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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..."
Anything to distract people from the massive corruption in the west.
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.
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".
Gee, I wonder why the old media might be working overtime to discredit Wikileaks, who they till recently were madly in love with?
... because that's how journalism works? It must seem new to you if you get all your news from Facebook.
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.
Funny how the media lambasted Mitt Romney for his position on Russia being a shitty foe. But now, omg so bad!
There are two problems here. First, nothing on Wikileaks should be taken as fact without corroboration. Right now too many just accept everything posted as fact. This is what lead to the current situation.
Second, Assange needed to have negotiated a trial for the rape charges. Right now he is a fugitive suspect. If what he did was rape under the laws of the country he was in, and if he really believes in the rule of law and is not in fact just a narcissistic demagogue, he needs to face the consequences of his actions. By not doing so he has lost all credibility as fighter of truth. He is a fighter for truth he finds useful.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The most interesting ones come from the KGB archives. Turns out CPUSA was paid for by the Ruskies (and it's leaders answered to them), the Rosenbergs were guilty, Alger Hiss was an agent of Stalin, etc etc. It's almost like the Birchers knew something.
But that's not what you're asking, see sibling replies.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The West does not understand this and is divided sharply upon every slight division possible.
The division is deliberate. Politicians and the rich actively conspire to maintain the left/right division. While the plebs bicker about social issues, the elite are free to control the money.
The Soviet Union was every inch a real threat, as it had a real nuclear arsenal. The residual weapons in Russia's hands still make it the largest in the world in terms of warheads. It also had, by far, the largest credible conventional army in the world for 46 years after the end of WWII, with a history of regular use (1956, 1968, 1979/80), and battlefield success. The Soviets were involved in every brushfire war happening in Africa and Asia, and even a few involvements in the Americas - Cuba and Nicaragua come to mind. The Soviets were interested in dominating the world, though in a less revolutionary way than in the days of the original Comintern. Dozens of nations around the world had Marxist regimes sustained by Soviet aid, and growing that sphere of influence to isolate and Finlandize the West - and specifically the United States - was the Soviet plan.
In summary, shove your revisionist crap up your ass. I lived in fear of those warheads ending society as I knew it for my first 20 years. The fact that the Soviets only got nuclear weapons through the actions of Communist spies and fellow travelers associated with the Manhattan Project...well, explains why I hate leftists gratuitously.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
ROFL Wow you really swallowed the propoganda whole didn't you?
You do know almost all of that global activity on the part of the soviets was because of our pissing match with them, right?
"The Soviets were involved in every brushfire war happening in Africa and Asia, and even a few involvements in the Americas - Cuba and Nicaragua come to mind."
You can say the same of us.
"Dozens of nations around the world had Marxist regimes sustained by Soviet aid, and growing that sphere of influence to isolate and Finlandize the West - and specifically the United States - was the Soviet plan."
lol Yes, because going communist would destroy us!
The soviets had warheads because we had warheads. They had no more interest in actually using them than we did. Actually they had far less interest, we were the only nation evil enough to use nuclear weapons once nations understood what they did and we tested them so we knew before we used them.
"I lived in fear of those warheads ending society as I knew it for my first 20 years."
Right, because your government told you to be afraid of them. The same government that told you to be afraid of those evil commies and their nucs also told children that if one showed up they should climb under their desk or curled up in a ball lining the halls at school. They aren't actually gone you know any more than ours are. The only thing that is different is the fear mongering.
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
To be fair, when Romney blasted Russia, Russia had not done anything wrong. I mean, sure, they weren't being very democratic and Putin had been dodging around their constitution to stay in power, but on the international stage they had been behaving.
Putin and Bush were good buddies and got along well together. Russia hadn't invaded any other nations or instigated a civil war in any neighbours. We didn't know anything about state sponsored doping. Russia hadn't been sending troops to their western border. Russia wasn't building new nuclear fallout shelters at a rapid rate back then.
Russia was behaving admirably for an authoritarian dictatorship. So yes, Romney deserved criticism back then; it was a different world and east/west relations were better.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch