Like I was saying - I don't believe the Russian conspiracy because Hillary has done all kinds of undercover shady tactics, and I can't totally disbelieve it because Trump is above practically nothing either. There's some things we know. There's some things we can make educated guesses about, and other things we can only speculate about, but we can all be certain this country is falling apart at the seams.
Donald Trump doesn't have to be in bed with Russia for Russia to try and meddle with the election. They just see it as a positive for Trump to be elected and of course he isn't above capitalizing on whatever they do. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and so forth. That scenario is far likelier than Hillary Clinton being able to orchestrate all our various intelligence agencies to falsely point to Russia. Why a Trump presidency would be so great to Russia is a question worth exploring though.
I was going off some friends, but it looks more like trolling - http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...podestas-twitter-account-after-hack/91974772/ They say it's the Russians, and not that that's implausible, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this stuff is coming from inside the Hillary camp by someone disgusted with her. No doubt Russia is trying to hack us, but they've always been trying to hack us. That's been ongoing since computers existed. I've yet to see anything even remotely convincing for the ties between Russia and Trump other than Hillary said so, which started at the same time leaks of her corruption began pouring out. So again, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it looks more like Hillary is begging people to believe this and mysteriously doesn't have anything tangible to show for it.
As an aside to the Election Thread - for which that discussion is to not continue here, but Wikileaks is doing an AMA currently on their role in the whole thing. Very interesting discussion - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wikileaks_staff_despite_our_editor/ The main theme being, does Wikileaks have an inherent journalistic responsibility? I dont know about that. They are not a news agency nor do they claim to be one. They are essentially an entirely new variable on the scene that not only didnt exist before, it wasnt even possible before.
Personally, I like the basic idea of what they're trying to do, but I'm not at all a fan of how they do it. They have an agenda, and are timing information releases "for maximum impact". They also seem a little bit naive when it comes to Asange's stay at the Embassy and his internet getting shut off.
Honestly, I'm kind of sick of Hillary and Trump and Left and Right and "we're fucked" for a while. If you want to talk tangentially about politics (it's hard not to talk about Wikileaks without it), do so, but I don't want any bullshit bi-partisan circular arguments in here. Clear as mud?
Japanese television welcomes the beast, in their weird Asian way. It's also a good look at how Trump used the media. What he did in his bizarre campaign was fucking genius and he won for a reason. I think he'll do well now that I'm calmed down from all my dem friends calling me an asshole for supporting him. The protesters need to accept the will of the people and go home. Wikileaks was clearly with Trump. I don't know where they got their information, but while people are mad they influenced this election they have the same right to support a candidate as any other media source. Clinton was willing to do anything to win, and broke more rules than Trump, if he even broke any. My guess is Assange wanted revenge on Clinton more than supporting Trump. When the news came out that he was a pedophile it was just way too convenient. He starts releasing classified documents and suddenly he's a pedophile? Come on. There were ties with Hillary's money and the accusations so whether it was true or not, Assange seemed to believe it and wanted revenge. There are consequences to the dog eat dog world of politics and that was the nastiest slap back Hillary received her whole career. I suspected all the information wikileaks released to the public so I appreciate what they did in the election. However, I'm not sure how I feel about the organization as a whole. They seem willing to publish anything with total disregard for the consequences. An organization like this existing to keep our politicians in check is a good thing, but I don't want to see our national security compromised just because they can do it. So far they haven't found anything that appears catastrophic in terms of getting American soldiers killed or anything like that, but in the future who knows?
I don't know if you followed their AMA on reddit yesterday but it was a bad look for them in my opinion. They kept saying they were impartial and release what they have, but wouldn't respond to people questioning how they only had information on Clinton. And they would go back and forth between their mission being to release when it would have to most impact or as soon as they had gone through the information. Especially since they miraculously didn't have anything on Trump it was pretty clear they were either withholding it (which supposedly Assange has said they have some stuff) or they didn't want to have it.
I didn't read through all of it, but the connection is obvious. Why is it ok for Clinton to use her intermediaries through the media to dump leaks and promote propaganda, but Trump can't use an outside source? We don't know if he was connected or if it was just to get back at Clinton, or if they just preferred Trump as a candidate, but why is what they did wrong compared to a network like CNN? We don't have objective reporting in this country, at least not in the mainstream. People want wikileaks to be objective, but I don't see the high ground when no one else holds themselves to the same standard.
I just watched a video of a woman shitting on a sign in the street in broad daylight in a huge crowd, and then smearing it with her hands. This is what a protest is nowadays. You cannot possibly top that.
I think it was retribution against Clinton/Obama for their hypocrisy on whistleblowers. It wasn't even really a hack, right? Didn't they get Podesta's emails by phishing him? It was a bad case of old people with a computer. In addition, exit polling has shown that people made their minds up long before the Comey thing and wikileaks didn't really change minds either. It only confirmed what people already suspected about Clinton and her campaign. Voter turnout was down for democrats because of how disheartened they were about Bernie getting fucked. So in that sense, maybe wikileaks did hurt the campaign by releasing the DNC stuff.
Just imagine if Trump made a deal with Asange... and Snowden and Asange get Presidential pardons from Trump once he's in office. Hillary has Wall Street, Trump has the outsiders. That would be amazing.
I wonder what it would take to break up the media conglomerates like they did with AT&T in the 80s. Because I don't think we're gonna get objectivity out of the mainstream media as long as a handful of companies control it all.
I don't know about that, but I do know others took the wikileaks further because one of the e-mails had his user name and password for one site in them They started plugging the combination into everything they could think of and got into a few of his accounts because he used the same combination.
I wasn't referring to it in terms of the election. I was just saying that if they're going to position themselves as independent and unbiased then be that. But in the AMA they tried to make it sound like they're unbiased but didn't come across very well on that note. I agree with the part about news organizations but looking at it in a "2 wrongs don't make a right" kind of way still think they can do better.