HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

The first minute of this interview should clear this up quite quickly. Julian Assange has certainly been seen alive recently, and certainly much more recently than 46 days ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

⬐ None

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⬐ flycaliguy

This video has a very strange morph edit at the 15:08 mark. Watch his left eye.

For me, it calls into question the validity of the recording.

⬐ wbhart

I'm sorry, but can someone explain to me why this would not be accepted as proof of life? He is asked questions in the first minutes of the interview and gives answers about events that happened this month. Isn't that conclusive? Somehow I must be missing something.

⬐ rando444

Can you explain what events that you saw referenced in the video that happened after Oct 16?

I'm not seeing it.

⬐ wbhart

In the first minute of the video, he is asked about "this final week of the election campaign". Also, he refers to the following Podesta email that was released on October 10th, which is quite clearly more recent than 46 days.

This is nothing more than a silly conspiracy theory.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3774

⬐ rando444

Looking at the video more, I agree with you that this is more recent.

However, I don't see any reason to believe that wikileaks itself is not compromised.

Wikileaks is saying assange is in control, wants to give proof, does not give proof, releases hashes, releases files that don't match the hashes, and despite all the calls for proof of life, they do nothing.. which if assange is still alive is possibly his way of trying to get people to not trust wikileaks anymore because it's been compromised and he can't say anything about it. (1) because they're not letting him and (2) because ecuador might kick him out for revealing the truth

Until the man himself gives some proof that he is alive and in control of the organization, I see no reason to trust wikileaks.

⬐ wbhart

If you start going looking for evidence that you are right about this, you will keep finding it, due to confirmation bias, and you will never let the conspiracy theory go. The only thing which I think is reasonable to suspect at present is that Assange's internet was cut off, and wasn't reinstated after the election. Once you go beyond that you are into conspiracy theory territory. To shut up the whole of Wikileaks in all the countries it operates in, would be a conspiracy of such massive proportions that the chances of it being pulled off are negligible.

If you think about it, Assange normally appears in interviews via some internet based conference software. If he hasn't got internet, he can't do that. So the only interviews you will see for a while are ones like Pilger's, where the interviewer actually goes into the embassy.

⬐ rando444

I'm not looking for evidence that "I'm right".. I have nothing to be right about, I'm not even claiming anything.

All I know is that it doesn't look like Assange has control of wikileaks anymore, and until he offers proof himself that he does, I find it unreasonable to just blindly trust re-assurances from nameless twitter posts.

⬐ wbhart

What possible proof could Assange offer to convince everyone that he is "in control of Wikileaks"? And why should/would he do that for you personally. There's probably a thousand people demanding Assange offer proof of this or that.

⬐ rando444

I'm not suggesting he do anything for me personally (?) And yes, there are thousands of people demanding proof that he is alive, that's the whole point of this post.

The fact that he and wikileaks aren't providing this despite saying they want to is the topic of discussion.

And as far as what possible proof.. GPG signed statement would be preferable. This can easily be accomplished without internet. Even a video statement would be somewhat acceptable. Wikileaks held a poll asking for how people wanted proof, and video was the top response. None was supplied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

⬐ jessedhillon

Don't be lazy.

⬐ orthoganol

It's a summary of the emails from the creator of WikiLeaks, if you don't believe him than to you WikiLeaks isn't credible. You're asking me to spend 20-30 minutes retrieving and linking when you are probably the only person who would ever see it.

Someone else compiled such a list, please peruse:

http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/

I hope that you are not an American citizen who voted -- you are willfully ignorant, and that is the worst type of voter.

⬐ jessedhillon

I do vote; what I don't do is let my imagination and bias run wild with insinuation, and I'm not lazy about my evidence. When I have confronted others about what's actually in the Wikileaks dump, nobody has failed to get past the "produce a link to primary evidence supporting your claim" step. Intellectually honest people at least reason from primary evidence when it's available to them.

It's pretty amazing that you can't even do that, and yet you want to lecture and condescend me.

⬐ orthoganol

No sorry, I linked you what you asked for. The "most damaging wikileaks" link has all the links to the emails organized by offense. In just the first 20 or so from my skimming there was pay-to-play evidence with the emails they were found in.

You've demonstrated a closed mind about this, and were not willing to look into it yourself, so I think that counts as being willfully ignorant.

⬐ jessedhillon

I got as far as #3, wherein they cite an emailed article as being one of the key quotes from the email. That's nakedly pushing an agenda, there's no intellectual honesty in that -- it's like me asking you to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then telling everyone how you casually refer to black people using the N-word.

To be frank, it's as honest as I'd expected it to be, and exactly why I wanted you to build your case from primary sources. Anyone can quote trash sources and force the other person to do the fact-checking; you should be able to build the case up from primary sources if there's any there there.

The level of Democratic party and media cooperation is staggering. Media has effectively become a part of the liberal part of the government. The reason Wikileaks scandal got so little attention is because they all, CNN, NYT, etc, are in bed with each other. It's effectively a government-media complex.

Interview with Julian Assange: https://youtu.be/_sbT3_9dJY4

⬐ soundwave106

One thing I'm personally tiring of in this election cycle is the very strong "media is an xyz conspiracy" narrative; a lot of the reasoning seems nothing more than, gasp, people actually have opinions and bias, and marketing spin is a thing. I don't see spin as a "conspiracy", frankly. There is no such thing as unbiased media, I've never known it ever. Connections are not surprising here either. It's rather puzzling to hear opinion and connections being treated automatically as strong conspiracy.

For the record, liberals these days will tend to say rather the same thing as the above, but substitute Fox News and Breitbart, maybe even the WSJ. There's certainly connections -- Fox News certainly has hired Republican big guns in the past, and Breitbart's executive chairman went on to manage Trump's campaign after all. There's also certainly spin in the other direction. You treat the source accordingly.

Narrative, spin, and marketing will always exist (not just for government and media, but for any organization, from big businesses all the way down to non-profit advocacy groups), it's omnipresent in life. It's a good skill in life to develop a sense for looking past the more egregious forms of marketing and spin in life (the "clickbait" of the web, as it were).

⬐ grandalf

Well, what makes a journalist good at their job is reporting facts and allowing the reader/viewer to understand as much as possible and formulate a decision.

When journalists are bad at their job they make it very easy to arrive at a particular opinion without really having to understand the issue. This too is the point of PR and of moralistic calls to action... to circumvent rational thought and make someone do something (vote a certain way, buy a certain product, hate a group of people, etc).

⬐ soundwave106

This is true -- the better journalists and papers actually give you enough facts to allow for meaningful conversation and disagreement. And this really is what we should look for, to separate good quality journalism from tabloid trash, regardless of bias.

From my viewpoint, the New York Times still has a reputation for quality journalism. Very few of the anti-New York Times viewpoints in this thread are terribly convincing to me from that perspective.

⬐ untog

The Wikileaks DNC scandal has gotten a crazy amount of coverage, particularly given that we're in an election year.

⬐ grandalf

> a part of the liberal part of the government

It's not actually liberal. In reality it's quite conservative... moneyed, powerful interests shaping the messages that they want the public to consume.

The idea that HRC is politically leftist is a bizarre bit of wizardry that is completely false and helps people who would vote for a leftward leaning candidate believe that she is on their side.

It's arguable whether HRC or George H.W. Bush is further to the right... they are in a similar ballpark... the endorsement is not too farfetched, though normally party loyalty would have prevented it from being made public.

⬐ skyrw

This election isn't Liberalism vs Conservatism, it's Corporatism vs Populism.

⬐ grandalf

I agree... HRC is a corporatist conservative and Trump is a populist conservative.

⬐ burkaman

What Clinton position do you consider conservative?

⬐ grandalf

HRC only very recently came to support same sex marriage, after it was a sure-fire winning issue. In the past she has called for a wall between the US and Mexico, she uses race baiting language to make white voters feel that she'll be tough on crime, and her remarks justifying neoconservative foreign policy are very disrespectful of the citizens (typically brown-skinned) of the nations the US attacks.

HRC is strongly supported by the banking and finance industry, as well as by essentially all large, establishment industry groups. This is the definition of conservatism, preserving the status quo.

HRC also focuses very much on American exceptionalism and makes a moralistic argument for US foreign policy. She's presided over the largest arms deal in the history of the world, selling US arms to Saudi Arabia.

She wishes for the US to be the world hegemon and to use drone strikes (terrorism) to intimidate and subjugate the (often) brown-skinned people who might try to prevent that.

As we've seen via Wikileaks, HRC has used her and WJC's considerable political influence to amass a fortune exceeding a quarter of a billion dollars. She's advocated most of the economic policies that the super-rich want most. Some of these are, frankly, good policies, but many are handouts and loopholes that help preserve the status quo at the expense of those on the bottom and in the middle.

I would never vote for Donald Trump, but I would also never vote for HRC for many of the same reasons that prevent me from voting for someone like Trump or George W. Bush, etc.

As we've seen with Wikileaks, HRC despises the Sanders voters and strategized not just to sabotage Sanders' candidacy by installing her own cronies in the DNC, but also by pretending to care about their issues while telling banks the opposite. Not only is HRC a political pragmatist, she's on record actively trying to stop the only moderately successful leftist political movement in the US (Sanders) and joking about it to bankers!

Voting for HRC because she's a woman evokes a tribal instinct that is on the same level as voting for someone because they are white. We all want a world of equal rights and we all want to respect powerful, even flawed, leaders whether they are male or female. But HRC goes way too far with the sabotage of Sanders' campaign and the warmongering. Thus I believe voting for HRC (or Trump) is an unconscionable act.

⬐ burkaman

Most of these are not conservative, they are just things you don't like. Expanding foreign engagement and the military is the opposite of conservatism. Support from established business is a pretty weak argument, she wouldn't be getting nearly as much support if there were an actual conservative in the race. "race-baiting language" and being rich are not conservative positions.

On the American political spectrum, she is not conservative.

Also, you've listed several good reasons to dislike Clinton, but

> Not only is HRC a political pragmatist, she's on record actively trying to stop the only moderately successful leftist political movement in the US (Sanders) and joking about it to bankers!

In what world is pragmatism a bad thing? And what politician doesn't joke about their opponents in private? What human being doesn't joke about their opponents?

⬐ grandalf

I intend the word "conservative" to describe self-identifying conservatives in US politics today, not to mean any specific dictionary definition. The word neoconservative is perhaps more accurate.

⬐ briandear

Neither one is conservative. Conservatism means small, limited government. Classical 'liberalism.'

Both want large expansive governments -- the differences are in how they employ the machinery of government to achieve their ends.

⬐ beachstartup

see: the ruthless domination and assimilation of bernie sanders, the populist-socialist, as indicated in wikileaked emails.

my feeling is if trump wins, it's because of jilted bernie supporters. what happened to all his campaign donations? hmm.

⬐ None

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⬐ blfr

You're just calling whatever you dislike "conservative." Left/right, conservative/liberal are all relative, there are no absolute points of reference. In modern US, GOP represent the conservatives and Democrats are liberals.

Thanks to neoconservatives, some younger people got used to the fact that right wingers are warmongers building global empires* but these are not intrinsically right or conservative views. Plenty of truly hardcore leftists, like Russian communists who were so far to the left of Hillary they would have useless bourgeois scum like her executed, loved war. Socialism is war time economy planning applied in peace time. They wanted a never-ending revolution that spread to the entire world, or at least the English Channel since they were better at manufacturing tanks than ships.

* Well, trying to build global empires while in reality bombing a random stretch of desert.

⬐ grandalf

> In modern US, GOP represent the conservatives and Democrats are liberals

This is totally inaccurate. There is a small aspect of the parties' rhetoric that evokes liberal and conservative ideals, but no substantial policy differences.

⬐ oblio

> They wanted a never-ending revolution that spread to the entire world, or at least the English Channel since they were better at manufacturing tanks than ships.

The Soviet Navy was one of the biggest navies in the world. I don't have the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure it was #2 in the world, only behind the US Navy.

⬐ douche

And it would have gotten the ever-living shit knocked out of it in a conventional shooting war with the US Navy.

Saddam's Iraqi army was one of the largest in the world. North Korea still has one of the largest. Quantity doesn't have quite the same quality as in Stalin's day.

The whole Hitler thing is strangely universal. I've previously read about Abe being compared to Hitler.

A stranger incident was a picture of Modi next to a Swastika - the (Indian) authors found no irony in using a Hindu symbol, and embedding in it the European epistemology of "Aryan pure blood", in order to appeal to people who they were appealing to.

Admittedly the elites of the latter are indistinguishable from those in the US, and this is imaginably true of Japan too.

Is this true outside the Anglosphere and their peripheries too ?

Edit: I think Assange has the situation right. Trump is symbolic of "White trash" - much as Modi is symbolic of the un-anglicized mass in India. Their opposition, dub themselves with various epithets like "progressive" "liberal" "secular" etc.. until the cows come home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

That said, it should be noted that this doesn't necessarily mean the contenders are going to do anything drastically different from the status-quo. Certainly has been true in India.

⬐ anilgulecha

> A stranger incident was a picture of Modi next to a Swastika - the (Indian) authors found no irony in using a Hindu symbol, and embedding in it the European epistemology of "Aryan pure blood", in order to appeal to people who they were appealing to.

You're missing some context -- that most Indian-locals have. Swatika is a common religious symbol used on everything from new stationary to inaugurations/events. The "Nazi"-ness of it is likely unknown to most.

So it would only be strange to those for whom the symbol is only taught/learnt in the Hitler-WW2 context.