"Some People Say"

The irony cuts like a knife:

Friends can differ, Mr. Assange said in the interview. Still, some of his staunchest supporters, like the heiress Jemima Goldsmith Khan, have turned on him, troubled by what they see as a double standard. In an opinion piece for the New Statesman, Ms. Khan wrote that WikiLeaks, which was created to produce a more just society, “has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose.”

Which Reinhold Niebuhr, at least, could have told you is what was going to happen.

“Julian loves misinformation; it’s his passion,” Mr. Greenwald said. “He’d likely say this just to make the Clintons uncomfortable.”

Do tell; and what does that have to do with transparency and the "democratization of information?

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 28, 2016

I'm not sure what "democratized" information looks like, except I agree with Snowden that it shouldn't include personal and valuable information like Social Security numbers (which is what he's addressing in that tweet).  And when critiqued like that, this is not your best look:

@Snowden Opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows https://t.co/4FeygfPynk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 28, 2016

I never thought Julian Assange was a knight in shining armor; what's still amazes me is that anybody did.

Anybody over the age of 13, anyway.

So, is this misinformation or proof Assange is interfering in the U.S. election?  Or is it just bullshit?

The American liberal media is falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton,” he told The New York Times during a Facebook video interview Wednesday.

“[They are] erecting a demon who is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins this election, which she is almost certainly going to do.”

Assange, whose organization released internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed to have been stolen by Russia, said it is particularly troubling that the Democrat's campaign has linked her critics to Russia.

“[It’s] that attempted reframing by Hillary Clinton, to declare media organizations that are publishing material that shows illicit behavior in the [Democratic National Committee] to fix the election for her, as somehow being Russian agents,” he said.

“Her campaign has effectively called, or maybe even directly called Donald Trump, the opposition leader in this case, a Russian agent,” Assange added of the GOP’s presidential nominee.

“Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, the fourth candidate effectively in terms of numbers, has also been called a Russian agent. This is a neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”

I got curious about that last claim, so I went looking.  This is what I found on Google.  No story directly connecting Stein to Russia critically, or connecting the Democrats to criticism of Stein.  The best I could find in a news story was this:

A number of media outlets have published scathing and misleading stories about Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, along with rumors circulated on social media by Clinton supporters.

But thats from RT, which is controlled by the Russian government.  Glenn Greenwald brought the claim up on Democracy Now!, with even less factual support.  I mean, some people say:

And it’s amazing to have watched, in this campaign, Democrats completely resurrect that Cold War McCarthyite kind of rhetoric not only to accuse Paul Manafort, who does have direct financial ties to certainly the pro—the former pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine, but really anybody who in any way questions the Clinton campaign. I mean, they even tried doing it to Jill Stein a few weeks ago by claiming that she had done something nefarious by attending an event in Moscow sponsored by the Russian television outlet RT that’s controlled by the Putin government. 

And Stein does think Assange is a hero, and Assange thinks Putin is almost beyond reproach.

So that squares that circle, I guess.  Assange, in other words, is dealing in innuendo and rumor and lies.  Pretty much the kind of stuff Wikileaks was supposed to put an end to.

Isn't it ironic?  Don't you think?  Maybe the Christian elders were on to something with that idea of "original sin," and "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  It's not good as a weapon, but it is a better basis for understanding what "some people say."