Assange Internet Link Cut By State Actor, Claims Wikileaks (rt.com) 475
An anonymous reader shares a report by RussianToday: WikiLeaks has activated "contingency plans" after its co-founder's internet service was intentionally cut off by a state actor, the media organization said in a tweet. The internet is one of the few, if not only, available ways for Julian Assange, who has been locked up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than four years, to maintain contact with the outside world. Facing extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape, which he denies, the Australian computer programmer has been holed up in the embassy in West London since 2012. He claims the extradition is actually a bid to move him to a jurisdiction from which he can then be sent to the US, which is known to be actively investigating WikiLeaks. The unverified claims of state sabotage come as WikiLeaks continues to release damaging documents, most recently thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta.
Does anybody ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Still believe his line of bullshit?
Democrats and Truth (Score:2)
Which "bullshit"? Please, be certain to clearly specify, whether you hate him for falsifying the released communications or for "stealing" the real ones.
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Believe Assange? Are you asking if we believe the email dumps are real of if we like the guy personally? I don't know him personally but respect his rights to speech, just like I respect yours. Your question is invalid given the subject matter at hand.
Do I believe the emails are real? Yes, I do. These dumps are as damaging to other high level politicians as they are Hillary. They demonstrate very clearly how far into the Banana Republic the USA has already gone.
Do I believe the emails are damaging to
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Earlier this month, it emerged that Hillary Clinton reportedly wanted to “drone” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when she was the US secretary of state.
If he had nothing of value, I doubt they would go to such lengths as droning a guy in an embassy.
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Pfft!
They'd drone you for a Klondike Bar! :P
Strat
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Sure, I do. Could be Russia to force him to release the whole 'insurance' dump automatically, which surely contains lots of painful material for the Democrats. Could also be an extremely lame attempt at silencing him at least until the last presidential debate is over. Less likely though, because it would be so stupid. Or Hillary is so sure of her win or so angry that she already prepares for Assange's prosecution, which requires that he is forced to dump the 'insurance' info first, so can later be arrested
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Assange is going to have to move out of his Ecuadorian mom's basement some time.
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I doubt anyone on Clinton's side is worried about the last debate. Thus far Trump has shown an astonishing inability to capitalize upon Clinton's negatives. Quite the opposite, in fact, he seems to have become a master at magnifying his own issues.
TFA is from RT (Score:2)
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there is no need of a leftist media conspiracy to have an idea of who edits the news of RT.
Which I'm fine with. I know when I read RT to take it with a grain of salt. When I read Breitbart, I know what I'm getting. I like Mother Jones, too, and I know what I'm getting. But when I'm watching a CNN debate, presented to me as fair and impartial, but CNN has given one side a copy of the debate questions ahead of time...uh oh.
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A quick read of the Times (first hit on this), the woman providing the question was a member of the DNC on leave from CNN and it's about a debate back in March against other Democratic candidates not the most recent one between Trump and Hillary. And since we only have the leaks from Hillary's guy, I don't know that the woman didn't present it or other questions to Bernie or the others in the debate.
[John]
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1) They gave it to Hillary and not Bernie because Hillary is the establishment choice. It's not so much a Republican/Democrat thing as it is an elites vs commoners thing.
2) Even if they gave it to Bernie, too, it's still fucking bullshit. It's just kabuki theater. There is no democracy. There is no journalism. There are elites, their chosen puppets, and their propagandists.
How does he know (Score:3)
Still believe his line of bullshit?
How could he know that the internet was cut "by a state actor" but not know which state actor?
No, I don't believe him.
And Predictably (Score:3)
His fan boys try to stifle his critics
Re:How does he know (Score:5, Funny)
Has anyone suggested that Assange should try rebooting his router? Sometimes that works for me.
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How could he know that the internet was cut "by a state actor" but not know which state actor?
I don't know either whether it was the US acting directly or ordering their colony to do so.
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In fairness to Assange, if I were cooped indoors in one building for years, with torture and murder at the hands of the CIA awaiting me should I ever leave, I'd probably be going a bit batty and attention-seeking myself. So while, yeah, he's behaving like a tool, I can sympathize.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Clinton went out of her way to avoid denying they were real. That's like Sherlock Holmes "The Case of the Dog that Didn't Bark." If they weren't real, why didn't she say so, instead of saying "they might not even be legitimate"? After all, she sure as hell knows if they're legitimate - or is this another example of her brain shutting off for 3 months from that concussion so that (she claims) she can't remember any briefings about security procedures?
She's no more credible than Trump - and in the process, she's managed to drag down Barack Obama. How can you have a secretary of state who admitted she went around in a brain fog for 3 months and NOT NOTICE???
Re: Does anybody ... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The leaked speeches are, without a doubt, legit. It's so obvious she's squirming, what with her "maintaining a public position and a private (favoring the banks an 0.1%ers) position".
If Hillary doesn't know what her campaign chairman is up to, she's incompetent. If she doesn't have the guts to ask him whether they're legit or not, it's because she wants to maintain a semblance of deniability - which again, not asking Podesta if they're legit or not means she is either afraid of the answer or again incompetent.
Of course, there's still more to come. That may be why "desperate times call for desperate measures."
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Assange failed. Probably a good thing for him and his work anyway: Trump's on record as wanting Snowden executed. Clinton's only joked about "droning" Assange. There's little doubt Trump would kill him.
Yeah, and Assange is so afraid of Trump trying to kill him that he's working overtime to release information that is only damaging to Democrats.
Quick question - when Wikileaks released the State Department dump that was handed to them by Manning, who was in charge of the State Department during that time?
There's a reason why Assange is anti-Hillary, and it's because she's out to get him. He embarrassed her department and herself, and if you think she's not the kind of person to hold a grudge then I'm not s
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The 2 major parties have both managed to nominate possibly the only candidate who can lose to the other one. No matter who wins, the loser will have deserved to lose to that person. In any other election year either of these candidates would basically be handing the victory to the other party, but somehow we've managed to nominate the 2 most disliked candidates in the history of presidential polling to face each other. It's awful. It would be comedic if it weren't for the inevitable tragic outcome.
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You seem intent on ignoring the fact that these leaks aren't coming from Russia, but from Wikileaks, who have a pretty good track record of getting it right. And let's face it - now that we know Hillary's "I have one position for the public and another private position when talking to the rich and powerful", whoever copied the docs deserves a public service medal.
How anyone can vote for either candidate is beyond me. The western world is scratching it's collective head wondering WTF happened.
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You couldn't possibly "go through and make sure they were all intact" because "diff" and "select and compare" is broken on every computer you have ever tried? BS.
No, I couldn't do it because I don't know how to do that. Don't be an asshole.
And she doesn't have the resources to hire someone who can do it for her? Or is the problem that, if she did that, the emails would be verified as real, and not give her even "implausible deniability" (and someone else who can then testify to the email contents under an immunity grant)?
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"Presumption of innocence" is ONLY for criminal courts. The "presumption of innocence" doesn't work for someone who's already been caught being deceptive and lying. Let's face it, there's enough stink going around that she has to respond to it, not hide. The onus now is on her, because at this point it's more likely than not (which is the rule for civil trials - preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt) that she's not "innocent" in any sense of the word.
Trump and Clinton are two p
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So what if they were stolen? So were the Pentagon Papers. [wikipedia.org], which outed the US's secret and illegal expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos, and the lies the government was using to sell it to the public. Ditto with Edward Snowden's documentation of the US's illegal and massive surveillance of American citizens on American soil.
Whistle-blowers should be rewarded, and in an honest and open government they would be.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:5, Interesting)
What is most amusing to me is that, when Assange's target was the U.S. Military during the Manning document dissemination, he was the darling of The Left and villified by The Right. Now that the leaks speak Truth to a Power of The Left, The Right is crowing and The Left is trying to intimidate those who support him.
The fact that he has so thoroughly infuriated knuckleheaded idealogues on both sides just validates what he has to say, IMHO.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep hearing this stupid talking point. I don't like what Assange is doing right now because he's trying to manipulate our election. If he wasn't exclusively trying to harm Clinton and if he just released them instead of timing the releases for the most damage and if the releases actually contained something worth giving a damn about I would be ok about it. But as it is what he's doing has nothing to do with transparency and that's why he's lost so much respect.
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I don't like what Assange is doing right now because he's trying to manipulate our election. If he wasn't exclusively trying to harm Clinton and if he just released them instead of timing the releases for the most damage and if the releases actually contained something worth giving a damn about I would be ok about it. But as it is what he's doing has nothing to do with transparency and that's why he's lost so much respect.
Maybe because the only dirty player in this election is the Clinton team? Maybe Bernie and the GOP were playing by the proper rules - rather than rigging the entire thing for themselves, so there IS no dirt on Trump or Bernie - just Clinton.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe Assange has an agenda.
You seriously think Trump is clean?
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe Assange has an agenda.
If someone tried to assassinate me, personally, I'd have an agenda too.
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There's a reason the Democrats have superdelegates, and it's to prevent another 1972. Even if Sanders had somehow managed to do what Trump did and get enough delegates on board to sideline Clinton, the superdelegates would have eliminated him, but that wasn't even necessary.
I think Trump is a pretty good reason for the GOP to adopt a similar system.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe Assange has an agenda.
You seriously think Trump is clean?
Actually, yes, at this point.
Here is a guy who's being audited by the Obama administration and has the full force of the Clinton political machine digging into every aspect of his life.
Man, he really must be squeaky clean if all they have is that he only paid the taxes he had too legally and he said "pu$$y" 11 years ago.
Feel The Bern (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing, that throughout all of this, we keep forgetting that the democrat primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders. Literal rigging of the election by the DNC. Literal vote fraud (http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/the-second-example-of-hillary-clintons-election-fraud-whoa-video/).
Forget the hypothetical stealing of the general election, this just happened with the democrat primary. The lack of outrage is palpable.
Re:Feel The Bern (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that electing Trump in place of Clinton because of this would be a boneheaded move.
Or, to simplify my statement above: The problem is that electing Trump would be a boneheaded move.
Re:Feel The Bern (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's be crystal clear - the Republican Party fell to an outsider this year. One could make the argument that they tried to cheat the outsider, and failed, but it's more likely that they literally ran a fair and balanced primary election.
The Democrat Party, on the other hand, excluded outsiders by cheating this year. One could make the argument that they would've won even without cheating, but that's highly unlikely.
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As a response, let me use a phrase I've heard from government apologists since the Bush administration -
If You've done nothing wrong,
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE.
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Or it could simply be a load of bullshit - how do you cut off *his* internet connection without cutting off the entire Ecuadorian Embassy's internet connection? Or did they have a new line put in and gave the billing contact as "Julian Assange"?
Lets quote the article on something:
Oh look, lets see how easy it is to extradite someone from t
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how do you cut off *his* internet connection without cutting off the entire Ecuadorian Embassy's internet connection?
I wonder if there's any way to use the internet without a physical connection? Dude, I bet if you invented such a mythical "wireless internet connection" you'd get hella rich.
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Oh look, lets see how easy it is to extradite someone from the UK
Technically, he's not in the UK. He's in Ecuador.
Embassy grounds are considered foreign territory.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Heck, he may have just failed to pay his ISP for this month.
[John]
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Histrionics?
They are the ones claiming this is a "state action", and lets not forget that Assange and his group has form for outrageous claims - such as that when he was on bail in the UK, someone set up spy cameras outside the bail address, only for those cameras to be proven to predate Assange and also be nothing more than sensors for speed signs...
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(as an adherent to the Vienna Convention) the host country may not enter the premises of the mission without permission of the represented country, even to put out a fire.[11] International rules designate an attack on an embassy as an attack on the country it represents.[citation needed] The term "extraterritoriality" is often applied to diplomatic missions, but normally only in this broader sense.
As the host country may not enter the representing country's embassy without permission, embassies are sometimes used by refugees escaping from either the host country or a third country.
Do you remember the Americans hiding in the homes of 2 Canadian ambassadors in Iran [wikipedia.org]?
Same as diplomatic pouches aren't searched - they can't even be x-rayed by the TSA or anyone else [state.gov].
Inviolability of Diplomatic Pouches
In accordance with Article 27.3 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR), properly designated diplomatic pouches “shall not be opened or detained.” Although inspection of a pouch by X-ray would not physically break the external seal of the shipment, such an action constitutes the modern-day electronic equivalent of “opening” a pouch. As a result, the United States does not search properly designated and handled diplomatic pouches, either physically or electronically (e.g., by X-ray) and considers it a serious breach of the clear obligations of the VCDR for another country to do so.
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And what does that have anything to do with anything? Or are you forgetting that Assange voluntarily came to the UK and spent more than a year living under bail conditions in the UK while he fought the European Arrest Warrant against him? He was even in a British prison for a time.
Where was his fear about being extradited from the UK directly to the US?
In short, Assange didn't give one shit about how easy it was to be extradited from the UK to the US, despite it being demonstrably easier than from Sweden.
Re:Does anybody ... (Score:4, Interesting)
In order to be "extradited" you first have to be a criminal suspect or a convicted criminal, Assange is neither in the UK.
But, because of the EU treaties, any member of the EU can hold an individual for a crime that was committed in any other EU territory. In this way, because Sweden claimed criminal wrongdoing, the UK held Assange so that he could be extradited to Sweden to stand trial for the crimes alleged there.
Assange has to first go to Sweden before the US can ask for Extradition, because Sweden is the one alleging criminal wrongdoing. If the UK simply sent him straight to the US, it would be obvious that the whole thing was a farce as it would have been an illegal extradition because Assange is not wanted for any crimes in the UK.
The whole pretense for the arrest warrant issued to Assange was so that the Swedish Prosecution Authority could interview him on the particulars of the case. Assange had offered to be interviewed multiple times by Swedish Investigators, but they all declined. Making it pretty clear that the point of the arrest warrant wasn't to interview him, but to get him onto Swedish soil.
The question then becomes: why?
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To be extradited to the US from the UK, Assange didn't have to have committed a crime in the UK, he simply has to be extradited under the concept of dual criminality - and yes, receiving and publishing classified information does indeed breach several UK statutes which are the equivalent of US laws.
As for the repeated crap about being interviewed within the Embassy, see my other post on that topic - the intention of the prosecutor is to charge him, and under the Swedish criminal legal process, he has to be
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Oh yay, some one who didn't take note of the very example I posted in my original post in this thread - the one where someone who did nothing illegal in the UK was extradited to the US. I even linked to the very story here on Slashdot. This has been done several times.
Assange could easily be extradited to the US under that same treaty, without having done anything illegal in the UK.
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Go to the rack and unplug the ethernet cable whose other end is in Assange's room. Change the wifi password and only tell people the new one along with the instructions "don't share your password, especially with that Assange guy."
The "state actor" was Ecuador, or else it didn't happen. That's the only government capable of doing it.
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If he's using wireless to connect, it's conceivable that the British government could have ordered the wireless ISP to kill his account. That I could buy. Mind you, the solution is equally easy, just get a new cell phone or wireless dongle or whatever he's using. Heck, I'm sure there are more than a few people that would happily let him use a phone in their name, so it could become very hard to target him in this way.
But as Wikileaks has released absolutely no details as to what happened, I have little reas
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It sure would be a shame if something were to happen to this fancy embassy of yours....
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Britain is almost certainly not going to cut off the Ecuadorian Embassy's Internet, and indeed, if it had, by now there would be a formal protest lodged by the Ecuadorian Ambassador with the British government.
There are a few explanations that do not involve an international incident.
1. A rather mundane outage, perhaps a backhoe severing a fiber link, or a cell outage (since we have no idea how Assange actually connects, it could be either).
2. Hardware failure (i.e. his laptop's WiFi went dead)
3. If he's us
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If that was the case why just threaten them to shut off his internet? Why not make them expel him from the embassy so he can be taken into custody since that's what they really want?
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A few points about your post...
This seems to be a common fallacy about the Assange story - that the Swedish allegations wouldnt be valid in any other country.
Not just Swedens legal interpretation - under UK law, unless specifically excluded by treaty, there has to be "dual criminality" involved in the extradition charges for the warrant to be valid in the UK. At every stage of Assanges extradition hearings, each judge found
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That's about the gist of it these days, isn't it?
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Explain. You think the e-mails he is disseminating have been falsified? If not, what is your point?
What he actually said is that we don't know if any of the e-mail in the links were altered.
This would be the first thing I'd wonder about in a disinformation campaign.
Good to see some patriotism. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's good to see the NSA step up to patriotically ensure Hillary's ascendancy to the throne. They were slacking compared to the loyalty of the DOJ who selflessly made sure to destroy the laptops of anybody on her staff who might have had incriminating evidence.
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"Only an out-of-touch idiot like Romney would ever think that Russia is our enemy! -- Hillary Clinton
Flag as Inappropriate"
Damn! Hilliary said something I agree with! Romney is an idiot. It's an amazing day.
Re: Good to see some patriotism. (Score:2)
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But Romney's a Mexican.
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I'm not convinced even now that Romney would have been any better than Obama.
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Well hell, I didn't make the quote, I simply repeated it and more as a joke than anything serious. I must have hit a nerve, if you missed the humor I'm sorry for you.
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I think he just got the name wrong. Clearly that quote should be attributed to Wilbur Wright, who did die in 1912.
source [infogalactic.com]
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This comment comes with a complimentary free tin hat!
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You can call Clinton a number of things. I'm not a fan, so I'm inclined to agree with many of them. But stupid, she is not.
And that is what she would have to be to get involved with this sort of thing when she's so clearly ahead in the election. Her dilemma at this point is not "win at all costs", but "How can I expand the Democratic footprint?".
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I guess they have to do what the commander in chief tells them. Isn't that how military organizations are supposed to work?
How does uncovering blatant corruption constitute (Score:3)
How does uncovering blatant corruption constitute the "undermining" of our democracy? That's what I'd like to see liberals explain.
Re:How does uncovering blatant corruption constitu (Score:4, Informative)
There hasn't been much uncovering of anything. The whole Wikileaks dump reminds me of the Prince Charles Spider Letters, where the Guardian put so much effort into getting access to Prince Charles' letters and memorandums to the British cabinet, absolutely certain that he was influencing policy in some evil nefarious way, only to find out he talked a lot about his concerns about agriculture.
Yes, there are some embarrassing things in the email dumps, as there would be if anyone's emails were leaked, but there is absolutely nothing to demonstrate this bizarre conspiracy theory that Clinton is the Lizard Queen of the Illuminati.
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Trump can't win now, he can only undermine confidence in the vote and his own party, which seems to be his aim now. It's not surprising that Putin is taking advantage of Trump's tantrum, but you astroturf lot need to ask yourself why you're going along with it.
I am going to laugh my a$$ off if this ends up becoming another Dewey vs Truman statement. As most polls still are within the margin off error, this could be a possibility
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Trump can't win now
If you repeat a lie often enough, or something along those lines...right?
Hillary wiped out the link with her cloth (Score:2)
Assange should watch his back, wouldn't want her to use her cloth on him!
Good and bad exposures (Score:5, Interesting)
At the times of Watergate, journalists relied on illegally-obtained information to bring down a Republican President. That was and remains deemed heroic and brought them accolades and Pulitzer Prizes.
Bradley Manning's exposures made him (or her? — one never knows with Illiberals) — a hero [huffingtonpost.com] as well. He may be in prison, but he is a hero still — with numerous fans at home [bradleymanning.com] and abroad [wikipedia.org].
Julian Assange was a hero too [huffingtonpost.com], as long as his exposures harmed Bushitler. But then things started to get weird. First, Wikileaks published a few bits about WMDs found in Iraq [wired.com] after all, leading to questions of whether Bush really "lied". That was still forgivable, because the found caches weren't "massive" [cbsnews.com].
But now that his releases harm a Democrat, his words are, as the very first post here claims, "bullshit" and he is not to be believed. One can really be forgiven for suspecting, people call the same acts different names depending on whether they are useful or harmful to Democrats.
See also "Peace is the absence of opposition to Socialism" [brainyquote.com].
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Re:Good and bad exposures (Score:4, Insightful)
Before those Pulitzers were given, before the journalists published those "illegally"-obtained documents, those journalists actually verified that the documents were fucking real, which is something no one has proven with the Guccifer 2.0 or #PodestaEmails19.
Re:Good and bad exposures (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Assigned to work on the case in June of 1972 [wikipedia.org], Woodward and Bernstein got their first Watergate-related Pulitzer in 1973 [wikipedia.org], less than a year later? Evidence against president's staff, says Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], only started to mount by July 1973, but Pulitzers are given out in April...
What sort of proof can be obtained in such cases, especially this quickly? Nixon only resigned in 1974, and the identity of the "Deep Throat" [wikipedia.org] remained unknown until 2005! Some "proof"...
Without realizing it, you've just demonstrated another Illiberal hypocrisy — if the suspect is a Republican, even a rumor or an unsubstantiated allegation is sufficient. For a Democrat — nothing other than "beyond reasonable doubt" would suffice. Thus any talk of Bill Clinton sexually assaulting women is slander, of his wife helping cover it up — only more so, but Trump is an asshole for preferring good-looking females to ugly ones.
Likewise, we are supposed to ignore Hillary Clinton's negligence with State secrets (she was never convicted, right?), but instead concentrate on rumors, Trump is a Putin's man.
Questions:
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No, she's been hiding emails from Congress by giving them to the FBI. The FBI isn't interested developing a case against her because Obama's involvement would then come out. And the DOJ sure as hell isn't going to prosecute him. Net result, FBI/DOJ grants immunity to everyone in the area and then destroy the evidence, even thought everyone involved is fully aware that Congress (remember them? co-equal branch of the federal governement?) has issued a subpoena for all such evidence.
Please do try to keep u
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This is why he is not prosecuted for espionage, but rather for rape [bbc.com]. Of course, "rape" had to be redefined [observer.com] to include "unprotected sex when the woman consented only to condom-protected penetration". But that's even less of a stretch than the feat Anderson Cooper accomplished recently by redefining assault [princeton.edu] to include unappreciated kiss.
Re:Good and bad exposures (Score:5, Informative)
"But that's even less of a stretch than the feat Anderson Cooper accomplished recently by redefining assault to include unappreciated kiss."
Try an actual legal dictionary.
http://legal-dictionary.thefre... [thefreedictionary.com]
"an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact."
That's ALL that's required for assault.
An unwanted kiss is actually assault AND battery; since there was unwanted ('offensive') physical contact too.
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Yes! Moreover, simply telling someone, you'll kick his ass is an assault.
But that is not, what Trump is accused of doing. Kissing, even if unwelcome, does not qualify as any of that. The ladies may not have actively wanted him to kiss them, but, as the same recording says, they haven't objected either: "When you are a celebrity, they let you do it." So, no, it was not an assault.
Moreover, this sudde
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From the Wired's article [wired.com]:
and:
I know which state actor it was (Score:3)
Where is the bigger, more interesting, and more newsworthy story that the entire Ecuador embassy has been cut off? I still haven't seen it.
Therefore, if the story is true, then everyone can easily infer which "stare actor" cut him off: Ecuador.
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I'd have thought a guy like him would have two or three PAYG SIM cards for contigencies.
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Suicide. The last bastion of the desperate. I almost feel sorry for him.
Fucking Comcast (Score:4, Funny)
My internet goes down twice a week and nobody starts a hashtag and pushes out press releases for me.
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Mike Pence is blaming the Russians now too. And he may be in a better position to know, since Roger Stone (Trump campaign bigwig) has copped to coordinating with Wikileaks.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/... [wsj.com]
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Eh, actually I believe the CIA/state department want war with Russia. Pentagon probably does not though.
Remember, the deep state has different factions which are opposed to each other for both ideological and practical purposes. We mere mortals just get to watch the lightening bolts flash upon Olympus and deal with the occasional flood or stray meteor that results from their magicks.
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NATO doesn't want it either. Russia would defeat NATO in 2-1/2 days. [popularmechanics.com]
A Department of Defense official has backed the Rand Corporation think tank's claim that the Russian military could defeat NATO forces in the Baltics in 36 to 60 hours. The statement is the latest in a string of warnings that the Atlantic Alliance is too weak to mount a defense of the baltic states.
RAND Corp explains their study results [rand.org]
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That coincides with what I said. Hubris on the part of State. Russia's economy is weak, but their weapons are no joke. Hillary (and the establishment Republicans during the primary debates) loved to talk about getting tough with Putin and establishing a no-fly zone in Syria. And when Putin parks S-4s in Syria? Whatcha gonna do then? Those things are beasts. "Stealth" is a meme.
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I have this funny feeling that Assange may be wearing out his welcome. I doubt very much Ecuador wants to be used as a conduit for Russia to try to undermine the US elections.
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It is rather odd that a sovereign embassy gets it's Internet cut by the host state and nobody bothers repairing it. If it was just an outage, it would've been fixed before it got on Slashdot but so far and I would guess that embassies have more than one method of linking to the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you any confirmation at all that the Embassy's Internet has indeed been cut? Others here are reporting that Assange doesn't use their Internet.