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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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:11PM (4 children)
I don't entirely disagree with you. However some finer points:
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".
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.
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)
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
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)
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
Given what we've come to expect from journalists, why is no one surprised?