@Pluto's Republic

and assange himself, a couple from the intercept itself, the daily beast, the atlantic, and a good (if hypocritical) trouncing by greenwald and naomi klein, but they're by and large a bit on the (ahem) long side. but this is a concise account of one ingredient: ‘Obsessive and obscenity-laden’: Assange hits back at Intercept claims he backed Trump’, via RT 16 Feb, 2018

“WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has rejected claims by The Intercept that he backed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He accused the outlet of furthering one of the authors' personal obsession.
“The editorial propriety of letting Micah F Lee, of all people, instrumentalize the Intercept to further his obsessive, obscenity laden campaign against WikiLeaks must be questioned,” Assange said on Thursday.

Assange added that Lee was “formally behind cutting off WikiLeaks' US tax deductible donations,” referring to the Freedom of the Press Foundation cutting off WikiLeaks’ access to funding.

In Wednesday’s story, Lee and Cora Currier of The Intercept claimed to have seen private Twitter messages from WikiLeaks staff from November 2015 onwards.” (etc.)

#3.1.1

It was around the time that Don Jr. was compelled to disclose information about his meeting with that Russian woman who claimed to have some dirt on Hillary, but instead lobbied him about the Magnitsky Act and Russian sanctions. Assange had a twitter discussion with Don Jr, advising him to turn his transcripts and notes over to the media. He also told Don Jr to have his father send his tax returns to him. It's not clear whether Assange was joking or not, but I find it amusing either way.

The Atlantic immediately published a hit piece on Assange about the tweets. Below are two of the dozens of articles that deconstruct and expose The Atlantic's smear.

‘The Atlantic’ Commits Malpractice, Selectively Edits To Smear WikiLeaks

The Atlantic Caught Manipulating Quotes to Make WikiLeaks Seem ‘Pro-Russia’

You know, the ongoing brainwashing of the American People has been magnificently successful. I am simply in awe. I've been reading textbooks and monographs about state-based propaganda this year, going back to the 1930s. To me the techniques described seem over-wrought and exaggerated. "Anybody can see right through the techniques they used," I thought. "No one would buy into that nonsense. At least, not in the 21st century."

I was so wrong about that. I hope the academics are recording what's happened to the American mind over the past few years. We need to establish a new baseline in counter-intelligence.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg @snoopydawg

Actually, DK started to go off the rails and sell out to the establishment the minute the Kerry campaign, aided by behind-the-scenes DNC mucky mucks (including Robert Gibbs, Kerry operatives, the Clintons, and the discredited Senator Robert Toricelli), GOP politicians, and the presstitutes of the corporate media successfully colluded/conspired to derail Howard Dean's insurgent primary campaign in 2004 (anyone remember the travesty of the "Dean Scream" and how that was used by the corporate media to smear Dean as a nutcase, just when the general electorate was starting to pay attention to the election season?). Rather than express outrage and decide to fight the Democratic establishment at that point for unethically taking out the candidate and the principles the Dean movement ostensibly represented (and which the site supposedly supported), Kos not only brushed all this stuff off, but he then JOINED in supporting Kerry. At that exact moment, something inside me told me that Kos had no integrity, and that what was more important to him was maintaining some kind of relevance within the Democratic Party establishment. However, I soon brushed off such thoughts and bought into the "lesser of two evils" rationalization ("anyone but Bush") for supporting Kerry.

Everything that Kos has done since then, I see now as no more than calculated and self-aggrandizing moves meant to: a. Stay relevant and move up within Democratic Party circles, and b. to enrich himself financially through his site.

The guy has ALWAYS been a principle-less opportunist. He was just good at blinding people to that reality for a long time. (Now that he has become a millionaire through VOX Media, I think he no longer cares as much about maintaining the illusion(s) that succesffully built and maintained DK for so long.)

I don't know if his front-pagers get paid to post on his site (including the sad Meteor Blades.) However, if they do and they are so addicted to what Kos pays them, then they truly are a pathetic lot because a lot of them know better than the shit they've been posting since during the Obama years (anyone remember "11-dimensional chess?"), and especially since the 2016 election and up to today. They essentially qualify as paid shills or, "presstitutes." If they are in fact getting paid for the right-wing bullshit they are now writing, then I don't know whether to hold them in contempt, or to pity them, as they faithfully fall in line with and dishonestly execute the directives that come down on high from that amoral, deceptive, and greedy opportunist, Commandante Moulitsas.

(In fact, by 2012 I'd only check into that site to laugh at the idiots that were still blinded by the pro-Obama/Democratic Party group think that characterized that site, even in the face of countless numbers of Obama/Democratic Party betrayals of progressive principles. By 2015, the only reason I'd check into that site was to see what was being said about the Sanders campaign and to monitor its progress. When the March or April, 2016 directive came down from on high about "unifying behind Clinton or else," it just further cemented by negative perceptions about Kos' true motives and agendas.)

As for so many of the non-progressive and even right wing comments that other "people" post on that site who are not front-pagers, I concluded years ago--even before the Correct-the-Record shills appeared--that a lot of those people and commentors were PAID shills pushing agendas, usually those that were in line with the agendas of the Democratic Party ruling establishment. (In fact, these past few years as I've reflected on this, I have also found it telling that it was a "banable offense" to suggest that someone was a paid shill on that site. In view of my estimation of Kos' MO, and his true motives in running that site, the reason he probably made this rule was because he KNEW that a lot of the people posting right-wing or pro-establishment bullshit (usually supported by MSM talking points) on that site weren't sincere or even sincerely deluded, and to have that whole issue brought to the fore would have completely given the scam away by destroying the credibility of his site . . . as well as his traffic numbers). To make a long story short, I strongly suspect that a lot of the people now attacking Assange (as they attacked Cindy Sheehan, Glenn Greenwald, and David Sirota and a slew of others before him that adhered to progressive principles to the point of embarassing the ruling Democratic establishment) are probably paid operatives of one sort or another. In retrospect, I believe now that TOP has LONG been infested by paid trolls and operatives, probably going back to 2003 when the site first appeared.

Kos has no integrity, and his site has no integrity. It has never been a truly progressive website, and Kos has never been a real progressive. From a de facto perspective, that site is nothing but a de facto scam/subsidiary of the DNC . . . and possibly a psy-op run by the CIA (but that's a whole other issue).

#3.1.1

but that was back when they were against war during the Bush adm. Once Obama was elected and continued Bush's wars and then expanded them more, the site turned on Assange for exposing Obama's war crimes. If you had been a member on DK very long you would see how the site that basically came into being during the Bush years and especially because of the illegal Iraq war has changed since then. The site used to be the most left of the political spectrum, but that all changed during Obama's tenure and went off the rail during the last election. They refused to admit that Hillary is just as big a war criminal as Bush was, that the Clinton presidency did untold damage to the country and that Obama was just a puppet for the 1%.

Just the fact that over 400 members of the site are cheering this abhorrent action on Assange shows that they do not believe in a free press, the first amendment or human rights.
Repeating this

This country wants him extradited here and charged under the espionage act where he will be disappeared and he will die in prison.

Assange is being target just because he has exposed country's dirty laundry which is what an open press is supposed to do. Ecuador is being pressured by other countries to do this. I hope that your are listening to this. Finally, how you watched the Collateral Murder video? IF not, please do. This one of the first war crimes exposed by Wikileaks

One comment from DK. This is not the worst one either.
I look forward to the day he dies in prison.

(edited)