US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5747

On October 24 2016 11:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


Wikileaks has released over 10,000,000 documents. Not a single one has ever been doctored or faked. Despite Clinton's camps claims, there is no reason whatsoever to believe they aren't genuine.

Unless one wants to just take Joel Benenson and Donna Brazile at their word (despite not being able to show the fake emails they claim wikileaks released).

The "fake" narrative is absolutely ridiculous. People can dismiss the confirmations of what many suspected all along as no big deal, but the folks from HRC's camp pushing this "well they could be fake" stuff is disinformation propaganda all the way.

EDIT: What I don't get, is why even bother claiming they could be fake if there's nothing significant in them anyway?

On October 24 2016 12:18 Probe1 wrote:

I have no idea how you can make a claim like that. It's not that I think wikileaks are fabricating or manipulating emails. They're getting leaks from third parties who could do anything they like with it. They could delete half an email. They could add in shit.

If the basis for a criminal trial against you was a wikileak document the first thing you'd say was it was fake. But if it's a trial in the court of public opinion then wikileaks is infallible because of how unverifiable the proof is.

I don't have a bone to pick with any particular document but damn, that is rather risky to blindly accept everything is truthful in spite of the secrecy around it.

On October 24 2016 11:53 Ghostcom wrote:


Most countries have a law concerning where you are allowed to fly model airplanes and drones (no idea about the US). Usually it isn't legal in the city because of the obvious dangers. On top of those, the drone was supposedly flying towards a helicopter. Of course they were justified in shooting it down.

On October 24 2016 12:54 LegalLord wrote:
Honestly, the only leak that seemed to have any real consequence was the DNC leak. The rest just fed into narratives that people were already predisposed to support anyways.

State Department official 'pressured' FBI to declassify Clinton email: FBI documents

A senior State Department official sought to shield Hillary Clinton last year by pressuring the FBI to drop its insistence that an email on the private server she used while secretary of state contained classified information, according to records of interviews with FBI officials released on Monday.

The accusation against Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's most senior manager, appears in the latest release of interview summaries from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's year-long investigation into Clinton's sending and receiving classified government secrets via her unauthorized server.

Although the FBI decided against declassifying the email's contents, the claim of interference added fuel to Republicans' belief that officials in President Barack Obama's administration have sought to protect Clinton, a Democrat, from criminal liability as she seeks to succeed Obama in the Nov. 8 election. The FBI recommended against bringing any charges in July and has defended the integrity of its investigation.

Clinton has said her decision to use a private server in her home for her work as the U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 was a mistake and has apologized.

One FBI official, whose name is redacted, told investigators that Kennedy repeatedly "pressured" the various officials at the FBI to declassify information in one of Clinton's emails. The email was about the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and included information that originated from the FBI, which meant that the FBI had final say on whether it would remain classified.

[On green energy plans]
Billionaire NextGen Climate Action head Tom Steyer: Check the polling we released. This is very popular w the American people. And then check the scientific news. This issue is blowing up. It is by far the most urgent issue in my home state. 48 percent rank it at number 1.

Podesta: You and I have different perspectives. I wish you luck.

Steyer: have now read the paper. Didn't think Next Gen article was bad for you guys.

Podesta: I am deep in the middle of dealing with getting fucked by the NYT, but I didn't expect to get fucked by you in the NYT. Thanks a lot for jumping us. I hope President Bush helps you reach your climate goals. PS great picture.

On October 24 2016 13:30 Plansix wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

Someone didnt read the release time email. You need to keep up with those office emails.

On October 24 2016 13:33 Dan HH wrote:

Or they tweeted about it >30m after they put it up on the site, seems like the simpler explanation

On October 24 2016 13:06 Plansix wrote:

Drones are regulated by the FAA and people cannot fly them over private or posted property. And they are not allowed to fly them in areas with other aircraft. People have won court cases for shooting down drones flying over private property without express approval to do so. So the police were likely in the right for ending that drone.

GH: There is no need for a smoking gun to not trust wikileaks. We just need to look at the guy in charge and ask if taking that person on good faith is a reasonable thing to do. And lets not forget that people have to sign NDAs to work for wikileaks.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-nda-proves-why-we-need-a-wikileaks-free-of-julian-assange/

On October 24 2016 13:33 Dan HH wrote:

Or they tweeted about it >30m after they put it up on the site, seems like the simpler explanation

-snip-

GG: But let me ask you this. We started out by saying that with this particular leak, because of WikiLeaks’ philosophy, the hacker went in and grabbed everything, which sometimes hackers will do even if they’re well-intentioned — because you don’t have time to grab only the relevant material, you hope that the people to whom you then give the material are going to do that. That was Snowden’s theory: I’m going to take as much as I can but make sure I’m only giving it to journalists who promise to safeguard the material and let the public see the stuff they should see, not what they shouldn’t.
Let’s say you had a good faith hacker who said, “I’m going to take all of John Podesta’s emails and I’m just going to download them. And instead of giving them to WikiLeaks, I’m going to give them to this organization and tell this organization, ‘What I want you to do is go through them and get rid of the ones where John Podesta is talking about the emotional difficulties staff members are having, or personal conversations he’s having with family members or friends, and pick the ones that really shed light on what the Clinton campaign is doing that affects public policy and discourse.’” Would you have qualms about that process?

NK: No. I think they set themselves up for the bank speeches coming out because they refused to release them. They should have released them, and what’s interesting is that some of the most relevant, newsworthy information is not in email traffic — it’s in documents like that. Or, for instance, an attachment that’s a transcript of Hillary Clinton’s conversations behind closed doors with labor leaders in which she says that climate activists should “get a life” rather than coming to her events. That’s not an email. To me, that doesn’t fall into the same category. I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it were curated.

It’s also the way in which it’s being released, to clearly maximize damage, and the recklessness about the implications of that when it comes to electing Trump. You’ve written about how dangerous it is for media organizations to take such a highly political approach to this election because they don’t want Trump to get elected, so they’re engaging in what you described as “journalistic fraud.” I agree with you.
But we have to acknowledge how political WikiLeaks and Julian are being here.

GG: It’s interesting. All we can do is speculate because it involves what’s going on in somebody else’s head, in this particular case, a person who’s even in the best of times quite complicated, who’s been trapped in a single room for five years, who literally has not seen the outdoors in many years, and who doesn’t have much of a future to see one shortly — so it’s hard to assess what’s going on in the mind of a person like that.

Still, as somebody who does know Julian, and that includes you and me as well to varying degrees, are you persuaded by this idea that Julian’s goal here is this conventionally partisan objective, that he has simply sided with the Republican candidate over the Democratic candidate and is doing what he can to help Trump? Or do you think it’s more about Julian harboring a substantive philosophical animosity toward U.S. empire and U.S. hegemony as a force for evil in the world, and looking for any opportunity to undermine and burn it?

To the extent that Hillary Clinton represents that, that she’s a target of his anger, on top of his view of her as desiring his imprisonment and therefore there’s this personal anger too — that goal isn’t the way Paul Begala wants the Democrat to win and the Republican to lose. I don’t think Julian has these simple partisan motives. I think it’s more about wanting to see things burn, out of a combination of political philosophy and personal resentment. I’m curious what you think about that.

NK: I don’t know. I don’t know him well. I’ve met him and I’m not sure I can answer that. I have to be perfectly honest with you, Glenn, I’m actually nervous about it, because there is clearly a vendetta element going on, which is understandable, because Hillary Clinton’s State Department is massively responsible for his lack of freedom. So I can understand that, but at the same time, Assange is not the only person who has lost their freedom for standing up for their beliefs.

-snip-

On October 24 2016 13:54 LegalLord wrote:
I personally think they are and have thought so for the past 2-3 years, but if you're trying to prove it you need better than an unreliable twit to do so.

On October 24 2016 13:49 Plansix wrote:
So Russian state tv has their staff camping Wikileaks and slams out stories the instant something is posted? The same informant that the US intelligence agencies say was stolen by Russia.

I'm ok with accepting the emails are all legit, but are people really going to argue that Wikileaks isn't working with Russian intelligence services? They barely try to hid it.

On October 24 2016 14:00 LegalLord wrote:

That 99% of these "Twitter bombshells" turn out to be bunk has led me to be rather unwilling to consider them to be worth paying any attention to.

On October 24 2016 10:56 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
Hillary campaign recommends poll oversampling in new Podesta wikileaks email.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26551