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**WARNING DARK TOPIC** A sick/dark new twist to Assange losing his internet connection.


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10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think Obama is pretty fucking pissed about this, yes. And I think this is likely one of the first straws you'll see. 

That sounds portentous. Is the US picking another asymmetrical fight it can't truly win?

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Just now, DanteGabriel said:

That sounds portentous. Is the US picking another asymmetrical fight it can't truly win?

Maybe? 

Obama has already given the go-ahead for a cyberattack against Russia and they've started planning it. Obama has been fairly cavalier about this type of thing in the past. 

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4 hours ago, Shryke said:

They are concerned about that too, if you hadn't noticed somehow. Like, the US is straight up right now saying Russia is trying to influence the US election and they are gonna retaliate over it.

But the US should also be concerned that an organisation is regurgitating Russian propaganda obtained via hacking in order to try and influence the election while many keep pretending like it's not happening. The connections between a purported clearinghouse for whistleblowing and a specific countries agenda is definitely cause for concern. 

I have noticed! Thanks for the updated info too, good stuff.

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14 hours ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Maybe he doesn't have anything on Trump?

It's widely speculated that the Russian government is behind the hacking of the DNC and now Podesta's e-mail, which they then fed to Wikileaks. Should Wikileaks have refused this material- which, whatever it's source, is exactly the kind of stuff it as an organization loves to expose- and said, "no, we won't release this until you bring us something on Trump as well?"

Is Wikileaks going to do a Wikileak about how Wikileaks was cynically manipulated by Russian intelligence to influence the US election?

The source of information is equally important as the information itself. If you are exposing a corrupt politician because you are being fed information by a corrupt government then you are serving a corrupt political master and you are not serving the pursuit of truth/justice or whatever noble cause you claim to be championing. In a sense you are exposing a minor corruption in service of a much greater and more dangerous corruption.

That is assuming Wikileaks is getting its Hillary information from Russian intelligence agency hacks and not from concerned citizens / Democrat insiders. Whistleblowing is about people concerned about truth and justice exposing lies, corruption, war crimes etc in order to make the world a better place. If the leaks are being arranged for and serve to improve the lot of a different corruption then it is not helping, and depending on circumstances might be making things worse, and it is actually working in contradiction to its aims and objectives.

The ends don't justify the means.

Unless of course Wikileaks is merely a tool for exacting revenge on powerful people Assange and co don't like, in which case carry on.

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Maybe? 

Obama has already given the go-ahead for a cyberattack against Russia and they've started planning it. Obama has been fairly cavalier about this type of thing in the past. 

I don't understand what they'd be targeting. First, the higher levels of the Russian government are made up almost exclusively of people who grew up in the Soviet Union. These are closemouthed by default even when they believe they're communicating in private and most certainly when they're using a means which leaves a record.

Second, Russia is not nearly as high-tech in its classified spheres simply because it is not as high-tech in general. The US demands that technology which goes into sensitive areas be made on-shore. Russia would like the same thing for the same reasons, but they mostly can't have it because there is no Russian Intel or Samsung or anything of the sort.

Third, revelations made about Russia are automatically dismissed by a sizable majority of Russians as enemy propaganda. In the US, when you release something bad about the Republicans, it is jumped on by the Democrats and vice versa. In Russia, jumping on something that harms the ruling party is at best a good way to discredit yourself.

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17 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Third, revelations made about Russia are automatically dismissed by a sizable majority of Russians as enemy propaganda. In the US, when you release something bad about the Republicans, it is jumped on by the Democrats and vice versa. In Russia, jumping on something that harms the ruling party is at best a good way to discredit yourself.

While I don't discount or disagree with the first two points, I think you're missing what they might do with this. Making Russia look stupid in the world is probably the goal. The US would never publicly attempt to destabilize the political systems as their counter, but, say, exposing more corrupt oligarchs similar to the Panama Papers? That is one of the things often cited as the reason Russia is hacking the US - the embarrassment - and doing another one might be a similar value.

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35 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Is Wikileaks going to do a Wikileak about how Wikileaks was cynically manipulated by Russian intelligence to influence the US election?

The source of information is equally important as the information itself. If you are exposing a corrupt politician because you are being fed information by a corrupt government then you are serving a corrupt political master and you are not serving the pursuit of truth/justice or whatever noble cause you claim to be championing. In a sense you are exposing a minor corruption in service of a much greater and more dangerous corruption.

That is assuming Wikileaks is getting its Hillary information from Russian intelligence agency hacks and not from concerned citizens / Democrat insiders. Whistleblowing is about people concerned about truth and justice exposing lies, corruption, war crimes etc in order to make the world a better place. If the leaks are being arranged for and serve to improve the lot of a different corruption then it is not helping, and depending on circumstances might be making things worse, and it is actually working in contradiction to its aims and objectives.

The ends don't justify the means.

Unless of course Wikileaks is merely a tool for exacting revenge on powerful people Assange and co don't like, in which case carry on.

That is pretty much what they have become at this point. 

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17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

While I don't discount or disagree with the first two points, I think you're missing what they might do with this. Making Russia look stupid in the world is probably the goal. The US would never publicly attempt to destabilize the political systems as their counter, but, say, exposing more corrupt oligarchs similar to the Panama Papers? That is one of the things often cited as the reason Russia is hacking the US - the embarrassment - and doing another one might be a similar value.

How many people are there either insider or outside of Russia who believe those oligarchs are not corrupt? The things they did in the 1990s are part of the public record. I suppose you can find a few newer crimes which would be by far less significant, but how much embarrassment would that really cause? Also, quite a few figures in Russia were specifically sanctioned by the West in the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis and it did not have much effect. I mean, yes, you can try to lower Russia's international reputation further, but given that it is already quite low (e.g. on the corruption perception list, it's currently tied for 117th place with Tanzania), there's much less chance of making an impact.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Here's the Wikileaks response to the initial accusations that started this thread. Looks like this was an elaborate smear attempt, as I suspected. Will be curious to learn more about the genesis of this all.

And I don't believe them for a second. They lost any sort of credibility they may have had with how they have conducted themselves and who they side with. 

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9 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

I guess that Ecuador is as horrified as everyone else (bar Russia) at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and got annoyed at Assange for pushing it, is not particularly surprising.

I guess Ecuador would like to avoid a Trump presidency but not exactly for the reasons you think (i.e. they're horrified by it), but rather a different shade.

Ecuador has, for nearly a decade, been part of the so-called "Socialism of the XXIst Century" bloc, along with Bolivia, Nicaragua and others, and spearheaded by Venezuela. They (Venezuela and the bloc) have strained their ties with the US and sought relations with alternative powers such as Iran, China, Cuba and Russia. 

If anything, Ecuador might be willing for an eventual HRC presidency that neglects LatAm (as Dem terms have for the past decades) that might be closer in ideology while at the same time ranting about it (the US as "the evil Empire"); and that leaves a vacuum of foreign influence that can be filled by their preferred powers (the aforementioned Iran, China, Cuba and Russia).

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32 minutes ago, Daniel Plainview said:

And I don't believe them for a second. They lost any sort of credibility they may have had with how they have conducted themselves and who they side with. 

Wikileaks' credibility isn't the issue at hand, though. The credibility of the accusation against Assange is the issue at hand. As yet, that's low. I note that most of the major media outlets are covering the internet cutoff but dancing around or avoiding completely the paedophilia allegation. If they thought that accusation was credible, they'd be covering it. 

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Wikileaks' investigatory document has a ton of information that can be followed-up on through Internet tools like whois, Google maps, and so on. Those claims, at least, look to be accurate based on some cursory looks I did.

Also, the Swedish law firm has significant credibility with me at least. They denied many of the claims from T&C about communications made regarding contact they add with them in their civil court filing.

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7 hours ago, Ran said:

Here's the Wikileaks response to the initial accusations that started this thread. Looks like this was an elaborate smear attempt, as I suspected. Will be curious to learn more about the genesis of this all.

The Sept 19th email is maybe the strangest thing I have ever read. The writer does not appear to be a native English-speaker. I guess the writer is purporting to be an agent of the Russian government? Kind of hard to tell. 

Anyhoo, Todd and Clare have a book for sale on Amazon. Someone awesome left this review today:

Quote

Coffee, with Unwelcome International Intrigue

Byskinny southerneron October 19, 2016

I got a date through ToddandClare.com. I figured, we'll meet for a cup of coffee and see how it goes. So I meet her at this out-of-the-way place I'd never heard of, with no reviews or even an entry on Yelp. The coffee tasted funny. I woke up in a hospital. They had evidently taken one of my kidneys and tossed my body on the road near the emergency room entrance. Some men came and talked with me, I think they said they were from the DIA or CIA? They asked a bunch of questions that I didn't know the answer to, like whether the girl mentioned Iran or Qatar, or Bob Creamer. I feel like I stumbled into something really dangerous.

ETA: Having now read more of their stuff...is it possible Todd and Clare Hammond are just random crazy people, and not so much the front for some shadowy conspiracy smear campaign?

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The author of the original piece on Daily Kos removed the post. http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/17/1583749/-Julian-Assange-investigated-for-online-grooming-of-8-year-old-girl

And there's a different piece by a different poster up today. http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/19/1584150/-Whatever-Happened-to-Extraordinary-Claims-Require-Extraordinary-Proof-The-Assange-Pedophilia-Claim

Buzzfeed has a story on it. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/josephbernstein/the-bizarre-story-of-how-a-tiny-online-dating-site-accused-j?client=ms-android-att-us

Here's Todd and Clare's blog. https://www.toddandclare.com/datinglife/ The Big Dating industrial complex is out to get them and wants women to be raped. Buzzfeed is evil and paid off by Big Dating. WikiLeaks is awesome and saves people from corrupt governments. WikiLeaks is horrible and uses the UN to threaten people.

It's about as crazy as anything published on InfoWars. Same kind of general incoherence. Maybe...Alex Jones IS Todd and Clare!!

God is there anything not crazy and awful about this election year?

 

 

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So, the whole story of Ecuador pulling the plug for Assange's internet access is basically down to, we do not want to get dragged into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, the US and their election. Which is probably a smart decission. I wonder if Kerry or somebody else from the state department called, and calmly told them, that they are not particularly happy.

And I'll play the devil's advocat on behalf of Wikileaks. What are they supposed to publish on Trump, that is not already in the mainstream media? My guess is, they simply do not get anything on Trump. Which kinda makes sense in a way. 

The Clinton stuff are somewhat semi-legal documents (not sure if anything was calssified as confidential or something). So typical wikileaks material. While Trump's stuff is mostly not really goverment related (even if you use that term in a very broad sense). So unless they have Trump's tax returns, or some paper work on the Trump foundation, I really don't see what they could possibly publish. And I think if anybody had a copy of those, they would probably rather find their way to the NYT or Washington Post, than to Wikileaks. That's where that criticism falls short. I mean you really can't criticize wikileaks for not publishing stuff they don't have.

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31 minutes ago, Notone said:

And I'll play the devil's advocat on behalf of Wikileaks. What are they supposed to publish on Trump, that is not already in the mainstream media? My guess is, they simply do not get anything on Trump. Which kinda makes sense in a way. 

Here's the thing though - Assange has said he does have some docs on Trump but has chosen not to publish them. So...he's decided to publish Podesta's risotto technique, but not anything he has on Trump. That's a lot worse than having nothing.

 

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18 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think this is more about the US diplomatic corps flexing some muscle and saying 'do you really want to be aiding and abetting a person who is helping Russia perform cyberattacks against the US?'

Ecuador probably just doesn't have that much of a dog in this hunt. 

That is a fascinating way to spin this.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Maybe? 

Obama has already given the go-ahead for a cyberattack against Russia and they've started planning it. Obama has been fairly cavalier about this type of thing in the past. 

Are you under the impression that this is not already happening?

 

If in fact ecuador is doing this as a response to pressure from the state department, that's highly problematic both from a censorship perspective and also as another potential gaffe by Clinton.  The optics on that are horrible for her.

Of course, she may be fully aware that people will carry her water and do the spinning on this without much prompting, so maybe she just doesn't care.

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1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

Are you under the impression that this is not already happening?

That the US is attacking Russia? No, I don't believe that is happening right this second - or at least I don't think the overt part of it is happening. 

1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

If in fact ecuador is doing this as a response to pressure from the state department, that's highly problematic both from a censorship perspective and also as another potential gaffe by Clinton.  The optics on that are horrible for her.

Of course, she may be fully aware that people will carry her water and do the spinning on this without much prompting, so maybe she just doesn't care.

I don't see how it's a gaffe from Clinton given that she's not, ya know, in the state department. I also don't see it as much in the way of censorial - especially given that Republicans are coming out right now and saying 'no, you shouldn't use this'. There's a difference between hitting wikileaks for leaking information and hitting wikileaks because they are consciously aiding espionage activities by a foreign government.

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