Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

I'd assume it's partly personal animosity, partly the idea that everyone else is gunning for Trump, partly that there's not much of international interest in Trump's past - he's a cheap crook who presents as a cheap crook, whereas Clinton has had positions of actual power and (in the Wikileaks narrative) has abused it.

i suspect with him not being a fan of the U.S., he simply wants to see us get fucked up. trump is the quickest and easiest way to do that.

There's an email going around now showing Jessica Valent, Sady Doyle and others p much collaborating with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not totally surprising and not sure whether it violates the nebulous ethics of "political blogging" but just sort of confirms why they were so obnoxious throughout.

Valenti responded to that charge on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/789470590054854656

@seanhannity
In 10 yrs @wikileaks has gotten nothing wrong & no one's been killed bc of the info released. #freejulianassange #freeinternet for all.

lol

Valenti responded to that charge on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/789470590054854656

― GUNSHOW POOPHOLE (Phil D.), Friday, October 21, 2016 10:34 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The email says that they are "working with" bloggers on getting the message out and that they had a group call with a few of them (not standard "journalistic" practice, not the same thing as reaching out for comment). However, if you read the wording carefully it's plausible that Valenti wasn't one of the people on the call, and was just someone they were listing as a blogger who was generally on their list or whatever. Ultimately she's more akin to an op-ed writer anyway and pretty clearly, one-sidedly pro-Hillary throughout the campaign. It's not like she reached out to the Sanders campaign for comment, as a reporter would.

So it's sort of another example imo of the thing that a lot of people already suspected (Valenti, Doyle and other bloggers functioning as a sort of street team for Hillary) turning out to be true. And at the same time, given that their bias was apparent, it's not a huge bombshell that there might have been some coordination (unless it turns out that they were on payroll or something).

Like many reporters, I talk to campaign officials but don't coordinate with them.

maybe they talk about, like, their favorite flavor of ice cream or something

Lol, if Valenti isn't mentioned as someone being on the call, then none of the people you just mentioned perhaps wasn't on the call either, and the whole story falls apart...

It proves nothing, except that Lauren Peterson once worded an email badly. And Lee Fang is already up on twitter bringing up the bullshit that 'Sady worked furiously to get pro-Bernie writers fired from their jobs', a lie that has already caused massive amounts of harassment. A piece of shit is he.

kinda surprised you weren't mentioned as being on the call

At this point we have descended into pure speculation, on selectively released emails, obtained illegally, probably through the Russians who has been caught manipulating hacked material before. If there's nothing to corroborate, and Valenti disputes it, we're into conspiracy territory.

If we really are getting every mail sent to John Podesta from this period, there should be plenty of shit on bloggers so comfy that they participate in conference calls. Upthread you said we shouldn't judge the emails before the media had gotten through reading them, man alive, but now you think it's okay to speculate on people who aren't definitively implicated in this mail? People who have been harassed before, and will most certainly be harassed again due to this.

Naomi Klein even uses the same example of climate activism that has gotten me concerned and that I wrote about upthread :)

Somewhat coincidentally, I've had to remind lefty Assange fans that Wikileaks played a big part in passing around the climategate emails.

Jamil Smith disputes being in a call as well, btw.

Jessica Valenti just tweeted a bit of the sexist abuse she's received since this deceitful story went up. So avoidable, so foreseeable.

Ultimately she's more akin to an op-ed writer anyway and pretty clearly, one-sidedly pro-Hillary throughout the campaign. It's not like she reached out to the Sanders campaign for comment, as a reporter would.

Since nobody from either campaign is quoted as having commented to Valenti in the article that Norton cites as a GOTCHA, I'm super-curious as to how you imagine you know this?

WikiLeaks Verified account
‏@wikileaks

Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point.

that was v. lol, alluded to it in the future of the internet thread

julian assange who loves the jews
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789882885742419968

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvY8zqhWgAE7FZu.jpg:large

the term "LARPing" to refer to internet drama is such a useful distinction. after 9/11 at my yeshiva in staten island there were students talking about how they'd protect the building from terrorists and i realized that it was just bizarre roleplaying in the wake of difficult to process trauma. but LARPing is a kinda perfect [tho dismissive] summation of this escape into fantasy.

cold larpin'

https://mobile.twitter.com/prawn_meat/status/789359439014801408/photo/1

http://europe.newsweek.com/julian-assange-election-hacks-democratic-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-518469?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=http%3A%2F%2Feurope.newsweek.com%2Frss%2Fsocial

this was just the most insulting thing to read

This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the real victor is the U.S. public, which is better informed as a result of our work.

you're a piece of garbage

Assange really puts the "ass" in ass-hat.

this fuckin guy

fuck you and die, Julian

WL had an AMA on reddit earlier today, trying to do damage control AND reaching out for donations... unreal.

yeah i got a question

why are we still sharing oxygen with you

fuck you and die, Julian

― frogbs, Wednesday, November 9, 2016 11:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u kno he's not reading this board right

this isn't his email address, its a messageboard

Ya, if you want him to read that, you're going to have to email it to Hillary.

so does he get credit when people start winning election coverage Pulitzers using all the leaked info?

and the pulitzer for best coverage of spirit cooking goes to

Lol. Because fuck Fahrenthold, clearly the intercept copy-pasting emails deserve the pulitzer.

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/

yall really gonna hate wikileaks after reading this

The memo articulated a three-point strategy. Point 1 called for forcing “all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election.”

At the time, there were more than a dozen Republican presidential candidates. The “variety of candidates is a positive here,” the Clinton campaign said.

“Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right,” the memo noted.

“In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” the Clinton campaign wrote.

As examples of these “pied piper” candidates, the memo named Donald Trump — as well as Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson).

Oh, I've been shaking my head for a while at this. You realize this is absolute bullshit, right, Adam? And you realize the reason for this, right? That a memo from april 2015 doesn't prove anything about autumn 2015, right? You do get how time works, right? You're not to dumb to get how time works, right?

Oh, and then there are all the details, how it doesn't say what Ben Norton says. But, like, a pretty easy one should be that april 2015 wasn't actually during the primary campaign, and time doesn't work like that.

Frederik is a timelord; listen

those emails are old news but also even when they Leaked it was old news, because the clinton campaign obviously considered trump's primary performance a best-case scenario for themselves regardless of how much ratfucking they actually did (i don't think they needed, at least, to do any). this makes them idiots who will go down in history forever as idiots, but there's lots of those.

Trump also constantly talked up Bernie Sanders. Every candidate ever wants the most extreme candidate for the other side. That's normal. Anyone surprised to find an email like this is a complete idiot. Anyone who believes this email shows that the Clinton campaign 'intentionally created' Trump is an even bigger idiot, who doesn't understand how time works.

Oh, I've been shaking my head for a while at this. You realize this is absolute bullshit, right, Adam? And you realize the reason for this, right? That a memo from april 2015 doesn't prove anything about autumn 2015, right? You do get how time works, right? You're not to dumb to get how time works, right?

Oh, and then there are all the details, how it doesn't say what Ben Norton says. But, like, a pretty easy one should be that april 2015 wasn't actually during the primary campaign, and time doesn't work like that.

― Frederik B, Friday, November 11, 2016 5:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so i checked about how time works and april sounds like its before autumn right, so it was a plan for a thing before the thing, which sounds like time is running, uh, forwards?

that's the right way for time to run right, idk, i get mixed up

this is good discussion, this is helpful, thanks

Actually, april is both before and after autumn, because the earth moves around the sun. And april is different from autumn, there are no days in april which are also in autumn, so documents from april doesn't prove what happened in autumn. Trust me on this, I've got a degree in history, ie. I am in fact a timelord.

april is autumn in the southern hemisphere, makes u think

Oh, okay. So it's like, the Clinton campaign was actually directed from Chile or something? Is this another one of Naomi Klein's theories?

Actually, april is both before and after autumn, because the earth moves around the sun. And april is different from autumn, there are no days in april which are also in autumn, so documents from april doesn't prove what happened in autumn. Trust me on this, I've got a degree in history, ie. I am in fact a timelord.

― Frederik B, Friday, November 11, 2016 11:37 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what is wrong with you

http://www.amfibi.directory/us/233758/image.jpg

those emails are old news but also even when they Leaked it was old news, because the clinton campaign obviously considered trump's primary performance a best-case scenario for themselves regardless of how much ratfucking they actually did (i don't think they needed, at least, to do any). this makes them idiots who will go down in history forever as idiots, but there's lots of those.