There's a conspiracy theory going around that he was killed by The Man, who is resorting to tricks like CGI to pretend he's still alive.
I'm not sure what the motivation for killing him and continuing to pretend that he's alive would be, but then again, I don't understand most conspiracy theories.
Oh, but there are easier ways to do that. Offer to let him avoid being extradited to Sweden in exchange for not reporting on certain things, for instance.
Do you really think the Ecuadorean embassy, which had to install a shower so they could house him, is able to resist political pressure from basically all of NATO? Snowden had to flee to Russia, not even a Russian embassy, and he's not even leaking anything new. (I'm not necessarily claiming that anyone is actively manipulating WikiLeaks, just that there are a million easier ways to do it than secretly killing him and making a CGI double - and secretly killing him would require Ecuador's cooperation, anyway.)
That rumor started in November 2016, or a bit earlier, when Assange went dark for awhile, right after tweeting about a large police presence outside the embassy.
I don't think it's a very popular conspiracy theory that Obama would have killed him. Just a few people who remember SECSTATE Clinton talking about droning him, and that has given them fuel for this speculation.
Does anybody know about the channel which hosted the stream? "Golden State Times" doesn't have a legitimate website (the .com has an invalid SSL certificate; didn't even proceed) and some of their other videos appear more than a little biased: see their video named "VAULT 7: Obama's CIA Posed as Russian Hackers!!!"
Thanks for this, I just posted the first link I found on Youtube after the Facebook stream timed out. Only realised at the end that it wasn't official :/
“With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types,
but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack
techniques were stolen from,” Wikileaks said in a statement.
Please. While that program may exist, Russia and its agents absolutely DID hack the US political parties. Russia had a HUGE incentive to back the, at the time, pro-Russian Trump. Moreover, Putin had a personal grudge with Clinton who Putin thinks sowed dissent into the Russian people during Clinton's helm at the State Department.
These recent wikileaks releases, while alarming as an American, are just a play by Russia. Russia has been backed into a corner. Their only real move is to use their powerful counter-intelligence and propaganda arms to brigade the popular U.S. websites to sow dissent of our own government. You can go on 4chan and see people planning before hand to brigade sites like Reddit (and even HackerNews) with masked pro-Russian, anti-American propaganda.
At this point, Russia has seriously messed up in the eyes of the international community. Russia has sort of backed themselves into a corner. The only way they see they can minimize the damage is by sowing into us, the average American citizens, a dissent of our own government - dividing the citizenry. They do this so our domestic politics severely hinders our foreign policies. We can already see this happening.
> Russia and its agents absolutely DID hack the US political parties
How exactly did Russian agents hacked the parties? Can you give real examples and sources of your claim?
If we didn't have a long history of screwing each other on the order of millions of humans lives it might be possible.
They feel that we should have helped more in WWII so that 30 million (This number might not be accurate, but their count will be higher than ours) Russians wouldn't have had to die to defend Russia. The wanted a two front war with the Nazi's early on.
They feel that we have been actively maneuvering to endanger their safety throughout the entire cold war. They see our wars in Korean, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq Afghanistan as shows of power to demonstrate to them that we can kill millions and get away with it.
Then on top of all that, they were insular and perhaps even xenophobic before that anyway.
Recently Hillary was hawkish on openly attacking them and Obama held his ground well. They need to work their ass off just keep their ports from being useless, so they took the Crimea.
Worse, the way we see it we have done nothing wrong and view what think are acts of national security as acts of war. Maybe they are or aren't, it doesn't really matter here and now. What does matter is that all this damages trust.
How do we go about allying with someone we have so little trust capital to work with?
I think there is lots of evidence of most for the things I claimed.
This is a perspective thing, we each see no fault in allowing the other to be screwed when our own national security is at stake. Then we fault the other for horrible acts of war when they just thought they were defending their national security.
That does not seem like a good plan for Russia. Dissent is not an exception here, it is way of life. We constantly have protests, riots are fun on occasion, we sue the government when they misbehave and we have a whole movement that doubts the legitimacy of the federal government and IRS.
We succeed not in spite of this chaos, but because of it. There is no time for corruption to take hold and when it does it must produce something useful at market. The way many startups are setup they like to "move fast and break things", the rules seem to exist only as long as they are useful.
Sowing distrust in the populace of the US isn't even a good way to get a bestselling book anymore let alone execute complex international policy.
Apparently replay has been disabled for this stream on Periscope. The recording has been uploaded here on their official channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se6XWhKOE2Q
43 comments
[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 271 ms ] threadI can't deny there's a resemblance... but he sure looks different now... older. A lot older.
Edit: Here's a recent photo of him [1]. The difference might be the lack of a beard...
1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/7145700-3x2-940x627.jpg
I'm not sure what the motivation for killing him and continuing to pretend that he's alive would be, but then again, I don't understand most conspiracy theories.
Do you really think the Ecuadorean embassy, which had to install a shower so they could house him, is able to resist political pressure from basically all of NATO? Snowden had to flee to Russia, not even a Russian embassy, and he's not even leaking anything new. (I'm not necessarily claiming that anyone is actively manipulating WikiLeaks, just that there are a million easier ways to do it than secretly killing him and making a CGI double - and secretly killing him would require Ecuador's cooperation, anyway.)
I don't think it's a very popular conspiracy theory that Obama would have killed him. Just a few people who remember SECSTATE Clinton talking about droning him, and that has given them fuel for this speculation.
Conflicting interests? Fake video?
https://www.periscope.tv/WikiLeaks/1ZkKzEqeDMZxv
They're referring to the UMBRAGE program.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/07/wikileaks-cia-...These recent wikileaks releases, while alarming as an American, are just a play by Russia. Russia has been backed into a corner. Their only real move is to use their powerful counter-intelligence and propaganda arms to brigade the popular U.S. websites to sow dissent of our own government. You can go on 4chan and see people planning before hand to brigade sites like Reddit (and even HackerNews) with masked pro-Russian, anti-American propaganda.
At this point, Russia has seriously messed up in the eyes of the international community. Russia has sort of backed themselves into a corner. The only way they see they can minimize the damage is by sowing into us, the average American citizens, a dissent of our own government - dividing the citizenry. They do this so our domestic politics severely hinders our foreign policies. We can already see this happening.
Also, got any evidence of the hacking?
the USA and Russia (USSR) have been at odds far longer than I've been alive.
>>Wouldn't we want to be allies with the second most powerful country?
maybe, but we aren't talking about China here (I have no idea how you would rank Russia as the 2nd most powerful country, but please enlighten me).
>>any evidence of the hacking?
No, but (at least from my perspective) the razor appears to be leaning heavily in one direction.
Why do you say that?
They feel that we should have helped more in WWII so that 30 million (This number might not be accurate, but their count will be higher than ours) Russians wouldn't have had to die to defend Russia. The wanted a two front war with the Nazi's early on.
They feel that we have been actively maneuvering to endanger their safety throughout the entire cold war. They see our wars in Korean, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq Afghanistan as shows of power to demonstrate to them that we can kill millions and get away with it.
Then on top of all that, they were insular and perhaps even xenophobic before that anyway.
Recently Hillary was hawkish on openly attacking them and Obama held his ground well. They need to work their ass off just keep their ports from being useless, so they took the Crimea.
Worse, the way we see it we have done nothing wrong and view what think are acts of national security as acts of war. Maybe they are or aren't, it doesn't really matter here and now. What does matter is that all this damages trust.
How do we go about allying with someone we have so little trust capital to work with?
This is a perspective thing, we each see no fault in allowing the other to be screwed when our own national security is at stake. Then we fault the other for horrible acts of war when they just thought they were defending their national security.
We succeed not in spite of this chaos, but because of it. There is no time for corruption to take hold and when it does it must produce something useful at market. The way many startups are setup they like to "move fast and break things", the rules seem to exist only as long as they are useful.
Sowing distrust in the populace of the US isn't even a good way to get a bestselling book anymore let alone execute complex international policy.
Edit: I assume people flagged this because the live stream is over and it's not clear where any actual content is.