Yes, they are a news organization. Covering the election is what a news organization should do, and it's hard to argue the Clinton emails weren't newsworthy.
>They have been to be a known tool for the Russian government, even going as far as creating a show for Julian Assange on the state-backed RT TV Network
This is untrue. There is nothing suggesting that Wikileaks has knowingly coordinated with Russia. And that TV show was indepently produced by Assange, with RT buying some ofthe distribution rights.
If they are a news organization, they do a terrible job of reporting the news. They are a black box repository for leaked data. They were once a great resource for info hackers and leakers to push their data, like back in 2008/2009. But that was before news organizations started using their own secure drop servers for sources. Once WikiLeaks sources started to not go to them, they started to look for other benefactors and sources. They found it in the Russian Government.
Again, nothing suggesting they are knowingly working with the Russians.
Wikileaks quality has surely dropped. They are still the press, and any prosecution by the US will be over things like the Manning links, a direct attack on the freedom of the press.
OK, there is evidence that Assange sold the broadcast rights of a show to a Russian controlled news organization. Do you think that Jesse Ventura should also be prosecuted?
I don't think Assange should be prosecuted for appearing on Russian state TV. (Does anyone?)
While it may be technically true to say that he "sold the rights" to Russia Today, that's arguably a little misleading, as the show first aired on RT, and RT had exclusive initial rights to it.
>I don't think Assange should be prosecuted for appearing on Russian state TV. (Does anyone?
People use his television show to claim he's a paid operative of Russia. The same narrative can be made of Ventura, and any reason Assange should be prosecuted but not Ventura seems sketchy.
>While it may be technically true to say that he "sold the rights" to Russia Today, that's arguably a little misleading, as the show first aired on RT, and RT had exclusive initial rights to it.
They bought the initial rights in several languages, not exclusive, but he did not make the show for RT. That's a fairly clear distinction.
No-one is suggesting that Assange should be prosecuted for making a TV show, so I don't see what you're getting at with the Ventura comparison.
What you can't do is claim that it's somehow normal for someone who claims to be anti-authoritarian to appear on Russian state TV and take Kremlin money. The TV show is one of many examples of unusually close connections between Assange and the Russian state:
>What you can't do is claim that it's somehow normal for someone who claims to be anti-authoritarian to appear on Russian state TV and take Kremlin money.
First, this also describes Ventura.
Second, claiming to be anti-authoritarian while accepting help from a clearly authoritarian Kremlin describes the US in WWII.
None of those connections suggest he's coordinating with Russia, just that their interests sometimes align. I'm sure he'd take US money and appear on PBS too if given the opportunity.
I don't really know anything about Jesse Ventura, and still don't understand why you keep bringing him up. If he's done everything that Assange has done, then I don't like him either.
> I'm sure he'd take US money and appear on PBS too if given the opportunity.
Ah, the Captain Renault defense. (Sure, I collaborate with the Nazis, but I'd just as soon collaborate with the other side if they were winning!)
Ventura has a show that is on RT. You quoted my statement
>Again, nothing suggesting they are knowingly working with the Russians
And replied with a link to Assanges' show. I'll admit, "working" is too vague of a word to use, all my other posts use "collaborate," as selling the show to RT could be called "working with." However, if that contact is the damning evidence that you claim it is, the same evidence is available linking Ventura (and Larry King) to the Kremlin. Why aren't you calling for them to receive the same treatment?
>Ah, the Captain Renault defense. . (Sure, I collaborate with the Nazis, but I'd just as soon collaborate with the other side if they were winning!)
Still no evidence of collaboration has been shown. And nothing like that scenario, I'm sure he'd have gladly had his show run on both channels at the same time. More people would see his views and he'd make more money for his work.
The Vox article you linked has three sections about the "links." The first's conclusion starts
>This isn’t a direct link between Assange and the Kremlin,
The second is the TV show, and the third is just ridiculous. Russia is the place where it is most difficult for the US to access Snowden, basically the same for the bodyguards, and one tweet showing both Assange and Russia are antisemitic? They even follow it by saying
>Again, none of these even hint that Assange is a Russian agent. What they do show, when put together, is that Assange doesn’t see Russia as an enemy or a target.
Which seems fairly obvious. He's not a Russian agent, he just views the country that has passed a law calling him a "non-state hostile intelligence service" to be a bigger enemy.
The ones that caused the DNC chair to step down, showing that the DNC had subverted it's own internal processes regarding impartiality during the primary process.
The ones where it was revealed the Clinton campaign was running the DNC and Sanders never stood a chance. Whether your support that or not I don't think anyone disputes that this was revealed by Wikileaks
Plenty of people dispute this narrative, myself included. The DNC never took any action against the Sanders campaign, despite some disgruntled emails by some DNC staffers venting about Sanders.
I don't really know about that, there are many accounts such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf5ZkGKk9SM that claim otherwise, though I do not know how reliable these are.
As usual, context is critical. By the end of the primary, DWS was a lightning rod of controversy. Hillary recognized DWS was an obstacle to the Bernie wing rallying behind her and so she made a deal with DWS to get her to step down without a fight. She wasn't "forced" out due to wrongdoing, it was purely a political move to put the primary fights to rest and look towards defeating Trump. Had DWS stayed and defended herself, that would have severely weakened party unity. In such cases, truth takes a back seat to reconciliation.
Brazile's case is trickier. Taking everything she says at face value (which is a mistake), the main thing she demonstrated was that Hillary's campaign saved the DNC from bankruptcy before the primary by assuming its debt. Hillary (reasonably) put some controls on the DNC's finances in response to the mismanagement. Brazile had no evidence, nor did she claim that Hillary or anyone directed the DNC to act against Bernie. Besides, with the unfiltered look into the DNCs emails and Hillary's campaign's emails, you would expect to see mountains of evidence of Hillary manipulating the DNC against Bernie. But there was no such evidence whatsoever.
The other issue is the fundraising agreement that combined DNC-raised money with Hillary campaign money. But the fundraising agreement was standard and Bernie's campaign had the opportunity to sign the same fundraising agreement but declined.
> As usual, context is critical. By the end of the primary, DWS was a lightning rod of controversy. Hillary recognized DWS was an obstacle to the Bernie wing rallying behind her and so she made a deal with DWS to get her to step down without a fight. She wasn't "forced" out due to wrongdoing, it was purely a political move to put the primary fights to rest and look towards defeating Trump. Had DWS stayed and defended herself, that would have severely weakened party unity. In such cases, truth takes a back seat to reconciliation.
If DWS stepping down was a purely optics move, then why was she then immediately added as a campaign chair to the Clinton campaign, in probably what was the worst possible optics given the situation.
> Brazile's case is trickier. Taking everything she says at face value (which is a mistake)
"Let's just start off delegitimizing what she had to say, not because I have any evidence to contrary. I just don't like what she said."
> the main thing she demonstrated was that Hillary's campaign saved the DNC from bankruptcy before the primary by assuming its debt. Hillary (reasonably) put some controls on the DNC's finances in response to the mismanagement. Brazile had no evidence, nor did she claim that Hillary or anyone directed the DNC to act against Bernie. Besides, with the unfiltered look into the DNCs emails and Hillary's campaign's emails, you would expect to see mountains of evidence of Hillary manipulating the DNC against Bernie. But there was no such evidence whatsoever.
> The other issue is the fundraising agreement that combined DNC-raised money with Hillary campaign money. But the fundraising agreement was standard and Bernie's campaign had the opportunity to sign the same fundraising agreement but declined.
You fundamentally misunderstood the scandal it seems. What Brazile revealed was the full extent of the issues with the Hillary Victory Fund, and why that happened. These aren't two different issues.
The way the HVF worked was as a way to subvert maximum donor limits. You as a donor can normally only donate $2,700 to a campaign. Instead the HVF allowed you to donate simultaneously to each of the 50 state's individual DNC parties, who then immediately donate that money to the national DNC, who then immediately donated that money to the Clinton campaign. Yes the same deal was available to the Sanders campaign, in that they were also essientially allowed to donate ~$100 to the Clinton campaign for every dollar they raised. Yes, the setup was that all VF money was to make it's way to the Clinton campaign. I wonder why they didn't take that wonderful offer.
Nothing about that was standard.
This setup of giving VF money during the primary had never previously happened, was against internal bylaws, and is the main reason why we lost the house so bad. She had been pilfering funding for down ticket races in order to fund the primary campaign.
>If DWS stepping down was a purely optics move, then why was she then immediately added as a campaign chair to the Clinton campaign
It was a part of the deal to get DWS to resign. Hillary created a token position for DWS. It's like you don't understand politics at all.
>Yes the same deal was available to the Sanders campaign, in that they were also essientially allowed to donate ~$100 to the Clinton campaign for every dollar they raised. Yes, the setup was that all VF money was to make it's way to the Clinton campaign. I wonder why they didn't take that wonderful offer.
Yeah, that's bullshit. I'm gonna need some real sources for this one.
I don't believe they are a news organization, but they are something very similar that should be protected with the same freedoms. Their contributions during 2016 were highly biased but they released information that wasn't false, while it isn't wrong to call them partisan they still provided a valuable service.
If they had received the emails, discovered they were forged and then released them anyways, then I think there'd be a different story. News outlets need to provide true information, they can be opinionated if they are open about it but blatantly lying (i.e. National Enquirer) is the only thing I think is objectionable.
It specifically mentions that 12 russians conspired "with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury" to "stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 US election".
You don't have to be a genius to infer that one of those "persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury" is Assange.
>Can we agree that an indictment is much more than "nothing" and indicate a strong belief on the part of prosecution that they have a winnable case?
Sure. Wikileaks still is not mentioned as the prosecution does not feel they have a winnable case against the organization, and these indictments do not show Wikileaks knowingly coordinated with Russia.
If they are "Organization 1," which yeah they almost certainly are, they are called that as they are not even being accused of a crime. Everything in the indictments could be true and you still haven't shown that Wikileaks knowingly coordinated with the Russia.
Where is the suggestion that Wikileaks knew what the source was and coordinated anyway? The indictments suggests that the source was Russian, nothing points to knowing coordination.
I know that's Assange's line, but that's basically just how all TV is made. Nobody would claim Saturday Night Live isn't an NBC show because it's actually produced by Broadway Video.
RT's logo has a producer's credit in his show's credits. It's an RT show.
Wikileaks isn't a news organization. They don't do reporting. They are a publisher, which still has first amendment protections.
No, it is not. It may have been preffered if some of the less relevant emails were not shared, it's also unclear who should make the call of what is "relevant" and either way their release was news.
>They have been to be a known tool for the Russian government, even going as far as creating a show for Julian Assange on the state-backed RT TV Network
This is untrue. There is nothing suggesting that Wikileaks has knowingly coordinated with Russia. And that TV show was indepently produced by Assange, with RT buying some ofthe distribution rights.