Slashdot Mirror
The Unsettling Relationship Between Russia and Wikileaks (dailymail.co.uk)
schnell writes: The New York Times is reporting on the informal but seemingly symbiotic relationship between Russian hackers attacking American targets and Wikileaks (Warning: may be paywalled) as their favorite spot for disseminating the embarrassing results. New York Times reports: "American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed." When it comes to embarrassing the U.S. government, Russia and Wikileaks' Julian Assange doubtlessly have common interests. But the reporters' analysis of leaks over the past several years raises a question of whether this is just a natural alliance of a source for incriminating documents and a motivated publisher, or does Wikileaks focus on the U.S. and downplay revelations about authoritarian regimes like Russia's as a result of the cozy relationship? nickovs adds: The New York Times is reporting how Russia often benefits when Julian Assange reveals the West's secrets. The article discusses Assange's change in stance regarding Russia over the years and how the Kremlin appears to support, and benefit from, the leaks that he publishes. The New York Times reports: "United States officials say they believe with a high degree of confidence that the Democratic Party material was hacked by the Russian government, and suspect that the codes may have been stolen by the Russians as well. That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin's Kremlin?" Daily Mail (non paywalled source) reports: "In 2010 Assange was arrested in London on allegations of rape stemming from Sweden and released on bail. He described the arrest as a plot to extradite him to the U.S. where he could be investigated over the diplomatic cables leak, which greatly harmed American relations with the rest of the world while Clinton was Secretary of State. Putin also called the charges against Assange 'politically motivated' and said he is being 'persecuted for spreading the information he received from the U.S. military regarding the actions of the USA in the Middle East, including Iraq.' Russian officials have also suggested that Assange be given a Nobel Prize, and in 2012 paid to stream his TV show on state-backed network Russia Today. The Times also claims that Assange was offered a visa by Russia in 2011, though WikiLeaks has denounced this as false..."
Quick, blame the Russians for fucking EVERYTHING
If not, I would definitely be suspicious because they should have all kinds of crazy going on in
Anything to distract people from the massive corruption in the west.
Given he faces charges is ever extradited, what incentive does he have not to publish material damaging to the US?
Where are the leaks from USSR ? Plans for Ukraine, or other disputed areas ? I'd love to see how much oil is left in Saudi.... Maybe something about the Chinese space program ? Trumps' tax returns ? (I'm sure on that one he was smarter than Hillary and nothing was attached to the internet)
That's nothing more than the situation that you don't need a Wikileaks-like platform to know that Russian Democracy has nothing to do with democracy. Any newspaper will do.
bickerdyke
The sheer transparency of the attempt to discredit Wikileaks for its role in exposing the inner workings of the US ruling class is hilarious.
It might be true; the case here seems convincing, that Wikileaks is at the very least Russia-approved, if not actively coordinating with them somehow.
But so what? Is this supposed to make me trust them less? Trust Assange less? It's not like we trust him THAT much... he does provide a valuable service, but I wouldn't let him hold my gold watch or anything.
I think this is just a side effect of them having a lot of enemies in common.
Ever considered that the Real Enemy (TM) is the very existence of those "incriminating documents"?
IOTW, if the US executive is doing dirty things and being intransparent it's pretty irrelevant whether Bad, Bad Assange is in Bed with Bad Bad Putin or not. Stop being such big assholes and you won't have this problem!
Instead, the U.S. tries to discredit the source and is playing a dirty game. No wonder theories as "the whole might-have-been rape story has been planted by CIA/NSA" and now this one too sound all too plausible. It's the kind of dirty game those three-leters customarily engage in.
Wikileaks is damaging Hillary's campaign - they must be destroyed!
Remember how awesome Wikileaks was when this happened?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak
Well, now they are going after the wrong party, so they are bad now. // Not voting for Hillary OR Trump
Just want to point out that this is squarely in the middle of the definition of "conspiracy theory": The DNC is a conspiracy theorist hub and interest group.
Of course, they won't be widely called conspiracy theorists, despite being conspiracy theorists. Words aren't used based on whether they are true, but whether they are useful, and only sometimes is it useful to label a conspiracy theorist as that.
What else can I add? Main stream techno media.
Good thing that the article states that "American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services." In the same spirit I can also state that probably, Glenn Beck didn't rape and murder a young girl In 1990.
Anybody else has the impression that the Slashdot editors are trolling us?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Just another example of Russia being infinitely better at influence operations and utilizing modern tools to wage low-level conflict. Take notes...Putin's putting on a clinic.
Even if the U.S. is using these tactics to some degree, the Russians are gaining practical experience that is tough to match.
Hey kids, remember when nazi-Bush was president and Wikileaks was great because "truth to power"?
Well, that's all gone away now that the president happens to have a "D" next to his title and Empress Hillary needs to be coronated!
One reason to elect Trump is that if he's president "speaking truth to power" will be OK again. If Hildabeast takes over then we are right back to censorship being a great thing and Slashdot's "editors" doing their part to be useful idiots for the "cause".
I wonder what they are worried Wikileaks will reveal next about Hillary? Media is putting up its deflector shields to max just in case. Anything released by Wikileaks will result in reporters trying to steer every conversation to talking about this conspiracy they are fabricating.
If Russian spies gather information, there is no need to "launder" it. They already have it and can give to whomever they want. Giving it to Wikileaks just gets it more exposure than it otherwise might. People write news stories about Wikileaks, nobody writes stories about WesternSecretsRevealed.ru.
More proof that despite being a huge jackass in general, Assange is probably onto something.
They would not squeal this loud if he were not effective or if the documents he keeps releasing were in any way fake.
It's been shown that Hilary started recently investing into her PR team to destroy Wikileaks' credibility, obviously for the role they played in discrediting her and her team and revealing their crooked tactics. She's been exposed as a criminal beyond all doubt, now she's out for revenge. Do not buy into this. Whistleblowers are national heroes. They should be treated as such.
I wonder what prize would Russian officials suggested for the their counterpart of Mr Assange..
Lol, if you look at wikipedia, you get a sense from 'muricans that Soviets invented whataboutism. Yet here we, 'murican's most credible paper, NY Times is resorting to the same tactics as Soviet Russia once did when controlled by Stalin to change the subject when leaks expose their corruption.
'muricans are stupid as shit.
Both trump and Hillary are not that good and an 3rd party can make it so no one get's the needed 270!
Funny how cries of "If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide" dry up when it's your own dealings being exposed.
Russia isn't exactly in a position to really threaten us strategically. At most they can annoy and frustrate or policy in the middle east and eastern Europe.
As far as the middle east goes they are a lot closer to it than we are. If they want to take on those problems, I'd argue for letting them. The bulk of the oil money has already been made, the minor loss of influence over there in exchange for giving up the cost of responsibility for it is worth it.
As far as eastern Europe goes, that might be a different calculation but again I would suggest leaving that problem to the EU as much as possible and only stepping in when absolutely required. Remember we are not obligated they are not NATO members yet, and arguably some of the Russian behavior might be seen as a response to the provocative nature of potentially make its next door neighbors NATO members, rather than a provocation of its own.
So I think its fair to say Russia today is given a position of greater import in our foreign policy and national discussion than it really deserves.
Which brings us to Wikileaks. I think for the most part it continues to provide a needed service in terms of pulling back the veil on abuses, lies, and secrets which undermine our democracy. Assume the information can be vetted I am not sure it matters if the Russians helped obtain it or not. Its provably true or it isnt and should be looked at that way.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Even if, and that's a huge if, the allegations made in the blurb is true, so what?
First of all, the truth is still the truth no matter who tells it, may it be Julian Assange, the Kremlin, the CIA or an AC on Slashdot. If someone provides you with evidence which conclusively proves that person A is a lying sack of shit, it's up to you to react on that information. If your source isn't telling you person B is a lying sack of shit, or actually anything at all in particular about person B, that doesn't change the status of person A at all - he's still a lying sack of shit.
Secondly, our western "democracies" being headed by lying sacks of shit is a lot more interesting, because we can do something about them. The Kremlin being filled with lying sacks of shit is a problem for the Russians. I hope they eventually get around to deal with it even though the prospects seem bleak for now.
A parenthetic, yet truly prescient summary of the situation.
It's a pretty fascinating article. I do suggest reading the actual article, instead of just the slashdot summary, which slightly emphasized the anti-Assange parts and doesn't go into a lot of the rest of the article, which does go into other things.
But, here was one section that I found interesting: a leak that apparently WikiLeaks didn't publish:
WikiLeaks was just getting started in 2006 when Mr. Assange, an Australian national, sent a mission statement to potential collaborators. One of his goals, he said, was to help expose “illegal or immoral” behavior by governments in the West. Mr. Assange made clear, though, that his main focus lay elsewhere. “Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia,” he wrote. Shortly after releasing the war logs in 2010, Mr. Assange threatened to make good on that promise. WikiLeaks, he told a Moscow newspaper, had obtained compromising materials “about Russia, about your government and your businessmen.”
But Mr. Assange’s life was soon upended. On Nov. 20 of that year, an international warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which he denies. Eight days later, WikiLeaks’ release of a cache of State Department cables cast unvarnished — and unwelcome — light on the United States’ diplomatic relationships.
...Mr. Assange, asked soon after by Time magazine whether he still planned to expose the secret dealings of the Kremlin, reiterated his earlier vow. “Yes indeed,” he said. But that promised assault would not materialize. Instead, with Mr. Assange’s legal troubles mounting, Mr. Putin would come to his defense. ...One day after Mr. Assange’s arrest, the Russian president appeared at a news conference with the French prime minister. Brushing off a questioner who suggested that the diplomatic cables portrayed Russia as undemocratic, Mr. Putin used the opportunity to bash the West.
Wait, what? In 2010 WikiLeaks was going to publish materials “about Russia, about your government and your businessmen”... but never did? What happened to that leak?
Whatever Wikileaks was in the past, you can't be okay with them acting as a front for Russian espionage. Does anyone think for a second that the Russians are going to turn over emails they acquire illegally without editing the content? They're okay with hacking government and political party servers but they're going to be honest about what they turn over? Not a chance.
This isn't just hackers run amok. If it's state sponsored this is bordering on an act of war and Wikileaks is party to it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Now that Wikileaks is going after liberals (read: Hillary), let's discredit them in any way possible, even trying to link them to "the Russians".
it's all theatre and chest puffing to blame who it "could" be coming from and no the actual fact that the message being delivered proves hillary is a hack and a liar (even under oath). The DNC plotted against Bernie to crown hillary. And that she's been untouchable because everyone is doing their best to protect her. Our politicians have been bought and paid for and our media is in their pocket also even despite her not holding a press conference.
Seriously, she won't talk to the press now, do they actually think it will get better later?
No wonder people just tune out. The whole system is rigged against the actual people from getting the truth and getting the person they want.
There seems to be a non-paywalled version of the article on "Alaska Dispatch News", for what it's worth:
http://www.adn.com/nation-world/2016/08/31/how-russia-often-benefits-when-julian-assange-reveals-the-wests-secrets/
It was rather well put together and the pieces connected If you thought about it. This guys ego was always out of control but it seems to be getting worse lately. Everyone praises what this guy did but with all the stuff he released the Middle east has turned into a shit show. It wasn't great before but at least they didn't have at least 2 failed states there and chaos. That's all that has occurred their from the diplomatic releases he threw out there. Not freedom and civilization but just chaos and a degeneration into tribalism. The entire middle east is worse off now than what it was a few years ago. And im sorry Russia at this point is an enemy and threat to everyone. Its gobbled up parts of two countries in the last few years and threaten others to try to get its way. Its now an autocratic state run by a guy that wants to grab anything he can. In what bizzaro politically correct world do you live in that you cant see that? There are people out there that don't give a shit about law or civilization. They just will try to take as much as possible from you just cause they like having power. The only way to protect yourself from that is to have your threat and to protect your own people. That's just how the world is and its not going to change.
There are two things we are being prepared for:
1) The Department of Homeland Security wants to secure our elections for us, aka power grab.
2) The leaks are being discredited with the suggestion that the Russians are modifying or fabricating the documents, aka cover up.
Another clever-clog who's seeing behind the curtain. Well done you. Give yourself a 'not sheeple' medal.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Does it matter how information was obtained as long as it's true?
https://www.emptywheel.net/201...
a good take down of why this article is a piece of of propaganda
If I remember correctly, he spent a night with a groupie and then he didn't call back, then she said it was rape. Probably not a trumped up charge, just a woman who regretted hooking up afterwards.
Lol yeah. It's so obvious that the credibility of our "media" is nonexistent. Neither candidate in the front running is good. If I were media and fancied calling myself a journalist, I'd think long and hard about how we got here.
If you start peddling blatant political propaganda like this, which is so obvious as to be insulting to everyones intelligence, then just fuck off - people will stop visiting the site, given the disrespect and insult this shows, to the userbase.
Get enough of this garbage in so many other places already on the Internet - and I'm not even in the fucking US...
The amount of info on the US Government can either be Assange's hatred for it or the sheer amount of questionable things the USG does coupled with how insecure the information is.
In the "Wealth is everything " nation, getting your hands on incriminating information is simply a matter of how much financial backing you can bring to bear on the target. Throw enough money at someone at they'll give you anything you want.
Besides, MSM is trying to paint Wikileaks as a Russian thing in order to discredit current and future releases that aren't favorable to their darling candidate.
It's hilarious how much of a joke our " Democracy " has become. Our votes are directly influenced by those who own the media and thus, whatever agenda they are trying to push.
As such, they're pissed off that sources like Wikileaks can work against the " approved " stories released by what passes as the news these days.
Really. Not reliable. Don't quote "the Mail". It's a good way of finding yourself ridiculed in the UK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
This comes out exactly when Putin denies any Russian involvement in the DNC leaks. Let's see who shouts louder. In the meantime the guy ("Guccifer") who was arrested for allegedly hacking Hillary's email server, but then wasn't charged for it because the US couldn't actually prove it, has been sentenced on other charges. By the way he's from ROMANIA not Russia, but I understand that Americans will have trouble with the two countries that start with R.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It would make no difference to me if Assange rolled out of Putin's bed each morning. The information leaked has proven to be true time and time again which is the only credibility that messenger needs.
Nothing leaked about those other nations, including Russia, would make the information leaked about Western governments and US suddenly be less bad.
Screaming "The Russians are coming!" and running around like your head is cut off isn't going to distract me from the content of the leaks any more than it distracted me when they revealed Hillary Clinton was guilty of a DNC conspiracy worse than anything Nixon even attempted. I certainly don't think anyone missed the part where the very morning this terrible scandal was revealed instead of questioning whether the delegates were going to do their duty and change the outcome on behalf of the disenfranchised voters they represented had nothing but a stream of major news outlets questioning whether Sanders was going to get his "supporters in line" or could "control his people" in a tone that very much said you "better get your bitch on a leash."
Don't! The Not Sheeple Medal has a Russian tracking device in it!
So Russia is going to try to hack the US.
And the US isn't taking measures to protect itself from hackers.
So the obvious problem is that Wikileaks exists as a convenient place to dump the info. Right.
Awful convenient how all the "enemies" of those in power are suddenly agents of the evil Soviets again.
and there won't be anything to be embarrassed about.
Who are the American government's primary adversaries?
Number 1 adversary: the American people. America's people and its government are never going to be friends, and we are always looking for ways to defeat the other.
Number 2 adversary: other governments. The more power you have, the more the American government hates you.
Distant (but nevertheless significant) number 3: people governed by those other governments.
So you can see that when it comes to working against the American government, there's going to be a lot of bedfellows. Some will be strange. If you're out to get the American government, pretty much everyone else is on your side, including most Americans.
This is so big, obvious and consistent, that I'm not sure why it's noteworthy that Russia's and Wikileaks' interest dovetail. Everyone'e interests dovetail on this one. You can use the American government to draw a link between anyone and anyone, whatever fake relationship you want to show.
Assange has never been accused of rape.
It doesn't matter what the relationship between Russia and Wikileaks is if the information is true.
Even if they are working together, they are doing the American public a service with their actions. Don't blame Wikileaks for exposing this shit, blame the US government and the political parties for doing this fucked up shit giving them something to leak in the first place.
This would be like exposing a Day Care running a pedo porn ring only to have others blaming you for exposing it like you did some kind of bad thing.
The stuff Wikileaks has exposed that I have seen is stuff that should have been exposed.
"That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies?"
Is it possible that the New York Times is just a laundering machine for spewing American propaganda? Have they invalidated any of the Wikileaks? No, the best they have to come back with is posing questions vaguely showing a Russian origin of some leaks. Here is a pro tip, if you don't want to look bad, stop doing bad shit.
It's a pretty withering unpacking of the NYTs crappy agenda journalism: http://www.twitlonger.com/show...
Earth is a single point of failure.
Wikileaks can leak documents from US government on other countries...and they have; it is just not intentional (yet) on the part of the US. As far as a bias... the US waging a cold war on Wikileaks does foster resentment...
US elections now involve BILLIONS of dollars in propaganda spending; a great deal of that spending goes to media outlets. Surely you must notice how the "news" of organizations is skewed by their advertisers?
Remember when email viruses were a big thing in the 90s because of Outlook and the media never said Microsoft during their reports? MS advertising did that. I knew a news director, he said how it really works... Or how about how ADM, Monsanto, and other corporations with zero customers will pay huge amounts to advertise on networks with an investigative news capacity? PBS Frontline has probably brought in more corporate donations than any other PBS show.
Remember WMD in Iraq? Cheney planted lies in the NY Times and then cited them in the rush to war. That didn't even cost $ to use NY Times.
Foreign corporations are buying influence in US elections more than ever before (and multinationals who are considered based in the USA should be considered just as bad.) The big bad Russians are a tiny problem; best used as a scapegoat for anybody who wants to play dirty - plus it helps politicians looking for an enemy as they ramp up for another war to save the collapsing American "Empire" card house.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The US media is the anti-Russia Wikileaks.
One person knows 100 times more about Soviet policy during the cold war than either you or I know. Mikhail Gorbachev knows what he was trying to do.
When I've been to an event with Gorbachev and heard what he has to say, he was pretty clear that both he and Reagan sought to destroy the other country. Reagan's goal was finally achieved on December 25, 1991; the Soviets had the same goal going the other way.
Asked about certain events which occurred after the Cold War, Gorbachev used an interesting phrase to refer to that time period, "After Reagan defeated us ....".
Who's going to waste time publishing "shocking" allegations of Putin's ill-begotten wealth or deep-rooted corruption at all levels of Russian government when everyone both inside and outside Russia has known about it forever? You might as well publish "water is still wet".
Wikileaks did do some good work exposing specific corruption in some African nations, but didn't get a lot of media attention for it since nobody was particularly shocked by the allegations.
This space intentionally left blank
When will they explore the unsettling relationship between the media and the DNC? Or is it normal to hold clandestine fundraisers that their own lawyers forbid?
Source: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699
Not a shred of proof for the headline. Rather, it suggests an embarassing link between the NYT, and US government.
to distract from Hillary being evil.
Obviously, we can't rely on US politicians or the US civil service to keep the US public informed about their misdeeds. Russia has the money and the power to do so, so why shouldn't they?
No Clinton campaign propaganda on ./ thank you.
We all know it's Hillary's camp scare mongering. She's evil and lies about everything and has people killed, I'm mad as hell and I'm gonna vote for the guy constantly screaming abuse!
Just because wikileaks helps to expose illegal government activity does not mean that it is "aligned" with Russian interests. Perhaps we should focus on the activities that have been exposed, instead of focusing on the whistleblower and the whistleblower's tools.
Contained in relatively small box for years. There it is.
Don't care where the truth/facts come from. It's up to us to decide what to make of it. Regular Media looks far too screechy when they start dissing Wikileaks and blaming everything on the Russians.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
We Americans benefit most from Wikileaks! Not the Russians, and not any other country. The United States of America is by far the greatest beneficiary of the corruption exposed by Wikileaks.
If Stalin were alive today, I would believe he is living in a wrong country. CCCP moved over to USA.
Brazil's former president Lula also said it (that it is a political persecution), as did the president of Ecuador, as did the UN human rights court. He must be an agent for those as well.
Carlos Slim bought The New York Times. He is the richest guy on the planet and is an elite Mexican who backs Hillary because she has promised total "open borders" which will allow Mexico to continue dumping its poor into the US so guys like Carlos do not have to pay taxes to support them in Mexico.
The NYT has ALWAYS been super-left; they lied to the world about Stalin's massacre of millions of innocent people because their reporters loved communism. When they were outed, their excuse for Stalin's purge was "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." Their readers are, themselves, so far left that they are in the same intellectual bubble and cannot see how bad it is. Ever since Slim bought them, however, they have become pom-pom waving Hillary supporters who do not even pretend to be unbiased journalists. The FBI has been unwilling to tie the hacking to the Russians, but the DNC put out the talking point that the Russians were behind it in the hopes that anti-Trump "hawkish" Republicans might be driven to support Hillary and even more so if they think Russia is somehow involved with Trump. The NYT is just carrying water for Hillary and the DNC with this "story" - they do not seem concerned with the actual ties between the Clinton Foundation, Hillary's State Department, and the Russian purchase of control of a big chunk of the US nuclear industry.
There is of course some truth to what you say. Also, people actually believe things too, sometimes passionately. For one example, Al Gore believes that global warming is BOTH a good career tool AND an actual concern. The USSR actually tried to put nukes 90 miles from Florida, and politicians used that fact to their own advantage.
> Do you know what would have happened to the USSR had capitalism taken over? Not much really.
It's interesting to me how often people predict the past. Russia DID move to a market economy in the 1990s. GDP and personal incomes roughly doubled, after a turbulent transition period.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
people LOVED wikileaks as it embarassed the previous Administration, used it to celebrate heroes who were whistleblowers and used wikileaks to support every anti war anti American rant anyone wanted to make.
Now, suddenly, Wikileaks embarasses the DNC and it's all a bad thing? like suddenly the Russians or Chinese or other "bad guys" weren't using wikileaks as an intel clearinghouse and propaganda tool before this?
I thought it was supposed to be Republicans and "conservatives" who were afraid of Russians hiding under the bed? :P