Not sure if that was always astroturfing. I certainly feel ambivalent about Julian Assange and he arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, which obviously upset a lot of people.
The one responsible for loosing the election was Hillary Clinton, not Julian Assange.
And supporting the prosecution because of this is also quite an apt reason to not vote for her in the first place. And I think that was made clear before the election.
No single person can be attributed all the blame, but any person who (illegally) tried to influence the election is not a good person in my book. That's like saying Russia's misinformation campaign had zero influence and it was all Hillary's fault. That's just plain silly. You can admit Hillary made mistakes while also agreeing that Russia illegally tried to influence the 2016 election.
Don't even have to go very deep. Just look at these tweets [0] for example. Why is some "non-profit" organization started by an Australian trying to influence an American election?
Wikipedia wasn't perfectly neutral here but released truthful information in contrast to many media outlets, who were just as partisan. The reason why many people craved balance and so they made interna of the DNC public.
I have not seen any evidence of Russian interference, but they probably tried. I don't think they got any talking points across to be honest.
This non profit had proof of war crimes and maybe that influenced their disposition? Understandable in my opinion.
In general I am suspect of anyone pointing fingers at others to build a profile. Trump could do that and some people understood that it was holding up a mirror. That is no Trump endorsement and the Russian story an excuse. I believe internal leaks are much more likely.
The DNC talking points on this issue were schizophrenic as hell.
At first they said the most damning thing in there was recipes.
Then they said it cost them the election.
But they refused to say which leaks were responsible.
Then they claimed the swing voters they lost believed in pizzagate as if it were a mainstream conspiracy theory believed by many and that all the swing voters were therefore complete idiots.
Also if you're going to blame a conspiracy theory that was conjured out of thin air the leaks really didnt actually matter. An equally stupid pretext could have been invented, so why say they cost you the election?
So, according to them the leaks both cost them the election and didnt matter in the slightest.
If you think about all this for just a second it logically doesnt make any goddamn sense but people still parrot it. Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.
> Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.
I read your message waiting, line after line, for the dumb statement that got you downvoted. How do people still claim that there's no politically motivated mass-flagging going on on HN?
"If I talked about drone striking Assange it would have been a joke"
She said this. This is as close to an admission that you could get. She would never use that wording if this story were fabricated. She'd just say "I never said anything like that".
The "nonlegal" fluff in the emails is bs, but this story itself isnt.
It was, of course, "just a joke" much in much the same way racist jokes are "just a joke", which is why he took it seriously. It's why making a joke about murdering the president will get you hauled in by the secret service.
Arguing it's unproven is FUD. Why snopes is saying this is beyond me.
If one want to see how people perceived the relation between Hillary Clinton and Assange in 2010, this song/video demonstrate it quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ
Julan Assange also participated in the creation of a video with the same group released closely afterward, which at least implies that he might share the song writers perspective.
I have tried to found a source for what the lyrics say, but at any rate it seems clear that there existed an opinion (which very likely was shared by Assange) that Hillary Clinton where out to get Assange and an active part of the US actions against him. The exact wording is "charged for high treason", which is different from a drone strike but carries the same result: Death.
In my intepretation, it seems pretty clear that Assange might have had a negative opinion about Hillary Clinton 6 years later, rather than being neutral about the whole thing. Having the perception that someone is after to kill you can have that.
(Anyone that thinks that the band is a right-wing group should check out the videos produced about Trump).
Even if Assange's personal motivations had any relevance here, that comment alone would be enough to disqualify someone from holding any kind of public office in a functioning democracy that respects human life.
She lost to a guy that said 'grab her by the pussy', if you can't win against that I don't know... a rock with painted face might be a challenge to run against for her.
Lol not "traditional democratic voters"; the die-hards who saw, and continue to see, Trump as a messiah as he insults anyone from Gold Star parents, to disabled journalists, to Mexican immigrants...
Anyway, off topic and deplorably exhausting.
In the end, Assange is just a scapegoat. Although, he wouldn't be the first or the last. When WikiLeaks was being used to disclose information about other countries, US citizens and even the Government saw them as a positive force in the world. But, once the info focused on US affairs, especially around a Presidential election, Assange was public enemy number one (tied with Snowden).
Still very much (1) a tactical mistake and (2) not everyone of the 60 million people who voted for trump fits your description. Working class people fucked over by the establishment voted for the "anti-establishment" candidate, surprise surprise.
Again, that speech was made early in the campaign. Obviously not talking about 60mil people. But, definitely didn't help, especially once pundits pounced on it.
I'm not saying it wasn't a bad decision, I'm saying it's very understandable why people did what they did. Calling them stupid rednecks is very easy and makes you feel better than them but it's lazy and untrue.
And the guy actually increased his vote tally significantly in the next election, against a far less polarizing candidate than Hillary Clinton. I don't know if it's really as easy as blaming it entirely on her.
The DNC only have themselves to blame, wikileaks exposed their Pied Piper strategy -- they encouraged their media connections to elevate Trump before the playing field thinned out, they were so sure they could beat him [0]. As a Hillary voter, we were sure Trump was a joke. We didn't realize he had the DNC on his side. See the politico piece for quotes from wikileaks:
"How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?" [1]
"We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously." [2]
Is it a crime to subvert democracy? Apparently not when it’s your side doing it.
There were claims that Assange sat on Trumps mails, but genuinely I don’t think that’s the case and if it was then people likely would still vote for him as he is openly horrible: the emails proved Hilary was calculated.
Honestly if your biggest gripe with Assange is that he caused your person to lose then you have to ask yourself: did you just not want to know that your candidate was trying to subvert democracy?
The Sanders stuff was enough to put me off the DNC (actively hampering his chances of being a presidential candidate by removing him from ballots for instance), but learning that Hillary was the one with media contacts and pushing Cruz and Trump to be president is the ultimate backfire.
Should this man go to prison, for life, because your person didn’t get 4 years in office? Because of things she herself said?
Both parties do this. Pointing it out isn't whataboutism. Pointing it out is showing that Assange is the one who made political moves. He targeted specific politicians to leak negative information at opportune times. He didn't do this out of a sense of bringing the truth to light, he did this to further a political agenda. Where are his leaks on the republican party?
Did you provide him with some leaks? As he can't publish what he doesn't have. Though there is some evidence that the same group that leaked the DNC emails had access to RNC data, there is no evidence that shows Assange had any knowledge of or access to RNC data.
It's mind-boggling you actually conclude this from
> The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases.
> Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday.
It's because the tweet takes the article it quotes out of context. This is what leads up to the quoted part:
> That study design, as well as those of other drug makers, came under fire from experts who worried that, even if it was statistically valid, these interim analyses would not provide enough data when a vaccine could be given to billions of people.
Kind of an important passage to leave out, don't you think?
Do you really think this was comic book supervillain?
I remember this happening at the time and my impression was that it was happening without a doubt. Particularly when they announced the results a few days after the election.
My thinking at the time was inside Pfizer the idea of turning an election on this data was deemed too controversial - they would forever be associated with Trump if he won again. That might cause issue with the Dems.
No idea but unless there’s proof of something shadier? That would be my guess - just an American corporation making sure it doesn’t piss off half the country.
Nah, the most comicbook supervillain event was the fricking New York Times publicly hinting that if the vaccine was approved before the election because enough evidence was found that not doing so would definitely do more harm, they'd push the narrative that it was only approved to help Trump win and that people shouldn't trust its safety, effectively undermining safety in the vaccination program just to make sure Trump lost. All the other morally and scientifically dubious attempts to delay approval mostly seem to be downstream consequences of that.
