EXCLUSIVE: The Freedom of the Press Foundation has routed half a million dollars to WikiLeaks. But Julian Assange’s embrace of Trump split the group’s board, which includes Edward Snowden, and now it’s on the verge of a major break https://t.co/sF5yLn2jh0
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) November 17, 2017
And it actually is a sad moment, for some of us — sure, Assange has always been weird, but I convinced myself that something useful might come from the organization he would, eventually, run into the sludge:
In the heat of the presidential election campaign last year, Xeni Jardin, a journalist and free speech advocate, developed a sickening feeling about WikiLeaks.
Jardin had been a supporter of the radical transparency group since at least 2010, when it published hundreds of thousands of U.S. military and State Department documents leaked by Chelsea Manning. In 2012, Jardin was a founding member of the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit established as a censorship-proof conduit for donations to WikiLeaks after PayPal and U.S. credit card companies imposed a financial blockade on the site.
But during the election season, Jardin noticed WikiLeaks veering violently off its original mission of holding governments and corporations to account. Beginning in July of last year, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ driving force, began releasing a cache of stolen email from the Democratic National Committee, and injecting WikiLeaks’ influential Twitter feed with the kind of alt-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories once reserved for Breitbart and InfoWars…
Her misgivings eventually led to a tense confrontation with Assange and touched off a year-long debate among the directors at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has handled around $500,000 in individual donations for WikiLeaks over the last five years. Now the foundation acknowledges it’s on the brink of ending its assistance to WikiLeaks, on the grounds that the financial censorship Assange faced in 2012 is no longer in place.
“At our last board meeting in October 2017, a consensus arose that we could not find any evidence of an ongoing blockade involving PayPal, Visa, or Mastercard,” wrote Trevor Timm, co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We decided we would therefore formally notify WikiLeaks that unless they could demonstrate that a blockade was still in effect, we would no longer provide a mechanism for people to donate to them.”…
The foundation hastens to point out that Assange’s personal actions and politics are irrelevant to its decision. “Like every board, our members have a variety of opinions,” said Timm, “but our primary motivation as an organization has never been whether we agree with everything that WikiLeaks does or says.” But there’s no denying that some on the board have soured on WikiLeaks. Snowden, sources close to him tell The Daily Beast, has felt for a long time that Assange has taken WikiLeaks far from a positive, constructive vision of what Snowden believes WikiLeaks could or should be.
The foundation’s angst mirrors that of the larger community of former WikiLeaks supporters. The leaked messages between Assange and Trump Jr. recently prompted Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire backer of The Intercept, to tweet that they “disqualify” WikiLeaks from being considered a media organization. After Assange defended his election-chaos pitch as intended to “generate a transformative discussion about corrupt media, corrupt PACs and primary corruption,” Omidyar shot back: “Isn’t this an invitation to conspire to knowingly and falsely accuse election officials and a variety of people of fraud?”…
“This is the final mark of someone who’s in it for himself,” says journalist James Ball, who once worked for WikiLeaks, of Julian Assange. “He’s a sad man in a broom cupboard” https://t.co/sF5yLn2jh0
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) November 17, 2017
Major Major Major Major
Fuck wikileaks, Assange, Snowden, and their remaining supporters.
Here, have a dignified picture of my cat.
Betty Cracker
We used to have a commenter who seemed to have some sort of alert set up to notify him of when WikiLeaks was mentioned on Balloon Juice, and he’d swoop in to abuse us for criticizing it. Haven’t seen that guy in a while!
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: such a weirdly specific job/hobby.
StringOnAStick
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, almost bot-like you could say.
Viva BrisVegas
Even if Trump had wanted it to happen, the current Australian government is not servile and obsequious enough to allow itself to be bullied into appointing Assange as its Ambassador to Washington.
Who am I kidding? They would have asked Trump how much Assange’s salary should be.
StringOnAStick
I told the story here of an anarchist friend I used to have, who most recently became an MRA supporter, at which point I quit indulging the Enhance the Contradictions crap and cut off contact. His having been a huge supporter of Snowden, Assange and Greenwald just completes the shit sundae that is his political “mind”. Fucking hypocritical purity pony. So tell me, when has the Enhancing the Contradictions crap ever brought about a revolution that didn’t eat its own? I’m going with “never”.
Viva BrisVegas
@Major Major Major Major: The ASPCA disapproves of the use of the Vulcan mind meld on pets.
mai naem mobile
I’ve never liked Assange. Even way before the Swedish rape stuff, I always felt he gave off creep vibes. I don’t know quite what it is – his face which looks albinoish and cruel or the gray hair/young face, his mannerisms- the whole package?? I also have that kind of feeling towards Ted Cruz and kind of towards Mike Pence but the vibes don’t come across as strongly off Mike Pence. Anyhow, i feel kind if bad for Omidyar. Sounds like he got sucked in by Assange and Greenwald.
I’ve also always thought Putin looks like a thug(even before I followed any Russian geopolitical stuff) – I wouldn’t even buy a 25 cent knick knack from Putin at a yard sale,forget about getting a loan from him. This guy would break your legs and pull your nails off at the same time if you were one minute late with the payment.
RandomMonster
@Betty Cracker: Assange may have a lot of time to fill, between emailing Uday about some fresh Russian intel and hitting on the cleaning women at the Ecuadoran Embassy.
BlueDWarrior
Sometimes I get terribly depressed when I realize no system devised by man is immune from man’s own faults.
jl
@mai naem mobile: I remember reading early on that Assange ran his ‘radical transparency’ whistle blower organization in a very autocratic and secretive manner. Perhaps some some secrecy and mystery was needed for a group that said it was going to publish things that really nasty and/or powerful countries and groups did not want published. But the whimsical autocracy I read about in the stories was concerning. Maybe early signs the group would go bad.
I don’t know if there was an elaborate plot between Putin, Assange, Trump and the other alt right hangers on. Maybe there didn’t need to be. Maybe the Russians stumbled on a group of goofs that indicated they would pull all sorts of crap on their own with whatever the Russians could steal and send off. And from the articles I’ve read by spy experts on how Russians operate, they feel people out in order to try to figure out how to get the most done with the least effort and paper trail. Maybe some winks and nods were enough. (edit: though, from what I’ve read, that is enough for the Trumpsters to be guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime.)
But it doesn’t make much difference whether we can figure out exactly what Assange thinks he is doing. He’s clearly a big fat liar, and that is a problem for a supposedly neutral radical transparency whistle blower organization.
Amir Khalid
I’d always wondered if Julian Assange was too good to be true. I guess the final confirmation is in: he ain’t. Not by a mile. That’s a pity. If Wikileaks were to stick to its ostensible mission, it would be a real force for good. Too bad that it had to be founded and led by an arrogant prick. Wikileaks needs to cut itself loose from Assange, if it can.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Maybe it’s as simple as money. The article mentions that WikiLeaks’ heyday in terms of cash flow was during the Bush era. Makes sense — they were publishing things that some liberals (myself included, in some cases, e.g., the “collateral murder” video) found valuable in exposing the Iraq clusterfuck. I’m sure the organization’s revenue dried up quite a bit during the Obama years. Next thing you know, Assange had a show on RT. Wonder how much Putin was paying him?
Anyhoo, the donations now come from cultists and alt-right trash. I think Assange will find that less lucrative in the long run.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
The “board of directors” for the Freedom of the Press Foundation includes……. wait for it…. Griftwald.
JPL
Better call Jared!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
He’s a murderer. He purposely helped the Taliban kill Afghan civilians for the crime of not wanting to live under Taliban extremists.
msdc
The signs that Wikileaks was a creepshow were there from the beginning. The State Department leaks included all sorts of cables that didn’t really serve the public interest but did set back US diplomatic efforts. There was the outing of informants, as mentioned above. A responsible organization would have culled the irrelevant or dangerous leaks from the genuinely newsworthy, but Wikileaks has never been responsible. Even the “Collateral Murder” video was edited. Fucking Stephen Colbert called out Assange on it, but somehow Xeni Jardin is just now figuring this out.
If that was Wikileaks at their “best” it’s no wonder they ended up where they did. They have always been a bunch of libertarian bros more interested in tearing shit down than serving any journalistic purpose.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@msdc: And who was Secretary of State in 2010? I see a pattern here(adjusting my tinfoil hat).
Mai.naem.mobile
@jl: they also say the Russians think long term. Way long term. I wouldn’t be surprised if Assange and Putin had collaborated with Putin grooming Assange. I honestly think Dolt45 was a fluke. A joke that even Putin was surprised went all the way.
Kay
I feel as if they’re missing the biggest reason they should drop Wikileaks- Assange asked for Trump tax returns so he could leak them to enhance the credibility of Wikileaks attacks on Clinton.
Wikileaks intended to conceal what they were doing- promoting Trump. Assange’s intent was to trick his donors and supporters and retain credibility by “leaking” something a campaign gave him. That’s a political operation. It’s exactly the “rigging” he supposedly objects to.
It isn’t about who he insulted or stalked on that board. It’s about the fact that he was using a “transparency” org to trick people.
Wikileaks also flat-out lied when they were asked about this during the election- they denied doing it.
Manyakitty
@Major Major Major Major: Samwise embodies handsome nobility.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: nah. He’ll always have wing nut welfare. Now with rubles!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Weird, as in child rapist weird?
What weird is a how people on the left bend over backwards for the likes of Assange but want to hang someone like Franken at the first pass. Caeser Wife ad abusrdum.
Child rapist says it all and why Assange hates Hillery so much.
Scotian
Assange and Wkileaks played the exact same game of projectionism about the 2016 that has become the de facto norm and default position of the GOP and far right for the last quarter century.. It was obvious from the outset last year that they were taking one side AND being fed by the Russians uncritically at best,, by design with intent at worst, clearly intended to tilt the US elections one way. IOW, Assange was rigging the election to Trump for Putin, and he deserves everything that can be coming karmically speaking, morally speaking, ethically speaking, pretty much every way speaking IMHO.
Traitor to western social values and the rule of law Assange and Wkileaks, Russian proxy, and all around Piece of Work. Nice to see him being fully exposed to his supporters, perhaps they will finally start to think a little more critically and a little less emotionally.
Who am I kidding?
GregB
There are only two options here.
Wki was either started by good people with decent intentions and became corrupt or it was long term political operation with nefarious goals.
Either way, the end result is it currently corrupt.
dr. bloor
Xeni and her gang at the League of Extraordinary Useful Idiots still appear not to understand that they were nothing but a shell organization.
hugely
@Kay: kay i still say the request for tax return is naked ploy to give russians kompromat
different-church-lady
Assange has a moral arc that’s like the back story of a comic book villain, and makes just about the same amount of sense. Why “the left” keeps falling in love with these kinds of people I have no idea — you are always going to end up scratching your head at the plot twists and changes of allegiance.
Chris
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
This. Fuck ‘im.
Captain C
@StringOnAStick: Enhancing the Contradictions seems to me to essentially mean “I’m going to unnecessarily fuck up a lot of people’s lives and then expect them to support whatever harebrained scheme I’m promoting, and also to love me for doing so.”
You never hear about someone offering to Enhance the Contradictions on themselves.
The Moar You Know
Which were not cleansed nor redacted and got many people killed, and yet he thought everything was just fine until the rapist in charge started embarrassing them by making public noises about his deep man-love for Trump.
If anyone involved with this outfit didn’t think it was a bad idea from day one, they are idiots.
Captain C
@different-church-lady:
I think some of them are so desperate to hear what they want to hear that they won’t do any due diligence on anyone who does so. Cf. the Wilmer cultists and dead-enders.
schrodingers_cat
Assange didn’t need shit Midas to touch him, he was always shit, many chose not to see it.
J R in WV
Well, actually, I have done a (tiny) bit of investigative reporting long ago, and as a database designer with a government agency tasked with fulfilling FOIA requests from investigative reporters, so working with those reporters to ensure they got the data they sought and understood the relationships between very complex data sets, when Wikileaks first appeared I agreed with the principles they claimed to stand for.
There is a great deal of data kept secret or not publicized both by government agencies, NGOs, and private entities (like corporations) which would greatly benefit the general population if made public and analyzed by professionals in the specific field involved. Like tobacco research, chemical toxicity data, environmental research results, just for a few examples.
By the same token, portions of that data should never be made public, especially data relating private citizens (like the unfortunate Afgan citiizens, or people suffering with medical issues from pollution in industrial neighborhoods) to portions of specific data sets. Wikileaks quickly became immoral leakers by publicly identifying individuals and making their personal and private data public.
Then by releasing data that could (and probably did) lead to the deaths of people in war torn areas they and their supporters became accomplices in murder. Because a father may have been an informant, his children should become victims of a car bomb? Just nope to that! Assange should never walk the streets a free man again!
That’s also a pretty terrible foundation for any kind of organization, much less one supposedly dedicated to improving the world! My bad for not immediately identifying the groups and people surrounding Julian Assange as criminal conspirators aiming to aid totalitarian oligarchs. But now I see!
PJ
@different-church-lady: Assange’s moral arc is a flat line. From all reports, he’s always been a vain, cruel, self-righteous, short-sighted egotist (and probable sociopath) who demands complete loyalty to his person and complete opacity for his and Wikileak’s behavior. He happened to cotton on to an idea that many in the press and the public thought was worthy, particularly given the lack of information being provided by the Bush Administration, but which he seems to have always intended to be a weapon 1) to upset the rule of law and world stability and 2) to elevate his own person. He really is a Bond villain, but fortunately without much of the wherewithal or intelligence to really destroy the world.
ETA: Or, maybe more accurately, a Get Smart villain, because what he really seems to take glee in is mayhem and KAOS.
Duane
@Scotian: You told the Truth about Assange. We should just refer to him as Ass, and save the keystrokes. Traitor indeed.
Same goes for Sean Rattity. He carried Russian water across the airwaves for months.He was an accomplance.When the tumbrels come, save Ass and Rattity a good seat.
matt
@different-church-lady: These stupid people fell for Assange’s story hook line and sinker.
matt
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: he’s dodging rape charges and well, you’re an unhinged piece of shit.
Marcia
Like the proverbial cuckolded spouse, Xeni Jardin was the last to find out. He must have spent a lot of money on earplugs and blindfolds.