Assange got e-mails for both Republican and Democratic parties from a Russian hacker associated with the Kremlin and then specifically chose to withhold the Republican e-mails and release the Democratic e-mails. If he meant anything he said about transparency, he would have released everything, but that's not what he or his employers wanted. They wanted their puppet president in Trump, and Assange was happy to help like the Russian asset he is.

[–] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You replied to a comment asking "source?" with an entire paragraph containing zero sources.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago

Source is probably years of watching Rachel Maddow’s Russiagate conspiracy theorizing.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago

A comment replying "Source?" is not contributing to the conversation, and criticising someone for writing more than 1 word in reply is also bullshit.

It really gets on my wick when people thing saying "Source?" is a sufficient challenge in online conversation. We're not writing academic papers here, we're chatting shit on the internet.

If you have an argument to make, make it.

If you have a counter-argument, make it.

If all you want to do is shit on someone for not writing an academic article with citations[^1] but don't actually contribute anything yourself, go suck on a turd.

[^1]: Wow, look, lemmy has a citation function! If only the hyperlinks actually worked...

However, it should be said, @Shalakushka@kbin.social has probably got things wrong. I don't think Russia provided emails from the Republican party. The argument doesn't even make sense - why would Russia provide arguments on both sides if they wanted one side, their Republican tiny-handed man, to get into the White House?

Rather, what happened, as I recall, was that Assange also received intel on Russian corruption from somewhere else, then elected not to publish it. That is perhaps dodgy, but at the same time the reasoning I recall him giving was that it is obvious that Russia is corrupt - it simply was not newsworthy.

[–] ralphio@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why do people keep saying this? It doesn't even make sense. Why would the Russians give Assange the RNC emails if they didn't want them to be published? There is no evidence that I can find that the RNC emails were ever given to anyone.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

That's because they didn't. What happened was someone subsequently released info about Russian corruption, and Wikileaks didn't publish it, citing the fact that Russian corruption was obvious and not newsworthy.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 points 8 months ago

Assange got e-mails for both Republican and Democratic parties from a Russian hacker and then specifically chose to withhold the Republican e-mails

but that’s not what he or his employers wanted.

Why would Russia give him information on both parties if Russia wanted to support one party over the other?

I think you've got things confused. I think the controversy was that he released information on the Democrats, provided by Russia, but then subsequently did not release information on Russia being corrupt. This was then construed as him being in support of Russia, when, by his argument, he simply did not think reporting on Russian corruption was newsworthy - of course Russia is corrupt.

If you can please provide evidence that Assange or Wikileaks were provided evidence of Republican corruption by the Russians, that would be appreciated.