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posted by chromas on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the delete-this dept.

Activist publishes 11,000 Wikileaks Twitter direct messages

An activist has published 11,000 direct messages on Twitter between the Wikileaks account and a group of its supporters. The direct messages were published by Emma Best on her own website. Her Twitter account states that she is a journalist on the East Coast. Best has been critical of Wikileaks and has advocated for government transparency. Some of the direct messages were previously published, but this is the first time all of the direct messages have been posted.

The messages show that Wikileaks wanted the GOP to defeat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential elections. "We believe it would be much better for the GOP to win," the Wikileaks account states to a supporter named "Emmy B" in one of the messages from 2015.

Why would they do that?

Clinton: I don't recall joking about droning Julian Assange

Oh.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:53PM (8 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:53PM (#715698)

    The worst thing I can recall him doing, was editing that damned video that he named "Collateral Murder". And, he didn't even do a very good editing job, because if you have a clue, and listen carefully, you STILL understand that it wasn't "murder".

    So the story behind that video: Reuters had been trying to find out what had happened to one of their journalists who had gone missing in Iraq. Nobody in the US military would tell them what they knew. Thanks to Wikileaks, the world got to find out that he and his camera crew were gunned down by a US helicopter, and then the helicopter gunned down a pair of civilians and by accident the 2 kids who happened to be in their van who had stopped to try to help the reporter and his crew. You can hear the gunner wishing that one of the civilians writhing on the ground would pick up a weapon so that shooting them was legal (attacking unarmed people attempting to provide medical aid is illegal under the Geneva Conventions).

    It just so happened that said Reuters journalist had been telling a different story about the Iraq War than the US military wanted to be told. Which I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with why they were targeted and killed.

    The army's excuse for all of this was:
    1. The cameras looked like RPGs. Which they don't, but never mind that.
    2. The civilians were confused with insurgents trying to remove weapons from their fallen comrades. Never mind that nobody on the ground had any weapons, and you can hear one of the gunners rooting for one of the civilians to pick up something that looked like a weapon so the shooting could look all nice and legal again.

    Simply dismissing all that as "you don't have a clue" is to be willfully blind to what happened because patriotism or something. What that helicopter was doing was either (a) against the rules of engagement and the people in there should have been punished, or (b) was following the rules of engagement and US command was breaking treaties. I'm going with option (b), because the US also targeted a hospital in Afghanistan when they had every reason to know it was a hospital.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:11PM (4 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:11PM (#715713)

    I don't entirely disagree with you. However some finer points:

    It just so happened that said Reuters journalist had been telling a different story about the Iraq War than the US military wanted to be told.

    This being "most of the legacy media" and all the international reporters, pretty much ANY journalist getting waxed would qualify; I'm just saying its a realistic conspiracy theory that "the military" was like F-them light em up because they're intensely biased against them journalists in a war zone; that specific poor bastard who got lit up was VERY unlikely to be specifically targeted. A SN automobile analogy is consider the endless cop killings of unarmed black men, the cops go out some night "Some black dude want to fight or pull a gun on me, I'm gonna F him up" is quite a bit different than "tonight I hunt mr XYZ of whatever address SSN 123-45-6789 and I will kill him at 1:32 am in a premeditated fashion".

    The cameras looked like RPGs. Which they don't, but never mind that.

    Dude; you put a tube-thing on your shoulder in a war zone around armor or air assets and you're a dead man. Again the bad car analogy, if you're pulled over by a cop and whip out your airsoft pistol and stick in the cops face, absolutely no one on the planet can be surprised when you end up dead, no matter how smug you'll be in the last few seconds that technically the cop did the "wrong thing". If you want to be billy bad ass the gutsy cameraman, well, thats really cool and all, but you're going in knowing that behavior has maybe 50% odds of dying.

    What that helicopter was doing was either

    It just looks bad out of context. You know how propaganda works and this would be food for it. A standard SN Trump analogy would be if Trump introduced legislation "Criminalizing the use of the word Nigger in national parks as a misdemeanor offense because of its disorderly conduct effects also we're sick of hearing shitty rap 'music' in national parks" you know the usual suspects would carefully edit it down to one word soundbite of Trump saying "nigger" and nothing else and rant about how he needs to be impeached for saying the n-word and similar idiocy, carefully burying the context. Likewise in the context of an ongoing running battle, WTF are civies and journalists standing around at the end of a gun barrel anyway?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:00PM (#715749)

      It just so happened that said Reuters journalist had been telling a different story about the Iraq War than the US military wanted to be told.

      This being "most of the legacy media" and all the international reporters, pretty much ANY journalist getting waxed would qualify

      To be more specific about this: This particular journalist was not part of the Pentagon's "embedding" program, which was all about showing the story the Pentagon wanted told to the folks back home. Propaganda aimed at the US public is in fact an essential aspect of US military strategy, because the Pentagon firmly believes that the reason they lost the Vietnam War is that the US public learned the truth about what was going on and stabbed them in the back, and they're determined to do everything in their power to prevent that from ever happening again.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:31PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:31PM (#716195)

        To be more specific about this: This particular journalist was not part of the Pentagon's "embedding" program

        Oh god thats even worse. At least embedded guys are "known" so "yo our cameraman is over there don't shoot him" is a thing. But now you got randos running around in unknown locations with cameras (and don't forget ISIS propaganda videos... we're not the only side with cameras)

        Its kinda like re-enactors at a civil war camp public event ARE snake in the grass tools of the imperialistic state, but at least the cops are expecting black powder rifle and pistol dudes wandering around, so they're unlikely to be shot despite being government collaborators. Some rando who likes the civil war running around dark alleys at 2am while attending an event during the day is gonna get shot by the cops if he's brandishing his 1855 civil war navy revolver in that dark alley. And its not because the cops are evil or guns are bad, its because the guy is a crazy risk taking lunatic.

    • (Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:17AM (1 child)

      by Spamalope (5233) on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:17AM (#716004) Homepage

      The cameras looked like RPGs. Which they don't, but never mind that.

      Dude; you put a tube-thing on your shoulder in a war zone around armor or air assets and you're a dead man. Again the bad car analogy, if you're pulled over by a cop and whip out your airsoft pistol and stick in the cops face, absolutely no one on the planet can be surprised when you end up dead, no matter how smug you'll be in the last few seconds that technically the cop did the "wrong thing". If you want to be billy bad ass the gutsy cameraman, well, thats really cool and all, but you're going in knowing that behavior has maybe 50% odds of dying.

      Yeah, but if you saw that whole episode it was a bit different. A photographer was with a group that had an RPG. The group with the RPG was targeted. At the time of the engagement, only part of the group was visible to the camera. The photographer was visible but the RPG person wasn't, so the video was cut to only show the time when the RPG person wasn't visible so an incendiary yellow journalism story could be made about targeting a journalist. (the video was not from the point of view of those fighting)

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:35PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:35PM (#716199)

        Given what we've come to expect from journalists, why is no one surprised?

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:22PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:22PM (#715765) Journal

    You've heard of "embedded journalists", I presume. That is exactly what the Reuters journalist was - except he wasn't embedded on our side, or even with an allied force. He was embedded in an insurgent unit.

    That same insurgent unit had been firing upon our ground troops in the immediate vicinity - which is the REASON the Apache was there. The Apache found the insurgents who had been firing on US troops, only minutes before. It isn't clear to me how much time had passed - 5 to 15 minutes, it seems, but it was mere minutes. The Apache found an armed group of men exactly where it expected to find an armed group of men.

    Unfortunately for the journalist, that damned camera DOES look like a weapon, not to mention that he was "embedded" with an enemy unit. Yes, he seemed like a legitimate target to the crew of the Apache.

    You listened to the radio chatter? It's a little difficult to focus on the chatter, good for you. Why don't you listen again? It does become clear that these insurgents had been engaged in a skirmish with US troops in the very recent past. Legitimate targets, all of them.

    The two civilians who came by and tried to render assistance? I have a little bit of a hard time justifying that. But, you'd have a much harder time trying to bring charges under the Geneva conventions for shooting them up. They were, in fact, attempting to render assistance to members of a known enemy unit.

    The kids? Damn, that sucks. Who brings kids to a shootout?

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:29PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:29PM (#715810)

      The two civilians who came by and tried to render assistance? I have a little bit of a hard time justifying that. But, you'd have a much harder time trying to bring charges under the Geneva conventions for shooting them up. They were, in fact, attempting to render assistance to members of a known enemy unit.

      You should be having a much harder time, not just a little. Two civilians rendering aid and you think they were like "oh I know these guys, they are totally members of ISIS or whatever trying to fight off the US imperials, I will totally help them out while they're being shot!" Gimme a break, besides the entire situation occurred because of US imperialism and lies to get the public on board with another war. Oh sorry, military action!

      Who brings kids to a shootout? Uuuugggh, your victim blaming is strong today! Why didn't these civilians know an attack helicopter was scheduled for that day and keep their kids at home??? What degenerate parents /s

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:13AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:13AM (#716002) Journal

        You obviously have a lot of war zone experience, and are unaffected by the "fog of war". Is your name Mephistopholes, or Jesus Christ?