{"id":45461,"date":"2019-04-18T06:31:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45461"},"modified":"2019-04-18T06:31:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:31:14","slug":"debunking-the-assange-is-a-russian-agent-smears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45461","title":{"rendered":"Debunking The \u201cAssange Is A Russian Agent\u201d Smears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2019\/04\/18\/debunking-the-assange-is-a-russian-agent-smears\/\">Debunking The \u201cAssange Is A Russian Agent\u201d Smears<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/medium-9.jpg?fit=800%2C500&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">_____________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Smear 4: \u201cHe\u2019s a Russian agent.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not even the US government alleges that WikiLeaks knowingly coordinated with the Kremlin in the 2016 publication of Democratic Party emails; the Robert Mueller Special Counsel&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/file\/1080281\/download\">alleged only<\/a>&nbsp;that Guccifer 2.0 was the source of those emails and that Guccifer 2.0 was a persona covertly operated by Russian conspirators. The narrative that Assange worked for or knowingly conspired with the Russian government is a hallucination of the demented Russia hysteria which has infected all corners of mainstream political discourse. There is no evidence for it whatsoever, and anyone making this claim should be corrected and dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But we don\u2019t even need to concede that much. To this day we have been presented with exactly zero hard evidence of the US government\u2019s narrative about Russian hackers, and in a post-Iraq invasion world there\u2019s no good reason to go pretending that we have. We\u2019ve seen assertions from opaque government agencies and their allied firms within the US-centralized power alliance, but assertions are not evidence. We\u2019ve seen indictments from Mueller, but indictments are assertions and assertions are not evidence. This doesn\u2019t mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same government agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the public can\u2019t see the evidence, then as far as the public is concerned there is no evidence. Invisible evidence is not evidence, no matter how many government officials assure us it exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Debunking The \u201cAssange Is A Russian Agent\u201d Smears _____________________ Smear 4: \u201cHe\u2019s a Russian agent.\u201d Not even the US government alleges that WikiLeaks knowingly coordinated with the Kremlin in the 2016 publication of Democratic Party emails; the Robert Mueller Special Counsel&nbsp;alleged only&nbsp;that Guccifer 2.0 was the source of those emails and that Guccifer 2.0 was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2001,1779,827],"class_list":["post-45461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-julian-assange","tag-narratives","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45462,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45461\/revisions\/45462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}