didn't take it as a credible source in the matter, but wasn't going to bother with a longer than 2 min. search either for all details.
On a side note, I don't take the NYT to be any less biased that RT. All of them will conveniently forget about the parts of the story which they don't like. They all have favourites in the matter (Trump, Barr, Democrat leadership, Putinistas, etc).
People have leaked data on Russian corruption to WikiLeaks, which went unpublished. His leaks coincide with what is politically favorable to Russia, not with making all information free to the world.
To the downvoters: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia...
Maybe provide some feedback, so I can understand why you disagree with me?