[HN Gopher] Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S....
___________________________________________________________________
Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him
to go free
Author : amima
Score : 2461 points
Date : 2024-06-24 23:10 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| stale2002 wrote:
| Crazy that this has gone on for so long.
| pkaye wrote:
| Most of that time was spend escaping the Swedish arrest
| warrant.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| By narrow definitions of escape. He was essentially under
| house arrest, unable to leave the Ecuador embassy for years.
| arp242 wrote:
| Or he could have just faced up to the charges... That house
| arrest was entirely self-imposed for the first five years
| or so.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I don't think you understand what would have really
| happened if he did that, or where he would have really
| ended up.
| DSingularity wrote:
| A good chance dead.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think you do either?
| protocolture wrote:
| I mean he was proven justified there, the grand jury having
| been in place secretly for ages.
| ngetchell wrote:
| Wasn't there a tape accusation as well? I don't see why it
| wouldn't be both.
| mikemitchelldev wrote:
| What could he possibly do next (if he avoids a prison term)?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Write a book, be an internet pundit
| adventured wrote:
| The Edward Snowden route more or less, with his own twists.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > internet pundit
|
| public intellectual*
| karmasimida wrote:
| Set a podcast
| rsingel wrote:
| Get a gig with a Russian media outlet, again... See if Roger
| Stone has any work for him to do? See if GRU has any more
| deliveries it needs him to make?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-t...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah I was gonna say, there's all sorts of media
| opportunities on the right for him. He will be fine.
| doubloon wrote:
| oh how his fans are going to get an awful taste in their
| mouth when they realize which side he is on
| bardan wrote:
| Wikileaks had no "gig" with Russia Today. They produced the
| series tthemselves and it was picked up by various news
| channels - just not any mainstream Western ones (what a
| shock)
| rsingel wrote:
| RT funded it.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/wikileaks-
| founder-...
| bardan wrote:
| According to the article you link which was posted before
| the series aired, but not according to IMDB or Wikipedia
| which anybody could have edited with sources in the 12
| years since:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2223847/fullcredits
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tomorrow
|
| (Or if you actually have a real source for "RT funded it"
| then you should update Wikipedia and IMDB)
| rsingel wrote:
| A real source? Reuters is one of the world's premier news
| agencies, and the piece literally has RT crowing about
| funding the production.
|
| Never ceases to amaze me the hoops that Assange cult
| members will jump through to deny inconvenient facts
| about their hero.
|
| Can only imagine what you come up with to justify
| Assange's pathetic insinuations about Seth Rich and his
| blatant anti-Semitism.
| protocolture wrote:
| If his brain still works he could take another tilt at the
| Senate.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Find a job.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Why would he have a prison term in Australia?
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Probably the best outcome that could be expected for all
| involved. What a bizarre story though. Even if it causes a
| chilling effect on future leakers it did not make the US
| government look better at all, from my view.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| So basically he done his time
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, and voluntarily, at that.
| ein0p wrote:
| The Belmarsh thing wasn't voluntary in the least
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://archive.ph/eYe4G
| dang wrote:
| (That's the NYT piece, for those keeping track. We merged
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40782258 hither)
| java-man wrote:
| Yes, let's spend 6 trillion dollars replacing Taliban with
| Taliban, and destroy the life of one foreigner just to make an
| example.
|
| And who was punished for killing journalists in [0]? The
| whistleblower.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead
| guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally
| disseminating national security material
| faeriechangling wrote:
| He was already effectively a political prisoner. The US made
| enough of an example of him I guess. Expose US war crimes and
| this will happen to you.
| dralley wrote:
| Much like Snowden, people attach to whatever the highest-
| profile thing they released was, and act like that's the only
| thing they released. It's not, it's just what got the most
| attention. It's maybe 0.5% of the portfolio if you're being
| generous.
|
| Both Snowden and Assange went far beyond "blowing the whistle"
| in what they leaked and/or solicited.
| lupire wrote:
| OK, so Snowden ann Assange deserve punishment.
|
| Where is the punishment for the people commiting the crimes
| and treason that Snowden and Assange exposed?
| sanderjd wrote:
| They deserve punishment too.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Where is the punishment for the people commiting the
| crimes and treason that Snowden and Assange exposed?
|
| Other funny things have been exposed too and nothing ever
| happens.
|
| Like for example $12 billion, in hundred dollars bills,
| being send by a military cargo plane to Iraq, after the
| Iraq war. Of these $12 billion, $9bn are totally
| unaccounted for: it's not even clear if they ever made it
| to the plane. That is well documented.
|
| Just imagine the number of crooked politicians and military
| officials involved in such a highway robbery: robbing the
| people, to enrich themselves.
|
| _" Which fraud are we going to commit today, we didn't
| steal enough money: we need to choke on more money, what's
| our plan?"_ _" I know, I know, let's make $10 bn in hundred
| dollar bills disappear!"_
|
| It is also very likely, but probably too soon to be
| exposed/revealed, that such similar shenanigans happened
| with SBF/FTX and the funding of the war in Ukraine, where
| monkey business happened with US donations that probably
| never made it to Ukraine.
|
| To me it's no coincidence that all the charges against SBF
| concerning the bribing of politicians have been dropped:
| that's quite the can of worms for it's certainly related to
| money which disappeared while supposedly going to Ukraine.
|
| Another really funny one too is the government refusing the
| audit of the (missing) gold in Fort Knox (yeah, no, if out
| of $12 bn we know that $9bn vanished, I guarantee you
| there's no way all the gold supposed to be in Fort Knox is
| there). _" It's too complicated to do an audit"_. I read:
| _" a sizeable amount of that gold indeed vanished, like
| those $10 bn in $100 bills"_.
|
| That's my main reason for wanting to pay as little taxes as
| possible: it makes me puke to know I encourage crime.
|
| Now although these traitors and petty thieves shall never
| ever be send to jail, at the end of the day there are more
| important things, like having a clear conscience and being
| able to look your kid in the eyes.
|
| So let these traitors choke on their ill-acquired wealth,
| they deserve to be the miserable cockroaches they are.
| JetSpiegel wrote:
| 1e13 dollars is not that much money, it's just 10
| Instagrams, or a quarter of WhatsApp.
|
| It's not enough to move the needle on the dollar value,
| it's barely more than a buck per person om earth.
| protocolture wrote:
| Yes and they are great for releasing all that extra
| information. Its a fantastic public service they have
| provided.
| sanderjd wrote:
| The details matter because _most_ people don 't think
| _everything_ their governments do should be public
| knowledge, but also don 't think _everything_ they do
| should be a secret. So most people will judge something
| like this based on how close they think the leaker got to
| hitting the right mark with what they released.
| jpz wrote:
| He worked as a conduit for Russian interests.
| protocolture wrote:
| He released public interest information during an election.
|
| It has never been proven he had some killer stuff on trump
| and failed to leak it.
|
| Its not his job to selectively withhold information during an
| election to make demo voters happy.
|
| And trump is basically immune to bad press anyway. What more
| could you say about him that hasnt been said.
|
| This claim never held water and still fails to.
| defrost wrote:
| and stole classified documents.
|
| Wait, Assange or Trump?
| dijit wrote:
| Bad faith.
|
| He acted in the interests of everyone who doesn't like the
| US, you could justifiably say the same thing about him acting
| in China's best interest, or Iran.
|
| Absolute codswallop that you can't hold a government to
| account else you are criticised for aiding their enemies.
| Does that mean we should just sit down and take it because it
| makes us look bad?
|
| I'm the first in line to criticise my government (UK) but
| that doesn't mean I'm intentionally working in the interests
| of it's enemies.
|
| Sod off with these bad faith attacks espousing an opinion
| that no reasonable person could possibly hold.
| dralley wrote:
| I mean, he literally had a show on, and was paid to do so
| by, the Russian state media. And then later on failed to
| publish a set of Russian documents that were leaked to him,
| and also coordinated with (not just received leaks from)
| someone who turned out to be GRU.
|
| Reasonable minds can differ here, I don't think it's bad
| faith to suggest he might have been acting specifically
| towards Russian interests - if not originally, then later
| on.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| How do plea deals work for precedent? As despite the constant
| claim that he was only being charged for assisting in hacking US
| computers, the plea deal is over violations of the Espionage Act
| specifically about receiving and publishing classified documents.
| Or basically his acts as a journalist.
|
| Can this be used to indict other journalists who receive and
| publish classified information? As if so, this feels like a huge
| loss, though I can hardly blame Assange for not continuing the
| fight.
| tptacek wrote:
| They don't. Generally: lower court decisions don't create
| binding precedent.
|
| Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and
| publishing classified information"; he was charged with being
| instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first
| place.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| "Generally" is one of those somewhat troubling terms on a
| case that has severe First Amendment implications, but that's
| good to know.
|
| >Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and
| publishing classified information"; he was charged with being
| instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the
| first place.
|
| Those charges were (presumably) dropped as part of the plea,
| and his plea did not mention them. The plea is only about
| receiving and publishing.
| tptacek wrote:
| The standing indictment at the time of the plea deal is
| very easy to find on Google. And the plea is not only about
| receiving and publishing; what I think you're not seeing is
| the explicitly enumerated "overt actions" you would have
| seen in a full trial, but those "overt actions" are the
| things that connected Assange to his criminal liability in
| this case. But the conspiracy charge is right there.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The standing indictment was over 18(19?) charges, he
| plead guilty to one. A conspiracy charge, stemming from
| his role publishing violating the Espionage Act. Not the
| Computer Fraud and Abuse charge that many, including the
| DoJ's press release, said was the focus of the
| indictment.
|
| The "overt acts" part you mention is over Title 18 793(g)
| which basically says if two people work together in one
| part of a conspiracy they're both guilty of any actions
| their partner made.
| tptacek wrote:
| In any conspiracy charge, the "overt acts" are the
| specific things the accused did to further the
| conspiracy. Here, the distinction is being made between
| receiving a random document and publishing it, the way
| you would if you got, like, military information about
| Estonia, not caring what Estonia thinks about the
| classification of the documents, and _joining a
| conspiracy to deliberately take the documents_ from
| Estonia.
|
| By way of example: the murder-for-hire accusations
| against Ross Ulbricht were listed "overt acts" in his
| conspiracy charge.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Again, the overt acts reference a specific clause of
| title 18, and it would allow punishment of Assange for
| literally anything Manning did. It doesn't seem to be
| about anything further Assange did.
|
| >By way of example: the murder-for-hire accusations
| against Ross Ulbricht were listed "overt acts" in his
| conspiracy charge.
|
| Yes, the supposed murder for hire was something he wasn't
| charged with and wasn't mentioned in his sentencing. It
| was not a part of his trial.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, _conspiracy liability_ makes Assange liable for for
| whatever the charged _conspiracy_ , which included
| Manning, did. The "overt acts" are those things the
| prosecution can prove _Assange himself_ did. They 're the
| glue that connects Assange to the conspiracy.
|
| "Title 18" is almost the entire federal criminal code.
| Saying "a specific clause in title 18" is like saying
| "somewhere, in the entire US federal criminal code, it
| says...".
|
| As I just said: the murder-for-hire scheme --- which I
| believe was in fact part of Ulbricht's sentencing --- was
| an "overt act" in Ulbricht's conspiracy charge.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Saying "a specific clause in title 18" is like saying
| "somewhere, in the entire US federal criminal code, it
| says...
|
| I had referenced the specific clause, 793(g), in my
| previous post to you. It is also referenced in the plea.
| I didn't think I needed to do so again. I can quote the
| section
|
| >If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the
| foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of
| such persons do any act to effect the object of the
| conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall
| be subject to the punishment provided for the offense
| which is the object of such conspiracy.
| tptacek wrote:
| No. 18 USC 793(g) _is the conspiracy charge_. One of the
| elements of a conspiracy charge --- any conspiracy charge
| --- is one or more "overt acts" that demonstrate the
| accused was not merely associated with other members of
| the criminal group, but also actively participated in it.
| That's what the "any act" in your quote refers to ---
| those are the "overt acts". None are listed in this plea
| stipulation.
|
| Here: a Ken White article that is almost entirely about
| how "overt acts" work in conspiracy charges, along with
| their historical purpose:
|
| https://popehat.substack.com/p/overt-acts-and-predicate-
| acts...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So basically, the overt acts are evidence of the crimes
| he plead to, which again, was receiving and publishing
| classified documents. The violations of 793 a, b, and c
| mentioned in the plea, though you're right, those aren't
| overt acts.
|
| I still don't see how the plea is about anything else.
| That if this charge went to trial they may have brought
| up his supposed violations of the CFAA as some kind of
| evidence of his conspiracy doesn't really change things.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are two subthreads about the structure of the plea
| deal, but they're both closely related; both are about
| the question of whether the plea stipulation drops the
| notion that Assange had a direct hand in the conspiracy
| that produced Chelsea Manning's document trove, rather
| than just being a passive receiver who published
| documents he had no real duty, as a non-American, to
| protect.
|
| In both threads, the answer comes down to: the plea
| agreement says otherwise. Assange has stipulated to his
| culpability in the conspiracy --- the 793(g) charge you
| brought up. The plea agreement doesn't list the overt
| acts that _substantiate_ the charge, and would make
| clearer the reasoning behind Assange 's active
| participation. But that's because the plea agreement is a
| stipulation, for which the only evidence needed is that
| of agreement between prosecution and defense.
|
| The superseding indictment is much more explicit. Had the
| case ever gone to trial, you'd have seen at its
| conclusion jury instructions that would have made clear
| the evidentiary threshold --- the overt acts, what acts
| qualify, etc --- to convict on the conspiracy.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| What action is the court taking that you are worried about
| setting precedent? I haven't read more than the linked
| article, but it appears the only role the court will play
| is accepting a plea deal.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The article links the court documents detailing what
| charges he is pleading to. It's receiving and publishing
| classified information.
| tssva wrote:
| The plea deal is about conspiring to obtain them which is
| not receiving and publishing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The plea is linked in the article, it very clearly says
| it's over receiving and willfully communicating
| classified documents.
| tptacek wrote:
| The article links to the plea document.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Yes, I said that.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Are we reading the same document? It clearly states
| Assange "knowingly and unlawfully conspired with Chelsea
| Manning to commit the following offenses against the
| United States..."
|
| The case isn't about Assange simply receiving classified
| material from Manning.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >"knowingly and unlawfully conspired with Chelsea Manning
| to commit the following offenses against the United
| States...".
|
| Why are you quoting that part rather than any of the
| actual offenses? He undoubtedly conspired with Manning to
| receive classified documents for the purpose of
| publishing them, which is what the plea details.
|
| Part (a) even says he "received or obtained" classified
| documents from a person knowing that they were illegally
| obtained. It doesn't say he helped with the illegal
| obtaining.
| tptacek wrote:
| It doesn't list _any_ of the overt acts, because it 's a
| plea agreement, and the defense stipulates to the
| conspiracy; there's nothing to prove, except that the
| prosecution and defense agree.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Then why does it list violations of 793 c, d, and e?
| Those are clearly "overt acts."
| tptacek wrote:
| No. Overt acts are not themselves criminal charges;
| they're evidentiary requirements for a conspiracy charge.
| Individual overt acts don't even have to be backed by
| statutes; an "overt act" in a conspiracy might not itself
| be a criminal violation at all. I think you're trying to
| work back from some faulty first principles here.
|
| What you should do here is compare the plea stipulation
| to the superseding indictment, and note that the "overt
| acts" of the conspiracy charge refer back to the "general
| allegations" section. Or: you could go track down any
| other conspiracy indictment (Ulbricht's is a fun one) and
| see examples of "overt acts" listed explicitly.
| tssva wrote:
| The actual offensive says he knew the documents had been
| and "would be" obtained illegally. The key phrase is
| "would be". Once he knew documents would in the future be
| taken illegally and agreed to receive them and publish
| them it entered the realm of an illegal conspiracy to
| obtain classified material.
|
| This differs from for example The Pentagon Papers where
| the material was delivered to reporters after already
| having been taken. They had no foreknowledge that they
| would be taken.
| tptacek wrote:
| The original indictment goes much further than that! They
| didn't have him on a technicality; they had him as
| effectively the orchestrator of the conspiracy. Who knows
| if that would have held up in court; I think the case
| wasn't all that strong on anything more than a minor role
| for Assange.
| dhx wrote:
| News reports indicate a single alleged offence per 18 U.S.
| Code SS 793 (g)[1] for conspiring with at least one other
| person in the conduct of an offence described in (a)
| through (f).
|
| By way of comparison, the former US president who is also
| in current poll results more likely than not to be elected
| as the next US president is presently alleged to have
| conducted 40 of these 18 U.S. Code SS 793 offences.
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Do
| nald_...
| idlewords wrote:
| Is there a former non-sitting US president? Did someone
| just beaver away at a standing desk for four or eight
| years?
| dhx wrote:
| Typo fixed
| frognumber wrote:
| Legally, no.
|
| Practically, yes.
|
| I've been in situations where there was no precedent, and in
| asking what would happen if this went to court, decisions
| were made based on how lower courts ruled. Legal analyses,
| law review articles, customary practice, etc. all /influence/
| courts.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice,
| etc. all /influence/ courts._
|
| Correct. As a general rule:
|
| - When the "black-letter law" dictates a result (that is, a
| statute or binding precedent), a judge will generally
| follow it -- unless the judge _really_ wants to achieve a
| particular result and is willing to do mental-gymnastics
| rationalizing or to try to get the law changed.
|
| In other situations, judges are typically very busy but
| they still want to get it "right," in accordance with
| whatever their personal mental model of life suggests, _and
| they don 't like being reversed on appeal_. So they
| (judges) look for support -- and try to anticipate possible
| counterarguments -- from a variety of sources, as suggested
| by the adversaries' counsel battling each other's arguments
| -- each of whom is motivated to help the judge do what
| counsel want by finding the sorts of things mentioned
| above.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Journalists generally avoid asking for classified information.
| The belief is that (in the US) a journalist that passively
| receives classified information & publishes it isn't committing
| a crime due to the First Amendment. The actual crime itself was
| committed by the person leaking the information.
|
| Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information. That's
| where the espionage claim comes from.
|
| There's not much precedent on this though and making a plea
| deal avoids establishing one. I am not a lawyer, and this is
| not legal advice. Generally, precedent is established when
| someone appeals their conviction, and a higher court determines
| that the conviction is lawful. Higher court decisions bind
| lower courts, so e.g. if a circuit appeals court says the law
| is "X", every district court within it has to agree.
|
| Since generally, you wouldn't appeal a plea deal, there
| probably won't be legal precedent from this.
|
| That being said, I wonder if the USA will informally say "we
| got Assange; we can get you" the next time a similar situation
| comes up.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The short answer: making a plea deal avoids establishing one.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > I wonder if the USA will informally say "we got Assange; we
| can get you"
|
| I can't imagine we haven't been saying that since the day
| Assange set foot inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
| jfengel wrote:
| I sure can't imagine anyone thinking "I'll get off scot
| free, just like Assange".
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >belief is that (in the US) a journalist that passively
| receives classified information & publishes it isn't
| committing a crime due to the First Amendment. The actual
| crime itself was committed by the person leaking the
| information.
|
| Even if you think Assange did more than this, this plea deal
| is very clearly over passively receiving classified
| information.
|
| The precedent information is good to hear, thank you.
| slg wrote:
| >Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information.
|
| This phrasing makes it sound like Assange asked "Do you have
| this?" when the accusations have always been closer to "Can
| you get me this? Here is how you could go about doing that."
| That takes it out of the realm of journalism in at least the
| legal sense.
| lokar wrote:
| When you encourage someone else to commit a crime, and then
| use the results of that crime in your own work you really
| should not be surprised that law enforcement comes after
| you.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The work was not for profit and in the public interest.
|
| Did he actively encourage people to do things they didn't
| want to do, or did people actively seek the necessary
| advice from him?
|
| Would Assange's problems been solved a single cut out? "I
| can't answer that but I can put you in touch with people
| who can."
| vkou wrote:
| > The work was not for profit and in the public interest.
|
| Any bit of classified information can be reasonably
| considered in the interest of someone in the public.
|
| Public interest can only mitigate the illegality of what
| you're doing, it doesn't just magically make the act
| illegal.
|
| > Did he actively encourage people to do things they
| didn't want to do, or did people actively seek the
| necessary advice from him?
|
| False dichotomy.
|
| If you want to rob a bank, and you come and ask me to be
| the getaway driver, we're both going to hang. It doesn't
| matter who had the idea for the crime, what matters is
| that he materially assisted in carrying it out.
|
| Now, if you robbed a bank, and just dropped a million
| dollars on my porch, that would be a different story.
| That's the defense journalists use when they receive
| illegally obtained information.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > If you want to rob a bank, and you come and ask me to
| be the getaway driver, we're both going to hang. It
| doesn't matter who had the idea for the crime, what
| matters is that he materially assisted in carrying it
| out.
|
| Flawed analogy.
|
| He didn't help them rob the bank. They asked "what is a
| good way to get away from a bank robbery." He answered
| "here are some ideas that have worked in past bank
| robberies."
|
| And it's not a false dichotomy. The law considers mens
| rea to be a very important factor. The law isn't a black
| and white application of imputed standards to our social
| order. You can tell this because we allow juries to
| decide what happens in them.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The work was not for profit and in the public interest.
|
| And so, in your world, if I rob a bank and give all the
| money to really good charities that measurably make
| peoples' live better, it's not illegal?
|
| Or if I kill a known pedophile/child rapist to keep them
| from hurting more children, is that not illegal?
|
| Is that what you believe? If so, why bother having laws
| at all? We just need to ask our modern-day Solomon --
| akira2501, that is -- if something can be justified, and
| as such, is legal. Or am I missing something?
| Cody-99 wrote:
| Assange played an active role in breaking into government
| systems. He wasn't asking "can you get this for me?".
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right - Assange was running password crackers, IIRC. And
| "here's how you could cover it up".
| zgcarter wrote:
| There is a precedent from the Pentagon Papers:
|
| https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/new-york-times-
| co-v-...
|
| As the last paragraph points out, not a _clear_ victory for
| the free press, but the Assange prosecutors know this case
| very well and you are absolutely right that they want to
| avoid another one.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Hopefully the next Wikileaks will have better OPSEC and will
| be completely out of reach from ALL governments
| mdhb wrote:
| If he went back to even thinking about touching classified
| material again in the future he would deserve to be jailed
| just for the stupidity of it alone after this. The takeaway
| here isn't "better opsec".
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| So you're for or against the First Amendment?
| tssva wrote:
| The plea deal is for "conspiracy to obtain and disclose
| national defense information". Having documents dropped in your
| lap and then publishing them is different than conspiring with
| someone to illegally obtain them in the first place.
| esnard wrote:
| JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE
|
| Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison
| on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He
| was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at
| Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane
| and departed the UK.
|
| This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots
| organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders
| from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United
| Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations
| with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not
| yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as
| soon as possible.
|
| After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours
| a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and
| their children, who have only known their father from behind
| bars.
|
| WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government
| corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful
| accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid
| severely for these principles,and for the people's right to know.
|
| As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought
| for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his
| freedom.
|
| Julian's freedom is our freedom.
|
| [More details to follow]
| dang wrote:
| That is the text of
| https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1805388007475732646, for
| those keeping track. (We merged that thread hither from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40782571.)
|
| Other URLs from threads we merged:
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-releas...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/assange-plea....
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgggyvp0j9o
| chromoblob wrote:
| i love just your last line.
| Neil44 wrote:
| 1901 days in prison, after all that time since 2012 holed up in
| a room in the Ecuadorian embassy first.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| He was in isolation in a high security prison without having
| been convicted of any crimes since 22 September 2019. He was
| only released after 'admitting' that he was guilty...
|
| I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any
| countries' courts and justice system after that...
| randomopining wrote:
| That you can't apply any level of nuance to this compared
| to truly authoritarian countries, is kind of childish.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Which ones are truly authoritarian?
| metabagel wrote:
| Russia and China both have authoritarian governments.
|
| https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-
| map?type=fiw&year=2024
| dangus wrote:
| He wasn't convicted of any crimes because he was avoiding
| trial.
| tootie wrote:
| Crimes he was definitely guilt of and could likely have
| plead to at any time, served a sentence and been free
| years ago.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| My memory is the US was trying to extradite Assange to
| the US and was threatening to charge him with Sedition
| with a possibility of decades of prison time. That was at
| least the stated intent of the previous CIA director
| goodpoint wrote:
| They could even murder him.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Wouldn't he have to be a citizen of the US to be charged
| with sedition?
| etc-hosts wrote:
| The US tries to charge foreigners of crimes all of the
| time.
|
| Here's a slightly biased summary, but in this case I
| think the extreme outrage and bias is totally justified.
|
| https://prospect.org/justice/julian-assange-espionage-
| act-19...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| No. Until the recent convictions in relation to January
| 6th, the most recent US conviction for sedition was
| against an Egyptian for his role in the 1993 World Trade
| Center bombing. He died in federal prison.
| resters wrote:
| He helped reveal far more serious crimes committed by US
| officials -- none of whom faced any consequences.
| pie420 wrote:
| If I murder 2 people and reveal that john murdered 22
| people and Bob murdered 36 people, does that mean I get
| to skip trial because I revealed bigger crimes?
| Sometimes, if I can get a plea deal, but this was not the
| case, so what is the problem here?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Getting a plea deal is contingent on the state caring
| about the larger crimes in the first place. See the
| problem?
| RockCoach wrote:
| The problem here is that Assange didn't kill any people,
| while Uncle Sam has killed hundreds of thousands for oil,
| revenge, and preserving the hegemony.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Really bad example when the war crimes revealed were
| actual murders etc. of many, many civilians, and
| Assange's crime was telling the secret (by the rules of a
| country that he was not a citizen of, and of a country
| where he wasn't located) that these war crimes happened
| and that nobody faced any consequences for them.
|
| _Revealing information_ about many murders is very
| different from _doing_ murder.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I had not been following wikilinks. Had he revealed any
| actual crimes?
| asveikau wrote:
| Plea deals and innocent people being pressured into
| accepting guilt is a huge problem in the US criminal
| justice system, but I'm not sure Assange in particular fits
| this. I think he did what is alleged. You could also
| separately argue that it shouldn't be a crime or that
| penalties should be less? I think that is a separate
| discussion.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| > I think he did what is alleged
|
| 'Think' is the operative word here. Assange would not
| have had a jury trial if extradited without the plea
| deal, and for a jury trial, mere opinion isn't enough to
| convict
| ben_w wrote:
| "Following his arrest, he was charged and convicted, on the
| 1st May 2019, of violating the Bail Act, and sentenced to
| fifty weeks in prison."
|
| So sure, given you said "since 22 September", but with a
| huge embassy-shaped reason why they didn't let him out on
| bail _a second time_.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's right he was convicted of a crime and jailed. He
| should have been released from prison for that on 22
| September 2019 but was instead kept imprisoned because of
| the extradition request by the US.
|
| So from 22 September 2019 until his release now he was
| jailed in very strict conditions without having been
| convicted of anything, which to me is unacceptable
| whatever the extradition request situation. Especially
| now that we see that the instant he pleads guilty he is
| immediately freed...
| ben_w wrote:
| That is indeed the consequence of _skipping bail after
| having lost an extradition hearing_ , yes.
|
| What would you have done? "Oh, he ran away again, nothing
| we could have done, this was totally unforeseeable?"
| gambiting wrote:
| Normally people get a tracking bracelet and they have to
| check in every few days but are free to go otherwise,
| given that you know, they haven't been found guilty of
| anything at that point - being kept in a tiny cell in
| isolation for 23 hours a day for 5 years is reserved for
| the worst of the worst criminals, people who even in
| prison are extreme danger to everyone else - it made zero
| sense to keep him locked up that way.
| ben_w wrote:
| _Normally_ people don 't go into an embassy for seven
| years and give speeches from the window to an adoring*
| crowd, leaving the police obliged to post an officer at
| the embassy door 24/7 just in case he leaves because
| they're not allowed in without permission that isn't
| coming.
|
| Was he even wearing a tag on the first bail?
|
| * at least, I _assume_ those crowds were adoring rather
| than booing...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's 5 years in jail (and in isolation 23h a day)
| without trial however you look at it...
| brookst wrote:
| > I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any
| countries' courts and justice system after that...
|
| Couldn't disagree more. By this logic, no country should
| criticize any other country's courts and justice systems
| because they all have problems and massive miscarriages of
| justice.
|
| Do we want more scrutiny and criticism or less? I think the
| world is better if the US and UK aggressively criticize and
| pressure other countries to improve AND ALSO everyone else
| criticizes abuses by the US and UK and pressures them to
| improve.
|
| IMO that is a much better world than one where nobody is
| highlighting abuses or asking anyone else to improve.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Abuse is always highlighted (or minimised) because of
| ulterior motives, not because of the abuse itself.
|
| What I am highlighting is the hypocrisy.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| When it comes to questioning another's moral standing, it
| helps to have a leg to stand on
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day
|
| Why, though? I didn't even think that was a thing in Britain,
| at least if you're not some very high risk criminal convicted
| of violent crimes, which I don't think he is? Regardless of
| what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely
| unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other
| prisoners...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's used as a torture method
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Why, though?
|
| Because he fucked with the powerful.
| kzzzznot wrote:
| Why? To punish and deter.
|
| He exposed terrible things done by large powers, therefore he
| was persecuted absolutely.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Sure that's obvious (or not... depending on one's political
| views), but there must be some legal justification. Or can
| they put someone in permanent solitary confinement without
| giving any reason at all in Britain?
|
| I'm reading at some sites that this isn't really true and
| that he wasn't literally held in a 2x3m cell for 23 hours
| every day. Although it's not very clear what were the
| actual conditions.
|
| edit: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/11/un-
| expert-to.... it's very vague and unspecific though..
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Turns out when governments toss around the words "spy"
| and "espionage" freely and without regard to their actual
| definitions they can get away with things like this.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| He didn't expose anything significant on Russia, for some
| reason.
| exe34 wrote:
| did he raid the fsb servers or the nsa? maybe it's
| because of the source?
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| His role in Wikileaks wasn't to personally raid servers.
| He was receiving leaks that were delivered to him via his
| platform, and then he decided what was worth publishing.
|
| Either he never had been handed any significant leaks on
| Russia, either he chosed to not publish them.
| exe34 wrote:
| So for every crime by one state, he has to publish one
| from another state for balance? Is it not enough that one
| state committed a crime and he reported it?
| A1kmm wrote:
| Wikileaks has published things about Russia:
| https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/
|
| There are a lot of countries they have never published
| anything on. They have a smaller number of large leaks,
| so that is not necessarily out of the ordinary.
|
| I think it is credible that Wikileaks were provided some
| documents from Russian state-sanctioned actors, who knew
| Wikileaks would publish them, and that the state-
| sanctioned actors did so to serve Russian interests. But
| the claim that Wikileaks as a whole is biased towards
| Russia doesn't seem likely.
| adolph wrote:
| _Assange was charged by criminal information -- which typically
| signifies a plea deal -- with conspiracy to obtain and disclose
| national defense information, the court documents say._
|
| What a waste of a life over a pointless and vindictive
| prosecution. Here's hoping all prosecutors involved go the way of
| Stevens'
|
| https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta...
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I'm curious if there are any Australia <-> USA deals here too, in
| terms of restrictions he may have upon arriving to AU
| ChrisNorstrom wrote:
| They think their harrasment of him is going to deter future
| whistleblowers but the only thing they've done is encourage
| future leakers to "go all the way, leak everything no matter how
| damaging, and then kill yourself to be a martyr. They should have
| just pardoned him and let him go.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| still no word of what happened to his beloved pet guinea pigs
| during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy.
| seeknotfind wrote:
| WebMD > "The average guinea pig lifespan is between five to
| eight years"
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Assange freed, didn't have that on my bingo card.
| novacancy wrote:
| I wonder what legal repercussions could follow from him
| "admitting" to have commited whatever they want him to admit
| codezero wrote:
| he has spent a long time resisting, what makes you think he's
| admitting to what "they" want him to admit to?
| surfingdino wrote:
| The article states what's going to happen. He'll be charged and
| immediately released, because he made a deal.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| I suppose this concludes the dark-comedic odyssey that began when
| he flew to Stockholm on 8/11/10 [1], just shy of 14 years later.
| In its totality it reads like something Kafka might have written
| as a teenager.
|
| Whether or not his work had any worth to it, it's hard not to
| conclude that he was a de-facto Russian agent, IMO. The most
| pungent data point is probably that Rohrabacher [2] was mediating
| a pardon deal between him and Trump. [3]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
|
| [2] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kevin-
| mc...
|
| [3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-
| trump-o...
| vr46 wrote:
| Well that was all worth it
| tamimio wrote:
| He is a legend and should inspire future whistleblowers. Both his
| leaks and trials exposed how corrupt the justice system is.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| What, by picking and choosing what content to release to push a
| political agenda?
|
| Like getting leaked data from the DNC and RNC and coordinating
| with the Trump campaign to time DNC leaks for maximum effect (I
| have no love for the DNC) while not releasing RNC content sent
| to you?
| harry8 wrote:
| >What, by picking and choosing what content to release to
| push a political agenda?
|
| I think you've confused wikileaks with the new york times
| there. The times definitely pick and choose. I have seen no
| evidence that wikileaks suppressed anything ever. Link if you
| have it as that would make them more like the times.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Fraid not:
|
| > Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016,
| at the height of last year's presidential election, the
| WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to
| Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee's oldest son and
| campaign surrogate.
|
| > The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency
| organization that the American intelligence community
| believes was chosen by the Russian government to
| disseminate the information it had hacked, actively
| soliciting Trump Jr.'s cooperation.
|
| Source:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-
| sec...
|
| > Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and
| others in the Trump Organization received an email in
| September 2016 offering a decryption key and website
| address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an
| email provided to congressional investigators.
|
| Source: https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/08/politics/email-
| effort-give-tr...
|
| > In the messages, WikiLeaks urged Trump Jr. to promote its
| trove of hacked Democratic emails and suggested that
| President Trump challenge the election results if he did
| not win, among other ideas.
|
| Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-
| trump-jr-comm...
| harry8 wrote:
| Playing sources (presumably to get information) is not
| suppressing stories or burying information. I find it
| difficult to believe Wikileaks would have hesitated a
| nanosecond to hang any trump out to dry given the
| opportunity.
|
| So no.
|
| I think you wanted Wikileaks to suppress the information
| there and they didn't. They published. But hell maybe
| Assange really did decide he preferred syphilis to
| gonorrhoea. Just like the times do, and the post, wsj,
| and Fox, cnn and mother jones. It's a very establishment
| media thing to do. Clapper disagrees, sure.
|
| The content of the emails was the problem not Wikileaks
| for publishing truth.
|
| Wikileaks gave access to third parties for documents they
| were publishing many times. So dues everyone when the
| story is big and impact is desired. So what?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I find it difficult to believe Wikileaks would have
| hesitated a nanosecond to hang any trump out to dry given
| the opportunity.
|
| And yet they did have leaks about the RNC that weren't
| released. Why?
|
| I mean, dirt on Trump isn't hard to come by - are you
| claiming that not once has anyone sent Wikileaks negative
| information on him or his campaign, and that's the only
| reason we haven't seen any?
|
| > I think you wanted Wikileaks to suppress the
| information there and they didn't.
|
| To be unequivocally clear - The DNC is corrupt to its
| very soul. Whatever you or I think of Bernie Sanders, the
| way they handled the whole Sanders/Clinton situation is
| despicable and vile and an insult to the members of the
| party they purport to lead. And the fact that Debbie
| Wasserman-Schulz was running the Clinton campaign,
| effectively, less than 24 hours after being finally
| forced out of DNC leadership, to me just demonstrates
| that those theories were accurate.
|
| > The content of the emails was the problem not Wikileaks
| for publishing truth.
|
| Yes.
|
| The other problem is Wikileaks sitting on OTHER email
| contents and choosing NOT to publish them AND
| communicating with political candidates on what they'd
| like to see leaked and not, and when.
| harry8 wrote:
| I think this thinking is fantasy.
|
| >are you claiming that not once has anyone sent Wikileaks
| negative information on him or his campaign, and that's
| the only reason we haven't seen any?
|
| There is nothing that wikileaks is even credibly accused
| of suppressing. Trump leaks are found on the front page
| of the new york times. Lead story of CNN, NBC, CBS, wapo,
| wsj and fox. Eg his tax return. There is no need for
| whistleblowers to send things to wikileaks. If wkileaks
| didn't publish, you'd see it and also likely claims from
| the source that it happened.
|
| "There must be massive trump dirt so if we haven't seen
| it that's wikileaks supressing it." Difficult to believe.
|
| Again if there is /any/ credible accusation that
| wikileaks suppressed /anything/ at all in support of
| republican presidents, like we know the ny times did,
| let's see it. Let them answer for it specifically. These
| constant smear accusations that are totally evidence free
| look really bad.
| whoitwas wrote:
| I think Wikileaks stopped being reliable long before this
| occurred. I can't find and exact date, but their canary died
| more than a decade ago.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > should inspire future whistleblowers
|
| I'd think his treatment might dissuade future whistle blowers.
| rfoo wrote:
| Well, it would be depressing if we have to rely on The Shadow
| Brokers-style "whistleblowers" in the future.
| ffhhj wrote:
| The world changed a lot, now our computers are surveilance
| tools.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I'm glad Assange is free, but he really pushes the definition.
| He wasn't a whistleblower, he actively pushed whistleblowers to
| deliver information that he wanted to publish. He frequently
| revealed sources in active warzones, and redacted a bunch of
| Russian financial information from their leaks on Syria.
| ggm wrote:
| Politically shrewd for each of the 3 primary governments
| involved, removes the issue from the agenda. I'd say its zero-sum
| outcome for any player: as many people will be angry as happy
| he's freed. the point being it can't be weaponised as easily as
| having him in the cell.
|
| Sweden may differ of course. I don't think either of the 3
| primaries care what Sweden thinks.
| searealist wrote:
| Sweden does as the US tells.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The people downvoting your comment are ignorant on reality.
| It is common knowledge that Sweden has been used by the CIA
| as a black site. Sweden has been a satellite state to the US
| for a long time, just as other countries are or have been
| satellites of Russia.
|
| Edit: Your down votes do not change reality. More important
| countries than Sweden have been satellites, such as East and
| West Germany.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Still waiting on the rebuttal to this. Own up or shut up.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Sweden was not used as a black site.
|
| The US promised to not torture three guys who were handed
| over to them, and then started torturing them, illegally at
| Bromma airport, but this was restricted to things that they
| did not regard as torture, such as drugging people, putting
| things into their colons, use of 'restraints', etc.
|
| There were no black sites in Sweden. There was torture
| here, but only for one afternoon, on an airplane that soon
| left our territory.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > this was restricted to things that they did not regard
| as torture, such as drugging people, putting things into
| their colons
|
| What the _fuck_? Amazing I never heard about this, even
| doing my best to follow the 'extraordinary rendition'
| atrocities.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It's a lot less bad than the worst stuff, so it's easy to
| miss. Sweden lost a case in the ECHR due to this one, and
| we didn't really participate and instead had obtained
| guarantees that weren't held to.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| "Common knowledge" and "black site" have never made sense
| together in the same sentence unless you are a conspiracy
| nut.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I suspect and hope that you're not such a person in real
| life as you give the impression here of being.
|
| - Mainstream media of all political alignments have
| reported on CIA black sites.
|
| - The Red Cross has investigated CIA black sites and
| delivered reports to the White House on them.
|
| - The Council of Europe has investigated CIA black sites:
|
| "A June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated
| 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory
| (with the cooperation of Council of Europe members), and
| rendered to other countries, often after having transited
| through secret detention centres ("black sites") used by
| the CIA, some located in Europe."
|
| - The European Parliament officially criticized (after a
| vote) the European nations (including Seden) who:
|
| "...have been relinquishing control over their airspace
| and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights
| operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being
| used for illegal transportation of detainees"
|
| This is not some "conspiracy nut" stuff. This stuff has
| been widely known for decades and reported everywhere. If
| you didn't know about it, you haven't read the news. You
| can look into it on Wikipedia if you want, of all places:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_black_sites
| draugadrotten wrote:
| One example which comes to mind:
|
| "Swedish papers illuminate CIA renditions"
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7915747
|
| "Sweden Violated Torture Ban in CIA Rendition"
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-
| torture-...
| funOtter wrote:
| Why is this case located with the United States District Court
| For The Northern Mariana Islands?
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| The case is federal, it's not confined in jurisdiction. But the
| plea deal is being entered there because of _" defendant's
| opposition to traveling to the continental United States to
| enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal U.S.
| District Court to the defendant's country of citizenship,
| Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion
| of the proceeding"_
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nmid.64...
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Interesting. So he'll have to physically be present in the
| CNMI? Presumably he'll fly London-Tokyo-Saipan, since this is
| just about the only way to get there without transiting the
| US (including Hawaii).
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Yes, he'll be in court in Saipan on Wednesday morning to
| enter the plea. Apparently he's already left London,
| according to WikiLeaks twitter account and other reports.
| Don't think he's flying coach though : )
| martyvis wrote:
| Apparently going via Bangkok. https://x.com/eevblog/status/
| 1805402801658638356?t=NWDJGlqrI...
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Ah, it's a private jet (Bombardier Global 6000), not
| commercial aviation. Then again, after all he's been
| through, it would hardly be fair to subject Assange to
| the horrors of cattle class on United.
| perilunar wrote:
| London - Bangkok: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airc
| raft/9h-vtd#35d51855
|
| Bangkok - Saipan: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airc
| raft/9h-vtd#35d863e6
| r24y wrote:
| > proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the
| defendant's country of citizenship, Australia
|
| This is a little disingenuous, and made me chuckle. It's
| faster and cheaper to get to Australia from the US mainland
| than it is from Saipan. Yes, it's physically closer as
| stated, but does not confer the claimed benefits.
| beaeglebeachedd wrote:
| That was my thought too. It's outside the mainland customs
| zone though which is full of fascist angry CBP agents at
| the ports of entry. Maybe CNMI immigration is easier? It's
| also faster/easier to escape maybe, although USVI is also
| outside mainland customs and easy to slip out of.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's a chartered flight, so it will be faster and cheaper
| (assuming it continues to Australia).
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Because it's about as far away from the US mainland as you can
| get and relatively close to Australia where he's going. Also
| it's conveniently very far away from any journalists. At least,
| I can't imagine those shipping out in large numbers on short
| notice.
|
| So, they get to rubber stamp this and get it over with without
| too much scrutiny in the media before the man starts giving
| non-stop interviews in Sydney or wherever he is going in
| Australia.
| sackfield wrote:
| In an ideal world we would get to do a reverse investigation to
| understand which government officials were complicit in his very
| obviously politically motivated detention, action would be taken
| upon those individuals to ensure accountability, and the system
| itself would be updated so powerful interests can't abuse the law
| like this. How far are we from this world?
| dboreham wrote:
| Responsibility has to be pretty defuse, right? You can at least
| begin with all the presidents in office since he was
| prosecuted, until N-1 since presumably the Nth just released
| him.
| sackfield wrote:
| Diffusion of responsibility is definitely a defense in these
| cases, but the system should recognize this shortcoming and
| assign accountability (at least in an ideal world).
|
| Although I'm willing to bet that the true actors here weren't
| necessarily presidents (even though they would ultimately be
| accountable like you say). Would be interesting to see who
| demanded what and when.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Diffusion of responsibility comes from diffusion of power,
| which is an intended goal of many stable systems of
| government. Cuts both ways.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's not to lionize Assange, but these are almost crimes
| against humanity, they stole peoples tax dollars and then
| built a surveillance state used against the citizens. When
| that was revealed they then used the same tools to destroy
| a single human being for the purposes of creating a decade
| long chilling effect for anyone who might consider doing
| the same.
|
| There shouldn't be any diffuse responsibility for
| participating in this farce at any level. When the
| information was released the public never clamored for it
| to be investigated and for people to be hunted down and
| jailed for releasing it. It was entirely a captured
| administrative state claiming for itself rights it
| demonstrably never had, such as claiming a foreign national
| committed treason, or that he could be viewed as an "enemy
| combatant."
|
| To have gone along with this willingly deserves the same
| scrutiny we gave German officers at the end of WWII.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| > _There shouldn 't be any diffuse responsibility for
| participating in this farce at any level._
|
| I would argue there should, no exception. Not even WWII.
| While keeping in mind that the responsibility was so
| gigantic to begin with, that even diffusing it might end
| up putting most participants in jail, some of them for a
| long time.
| etchalon wrote:
| A lot of Assange supporters are going to feel weird about
| giving Biden credit for his release, especially since Biden
| was part of the administration that initially decided to
| pursue Assange.
| TallTales wrote:
| Also because he was forced into pleading guilty for doing
| journalism. A great crime has been committed against
| Assange and I understand why he would do this. I would
| never ask him to spend another day in a small Ecuadorian
| embassy room with no living facilities or in a medieval
| torture cell in England... He has suffered more for the
| free people of the world than we have a right to ask for
| but this is not a just outcome.
| dools wrote:
| He wasn't "doing journalism". WikiLeaks just posted a
| completely unevaluated firehose of data fed to it by
| whomever, which is why they were such an easy asset for
| Russian intelligence.
| rendall wrote:
| This is misinformation. Their policy was never to publish
| anything they could not verify, and the "asset for
| Russian intelligence" was only ever a DNC and US
| intelligence smear to discredit Wikileaks.
| af78 wrote:
| It's not just "DNC and US intelligence." Wikileaks tried
| to influence the 2017 election in France among other
| examples. See https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacronLeaks.
| This partially backfired when the dump of e-mails they
| published was found to contain russian-language messages.
|
| That Wikileaks systematically favors the russian
| government, and never does anything contrary to the
| interests of the russian government, strongly suggests
| they are an asset of russia.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Exposing corruption mainly in the anglosphere is not some
| systematic error if that is what you do best and where
| most of tge organisation live and know people.
|
| You could claim Wikileaks is a Thai or South African
| asset too on those preconditions.
| rendall wrote:
| Tell me and be honest: is that link to a politically-
| motivated, unproven allegation that will be believable
| only to those who want to believe, because the "evidence"
| will be a rabbit warren of innuendo, emotionalism,
| question begging, circular citations, and talking head
| pundits assuring us all that they have seen the evidence
| and "it's extremely credible"? Because that's all the
| anti-Assange people have so far.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Does it not count as whistleblower? You see wrong doing
| and tell a bout it.
|
| "I'we seen bad thigs, this is all i got, lets look at it
| together."
| varjag wrote:
| There were hardly any wrong things uncovered in the
| cables though. The most shocking part of them is American
| civil servants are pretty good at prose.
| roenxi wrote:
| I'm not exactly disagreeing because it is a factual view.
| But there are some knotty issues that go a lot deeper.
|
| 1) The US was doing a lot of things wrong. Going off the
| 2011 cables [0] they were spying on various people they
| weren't meant to be, there were one or two things that
| look war crimes to me but who knows technically and a few
| gems like "Der Spiegel reported that one of the cables
| showed that the US had placed pressure on Germany not to
| pursue the 13 suspected CIA agents involved in the 2003
| abduction of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen".
|
| 2) It wasn't obvious in that leak that the US was doing
| anything _counter the interests of the US_. But Assange
| isn 't a US citizen and wasn't in the US at the time, so
| that isn't a reasonable standard to hold him to.
|
| 3) Even internally to the US though there is a reasonable
| argument that he was helpful. If US citizens don't have
| easy access to this sort of information, how are they
| supposed to effectively exercise democratic control on
| the government? People are going out and doing terrible
| things in their name which, arguably, are
| counterproductive and they would probably not want done.
| Accountability requires sunlight and they can't debate
| whether there is enough sunlight without people like
| Assange.
|
| 4) It turns out that the US does have a huge probably-
| illegal certainly-ill-advised spying program that was
| being sniffed out by leakers. The response to Assange
| seems likely to be part of a campaign to keep material
| information on such topics like that out of the public
| sphere.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomati
| c_cable...
| varjag wrote:
| I could somewhat follow you until (3). Throwing the
| confidants and allies under the bus for idle public
| curiosity is absolutely not an acceptable trade-off.
| roenxi wrote:
| If I dig in to the Saudi Arabia section of wikipedia I
| get to "Diplomats claim that Saudi Arabian donors are the
| main funders of non-governmental armed groups like Al-
| Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)". That is a
| quintessential staunch US ally. It probably _is_
| acceptable to throw them under a bus, metaphorically
| speaking and it is more useful than mere idle curiosity
| be useful to have that sort of information in the public
| discourse. The spending and liberty-backsliding done in
| the name of terrorism has been material to date.
|
| It might help you to follow the perspective if you
| consider it is plausible that the US's current diplomatic
| strategy is ineffective and needs pressure to reform.
| Especially after discounting the heft of their domestic
| economy. From what I've seen of the game theory,
| generally speaking best policy is to be scrupulously open
| and honest with very short bursts of sudden backstabbing
| when it makes overwhelming sense. The is, happily, a
| strategy that is highly compatible with radically
| transparent democracy.
|
| There isn't a way to run this sort of institution without
| transparency. The incentives don't tend to work out.
| varjag wrote:
| I'm not following. Do you think that a confidant or a
| source from within Al-Q, Taliban or Saudi govt in general
| should be thrown under the bus?
| dools wrote:
| Let's assume there was stuff that _needed_ to be leaked
| in the public interest: we have a perfectly good counter
| example which is Snowden.
|
| You know who _didn 't_ go to jail? Glenn Greenwald.
| mda wrote:
| I agree they have no idea about journalism. I remember
| they had put a big pile of emails sent to some government
| agency in Turkey. It was all some people complaining
| about daily things, reporting issues in their cities etc
| (emails were not anonymized of course), They just dumped
| them and claimed they were exposing the corrupt
| government.
| darby_nine wrote:
| I'm struggling to figure out how wikileaks works as a
| russian intelligence asset in a way that somehow doesn't
| apply more aptly and openly to western media as a whole.
| Hell our entire elections are built around directly and
| indirectly paying media to run content ("ads").
|
| There is no genuine concern here over some deep
| vulnerability our society has to russians or anyone
| because of wikileaks. Assange (nor snowden) caused any
| material harm remotely proportional to the blowback
| they've received since. This is about punishment for
| circumventing state-level controls and embarrassing the
| state. To think that Trump would somehow be more lenient
| on either is unthinkable--he's part of the same class of
| people that Clinton is that is most sensitive to the
| health of systems Assange threatens.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Oh, but it does, and that's also a problem. Key Western
| media, for instance the NYT, are seriously compromised
| due to being poster children for what's called 'MICE'
| (Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego): if the NYT, like all
| newspapers, is going broke in the age of the Internet,
| it's got all of that as vulnerabilities, especially Ego
| as it sees itself as the bulwark of truth, yet it can't
| pay its bills.
|
| Enter Russian oligarchs, just like they bought up London,
| and then control the oligarchs by force when you can't
| simply direct them by shared ideology, and you've got
| pretty much the most powerful propaganda outlet you could
| possibly have, until you exploit it so heavily that you
| burn its former reputation to the ground. Which you do,
| because you yourself care nothing for its well-being:
| it's a tool for your political aims in fighting NATO and
| furthering your empire.
|
| Sure, it applies to western media as a whole, from the
| bottom to the top.
|
| If WWIII had stayed entirely in the infosphere, and
| Russia had not invaded Ukraine and tried to make good on
| their preparations, nobody would ever have known WWIII
| had been waged in the infosphere. That's how well it had
| been going. It ran aground when physical countries had to
| be annexed.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| My recollection is that the Obama administration was split
| on this, with DoJ officials enthusiastic but Obama
| purportedly being concerned about the political
| implications for journalism. The charges were only filed in
| 2018/2019 under the Trump administration, which presumably
| did not have major concerns about journalism. Am I wrong in
| this?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > concerned about the political implications for
| journalism
|
| As I recall, Wikileaks made the choice to take sides in
| politics, so the blame lies with them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Without starting the whole "is publishing documents
| received from an enemy of the state seditious," debate, I
| didn't think there was supposed to be a jail term on
| taking sides in politics. :-)
| vkou wrote:
| No, but there may be jail terms for assisting your source
| in accessing computer networks in order to leak that
| information.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Hillary wanted to drone Assange, so you would expect
| Wikileaks to take her opponent's side
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| I'm trying to work this out myself. Julian's wiki page
| has
|
| > He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012[10] on
| the grounds of political persecution and fears he might
| be extradited to the United States.[11]
|
| It seems to me like the Trump administration simply
| mainted the status quo of what came before them. One
| theory could be the timing of the charges was more
| aligned with Ecuador changing PM/kicking Assange out of
| the embassy. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/14/lenin-
| moreno-julian-assan...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The DOJ and the Obama administration were in agreement
| that you would have had to prosecute the papers and
| journalists who had previously run stories on the Bush
| era leaks revealed through Wikikeaks as well.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
| security/julia...
| roenxi wrote:
| In the sense that the US letting up on the poor man is a
| surprise, yes. But without having polled the pro-Assange
| crowd it doesn't seem like a special surprise that it was
| Biden. He's been the name on impressive things before, like
| ending the Afghanistan war (which at the time had been a
| political humiliation for the US longer than Assange had).
|
| Supporting transparency and good journalism isn't a
| partisan issue, and there are going to be good people in
| any administration. Plus Assange wasn't annoying
| presidents, he was going after people in the deep state.
| kristopolous wrote:
| The Biden administration doesn't have a terrible track
| record with a bunch of things (bringing back net neutrality
| for instance) they just have a really bad marketing
| department.
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't know if Biden had anything to do with this, but
| he has some good old school democrat instincts. The
| problem is that he's surrounded by globalists and
| progressives who can't loudly promote the good things he
| did, like tariffs, getting out of Afghanistan, initially
| maintaining tight border restrictions, etc.
|
| I mean, even if Biden has something to do with this plea
| deal, his staffers won't promote it because they think
| Assange is a kremlin puppet who conspired to help Trump
| get elected.
| tptacek wrote:
| Or: nothing really interesting happened here at all, the
| USAO figured they were 2-3 years out from wrapping up a
| trial on these charges, that the only toothy charges they
| had for Assange were conspiracy charges for which
| Assange's active participation was weak, and so the
| sentencing guidelines would likely have left him at "time
| served", which is not a good use of the prosecution's
| time.
|
| But, I mean, sure, maybe Biden directed DOJ about an open
| case, and AG Garland just rolled with it, because he sure
| seems like the type.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm just responding to the person giving Biden credit
| above. I don't know what happened. But the DOJ is under
| the executive, so why wouldn't Biden be able to direct
| the DOJ about the case? Even if to say "I don't want my
| administration prosecuting whistleblowers?"
| tophi wrote:
| You are not wrong. Nor are they.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Some of the Bernie people managed to sneak their way into
| the Biden administration in a few minor departments.
|
| They were too virtuous to run an election but they seem
| to make pretty decent policy decisions
| varjag wrote:
| Right it's all little Bernie elves, nothing can be
| credited to the sitting president at all.
| rayiner wrote:
| Biden is a potted plant. I saw him at a small campaign
| event in Iowa five years ago, where all the candidates
| delivered a speech. He made it through the speech okay
| (like his SOTU) but they accidentally started playing the
| transition music early and he completely derailed. He
| started saying random things like "support the troops."
| He was not there anymore in the moment.
|
| Voters backed Biden in the primary because he was a
| throwback to an earlier version of the party. But the
| Elizabeth Warren bots ended up running the administration
| anyway.
| safety1st wrote:
| To quote the article: ""This was an independent decision
| made by the Department of Justice and there was no White
| House involvement in the plea deal decision," National
| Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a
| statement Monday evening."
| impossiblefork wrote:
| This isn't Biden being decent though.
|
| They're forcing Assange to 'confess' to a crime in the US,
| where he has never been and which creates enormous
| problems. It should be remembered how severe what the US
| was doing at the time. They got some people handed over to
| them here in Sweden, who they agreed to not torture, and
| then started already at the airport. They had torture
| facilities in Poland, where people almost certainly died,
| etcetera.
|
| What Assange did was legal and what the many activities the
| US was engaging in to obtain people abroad etc., illegal.
| He has no duty to the US, because he is not a US citizen or
| permanent resident.
|
| Consequently even this is not a friendly act from Biden. It
| ends Assange's imprisonment, but it is a use of threats in
| order to obtain something from him, namely his
| 'confession'.
| wmf wrote:
| There has been reporting on this. Apparently there was one
| zealous person in DOJ pushing the Assange case and everybody
| else thinks it's too weak to be worth it.
| tyingq wrote:
| This article from the Intercept covers it pretty well. The
| prosecutor in question is Gordon Kromberg.
|
| https://archive.is/E5KbI
|
| Here's another:
| https://www.newagebd.net/article/226187/julian-assanges-
| gran...
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| It's interesting, if you believe that one person can take
| down the system - as a whistleblower must - well surely, one
| person can buck the system's instincts and try to take down
| _you_.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Don't forget Hillary was fixated on Assange for a long time,
| and was even quoted with "Can't we just drone the guy?".
|
| The direct spat lead to Assange helping Trump and the
| Russians publish Hillary's email server spool.
|
| I don't like that Assange ended up helping Trump and Russia,
| but you can't blame him for helping the one person who can
| kick the person out of office who wants to Tomahawk you
| harry8 wrote:
| I think this is nonsense?
|
| As far as I know there is zero evidence that wikileaks did
| not publish everything newsworthy that they were given
| regardless of who it helped or hindered.
|
| Anyone have anything credible showing they suppressed
| anything ever?
| whoitwas wrote:
| Wikileaks canary died a long, long time ago. Nothing from
| them has been trustworthy for a long time.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I thought it was the warrant canary of their email
| provider (Riseup) that died in 2016. Did Wikileaks ever
| even have a canary?
|
| Riseup currently has a canary[1], they state that it
| would not trigger for "gag orders, FISA court orders,
| National Security Letters" which seems like it makes it
| pretty useless.
|
| 1. https://riseup.net/en/canary
| whoitwas wrote:
| From wikileaks:
| https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys
| bbarnett wrote:
| This says nothing about it being a canary. All canaries
| are stated as such.
|
| Instead, all I see is some debate about PGP.
|
| I can believe that only one submission ever used it. PGP
| is not friendly to people who barely undersrand how
| computers work (99.999% of the population), and some
| panicking whistleblower isn't interested in taking a
| layman's course in crypto to send some docs.
|
| So why would wikileaks renew their useless(from their
| perspective) PGP key?
| edm0nd wrote:
| Wikileaks in general (as a website) has been dead for
| years now. Just go look at the website.
|
| Last update in the Leaks section is from 2018.
|
| Last update in the News section is from 2021.
|
| I'm interested to see if Assange brings it back to life.
| rtpg wrote:
| I thought there was some story about Wikileaks receiving
| a bunch of stuff regarding Russian gov't officials and
| there was internal debate in the org and it ended up not
| being published. Was that just a made up story?
| bardan wrote:
| It isn't made up. It was during one of the email leaks
| when the org was stretched to it's limits. Suddenly they
| get these documents that they don't have time to fully
| parse and don't look very interesting anyway. Immediately
| there are dozens of articles put out simultaneously about
| how Wikileaks refused to publish Russian documents. I
| guess they learned about the documents being passed to
| Wikileaks in the first place, wonder who let them know?
|
| The documents were later published elsewhere and nobody
| cared because they were uninteresting.
| rtpg wrote:
| I mean all of their leaks are politically motivated, they
| are axiomatically a cutout. acting scandalized that
| someone tried to leak stuff is weird. I get the
| overworked argument in theory, but odd they didn't
| publish it at all in the end.
| bardan wrote:
| As I mentioned they were in the middle of one of the
| biggest releases in their history, the submitted
| documents didn't look interesting and indeed when they
| were published nobody cared. Do you know what they were?
| Publishers won't just publish any old trash you send
| them.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Foreign Policy: WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian
| Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign
|
| https://archive.is/ztpnZ
| rendall wrote:
| 404 not found
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Fixed, ty.
| CalChris wrote:
| Unproven. At best unproven and denied.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-
| strik...
| nullc wrote:
| Your link does not include a denial, it includes Clinton
| saying she did not recall making such a comment. Is there
| an outright denial elsewhere?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Your link does not include a denial
|
| I don't recall calling for or making detailed plans to
| assassinate the leaders of the G7 at their recent summit.
|
| I also don't recall claiming that you were a pedophile, a
| murderer and a cross-dresser.
|
| So does that mean you believe I have actually said/done
| the above, as I haven't _denied_ them?
| nullc wrote:
| No one reported you claimed those things and particularly
| not in an official meeting where there should have been
| minutes and would have been witnesses which could have
| boosted a lack of recollection to certainty.
|
| Your examples also fail to continue with "but if I did it
| was a joke" -- a remark itself almost as damning as the
| act. We're not talking about mere defamation in the case
| of Assange: talking about the secretary of state-- who
| unambiguously has the power to murder foreign persons
| with a suggestion-- suggesting that she's would joke
| about murdering people. Not a great look.
|
| So, no, your remarks are unambiguously not denials, but
| no denial was required in your case.
| oska wrote:
| Mate, this is the comment that they were _directly_
| replying to :
|
| > At best unproven and denied.
| paulddraper wrote:
| 1. Clinton neither admitted nor denied it. She only said
| she "didn't recall" making that statement.
|
| 2. In any case, Clinton has been very openly critical of
| Assange, saying the charges were not punishing journalism
| and that "he has to answer for what he's done." [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Qc19Qk3KKCw?t=50
| CalChris wrote:
| _Snopes_ sourced that accusation to the far right _True
| Pundit_ which had also contributed to the Pizza Gate
| conspiracy theory. I 'm done here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Pundit
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Logical fallacy
| shadowgovt wrote:
| _Ad hominem_ is a fallacy if you are arguing
| hypotheticals and philosophy in a Greek salon.
|
| In understanding how the world around us works,
| credibility matters quite a bit, and "I'm not interested
| in pretending _True Pundit_ says true things " is a
| pretty reasonable shortcut.
|
| Rather than just thought-terminate with "logical
| fallacy," the burden is now on the one bringing the
| evidence to bring it via a channel _other_ than _True
| Pundit._
| paulddraper wrote:
| For whatever role True Pundit played in spreading the
| rumor, Clinton played an equally large role via her
| "denial."
|
| https://x.com/wikileaks/status/783424443070738433
| Applejinx wrote:
| Clinton has had a knack for knowing the real truth of a
| situation and either not wanting to share that with the
| public, or doing it in a haughty way where she's simply
| not believed. Knowing what I know about her in that way,
| such a quote is worrying.
|
| It implies that she's being characteristically tonedeaf
| and screwing up the communication of some pretty serious
| concerns about Assange, but I think that's no mystery by
| now. You can always get Clinton to make it all about her
| and spin it in a way that can let you get away with damn
| near anything, but that's just exploiting personal
| failings on her part, where if you dig into what she
| knows it's unsettling how sharp she is.
|
| You can't go by whether Clinton's screwed up the optics.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Check your sources. Alex Jones doesn't count.
| usernottaken wrote:
| I don't think the issue is whether Clinton made this
| comment or not. The legend simply points out what every one
| is thinking. That this threw the election for her, and that
| is likely her entire perspective on this. The Trump admin
| was likely motivated to prosecute, so as to appear they
| were not in collusion with the release of the emails, and
| the current administration directly backed HC. People like
| Kromberg do not come out of a vacuum.
| richrichie wrote:
| No evidence of Russian hand. Most likely a DNC insider
| work.
| crummy wrote:
| A DNC insider that set up a very large trail indicating
| external phishing?
|
| Edit: at the time I think this was considered to be a
| pretty comprehensive description of what happened. Not
| sure if new information has come to light since then.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/mg7xjb/how-hackers-broke-
| int...
| richrichie wrote:
| Anything is possible. Don't underestimate the stupidity
| of the party members.
|
| Hillary ran her own email server that trafficked
| classified information and that was maintained by a
| couple of Pakistani dudes.
| zarzavat wrote:
| This doesn't make sense because the Assange case has been a
| diplomatic issue between the US and Australia ever since
| Albanese came to power.
|
| Ultimately the responsibility falls to the President since
| the DOJ isn't responsible for international relations. Biden
| must have thought the case was important otherwise there's no
| reason to harm relations with an ally over something like
| that.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There is a big overlap between political organizations and
| organized crime.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| I was reminded of this joke:
|
| > A city slicker shoots a duck out in the country. As he's
| retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that
| since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him.
| After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the
| matter "country style."
|
| > "What's country style?" asks the city boy.
|
| > "Out here in the country," the farmer says: "when two fellers
| have a dispute, one feller kicks the other one in the balls as
| hard as he can. Then that feller, why, he kicks the first one
| as hard as he can. And so forth. Last man standin' wins the
| dispute."
|
| > Warily the city boy agrees and prepares himself. The farmer
| hauls off and kicks him in the groin with all his might. The
| city boy falls to the ground in the most intense pain he's ever
| felt, crying like a baby and rolling around on the ground.
| Finally he staggers to his feet and says: "All right, n-now
| it's-it's m-my turn."
|
| > The farmer grins: "Forget it, you win. Keep the duck."
| Buttons840 wrote:
| The real life version is a company sues you for a stupid
| reason and after spending a couple hundred thousand dollars
| on your defense the company loses and says "our bad lol", and
| then the matter is settled.
|
| Or, in this case, after prosecutors hold someone in prison
| for a decade or two they offer a plea deal.
| acer4666 wrote:
| That's not what's happened here. His time in UK prison
| counts towards his US charges and is the reason he's not
| doing time in US prison. It's more like if "settling things
| country style" involved giving each other ducks, and after
| round one the farmer received a duck then said "forget it
| keep your duck".
| paulddraper wrote:
| That's like playing "who can punch the softest" with my dad
| silisili wrote:
| Oh man, core memory unlocked. Only fell for that one once!
| paulddraper wrote:
| At least you won :)
| ajross wrote:
| > action would be taken upon those individuals to ensure
| accountability
|
| Out of genuine curiosity: what "actions" do you want taken and
| what accountability are you interested in? I mean, to be blunt:
| you think this is a crime, right? You want someone charged and
| prosecuted in a court, with due process, in front of a jury of
| peers, yada yada.
|
| So... what if your imaginary prosecutor jumps ship to somewhere
| else where they get arrested and detained, and then refuse to
| come back to the US to face trial. Are they not then a
| political prisoner? Why not?
|
| The point being: Assange wasn't thrown in jail without trial,
| he was thrown in jail because he refused trial. And there's an
| important difference.
| jesterson wrote:
| Oh boy, very far, unfortunately.
|
| What you say we need badly as it keeps every government
| employee accountable for what they did.
| tophi wrote:
| Cheers. what say you to Navalny's torture, detainment, and
| death?
| pastage wrote:
| Corrupting legal processes with a combination of weasel talk
| and bureaucracy is always the first step towards a Navalnyj
| situation. When that happens to political dissidents how ever
| bad they are we should all feel great concern.
|
| But I might missunderstand you.
| sackfield wrote:
| I don't know a lot about it, on the face of it I think its
| terrible. Why do you ask?
| hajile wrote:
| Most reasonable people would denounce BOTH. You seem to be
| pushing toward the idea that "if they do something evil, my
| evil is no longer evil".
| chaoskitty wrote:
| It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of
| whistleblowing, which informs us, the citizens, about what our
| governments are doing that's illegal, than about the illegal
| activities themselves.
|
| What does that say about those people? Are they easily led by
| emotion? They certainly don't care about the rule of law, if
| breaking the law by others can so easily be ignored. They aren't
| particularly patriotic, if they think that subverting the checks
| and balances in their preferred kind of government is fine.
|
| I'm glad this partiular episode will be finished soon.
| tene wrote:
| You've got it exactly right, many people in the US care far
| more about compliance with and respect for authority than they
| do about rule of law.
| slg wrote:
| >It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of
| whistleblowing...
|
| This is true in both directions and Assange is the perfect
| example of that. Someone being a whistleblower is not a get out
| of jail free card and there are still laws regarding how
| whistleblowing should be handled and what qualifies. Assange
| leaked a lot of important stuff that qualifies, but that wasn't
| all he leaked or did. A shockingly few number of people seem
| willing to engage this issue with the nuance that is requires
| and either label Assange a hero or a villain when he clearly is
| somewhere in between.
| protocolture wrote:
| I am not aware of anything he has leaked being problematic.
| In fact, the US couldnt demonstrate that he had lead to the
| death of any soldiers or spies. And in a lot of cases, the
| spying was certainly unjustified.
|
| I find it troubling that people dont have the nuance to
| identify that hes a bit of a smelly housemate and problematic
| manager but ultimately a clear net benefit to mankind.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _In fact, the US couldnt demonstrate that he had lead to
| the death of any soldiers or spies._
|
| Isn't "it's difficult to prove that people literally died
| because of his actions" a pretty low bar to set?
| protocolture wrote:
| Not when the claim being made was that his leaks would
| lead to death.
| sanderjd wrote:
| ... no, "possibly didn't actually get anybody killed" is
| still a low bar, even when the claim is that it might.
| dralley wrote:
| Julian Assange, on his leaking of the names of hundreds
| of Afghan civilian informants into the hands of the
| Taliban:
|
| "Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed,
| they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
|
| I personally don't see much moral need to, for example,
| somehow obtain proof that the Taliban actually killed
| people based specifically off of his actions. He
| obviously doesn't actually care if they did.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Well put. This is the point I was trying to make, but I
| was more glib. It is perfectly reasonable to criticize
| someone for jeopardizing peoples' lives, without waiting
| to find people who were provably killed as a direct
| consequence.
| slg wrote:
| >I am not aware of anything he has leaked being
| problematic.
|
| I hesitate to even bring it up because it tends to poison
| any online discussion, but the DNC leaks were a pretty
| obvious one. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt
| that the leaks were truly whistleblowing despite not
| actually revealing any illegal behavior, the way he
| continued to insinuate that Seth Rich was his source
| despite Assange still being in contact with the source
| after Rich's death should make it clear that Assange was
| not acting ethically.
|
| >but ultimately a clear net benefit to mankind.
|
| And this was exactly my original point. This isn't how the
| law works. We don't throw the good and bad on the scales of
| justice to see which side is heaviest. He did plenty of
| good things. He committed some crimes. The good things
| don't excuse the crimes.
| 6502nerdface wrote:
| > This isn't how the law works. We don't throw the good
| and bad on the scales of justice to see which side is
| heaviest.
|
| Shoot, there goes the argument I was planning to deploy
| against Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.
| mr_toad wrote:
| I'm pretty sure your founding fathers committed what
| would be considered by the law of the land at the time to
| be treason and sedition. So did people like Nelson
| Mandela and Ghandi.
|
| And on the other hands there are Nazis who just followed
| legal orders.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We kind of do look at the big picture when deciding a
| proper punishment.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| First, Assange isn't a whistleblower, nor a leaker. He was a
| publisher. Wikileaks received leaked documents from
| whistleblowers and published them. Or at least received
| documents from somewhere and published them.
|
| In the beginning Assange tried to vet the leaks he published.
| He contacted the US over the Manning leaks to go over them so
| he could publish without risk, the US refused.
|
| So Assange set up a huge team of journalists to comb through
| the documents to see what was safe to publish. One of those
| journalists working for The Guardian proceeded to publish the
| key to the entire database, ensuring everything was leaked
|
| Shortly after, he ends up in embassy and was unable or
| unwilling to do similar things.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| There's nuance here that I didn't originally appreciate,
| thanks!
|
| Interested in any links you could provide, too.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The Wikipedia article handles it adequately, https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Unredacted_cable_rel...
|
| If you want a deeper dive, I'm sure something exists but
| I don't remember where it would be.
| slg wrote:
| >Shortly after, he ends up in embassy and was unable or
| unwilling to do similar things.
|
| Are you suggesting with this "unable or unwilling to do
| similar things" part that he should be excused because he
| tried to do it initially? Should we forgive a lapse in
| journalistic ethics from that point forward because he
| started out on the right path and just couldn't stick to
| it?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Being forced into taking refuge in a tiny foreign embassy
| because the country whose war crimes you exposed is
| trying to lock you in a dungeon for life and/or
| assassinate you isn't, "a lapse in journalistic ethics".
| Our government has been the bad guy every step of the way
| in this whole affair.
| slg wrote:
| > because the country whose war crimes you exposed is
| trying to lock you in a dungeon for life and/or
| assassinate you
|
| Maybe the plea deal should be an opportunity to
| reevaluate these hyperbolic claims regarding the
| potential punishment that awaited Assange.
|
| >Our government has been the bad guy every step of the
| way in this whole affair.
|
| And that was the exact lack of nuance I was criticizing.
| One side being a bad guy does not make the other side a
| good guy. There is no excuse for the way Assange
| eventually abandoned any form of journalistic ethics.
| lukan wrote:
| "One of those journalists working for The Guardian
| proceeded to publish the key to the entire database,
| ensuring everything was leaked"
|
| It might have been somewhat leaked before, maybe because of
| misscomunication/individual action. But it was not known
| widely before - still, Wikipedia made the decision to
| publish all unredacted on their own:
|
| "WikiLeaks said that on 2 September it would publish the
| entire, unredacted archive in searchable form on its
| website"
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The key had unquestionably leaked, and though it wasn't
| wide spread at the time, it inevitably would be. Things
| were already starting
|
| Wikileaks said their decision to publish was to prevent
| third parties from tampering with the leaks creating
| false stories, but it was likely primarily that Assange
| and Wikileaks wanted the credit for the leak. Not a noble
| reason, but it still wasn't their fault they were in that
| shitty situation.
| lukan wrote:
| "Not a noble reason, but it still wasn't their fault they
| were in that shitty situation."
|
| Not so sure about that. I recall some of the journalists
| working with him on the release said, they were shocked
| to here, that Assange said he does not care at all about
| the life of the informants, as they were working for the
| US. (source, some article from "Spiegel", would be quite
| some work to dig that up)
|
| So I do not trust, that he seriously was concerned about
| their lifes, making serious security considerations.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| There was disagreement about the decision, but again the
| leaks were already out there. As you mentioned, Wikileaks
| published them on the second. Cryptome published them on
| the first.
|
| Every possible decision after the keys were leaked was
| shitty. Maybe Wikileaks could have picked a less shitty
| one, but they were still in a terrible situation because
| of somebody else's actions.
| lukan wrote:
| My point is, if he would have been concerned, he could
| have used better security in the first place.
|
| "In February 2011 David Leigh of The Guardian published
| the encryption passphrase in a book;[6] he had received
| it from Assange so he could access a copy of the
| Cablegate file, and believed the passphrase was a
| temporary one, unique to that file"
|
| Assuming David Leigh was not lying, Assange should have
| been more clear with the security implications. (then
| again, I see no reason to publish the temporary key in
| the first place). Still at that time it was not not
| known, except for maybe some intelligence organisations.
| So if really concerned, one could have done many
| different things to protect informants, delay the time,
| instead of publishing it officially for the whole world
| to see.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I won't claim Assange had great security, I don't think
| even he would. Still, publishing any key you get without
| express permission seems suspect.
|
| The key was public and the database was public. If you're
| an informant, would you rather be completely unaware of
| that while the local intelligence organization is already
| digging through it or have the whole world know including
| people that could help/warn you? I don't think "sit on
| it" is obviously the best choice.
| gizmo wrote:
| Julian Assange published evidence of war crimes committed by
| the US Army. Both the leaker/whistleblower (Manning) and
| Julian Assange got their lives ruined over it. What is the
| lesson here? That if you value your life you should look the
| other way when you come across evidence of serious
| malfeasance? That killing innocent people is not a real crime
| but embarrassing those in power is the worst crime
| imaginable?
|
| This is much bigger than Assange.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What is the lesson here?
|
| At least part of that lesson is that if you engage in
| partisan politics with your 'journalism' then you instantly
| become a great deal less sympathetic with about half the
| population. That includes a bunch of people in positions
| with enough power to make your life complicated.
| lukan wrote:
| "Julian Assange published evidence of war crimes committed
| by the US Army."
|
| I assume you mean the famous "collateral murder" videos?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstr
| i...
|
| That is my biggest issue with the whole wikileaks thing.
| Because it might borderline a warcrime by being careless -
| but it was no murder. Yet it was framed as the US army just
| killing journalists for fun. But it was not at all like
| this.
|
| There was active fighting, the journalists that were killed
| were embedded with active fighters - and their camera
| misstaken for an RPG. Those things can happen, especially
| if the journalists do not mark themself as journalists.
|
| "The cameras could easily be mistaken for slung AK-47 or
| AKM rifles, especially since neither cameraman is wearing
| anything that identifies him as media or press"
|
| The second attack while civilians evacuated and the
| children killed in the van - that was the bad thing. But it
| was still in the context of US troops receiving fire. So
| not at all allright, dirty war in a urban area - but not
| intentional murder. It was collateral damage in a wrong
| war.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| There was actually a war crime though, namely the double
| tap.
|
| All the other stuff in the video is either legal or
| something which could be an honest mistake.
| lukan wrote:
| You mean the second strike?
|
| I tend to agree, the problem is, this was not a
| conventional war, for which the concept of war crime was
| made for.
|
| The combatants were not wearing uniforms. The van was not
| marked as an ambulance. All civilians and some had
| weapons - and on the other hand US soldiers thinking only
| in terms of conventional combat, where there might have
| been an rpg still around for an enemy to retrieve and
| fire at them.
|
| "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a
| battle"
|
| But they happened to live there. They did not visited a
| battlefield for fun. So yes, the video showed quite well
| to the world the reality of urban fighting against an
| uprising. Dirty as hell.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes.
|
| But partisans and resistance movements are normal part of
| war and something you have to accept when you invade and
| occupy a foreign country. It is permissible to use all
| means available to one when resisting foreign occupation.
|
| The Van wasn't an ambulance. It was, I suppose you say,
| people helping wounded people, and those people are
| protected, whether they are marked or not.
| lukan wrote:
| Yes, I said I think it was a wrong war and that the
| "ambulance" wasn't marked as one because it was just some
| civilian trying to help people.
|
| But otherwise there are some rules for engagement in
| partisan warfare. For example they must be marked as
| combatants by uniform or some other clear sign.
|
| Exactly for this reason, to be able to divide between
| combatants and civilians. The more the partisans ignore
| that, the more civilians will die. Which is why it is
| also frequently used as a dirty tactic to raise more
| civilian uproar and more joining the partisans.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| The purpose of partisan warfare isn't to protect
| civilians, but to drive out invaders.
|
| One does have to put on a uniform or sign while
| performing direct attacks, but it's not required during
| sabotage operations. Then it's even permissible to use
| enemy uniforms.
| lukan wrote:
| "Then it's even permissible to use enemy uniforms"
|
| No it is not. At least not under common international
| law. (And a sabotage mission is a direct attack)
|
| "Not all uses of enemy uniforms are prohibited therefore;
| only "improper" uses. For example, wearing enemy uniforms
| in order to flee the fighting or escape capture does not
| run afoul of the law. On the other side of the spectrum,
| engaging in attacks while wearing the uniform of the
| enemy is flatly prohibited"
|
| https://lieber.westpoint.edu/combatant-privileges-and-
| protec...
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I think we've gotten to deep into the threading, so I
| can't respond to your comment where you actually bring
| this up, but it is permitted, because there's a
| precedent, namely Skorezeny.
|
| It is at least permissible to _order_ the use of enemy
| uniforms for sabotage operations, provided that they be
| taken off before direct attacks.
| lukan wrote:
| Well I agree that we got too deep here in an OT, but you
| can always click on the "2 minutes ago" and then you can
| reply directly.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Ah, I see.
| edgineer wrote:
| When Assange went on Colbert he said WikiLeaks would
| release another video showing dozens of civilians being
| murdered.
|
| I'm familiar with the video. Unfortunately, I don't see
| that WikiLeaks ever did publish that one.
| lukan wrote:
| Have you seen that video yourself?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah okay, your comment reads like every single war crime
| apologia ever written. Obviously when it's your side
| there's always nuance and good intentions. I'm not going
| to give the benefit of the doubt to an army that was
| invading a country based on lies and that destroyed said
| country for 2 decades.
| wmf wrote:
| I wish the US had offered whistleblowers reasonable plea deals
| and they had taken them. Unfortunately that's not the world we
| live(d) in. The US pursued a policy of vindictive and
| extralegal punishment against "enemy combatants" that made a
| lot of people doubt whether they could get fair treatment.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Plea deals aren't a solution. No matter how reasonable.
|
| This agreement itself is a plea deal, but involves the
| agreement in principle that Assange has committed a crime by
| publishing this information. That in itself is an enormous
| problem for people seeking out government wrongdoing.
| wmf wrote:
| Yeah, it's not at all clear to me that Assange did anything
| illegal and if he was offered a deal 12 years ago he
| probably would have rejected it. But Snowden and Manning
| definitely broke the law and I don't think it's a good look
| for anyone involved to have Snowden being a fugitive and
| cause celebre in exile for life.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| I think people like the idea of whistleblowing because we have
| a lack of trust in Governments and corporations. Whistleblowing
| "lifts the lid" so to speak on potential large breaches of
| trust and breaches of the law to a greater degree of perceived
| damage than whistleblowing.
|
| Essentially uncovering hypocrisy in the way our Governments and
| corporations works.
|
| People can both care about the act of whistleblowing and the
| illegal actions incurred as a result.
|
| But it's all nuanced, there's whistleblowing and then there's
| whistleblowing in a way that puts other innocent people at
| risk.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| The Wikileaks affair opened my eyes. I used to think an
| informed public was a good thing. Turns out it just means
| they vote for Morton Downey Jr.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| Julian's not a whistleblower, he's a journalist. Whistleblowers
| are people within the organization.
| threeseed wrote:
| He's also not a journalist by traditional definitions i.e. no
| formal training, no accreditation, no redaction to protect
| innocent parties, no protection of sources.
|
| He's more akin to an activist.
| grecy wrote:
| > _He 's also not a journalist by traditional definitions_
|
| The year is 2024 and we've had the internet for a good
| while now.
|
| I think it's safe to say that "tradition definitions" are
| long, long dead and we need to get on with what the reality
| actually is.
|
| Who cares what "journalists" were defined as in 1980.
| caseyy wrote:
| Hmm, this is the definition -- https://dictionary.cambridge
| .org/dictionary/english/journali...
|
| > a person who writes news stories or articles for a
| newspaper or magazine or broadcasts them on radio or
| television
| threeseed wrote:
| By your own definition this doesn't apply to Assange.
|
| Simply dumping files on a website doesn't make you a
| journalist and US courts agree.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| This is 'a' definition.
|
| Cambridge.org needs to wake up.
|
| The various yt auditors around - especially in the US -
| all class themselves as journalists.
| blitzar wrote:
| I am a trillionaire.
|
| Saying it doesnt make it true.
| colordrops wrote:
| The law doesn't care about "traditional definitions".
| Anyone in the US can act as a journalist by simply
| publishing.
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| Journalists consider Julian to be a journalist.
|
| > WikiLeaks wins top Australian journalism prize... The
| Walkley Award is one of a number of journalism prizes won
| by WikiLeaks in recent years, including Amnesty
| International's UK Media Award and the acclaimed Martha
| Gellhorn Prize. The latter award is given to journalists
| who reveal "an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment
| propaganda." These prizes undermine the Obama
| administration's claims that Assange is not a journalist
| and that the publication of thousands of secret US
| diplomatic and military cables is illegal.
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/11/assa-n30.html
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And only sometimes. Other times he was a political
| campaigner. "Hey Don Jr, let's talk and coordinate the
| release of a bunch of DNC material when it can most benefit
| your dad's campaign. And don't worry, I'm sitting on the RNC
| material, it's safe."
| impossiblefork wrote:
| What US journalist isn't?
|
| My impression that partisanship in reporting is incredibly
| strong.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It absolutely is. But there are dozens or more comments
| here about how Assange and Wikileaks were "above all
| that", and "impartial sources, without fear or favor".
|
| When no, he was and is as partisan as anyone else.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but he was still a journalist.
| olalonde wrote:
| Which illegal government activities did the Manning/Assange
| leaks uncover? The only thing I can recall is that "collateral
| damage" helicopter footage but it was an isolated incident and
| was deemed legal following investigation.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I remember that footage.
|
| "Deemed illegal", sounds rubber-stamped.
|
| The fact that you put "collateral damage" in quotes, has the
| same value as me putting "Murdered by COD players, just for
| carrying a camera" in quotes.
|
| I stand to be corrected regarding the video in question.
| instagib wrote:
| "On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage
| and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of
| classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks.[6] The video, which
| WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder,[7][8] showed the crew
| firing on a group of people and killing several of them,
| including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some
| of the casualties, all of whom were civilians.[15] An
| anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity
| of the footage,[16] which provoked global discussion on the
| legality and morality of the attacks."
|
| From:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike
|
| 3 attacks. Two 30mm cannons and one hellfire.
|
| There is tons of video out there and sometimes leaked of the
| drone strike recordings. The hostage video section of high
| side is creepily advertised also for inspiration or idk.
| bandrami wrote:
| The gunship crew literally talk about how annoying it is to
| have to wait for them to pick up a gun (at which point they
| aren't civilians)
| faizmokh wrote:
| Yeah "collateral" and "isolated" incident.
|
| They hate you because of your "freedom" anyway.
| duk3luk3 wrote:
| No, this is actually extremely simple to square up: In order
| for the rule of law to be protected, and to allow the public to
| hold government accountable for what it does in their names, it
| is necessary that the actions of the government are held to a
| much higher standard of legal scrutiny than individual citizens
| or the public.
|
| This means that whistleblower immunity should be extremely
| strong and anything the government wants to do to prosecute
| whistleblower should have to pass many hurdles.
|
| This doesn't conflict with the concept of checks and balances,
| rather it has to be an integral part of the checks and
| balances.
|
| In fact, this rationale is so simple and self-evident to anyone
| who asks themselves how the rule of law can be upheld in the
| face of the potential for unlawful conduct by government actors
| that one should ask themselves if coming to the opposite
| conclusion does not require a strong dose of motivated
| reasoning.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's safe to assume that 'so many people' includes a whole lot
| of covert actors trying to peddle the government's point of
| view on Assange and Wikileaks.
|
| Regardless, the exposures are exactly what journalists and
| publishers should be doing - government agencies went out of
| control under the umbrella of the Patriot Act, and the results,
| from fabricated claims of WMDs in Iraq to who knows what, have
| been disastrous.
|
| Also, Wikileaks did pretty responsible journalism for example
| on the explosive Vault 7 leaks:
|
| https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
|
| > "Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some
| identifying information in "Year Zero" for in depth analysis.
| These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and
| attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United
| States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any
| approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model
| and note that the quantity of published pages in "Vault 7" part
| one ("Year Zero") already eclipses the total number of pages
| published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA
| leaks."
| doubloon wrote:
| when your whistle blowing only reveals secrets of one side,
| then i am very skeptical of motivations.
|
| where are the dumps from north korea. where is kim jong un's
| private communications with Xi Jinping. Where is Putin's
| communications with Lukashenko. Where are internal memos from
| the people's liberation army. Where are the leaks from the
| Ayatollahs.
|
| Also yes the targets were western governments. What about
| western corporations? Where are leaks from Boeing about their
| issues? Where are leaks from Facebook about PTSD of their
| moderators? Where are the leaks about Peter Thiel or Elon Musk
| or whatever?
|
| The targets WL chose were basically the "evil west", you know,
| the only reason Ukraine has not been reduced to a prison
| complex.
| cortic wrote:
| The motivations of a person who disproportionately helps
| western governments is troubling to you? Or is it that you
| don't consider exposing criminal conduct helpful?
| funkhouser wrote:
| Hilarious that he was counting in Trump to get him released, but
| it wound up being under Biden.
|
| You can tell it's election year for the USA. Probably hoping for
| a little extra PR from it all for being the Good Guys (tm)
| senectus1 wrote:
| Trump was never going to release him.
|
| Assange was just a soundbite for him to dogwhistle.
| funkhouser wrote:
| Absolutely. Did you hear Trump recently saying he'd get Dread
| Pirate Roberts guy released or something like that? The silk
| road guy?
| popularrecluse wrote:
| Trump has caused more damage to U.S. intelligence interests
| than Assange ever did. Trump's unpunished actions make the
| prosecution of other violators look like pantomime.
| anarchy_matt wrote:
| information should be free, exposing US war crimes shouldn't be
| illegal
| sanderjd wrote:
| I'm personally glad that the Allies were able to keep the
| information about their plans to land on the beaches in
| Normandy from "being free", in order to catalyze their victory
| in WWII.
|
| But I think, charitably, what people mean when they say things
| like this is that _more_ information should be free. And I
| think agree with that. But I 'm not entirely convinced it
| applies to everything Assange is responsible for releasing.
| kobalsky wrote:
| Does this qualify as some sort of variation of Godwin's law?
|
| Keeping war crimes classified until everyone responsible is
| dead is not the same as keeping plans secret during a war.
|
| Hard to mix those two up to the point I'd say it was done in
| bad faith.
| fastball wrote:
| The commenter you are replying to is not the one who mixed
| those things up. Julian Assange did that.
| sanderjd wrote:
| When you are talking about military secrets and making the
| unqualified assertion that information should be free, it
| is on topic to mention times when successfully keeping
| military secrets was critical for a better outcome of a
| conflict.
|
| It's also worthy of outrage when keeping secrets leads to
| monsters escaping accountability.
|
| But don't pretend it isn't the same thing! It would be very
| nice if all military secrets that get leaked were only of
| the "exposing war crimes" sort, but all that information is
| all mixed together with the "jeopardizing people and plans"
| information.
|
| It's just not this clear cut "leaking is always good
| because information should be free" thing that a lot of
| people want it to be. It also isn't the clear cut "people
| who leak information are bad" that a lot of other people
| want it to be. It's a mix of good and bad and the details
| matter.
| codezero wrote:
| calling a war a war shouldn't be illegal, but it is illegal in
| russia.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| I never thought they had it in them. Never thought in a million
| years they'd let this go. It gives me some faith that the US
| govt. was able to move on from this. When democracy itself is at
| stake, this wins important favorability. Good on the biden
| administration.
|
| Less persecution of those that benefit society, more persecution
| of those that seek to undermine it, please.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Good on Biden? It was only Assange good fortunes that his bail
| hearing coincided with Biden polling so terribly that they were
| probably forced for release him. I'm sure they believe
| themselves to be hemorrhaging votes and unable to risk any more
| negative publicity with the left. So they decided they don't
| want to receive him any more.
|
| Is that too cynical of a view? I mean this is an administration
| that is supplying the most destructive weapons to Israel so
| they can kill and dismember Palestinian women and children --
| what's the freedom of one innocent man to such people?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > coincided with Biden polling so terribly
|
| Do you think this _helps_ Biden? Assange is a right winger,
| helping him out isn 't likely to convince moderates to go for
| Biden.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Yeah. Avoiding the persistent enmity of the traditional
| liberal left -- you know the anti war, pro freedom of
| speech crowd that used to represent the fundamentals of
| being liberal in the US -- during the election cycle almost
| certainly helps Biden.
|
| Or do you think traditional liberals ripping Biden non-stop
| when most liberals are demoralized by everything happening
| is going to help Biden somehow?
|
| The only people who think this hurts Biden are people that
| think Clinton was a better liberal candidate than Bernie.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Hopefully he will not have a mysterious accident not too long
| after returning home.
| wumeow wrote:
| Kudos to the Biden administration for putting an end to yet
| another long running US boondoggle.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Guantanamo should be next.
| beaeglebeachedd wrote:
| If you're referring the prison, no one will take most the
| people there, that's probably why it "can't" be closed. They
| should be released if they haven't been convicted by now...
| The question is to where?
| cletus wrote:
| So I have a couple of thoughts on this. For context, I'm a big
| fan of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Julian Assange is...
| more interesting.
|
| Imagine you're a journalist and someone hands you a shoebox full
| of SD cards with classified materials including video evidence of
| war crimes. Most of us would agree it is the ethical thing to do
| to publish that and you're definitely a journalist.
|
| Now imagine you had a contact in the military with acccess to
| classified data. What if instead of simply receiving that
| information, you tell that person what you're interested in. Are
| you still a journalist?
|
| What if you procure tools for that person to bypass security
| procedures? What if you instruct them on methods they can smuggle
| out that information from a secure facility? Are you still a
| journalist?
|
| What if you run someone off the road so they have a car accident
| and they miss their shift and that person is in charge of
| facility security, making it easier for your contact to smuggle
| out classified materials? Are you still a journalist?
|
| This can go on and at some point you're no longer a journalist.
|
| My point is that Assange was allegedly more of an active
| participant in acquiring these materials so there's an argument
| to be made that he wasn't a journalist, legally speaking.
|
| But here's where I think Assange really hurt himself: by playing
| politics in selectively releasing the Podesta and DNC emails to
| try and sway the 2016 election. This demonstrated that Wikileaks
| is not, as it portrays itself, a vessel for unfiltered
| publication. This mattered in the court of public opinion because
| that's what would ultimately have to come to Assange's aid.
|
| Now make no mistake: the US government did what it set out to do,
| which was to create a chilling effect on journalism that exposed
| US government secrets. Assange has essentially spent 12 yaers in
| confinement between the Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh awaiting
| extradition.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| If only government secrets were just their grandma's recipes.
|
| Why do governments are given special treatment when some of
| their secrets are crimes that are disclosed too late to get
| anyone involved in a trial, and happened too long ago to do
| anything about it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
| JackSlateur wrote:
| In the animal farm, all animals are equal, but some animals
| are more equal than others.
| po wrote:
| I agree with you and I'm a bit surprised that more people don't
| see the difference between what Manning and Snowden did and
| what Assange was up to (including apparently Snowden himself).
|
| At the time, I was initially a person who thought that what
| Wikileaks was doing was a net good for the rule of law, but
| changed my mind when I learned about the selective nature of
| what they publish. The fact that they were playing politics,
| pushing conspiracy theories, and actively coordinating with the
| Trump campaign completely discredits any moral high-ground they
| had. You can say that what happened to him is unfair and that
| may even be true but Assange is no hero.
| marssaxman wrote:
| If we consider other forms of journalism, it seems quite
| normal that a newspaper or TV station offers a specific
| political perspective, the news it publishes being
| selectively curated by its editor. Perhaps the issue is not
| that Assange had an editorial slant, but that his publication
| stood alone; we had no whistleblower's equivalent of CNN or
| the New York Times to consult for contrast as Wikileaks began
| playing the part of Fox News.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Yeah all the famous, immortalized people we look back on in
| history have had a bias. The dude has a bone to pick with
| the Democratic party. So what. He exposed corruption deep
| in government regardless. Saying "yeah he exposed crimes,
| but he mostly only did it to spite the liberals, so does
| was it really a good thing?" is bizarre.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I would add to what you wrote that I personally have
| reservations about revealing the identities of confidential
| sources, activists, etc. He willfully published not only the
| sources in active warzones who were feeding information to the
| US, risking their deaths, but also the secret identities and
| conversations of activists in Belarus who were summarily
| imprisoned or killed.
|
| And it's not that they're committed to always releasing
| everything, they painstakingly withheld information about
| Russia's financial backing of Syria during one of their
| releases.
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| i have a very, very hard time feeling sympathetic to the
| elements put in danger here.
| cjpearson wrote:
| What do you have against anti-Taliban Afghans or anti-
| Lukashenko Belarusians?
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| I'm afghan, so i can only talk about the caliber of US-
| cooperating, calling them anti taliban is a distinct
| misnomer, afghans I've met, and they are quite literally
| some of the very worst and amoral people I've ever met.
| They aren't motivated by moral objections towards Islamic
| extremism, they have found a big daddy to lend them
| authority and maybe solves a few unrelated vendettas for
| them. Most concerning opium and warlordism. Let's also
| not forget where the taliban got their supplies from.
| ...and the fact that the sudden US retreat, and
| especially backtracking on guarantees of citizenship,
| killed more pro-US afghans than assange ever could have.
| People don't hold onto a departing planes landing gear
| for nothing, that's something you do with your back
| against the wall. Kandahar skydiving club it jokingly was
| called by US troops, how about yall don't feign sympathy.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I'm the precise other way around.
|
| Snowden and Manning had a duty to the US. They were US
| citizens, they even worked for the military or spying
| apparatus.
|
| For them to release information, no matter how justified, is
| obviously a crime, but Assange isn't American, not US permanent
| resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
|
| This is why I feel that the prosecution is so insane. Assange
| getting extradited to the US is like Russia getting somebody
| extradited to Russia. Now of course, you can't expect better
| from the UK, which participated in the same war he is most
| famous for publishing stuff from, and him going to the UK was
| incredibly stupid.
|
| But acquiring material actively is something you should
| obviously do. If you're a citizen of a third country and have a
| chance to obtain material of public interest, of course you
| should, and it shouldn't concern you whether the country whose
| material you obtain regards that as a crime.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I think you are both right.
|
| Snowden and Manning broke the oaths they took.
|
| Assange is guilty of espionage.
|
| > but Assange isn't American, not US permanent resident, and
| he has no duty to be loyal to the US.
|
| That's besides the point, for example if a CIA agent is in
| China gathering intelligence on classified things, he is
| clearly guilty of espionage. You don't have to be a citizen
| or a permanent resident or have a duty to be loyal to a
| country to be spy.
|
| edit: typo
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't mean that the CIA agent is a
| criminal.
|
| Consequently, if arrested in, let's say, Thailand and
| handed over to China he will presumably not confess to
| espionage, just as Assange should not. He will instead
| presumably regard the procedure as irrelevant and say
| nothing.
|
| By entering into a guilty plea he is participating in a
| legal procedure which is bullshit, and by legitimising it
| he causes harm to others who would seek to obtain
| information about war crimes from foreign countries.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| The CIA agent is not a criminal in the US. For the
| Chinese government he is a criminal.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Of course, but from his PoV he is not, so he should not
| participate in or legitimise a procedure in a Chinese
| court.
|
| Consequently, entering a plea, and particularly a guilty
| plea, should not be done.
| deanCommie wrote:
| I think framing the ethical considerations of this based on
| geographical borders is unnecessarily limiting.
|
| Political borders should not be relevant to evaluate the
| ethics of what each person did.
|
| Manning & Snowden ultimately to me acted ethically (And
| subjectively history has not been kind to the things that
| Snowden has had to do or chose to do since he got asylum in
| Russia)
|
| Assange ultimately acted UN-ethically by being selective in
| some cases (leaking DNC data but not RNC), and "non partisan"
| in others (Leaking data that contained info on US war crimes;
| while also risking the lives of unrelated US intelligence
| agents and informants NOT complicit in war crimes)
| JackSlateur wrote:
| Here in France, as an individual, you can provide proof in a
| justice case, regardless of how you got them (that is, they are
| valid even if acquired through illegals means).
|
| I believe illegal acquisition of proof shall be punished only
| if the underlying case is denied.
| unraveller wrote:
| >Are you still a journalist? If he were an american citizen
| then the answer is yes as nothing much would stop him from
| being a journalist. You can speak and journal from prison
| there.
|
| What your asking implies is was he more an agitator or
| conspirator. Well he is about to admit to as much out of
| necessity, more to the point, will the next round of
| international journalists feel so much grey area hunting is
| necessary to bring us the truth about governments acting in the
| red area? I suspect many a journalist would go back in time and
| spill coffee on Hitler if it helped unearth those state
| secrets.
| hajile wrote:
| In the US, the Right to Freedom of the Press has NOTHING to do
| with "journalists" and everything to do with the freedom for
| ANYONE to write, publish, and distribute whatever they'd like.
|
| If I as a US citizen didn't sign a contract agreeing not to
| publish something and if that something isn't libelous, I
| should be free to publish it.
| sanderjd wrote:
| The law on this is not at all that people can publish
| "whatever they'd like". It's a complex mishmash of written
| laws and legal precedents that have accrued over a long
| period of time. The end result is somewhere in the middle.
| There are legal ways to publish more information than the
| government or others would like, but there are also things
| that are arguably "press" that are not legal to do.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Never thought I'd live to see the day. After looking after his
| health and family, I hope he resumes interviews and podcasting.
|
| Today was a good day.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| if everything written here actually happens, i suppose this is as
| satisfying an ending that everyone can get
|
| i really hope this man will be free. there's still a really bad
| precedent set that they will imprison you first, make you serve
| your term, then get your day in court to go free.. its a bit
| crooked and i really dont like this
|
| part of me thinks this is happening now because the presiding
| dominant western political establishment is losing power
| everywhere and they don't want the growing adversarial camp to
| hold freeing him as a victory while being able to set the
| precedent of his guilt to someday have in their back pocket the
| ability to do this again without the perceived unfairness
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| > Julian's freedom is our freedom.
|
| A little too heavy handed. Yeah it seems like from the outside he
| was potentially overly punished, pending further details that may
| never materialize, but "his freedom is our freedom" is pretty
| extreme given what he did. He's not relatable.
| dmix wrote:
| Yes the world is clearly a worse place because of Snowden,
| without him just imagine the true power the national security
| state could have achieved and how much safer we'd all feel.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| I don't know, did he really change really anything? It
| doesn't feel like it at least.
|
| Outside of the tech community, he's not really known except
| for being that guy who leaked things.
| dmix wrote:
| You don't have to become a celebrity that every random
| person on the street knows to try to do some good in the
| world, whether it works or not.
|
| And objectively the internet is a safer place thanks to the
| Snowden NSA leaks which were directly inspired, not just
| ideologically but technically in how it was done, by
| Assange. You can look at the mass adoption of encrypted
| messaging and HTTPS adoption statistics (which grew
| exponentially directly after the leaks to become near
| standard), and plenty of other metrics to see that.
|
| Wikileaks was the spawn of many good things, even despite
| it's flaws.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| > You can look at the mass adoption of encrypted
| messaging and HTTPS adoption statistics (which grew
| exponentially directly after the leaks to become near
| standard), and plenty of other metrics to see that.
|
| I don't think increased TLS adoption was caused by
| Snowden or Wikileaks. It was because of the HTTP/2
| protocol and Lets Encrypt taking off.
|
| You can read about that history here:
| https://opensource.com/business/16/8/lets-encrypt
|
| According to Aas, they decided to start LetsEncrypt in
| 2012. Before Snowden leaked anything.
|
| Similarly, one could argue that encrypted messaging
| became popular because of the work done on projects like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp (which added
| "encryption" in August 2012).
| imiric wrote:
| A single person doesn't have the power to change how a
| government system has worked for decades. Snowden merely
| made the truth public, but change can only happen if the
| majority of people want it, and even then have to fight
| hard for it. The sad reality is that most people don't
| care, and have even less of a desire to fight for it.
| Governments love complacency.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| He gave others the opportunity to change things. Some have
| taken up the opportunity to varying degrees of success,
| most haven't. One man takes their place in history and
| tries to do the most good they have the opportunity to do.
| Hard to argue Snowden didn't do that. We should ask
| ourselves if we can or ever will be able to say the same.
| Larrikin wrote:
| What if I respect what Snowden did and believe he should be
| pardoned and at the same time believe Assange should have
| been prosecuted.
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| literally nobody gives a fuck about the prostitution of their
| agency , I myself am grateful to be aware of it , but cant
| help feeling it only becomes worse by the day ... tldr not
| sure of the sum effect of having awareness raised here
| imiric wrote:
| Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know
| that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my
| brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you
| know what I realize?
|
| [Takes a bite of steak]
|
| Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.
| d0mine wrote:
| Yes, he is a true hero of NSA. The secrets were too big to
| allow just anybody to leak them.
| DSingularity wrote:
| For those who don't know the obvious reason behind his
| persecution is Wikileaks revealing embarrassing US secrets (re:
| embassy cables and Bradley/Chelsea Manning) and publishing IS war
| crimes in Iraq (re: collateral murder).
| Cody-99 wrote:
| Turns out taking an active role in breaking into government
| systems is a bad idea. The whole situation is funny because he
| would have been out years ago had he not done everything in his
| power to avoid a trial haha.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Everybody keeps repeating this without actually knowing
| specifically what his "crime" was.
|
| Here it is: He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran
| hashcat over it, couldn't successfully reverse it, and gave
| up.
|
| That's it.
|
| Prosecuting him for this "heinous crime against the state"
| has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
|
| At the time of this "crime" occurring he was not physically
| in the USA, not a citizen of the USA, and hence not subject
| to its laws.
|
| Unless you think the USA is the world government and can
| police anyone, anywhere, for anything?
|
| A link to the "tools of the crime":
| https://github.com/hashcat/hashcat
| Cody-99 wrote:
| >He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran hashcat
| over it, couldn't successfully reverse it, and gave up.
|
| Yeah..? He played an active role with his conspirator lol.
| He doesn't pretend to be some fool who accidentally got
| involved so there is no reason for you to do so on his
| behalf by trying to deny his crimes.
|
| >At the time of this "crime" occurring he was not
| physically in the USA, not a citizen of the USA, and hence
| not subject to its laws.
|
| An abused claim. Plenty of Russian hackers aren't US
| citizens or in the US when they commit credit card fraud or
| launch ransomware attacks but obviously they are still able
| to be charged under US law (or the law of any country they
| attack). And no one can seriously argue otherwise. Sitting
| in a different jurisdiction doesn't mean you can't be
| charged with a crime. For example, the South American drug
| lord isn't free to traffic drugs into Europe just because
| he isn't in Europe or a European citizen. That would be
| stupid and isn't how the world works.
|
| >Unless you think the USA is the world government and can
| police anyone, anywhere, for anything?
|
| US law can apply to the whole world if the US wants to
| enforce it (and so do most countries for plenty of crimes
| like cybercrime, terrorism, money laundering).
|
| >Prosecuting him for this "heinous crime against the state"
| has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
|
| I mean sure; trying any person for a crime cost money. Not
| really relevant.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| So you're saying Chinese law applies to you when you're a
| US citizen in the US?
|
| Have you ever said anything disparaging about the CCP or
| its leadership in an online forum? If so:
| congratulations! You've committed a crime _directly
| equivalent_ to what Assange did.
|
| You've just argued yourself into saying that it is
| proper, good, and right for China to extradite you. If
| not you personally, then people you know who did say
| negative things about the CCP. Or took Muhammad's name in
| vain. Or, or, or...
|
| We can't be subject to _every_ country 's laws,
| irrespective of citizenship or location.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| >So you're saying Chinese law applies to you when you're
| a US citizen in the US?
|
| If I launched a ransomware attack against a Chinese
| company, smuggled drugs into China via the Post, etc then
| I wouldn't be surprised when China charged me for my
| crimes. That is how the world works! There are plenty of
| laws where you don't need to be physically inside a
| country to be at risk of indictment (or equivalent).
|
| >We can't be subject to every country's laws,
| irrespective of citizenship or location.
|
| It would be silly for a country to try and enforce every
| law they have on others abroad. That doesn't mean
| countries can't enforce certain laws on people who are
| abroad. I gave you 4 examples of laws that countries
| commonly enforce on people abroad and for good reason.
|
| >You've just argued yourself into saying that it is
| proper, good, and right for China to extradite you. If
| not you personally, then people you know who did say
| negative things about the CCP. Or took Muhammad's name in
| vain. Or, or, or..
|
| No I didn't. China trying to extradite someone for
| criticizing them isn't the same as the US trying to
| extradite a Russian hacker who is behind a ransomware
| attack or a South American drug kingpin. Assange was a
| direct co-conspirator in accessing and stealing
| classified documents. Trying to pretend like that is on
| the same level as criticizing the CCP or some warlord is
| absurd. It is so absurd it is hard to tell if you are
| even being serious or just trolling.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > China trying to extradite someone for criticizing them
| isn't the same as the US trying to extradite a Russian
| hacker who is behind a ransomware attack or a South
| American drug kingpin.
|
| Why?
|
| To them it's the same severity of "crime".
|
| You don't get to define who takes what crimes seriously.
| If you open the door the US prosecution of overseas non-
| citizens for non-crimes they didn't commit on US soil,
| then you open the door for everyone else to apply the
| same logic to you.
|
| Assange basically did _nothing_. He didn 't break into
| any systems, he didn't access any IT systems, etc...
|
| > trying to pretend like that is on the same level as
| criticizing the CCP or some warlord is absurd.
|
| Tell that to these people, executed for _criticizing a
| dead person:_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo
|
| To you this might be an absurd reason to go execute
| someone, but to other people it was a "serious crime"
| requiring capital punishment.
| dlgeek wrote:
| [Not OP]
|
| > So you're saying Chinese law applies to you when you're
| a US citizen in the US?
|
| Sometimes
|
| > We can't be subject to every country's laws,
| irrespective of citizenship or location.
|
| No, that's why countries have extradition and other
| treaties that detail what foreign crimes they will
| recognize and provide reciprocity for with enforcement.
| Usually the answer is "Things that are also crimes in our
| country". Hacking is a crime in both countries, so
| Australian laws could be enforced on a US citizen through
| the mechanisms established by those treaties. Disparaging
| the CCP is explicitly protected in the US, so it wouldn't
| - so long as the US citizen never visits China.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Which system did he hack?
|
| Before you answer, consider that his crime is the rough
| equivalent of you walking past a "secure government
| facility" with one of those number-pad locks on the door,
| trying a few combinations, and then giving up.
|
| Also, before talking about "attempted crimes are still
| crimes" or whatever, please do a rough Fermi estimate of
| how many teenage children do that much _or worse_ on a
| daily basis, attempting to hack US systems from either
| abroad or on US soil.
|
| Should the government of the United States spend tens of
| millions of dollars prosecuting every such incident?
| Extradite every script kiddie and drag them in front a
| grand jury? Are you saying that there's "rules" here that
| are being meticulously followed by all parties?
|
| To most normal people, this looks like abuse of power.
| Assange made _powerful people look bad_ and they
| retaliated with all of the tools at their disposal.
|
| That anyone here can justify this kind of behaviour is a
| sign that you want an emperor, not a president. A king,
| not an elected official. You want _monarchy_ , with those
| in power able to execute a peasant for any infraction
| _against their betters_.
| thallium205 wrote:
| And publishing DNC and Podesta emails.
| edgineer wrote:
| The first years of his persecution, according to the legal
| system of various countries, was for a sex crime.
|
| He had sex in Sweden with a woman who consented to having sex,
| but not without a condom, and at some point he took off the
| condom.
|
| As I remember, that led to England seeking his arrest to be
| extradited to Sweden for this sex crime. Since he was stuck in
| the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Britain stationed officers
| outside it for years in case he stepped out. Ostensibly, for
| justice in this sex crime.
|
| Everyone knew the real reasons were to extradite him to the US,
| but the US was totally silent on him, until minutes before the
| statue of limitations would have run out.
|
| The US' charge was that Assange offered to run John the Ripper
| on a hash Bradley Manning gave him. Which, I mean, who among us
| have never run a hash in john the ripper?
|
| It's been astounding to see such incongruity between the heft
| with which the US can use its muscle against a target, and the
| thin veil of weak crimes the legal systems would admit to
| investigating.
|
| If Sweden, the UK, and the US would have been transparent that
| they were colluding to imprison him for publishing, I wouldn't
| have become so cynical.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| Your chronology is a little off. He went to the embassy after
| losing his appeal against extradition. He had already turned
| himself in and been on house arrest for two years at that
| point.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels suspicious about this and would
| hesitate to trust the persecuters? Maybe that's not a entirely a
| reasonable reaction (I just woke up about 10 minutes ago) but
| it's how I feel currently and I'm wondering if anyone else would
| feel the same.
|
| The U.S. as a national entity certainly isn't above lying, as
| leaks regarding them have shown.
| wmf wrote:
| This isn't really between the US and Assange; it's between the
| US and UK. If the US doesn't honor the rules for extradition
| then the UK may decide not to extradite people in the future.
| throwawaythekey wrote:
| The UK have already heavily bent (broken) the extradition
| rules in the favor of the US. I don't think the UK will mind
| as long as it doesn't cause public uproar.
|
| Most notably, the UK-US extradition treaty, which has
| exemptions for political offenses (e.g. espionage), has been
| found not to apply.
|
| This article is decent https://theconversation.com/julian-
| assange-how-british-extra..., but from the middle of the
| trial. Craig Murray's blog is also a good source of info.
| colimbarna wrote:
| In addition to the UK, it's almost certain that this had high
| level political influence between Australia's prime minister
| and the US president. I don't think the perspective that the US
| would be willing to damage their relations with Australia and
| the UK over this especially while the US is
|
| Considering the lengths Assange has gone to to avoid entering
| US custody, I think he's weighed up the ability to trust the US
| on this one with probably more information than we have.
| pharos92 wrote:
| This entire case was a catastrophic show of hand in how the
| justice systems across the west have been weaponized and used
| against the values it proclaims to protect.
| sambazi wrote:
| and the closure is likely a timed gesture to reinforce the
| point that those values are indeed still there and worth
| defending
| nemo44x wrote:
| Considering he served 12 or so years I'm not sure he won
| anything. But it's great he's free, or it sounds like.
| tivert wrote:
| > Considering he served 12 or so years I'm not sure he won
| anything.
|
| He didn't serve 12 years. He locked himself in his room for 7,
| then he actually served 5.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think that qualifies. 12 years of no freedom. Happy he
| finally gets to move on with his life. A real brave
| journalist who actually spoke truth to power.
| tivert wrote:
| > I think that qualifies. 12 years of no freedom.
|
| It _absolutely_ does not quality. Being on the lam is
| _obviously_ not the same as serving time in custody.
|
| You can only sum up to 12 by making false equivalencies and
| ignoring important differences. It reeks of having a self-
| serving preordained conclusion (or being downstream from
| one) then distorting everything until it fits.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| He must be enemy number one for a lot of states who want to make
| the US look sub human and engage in conspiracies.
| jeswin wrote:
| Julian Assange's years of torment (14 years, which in many
| countries exceeds the length of parole eligibility for a life
| sentence) affected how I viewed the world and my political
| leaning. It wasn't clear how what he did wasn't journalism.
| Daniel Ellsberg who was bound by US laws didn't suffer like this;
| and Assange is not even a US citizen.
|
| Remember the people who didn't stand by him: The entire left.
| Most European Governments, who were collaborating in a decade of
| torture; that he had to be protected by Ecuador is an utter
| shame. Of course WaPo, NYT, et al. Now every time I hear a high
| pitched social justice squeal from these folks, I realize that
| it's selective and merely self-serving.
|
| Sorry, political rant because this is a political topic.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Yeah it's absolutely insane how the American left depicted him.
| Admittedly controversial in discretion of disclosure and some
| election related effects--but to view your own political agenda
| above morality and their ostensible caring of human rights and
| war crimes just shows the depth of the hypocrisy. (Obviously
| American right wing is no better...)
| forgotmypwlol wrote:
| You're confusing Liberals for the left. Virtually the entire
| left that I'm aware of has championed his cause around the
| world, including in America. Think Chomsky and Democracy Now,
| not Jake Tapper and the NYT.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I don't have a strong opinion on Assange's initial actions but
| a big chunk of his "years of torment" were a legal tactic on
| his part. A legal tactic that appears to have worked!
|
| He could have engaged with the various legal processes being
| held against him, but he chose extra-legal protests instead.
| None of us know if that approach is better or worse than what
| he did, but this wasn't torment without agency. It was a direct
| outcome of his own choices.
| jeswin wrote:
| > a big chunk of his "years of torment" were a legal tactic
| on his part
|
| One man (and a bunch of supporters) against several
| governments with limitless resources. If something didn't
| stick, there would be another. Let's not judge his legal
| tactics looking back.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| >who were collaborating in a decade of torture; that he had to
| be protected by Ecuador is an utter shame.
|
| Oh come on. No matter your opinion on the whole situation you
| can't say sitting in an Ecuadorian embassy is torture lol. Dude
| had his girlfriend, internet, and pets. Calling the self
| imposed stay torture is beyond absurd. BFFR
| jeswin wrote:
| Yes torture. Among many others here's the UN Human Rights
| Commissioner's office on the Assange situation:
| https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/11/un-expert-
| to...
|
| His mental health deteriorated a while back.
| Cody-99 wrote:
| A self imposed exile inside an embassy and then 5 years in
| a British prison isn't torture. Trying to say that waters
| down what the word actually means.
|
| >His mental health deteriorated a while back.
|
| Okay and so what..? Does that somehow mean he shouldn't be
| held to account for his crimes? Plenty of prisons have bad
| mental health but that doesn't mean they should be let
| free. Had he not spent 14 years trying to avoid a trail he
| would have already been out years ago.
| epa wrote:
| I hope he takes his future security seriously. They are always
| around the corner.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Can someone who has an accurate source post when Wikileaks
| cryptographic canary expired? I'm unable to find a source and
| it's important to know they shouldn't be trusted.
|
| Here's when their key expired in 2007:
| https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys
|
| From another below:
|
| vikingerik
|
| A canary goes something like "This website has not received or
| acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove
| material." When they ever do, then they remove that notice. The
| government enforcement usually includes a gag order prohibiting
| the target from saying that they're under orders, so the intent
| is that you can infer government gag pressure by the canary
| having been removed. Wikileaks used to have such a notice and no
| longer does, so we assume government enforcement is why.
| Sephr wrote:
| I remember at the time that it expired, all of the moderators
| on their official subreddit also got replaced.
|
| The insurance file also got changed out at some point as the
| hash changed.
| vintermann wrote:
| The wikileaks subreddit was never official, and it was a
| train wreck. Two very dodgy Trump supporters "volunteered to
| help with the increased traffic" around the time of the
| Podesta releases and basically took over.
| random6754478 wrote:
| Didn't those Podesta leaks turn out to be legitimate?
| benreesman wrote:
| I remember when canaries were useful as a deterrent: even with
| an apathetic public on balance the tech community was pretty
| vigilant.
|
| These days Snowden is screaming into the void even as concerns
| HN readers, never mind that he was completely right at great
| personal cost the first time.
|
| I still trust Moxie, and Carmack/Palmer/etc. seem to be taking
| a stand, there are others, but it's getting thin.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| The main problem with canaries is that it's dead easy for a
| government to remove them from existence, simply issue
| subpoenas to every website that has one.
|
| The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically
| they won't.
| Mayzie wrote:
| > The main problem with canaries is that it's dead easy for
| a government to remove them from existence, simply issue
| subpoenas to every website that has one.
|
| Why can't social media platforms implement warrant canaries
| per user profile?
| benreesman wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I'll observe that governments used to
| be much less friendly with tech incumbents, at least in
| public.
|
| Ten years ago it was a scandal that big tech interacted
| with the surveillance state at all: Zuckerberg drove an
| initiative around cross-DC encryption at ruinous expense
| because of the mere accusation that the NSA might have a
| tap.
|
| Today they're giving us the finger with NSA board members.
| It's flagrant, arrogant, and anti-hacker anything: you will
| do nothing, because you can do nothing.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Politicians have been largely able to convince that it's
| tech that it's evil, with their actions always being
| colored through a political lens, whether it's "helping
| pedophiles" or "spreading misinformation" or what have
| you.
|
| The vassalization of these companies was imminent, and
| now, it is complete.
| benreesman wrote:
| I don't expect much from politicians, in my lifetime the
| political class has mostly seemed to be pretty nakedly
| self-serving.
|
| I'm sad because so many of my personal heroes, the
| hackers I've admired, are just on board past any possible
| argument that it's in the public welfare.
|
| I learn in the same month that OpenAI is satisfying their
| voracious appetite for data with an NSA partnership as I
| do that the old-school FB infra braintrust is taking the
| money.
|
| I'm embarrassed by all of this. I want to be remembered
| as part of something else.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| This isn't binary. They are both evil. Neither group is
| your friend nor do they have your best interests at
| heart.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Today they're paying for the right to have social media
| companies do their bidding, according to the Twitter
| Files Drop a little while back.
| josefx wrote:
| The government doesn't even have to remove them from
| existence. A judge most likely wont care how you leaked
| information you where told to keep secret and will just
| throw the book at you wether you used a canary to do so or
| not.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Palmer?
| qarl wrote:
| You know, the billionaire class who give money to Trump and
| use their techno skills to invent new and super deadly
| weapon systems thereby increasing their dragon-like hoard.
|
| True patriots.
| pie420 wrote:
| Government employee Palmer???
| hobs wrote:
| Palmer... Lucky? A stand? As in starting a company to sell AI
| and Robots to the DoD? Huh?
| alkonaut wrote:
| > This website has not received or acted on any government
| orders to disclose or modify or remove material.
|
| Never understood why gag orders don't just say "You can't say
| you received this order. Oh and by the way if we find you
| removed a canary, we'll just write that up as you having said
| you received this order".
|
| Because the point of a canary is for it to be known beforehand.
| So the government surely knows about any canary too.
|
| There must be some backwards definition of "speech" here which
| doesn't include all conveying of information (such as by
| removing previously published information), which makes it
| work, at least in the US (?)
| pcl wrote:
| The typical canary contains a signed timestamp. Generally,
| the US does differentiate between forbidding an action ("do
| not remove your canary") and compelling an action ("update
| your canary with a new timestamp" or "disclose the pass
| phrase for the signing key").
|
| I'm no expert, and I'm sure there are nuances, but the broad
| strokes behind the design of these canaries are that it's
| harder for the government to compel an action than to forbid
| one.
| adammarples wrote:
| The whole point of a canary is that it's passive, and for
| exactly that reason. All you do is stop updating the date.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Court documents revealing Assange's plea deal were filed Monday
| evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands,
| a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to
| appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with
| credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be
| free to return to Australia, where he was born.
|
| I wouldn't get too excited just yet. He is appearing in US
| territory before a US judge who is actually under any obligation
| to honor the plea deal. The judge could reject the plea deal and
| remand him to custody or sentence him to US prison.
| throwup238 wrote:
| IANAL but the judge can't both reject the plea deal and
| sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the
| guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would
| cause a diplomatic incident.
|
| He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached
| a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried
| about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international
| law if US is a party to the treaties involved (which in the
| case of extradition, it is).
| aixpert wrote:
| The history of Assange is the history of diplomatic
| incidents, in that sense rejecting the plea deal would not be
| out of the ordinary
| mike_d wrote:
| > Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a
| diplomatic incident.
|
| Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a
| fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble
| because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject
| your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new
| court date.
|
| Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn't change facts. There
| is a separation of powers between the prosecutor who is
| negotiating the extradition/plea and the judge who
| independently evaluates the agreement.
| vintermann wrote:
| This case made a mockery out of the idea of separation of
| powers, which you'd know if you'd followed it at all. The
| case was political from day 1, and even if there is no
| last-moment disgrace from the US (I don't think there will
| be), it still will be 100% political.
|
| They probably just realized they shouldn't dig the
| embarrassment hole any deeper, and think that an extorted
| confession is the most face-saving they're going to get.
| pyrale wrote:
| Because the UK was reluctant to give extradition based on
| the conditions offered by the US. Part of the reason the US
| is offering a plea deal is that it bypasses the need for
| extradition. Australia also asked the US to drop the case.
|
| So offering a deal only to have the UK agree to release
| Assange and lure him to US territory would definitely be a
| diplomatic issue, possibly jeopardizing future extraditions
| from the UK, for instance.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I don't understand why you are being downvoted. I just
| posted essentially the same thing:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40785120
|
| source: over a decade of experience in pretrial operations
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| As part of the deal he is pleading guilty right?
|
| Does the judge have to honor the prosecution agreement or
| is the judge free to impose a different sentence than
| what was agreed to by the prosecution?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Actually, you're correct, and my original answer was
| wrong. That's what I get for writing at 2am.
|
| Here's how it works generally: when you plead guilty the
| judge warns you that they do not have to accept the plea
| deal and can sentence you however the hell they wish. You
| plead guilty _and then_ the judge tells you if they
| accept the prosecution 's deal. I've seen several
| defendants surprised by the judge not taking the sweet
| probation deal and turning around and giving the
| defendant years in prison which they are unable to
| appeal.
|
| So, in theory, the judge could potentially give Assange
| some time.
| AdamN wrote:
| The expectation would be at that point that Biden is asked
| to pardon (or commute the sentence of?) Assange. That's the
| political solution if the judge were to not accept the plea
| deal and remand Assange.
|
| I wouldn't expect the judge not to go along with this
| though - he is pleading guilty and did serve what is now
| being called a sentence and presumably the US government
| can say that there are other benefits to his freedom that
| should not be overriden by the judiciary.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Perhaps once you try considering the matter in the context
| it actually exists within instead of a vacuum you'll
| understand the answer to your asinine rhetorical.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _There is a separation of powers between the prosecutor
| who is negotiating the extradition /plea and the judge who
| independently evaluates the agreement._
|
| Oh, sweet summer child. In such political cases there is
| almost zero "separation of powers". Much higher powers than
| the judge and the prosecutor are involved directly.
| hilux wrote:
| Did Assange have to show up in a US court? No.
|
| So why are you writing all this and then doubling down?
| vidarh wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > A letter from Justice Department official Matthew
| McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the
| Northern Mariana Islands District said that Assange would
| appear in court at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday (7 p.m. ET
| Tuesday) to plead guilty and that the Justice Department
| expects Assange will return to Australia, his country of
| citizenship, after the proceedings.
|
| Northern Mariana Islands District is US jurisdiction.
| hilux wrote:
| Thanks. You're quite right - I missed that.
|
| Now please excuse me while I find my tanto.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The judge can't sentence him, but if the judge refuses the
| plea deal he can order him to be taken into immediate pre-
| trial detention and schedule a bail hearing in the near
| future; and then refuse bail due to him being a flight risk
| (previously ran from authorities).
|
| He would then spend potentially several more years in jail
| preparing for trial, obtaining discovery, going through
| discovery, filing pretrial motions, subpoenaing witnesses,
| etc etc.
| qingcharles wrote:
| My answer above is slightly wrong, see my clarification:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40790246
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| > Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a
| diplomatic incident.
|
| Australian Politicians: _collective silence_
|
| We let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| As far as I remember there were a few Australian
| politicians making a few waves about the Assange case.
| bboygravity wrote:
| I don't think law, justice or even diplomacy are very
| relevant for most of this case.
|
| 1900 days in isolation (human rights violation), falsly
| accused of rape with the goal to extradite to the US, jailed
| outside of the US on behalf of the US (but not officially),
| and just the simple fact that a journalist gets jail time for
| exposing war crimes.
|
| Yeah, this has nothing to do with law or justice. This is
| about a handful of people above the law trying to save their
| *sses. Anything could happen at this point.
|
| Reminds me of when a foreign diplomatic aircraft (Equador)
| was forced to land in a foreign country (France), because the
| US thought Snowden might be on board. Remind me of the
| relevant law that allows for this please? lol
| sofixa wrote:
| > 1900 days in isolation (human rights violation)
|
| Call it what it is, torture.
| youngtaff wrote:
| > falsly accused of rape with the goal to extradite to the
| US,
|
| Where's the evidence that he was falsely accused?
| mandmandam wrote:
| The accusers withdrew their testimony, Swedish
| prosecutors were caught falsifying and destroying
| documents, and the case was withdrawn due to lack of
| evidence.
|
| I'd say that you could have found all this out yourself
| with Google, but you didn't even need to. All this info
| has already been linked in these comments.
| youngtaff wrote:
| You know accusers in sexual assault allegations often
| withdraw their testimony due to the pressures of the case
| - especially in this case where the women were
| threatened, smeared and accused of being honeypots etc?
|
| Most of the links in these comments aren't authoritative
| in anyway
| tuna74 wrote:
| The above statements are false. The case was withdrawn
| due to the time it took to get to trial, then the charges
| are dropped (statue of limitations).
| mandmandam wrote:
| > The case was withdrawn due to the time it took to get
| to trial
|
| ... Which weakens the oral evidence.
|
| The only evidence they had; because there was no DNA
| found on the condom submitted as evidence.
|
| https://medium.com/@njmelzer/demasking-the-torture-of-
| julian...
|
| > There were never any formal criminal charges, and the
| Swedish Prosecution Authority's investigation into
| Assange was dropped in November 2019 due to a lack of
| evidence.
|
| https://rsf.org/en/rsf-dispels-common-misconceptions-
| case-ag...
| pelorat wrote:
| He's not a journalist, he is bought and paid for by FSB and
| the Russian regime.
| Applejinx wrote:
| This. My hope is he had valuable information to give up
| about his former operators that was worth the plea deal,
| which is very possible as he's far from the only one.
|
| Let an old spy go off and retire, he can't work anymore
| anyhow.
| vidarh wrote:
| The US is a country with a history of outright kidnapping
| people from foreign soil - including that of friendly
| nations.
|
| There's every chance here that this deal represents a way out
| for the US as well, and that it will be kept for that reason,
| but if the US government still wants him to stand trial, a
| plea deal and the risk of a minor diplomatic scuffle at a
| point in time where the UK parliamentary election will
| overshadow the case in UK media isn't going to stop them.
|
| Keep in mind he doesn't have any support from the UK
| government - they'd rather be rid of him -, and the current
| UK government is almost certain to be out of government
| shortly. It's unlikely there'd be more of a diplomatic
| incident than a slightly stern letter.
|
| I think he has reasonable odds - this case is likely at this
| point mostly just a nuisance for everyone involved except
| Assange himself. There's nothing to be gained, other than
| perhaps for some overzealous prosecutor. But I also would not
| be one bit surprised if something was to happen.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| In addition, Keir Starmer (who will almost certainly become
| prime minister after July) has told the media in the past
| that he's 'pro-American', which suggests to me that he'd be
| unlikely to set the official relationship off to a bad
| start with awkward diplomatic interactions - and given how
| hostile Sir Keir is to Trump, I imagine he'd actively try
| to help Biden look good before the US presidential
| elections.
|
| An Indy article that sums Sir Keir's atlanticist stance in
| a few short paragraphs:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-
| starmer-...
| vidarh wrote:
| Yeah, I think the furthest Starmer would take this would
| be to instead attack the Tories for failing to ensure the
| case was handled better rather than attack the US.
| fblp wrote:
| I think it would be quite the diplomatic travesty for them to
| switch to arresting him after choosing to trial him in the
| closest court of Australia and credit him for time in prison
| already.
| https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1805385141239660627?ref_src...
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| What would the actual consequence be? Almost certainly
| nothing. That said, if the Americans wanted to drag this out
| further, they'd simply drag it out further, so it seems
| highly unlikely this is some ploy, however it's not
| impossible. Assange is more easily "forgotten" if they
| actually managed to imprison him in The States. But we'll
| see. I'll only completely believe it once he touches down in
| Australia.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> What would the actual consequence be? Almost certainly
| nothing._
|
| One of the key things blocking extradition from the UK to
| the US is that UK law doesn't let them extradite if the
| person will be tortured, executed, or won't receive a fair
| trial in the destination country. This isn't something that
| politicians can bypass, except by changing the law; judges
| are not political appointees in the UK.
|
| This means the extradition process from the UK to the US
| relies on the UK receiving assurances, _and the courts
| accepting them, because the US has always followed its
| agreements in the past_. To me it seems unlikely the US
| would want to jeopardise this.
|
| And what would the benefit be? They've already shown they
| have the power to ruin people's lives at will, effectively
| imprisoning them in an embassy for a decade. That seems
| like a deterrent that will scare off most journalists.
| steve_gh wrote:
| I think this is quid pro quo for the Harry Dunn case,
| which interestingly reached a final conclusion a week or
| so ago in the Coroner's court.
| netsharc wrote:
| In the context of the elections, it seems like the US
| government/Biden admin "fucking" with Assange would
| probably be detrimental, considering parts of the MAGA
| movement is "We <3 Russia"/susceptible to Russian
| propaganda - and Assange is Russia-friendly since he
| apparently got Hillary's emails from them. They can twist
| it as Democrats being the warmongers (yeah it requires
| insane logic-bending, but hey, MAGA are experts at that)
| and Assange the pro-peace leaker.
|
| So MAGA would probably take up his cause, but with the
| Biden admin freeing him (fingers crossed), that's one less
| thing they can use against Biden in the elections.
| nailer wrote:
| The Trump Russiagate conspiracy was a hoax.
|
| The Secretary of State not responding to the Libyan
| consulate's security concerns prior to the attack is a
| serious matter and the source of the documents is not the
| issue.
| netsharc wrote:
| > The Trump Russiagate conspiracy was a hoax.
|
| Ah, an appropriate example of bending logic and serious
| ignoring of many facts to end up with this conclusion...
| nailer wrote:
| Unverified after all the investigations:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/u-s-trump-intelligence-
| rus...
|
| One step less than 'hoax' but it's Snopes and they lean
| left.
| mistermann wrote:
| I find it very interesting how you:
|
| a) think
|
| b) (mis)use the English language
|
| For clarity: do you believe that your cognition on this
| matter is logically, ontologically, and epistemically
| flawless?
|
| I hope your seeming high level of confidence is resilient
| enough to answer this simple question directly, without
| engaging in rhetoric, meme magic, evasion, misdirection,
| silence, etc which in my experience is the standard
| behavior of the normative conditioned Western human mind
| when it is put into such a situation.
| kome wrote:
| holly fucking shit, you are SO patronizing. their comment
| is ok, and i fully understood their logic. I cannot say
| the same about yours.
| mistermann wrote:
| > holly fucking shit, you are SO patronizing.
|
| Perhaps (it is a subjective matter, in more ways than
| one, and some more importantly than others). What of it?
|
| Or another way of looking at it: which is more important
| in the big (geopolitical or otherwise) scheme of
| things...politeness (deceit, ignorance, rhetoric, etc) or
| truth/accuracy? Don't forget, _lives are literally on the
| line_. (Something else I find funny: sometimes lives
| being on the line is important, other times it is not. It
| is amazing how inconsistent humans are, even on the very
| most important matters.)
|
| > their comment is ok
|
| Is this to say that it suffers in no way regarding the
| specific phenomena that I am asking about?
|
| And if not:
|
| - what does "is ok" mean, precisely?
|
| - do you believe _that it does not_ suffer in any of
| these ways?
|
| > and i fully understood their logic.
|
| If you did not, would you necessarily be able to know?
| (Can you realize the architectural problem you are in?)
|
| > I cannot say the same about yours.
|
| What specific "logic" of mine are you referring to here?
| netsharc wrote:
| > For clarity: do you believe that your cognition on this
| matter is logically, ontologically, and epistemically
| flawless?
|
| No, I believe my cognition on this matter can be flawed.
| That's why the qualifiers "would probably be",
| "apparently", and "parts of".
|
| But I agree with kome's response.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Despite what his defenders claim, he went beyond journalism and
| actively engaged in process to obtain and disclose national
| defense information. Now he will pledge guilty for that.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| > Despite all his defenders, he went beyond journalism and
| actively engaged in process to obtain and disclose national
| defense information.
|
| "National Defence Information" ... is that what we're calling
| "War Crimes" these days?
| superkuh wrote:
| False. What they are charging him with is a brief speculative
| chat discussion about potentially having Manning provide the
| hash of a password to Assange to help crack it. But this
| discussed behavior never actually happened and was never
| referenced by them again.
|
| That's the conspiracy charge they indicted Assange for. If you
| don't believe me then read
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa...
| . If you say that's too long to read then just read the last 4
| paragraphs.
|
| They've bent over backwards to charge him here over something
| that literally did not happen and was only discussed as an
| option in passing. If they had anything else to charge him with
| they would. But they don't and rely on people like you
| propagating falsehoods.
| nabla9 wrote:
| True according to Assange himself. Keep up with the events.
| superkuh wrote:
| You're still confused. In order to not be imprisoned
| forever Assange admitted to the charges which are outlined
| in the above justice dept. link and summarized by myself.
| He did not admit to guilt for anything you're making up or
| imagining.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Spying on foreign countries, especially when they are engaged
| in war crimes and torture, is not illegal.
|
| Assange is not and has never been a US citizen or permanent
| resident. What he did is perfectly permissible.
|
| He made a huge mistake in traveling to the UK though.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| It's wild that Julian Assange is going to do five years in prison
| and Bush Jr and Dick Cheney are walking around free.
| codezero wrote:
| when was Snowden a head of state?
| keepamovin wrote:
| Congratulations! I share in the popular jubilation and sense of
| epoch-making reconciliation, that aligns with the stars, even tho
| I think Assange acted like an egotistical fool who squandered the
| great lens of transparency and accountability he had created
| through misjudged self-importance and vulnerability to
| manipulation by his sources for their own ends.
|
| Hopefully his Second Act brings good fruits without the thorns
| and rot of the previous ages. Good luck to him!
| drekipus wrote:
| Yes, we should whip him for not having a level head when the
| entire US government is against him. Someone like you and I
| would have been sure to keep humble and not be egotistical when
| seeking asylum and fair justice against an entity that has
| military bases all over the world
| keepamovin wrote:
| Well you don't know what I would do (except for what I'm
| saying here where you can see I wouldn't do what he did!
| haha), but I understand if you're speaking for yourself.
|
| I think precisely in that situation is when you need that
| kind of ability. But I wouldn't say we should whip him! Again
| speaking for yourself I suppose hahahahahaha! :)
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I don't know there's a teapot on Mars either. But it's an
| easy guess.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I think the person you're replying to is referring to the
| accusations against WikiLeaks of just dumping raw documents
| without at least removing information that could lead to
| identifying (and thus endangering) people who e.g. assisted
| the US in Afghanistan or who provided documents to WL in the
| first place.
|
| Yes, there was a point in getting the information out as fast
| as possible, but I think it's fair to blame Assange for not
| putting in the redaction work.
| vasco wrote:
| If they removed that, the machinery of the US would come up
| with another angle to say what he did was very bad. This
| should be obvious.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the endangering information was not
| originally published by Wikileaks, but by other journalists
| (the decryption key was written in a book or something, my
| memory is fuzzy on this); and Wikileaks only published the
| whole thing once the cat was already out of the bag.
|
| To sum this up, they _were_ putting the redaction work, but
| someone else failed to, and at that point it was too late.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| The material was shared with The Guardian and several
| other (including prominent US) media outlets, they are
| the ones that published it unredacted. Never was there
| any proof provided that those articles caused any harm to
| any personnel at any point in time.
|
| Those media outlets that are in fact guilty of what
| Assange/Wikileaks was accused of jumped at the first
| opportunity to throw Assange under the bus.
| underlipton wrote:
| Something tangential that I don't think has happened, but
| that I'd be curious to see the results of: an analysis of
| the number of people endangered by Wikileaks disclosures
| versus the number of people endangered by Americans
| abandoning interpreters and collaborators, or other action
| expressly consistent with US policy.
|
| With how mad we are about him f _cking over our people,
| surely we haven 't f_cked them over ourselves at a higher
| rate.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| People are so sure he made the wrong choice when he fled to
| the Ecuadorian embassy, but I wonder how they can be so sure.
| At the time, his biggest worry was to get assassinated or get
| snatched off the street and end up in a secret CIA torture
| prison. Neither of these fears were unjustified. Add to this
| the belief that US maximum security prisons are blatant
| violations of basic human rights and the belief that the UK
| and Sweden are close allies of the US, and his actions made
| perfect sense. His notoriety and his choices saved him from
| either of these fates, albeit at a high price.
|
| Did he make the right choices? Who knows. There is always a
| lot of counterfactual reasoning involved.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| The worst choice he made in this period was to be a
| terrible guest and eventually be evicted. However he had
| going through psychological problems and honestly I'm not
| sure if he wouldn't be evicted regardless (the new
| president was aligned with the US and wanted him gone)
| mc32 wrote:
| I hope he does something on X where he delivers dead drops
| given to him by whistleblowers on an episodal basis, and he
| grows big enough that he become _the_ place to go when you want
| to blow the whistle, whether it be rushed pharmaceuticals, govt
| morally dubious black ops, bad NGOs, front orgs, etc.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Is this a joke? If so I don't get it. You're describing
| Wikileaks.
| mc32 wrote:
| With a personality and context, with guests to discuss.
| Wikileaks was dry and left up to other journalists to write
| stories.
|
| Few journalists would do that today because most now toe
| the main line -or they think it'll give the "other guy"
| cover. No one bucks the incumbents these days. See anyone
| criticizing any western government actions these days? It's
| not like there isn't any fodder.
| Symbiote wrote:
| This is an idiotic statement. The governments I'm most
| familiar with are criticised daily.
|
| The most recent: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-
| interactive/2024/jun...
| lukan wrote:
| 'When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3"
| can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dns_snek wrote:
| All of this is petty criticism, it makes headlines one
| day and it's gone the next. You're allowed to say
| anything as long as it doesn't threaten to effect real
| change, you're allowed to protest as long as you do it at
| a scheduled time and place without seriously
| inconveniencing anyone, and you're allowed to expose
| crimes as long as they don't pose a serious threat to the
| institutions or people in power. It gives us an illusion
| of freedom of speech for the 99.9% while the heavy
| hitters are taken care of through persecution, false
| prosecution, torture, and occasional murder.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| That sure was the dream, wasn't it?
| mcmcmc wrote:
| As soon as a whistleblower from one of Musk's companies shows
| up you can guarantee he would get permabanned
| alt227 wrote:
| Speech is free unless you are telling people where Elons
| jet is.
| robxorb wrote:
| What's particularly silly about all that is it's actually
| Elons jet telling people where it is.
|
| That's how aviation stays safe: the planes broadcast
| where they are, to anyone and everyone who tunes in to
| that public signal.
| mc32 wrote:
| X covers one spectrum and CNN covers another spectrum.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Couldn't have said it any better. People have polarized him and
| his actions but it is a marbled tapestry of right and wrong -
| good and bad.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I'm not sure if I care at all that he was capitalizing on it.
|
| Frankly, I wouldn't care if this info was dropped by the
| Kardashians on a very special episode. It was crucial public
| information and it needed to get out one way or another. If
| vanity is an incentivizing factor toward someone taking that
| risk, so be it.
|
| What is it about someone being incentivized to be a
| whistleblower, in your mind, changes the validation of the act?
| nemo44x wrote:
| No one is perfect. But overall his actions were brave and he
| paid a terrible price. The worst part is probably that what he
| published ended up making no real difference.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| It is difficult to see the difference but very few people are
| privy to the planning of the programs revealed. Only those
| who oversaw the entirety of the programs can really grasp the
| scope due to the compartmented nature of the programs. I
| think these disclosures helped arrest a rapid decay into a
| dystopian surveillance state. However the motivations and
| irrational belief systems behind these programs persist so
| the fight is not over. Instead the proponents of unchecked
| surveillance powers are increasingly on the defensive and
| face more scrutiny than their arguments and results can
| justify leading to a continued reigning in of their powers
| that seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I'm
| not satisfied with this state of affairs but I am unsure how
| to reach a better one with the power systems and officials at
| hand. If you have any ideas please share.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I don't think there's any way to "fight the system" or w/e
| without becoming the system, or a part of it, as the system
| will consume whatever is useful and generates more power
| for itself. It co-ops everything. It's a useful lesson from
| the book Gravity's Rainbow. The only thing you can do is to
| fly under the radar and not participate, or participate as
| little as possible, and build your communities and
| relationships outside of it.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| While your point is not without merit, some people can
| work within a system while resenting its existence,
| covertly rebelling, and fighting for change. I've known
| many to do just that - but they also tend to be
| intelligent enough to that broadcasting their subversive
| intentions would be harmful to their livelihood so they
| don't. People like this aided in destroying the Nazis.
|
| > The only thing you can do is
|
| I'll stop you there - reductionist arguments can be
| dismissed with the same casualness they're made with.
|
| >to fly under the radar and not participate, or
| participate as little as possible
|
| So you've invented communes and the barter system. Tax
| time must be interesting.
|
| >build your communities and relationships outside of it.
|
| Pardon? Do you have a spaceship or space station? Wholly
| independent ship-city in international waters? If not
| you're apart the system wholly and completely.
| skilled wrote:
| YES!!!!!!!!!!
|
| REJOICE!!!!!!!!!!!
|
| Woooo!!! This is incredible news to wake up to.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The fact that he has to plead guilty even to one charge is so
| disappointing and also inconsistent. Assange just published
| others' leaks. This is just journalism right? Would the NYT or
| WaPo get in trouble for publishing leaked private information?
| For example recently with Trump's tax returns. The way Assange
| has been vilified and confined and threatened is disgusting.
|
| Still, I hope he finds happiness and peace.
| udev4096 wrote:
| I think the pressure from the Australian government had to do a
| lot with this good news[0][1].
|
| 0.
| https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansar...
|
| 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/politics/biden-assange-
| au...
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Wow. When I was in Sydney I was surprised at how many protests
| around there were about Julian Assange... didn't really
| understand why they cared about him or the US. Guess that
| worked?
| largbae wrote:
| He is Australian right?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Why though? There locking up their own whistleblowers, Daniel
| McBride.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Maybe Assange got too much attention. McBride's attention
| dropped off almost immediately after he was locked up.
|
| More than happy to locked them up unless it creates an image
| problem.
|
| Unfortunately in this country, a whistle blower is a fast
| track to being punished.
| stephenr wrote:
| I think you mean David McBride?
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| The first link is a motion spoken to independent Andrew Wilkie
| acknowledging supporters of Assange. The CNN article talks
| about the governments bid to have all charges dropped (they
| were not, he had to plead guilty on espionage).
|
| Despite Mr. Albanese (the prime minister)'s election promise to
| bring Assange home, he's officially refused[0] to talk to Biden
| about it and has never answered questions on what they're doing
| about it.
|
| It is great he's finally coming home, but forcing a journalist
| to plead guilty of espionage falsely, the decade of harassment
| and false imprisonment, the fake rape case... This should not
| be treated as "job done".
|
| 0. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-29/pm-says-biden-wont-
| in...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| He was offered a plea deal seven years ago
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/assange-offered-pardon-
| if...
|
| He refused it. Two years later, the Educadorian embassy
| kicked him out because they were tired of him smearing his
| shit all over the walls and assaulting female staff.
|
| It's been extensively proven he was acting in collaboration
| with and in the interests of the russian government:
| https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-
| russia...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-
| ass...
|
| "fake rape case"? Take a look at Assange's history of
| misogynistic comments both in public and in internal
| wikileaks chats: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-
| assange-wikileaks...
|
| ...and him assaulting female Ecuadorian staff
|
| ...and tell me again how it's more plausible that both
| Swedish prosecutors and the Swedish criminal court system _up
| to and including their supreme court_ conspired with the US
| to fake an entire case around Assange sexually assaulting two
| women. And then the UK government joined in that conspiracy.
| And then Ecuador joined in that conspiracy?
|
| Or...and bear with me here for a second...he's a misogynistic
| asshole who has so little respect for women he treats them as
| sexual objects?
| trustno2 wrote:
| Can he now go join Snowden in Moscow?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Good, this was getting majorly embarrassing for all countries
| still involved with this legal mess. The man dying in prison
| stuck in legal limbo without any conviction whatsoever (innocent
| until proven guilty and all that) would have been a PR disaster
| for the UK. And of course there's also the issue that the UK is
| very likely to get a new government that would have likely been
| leaning to just letting the man go in any case. At least the
| current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual
| principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent
| thing to do.
|
| This would have been embarrassing for the US. One country doing
| something decent and calling another out on the whole indecency
| of the whole case. Not a good look after a decade plus of legal
| limbo with no end in sight. And of course the man actually being
| extradited (as unlikely as that would have been at this point)
| would just refocus the attention on all the embarrassing things
| that Wikileaks actually leaked that have caused this whole
| vindictive attitude towards Assange. All that stuff being
| rehashed in court rooms and the media for months on end was not
| going to end well. So, the US grudgingly finally doing the right
| thing via a plea deal seems like a good face saving compromise
| that just ends this now.
| tetris11 wrote:
| > At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man
| with some actual principles and backbone and this would
| fundamentally be a decent thing to do.
|
| (massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go
| unpunished)
|
| The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet
| blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as
| the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his
| constituents. His backbone has a restitution coefficient
| somewhere in the Oort cloud.
| davedx wrote:
| Labour just said they'll enforce the warrant for Netanyahu's
| arrest. You find that lacking backbone?
| locallost wrote:
| Starmer has absolutely no opinions on anything other than
| not rattling the cage of conservative voters. This makes
| him broadly acceptable, but long term nobody is truly
| supporting him.
| zadler wrote:
| Have to see if they actually do it. Saying it means very
| little, it's not a controversial position.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes. He's dragged his feet on the Gaza war and on this for
| as long as he possibly could, but has increasingly faced
| outrage in more left-leaning areas and areas with more
| Muslim voters and all his policy stances appear to be
| calculated on the basis of what will win more votes/lose
| fewer votes rather than any kind of backbone. Nothing
| happens until he has more to lose by doing nothing.
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| Keir Starmer is a human rights lawyer, would be a bit weird
| for him to suddenly have no regard for international law
| where many human rights (ECHR) come from and likely divide
| his party.
|
| Not saying he's got a backbone, but he's just going for the
| easier option that keeps his party united.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| He's also got a background as a human rights lawyer. He
| probably has a lot of personal interest in cases like this.
| bob88jg wrote:
| He literally started the UK side of the persecution -
| starmer is a cop, always has been always will be....
| 317070 wrote:
| FWIW, I am one of his constituents in Camden, and he helped
| us out tremendously in a pickle with Home Office when the
| latest war in Ukraine broke out. The issue went from 6 months
| in limbo to being resolved within a week.
|
| I am not commenting on the backbone, but he is definitely
| there for his constituents.
| vintermann wrote:
| He is also personally responsible for the persecution of
| Assange. He was head of Crown Prosecution Services in the UK
| at the time we know (from Stefania Maurizi's FOIA requests)
| they actually threatened Sweden when Sweden wanted to drop
| the case.
|
| Wet blanked doesn't begin to cover it. I honestly think he's
| an entryist trying to tank the Labour party on the behalf of
| some British spy-lord. He's failing, but that's more the
| Tories' fault.
| zadler wrote:
| The spy lord is Tony Blair
| baud147258 wrote:
| > an entryist trying to tank the Labour party on the behalf
| of some British spy-lord
|
| I'm far from following current UK politics, but I've heard
| the same thing about Liz Truss...
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Do you happen to have these FOIA requests, and what kind of
| threats against Sweden were these?
|
| My attempts to find them by searching the internet have
| failed.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Have you actually read their policies? There are plenty of
| big changes.
|
| Maybe you are referring to them not stating that they will
| change taxes significantly? Well, yeah no shit. a) they
| can't, taxes are at their highest level since WW2, and b)
| they don't want to destabilise things like Truss did.
|
| I think his biggest issue is that his voice _sounds_ a bit
| wet and that makes people think he _is_ wet.
| omnimus wrote:
| He is Tony Blair / New Left all over again. Labour bleached
| from left wing policies. Nothing will change as they are on
| board to keep status quo. This (just like the New Left)
| will pave way for even more populist right candidates get
| in to power. Namely it paves way for Farage to be PM.
| bad_good_guy wrote:
| Good, Tony Blair / New Labour were amazing for the
| country.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I am always very curious of hugely enthusiastic New
| Labour supporters. Happy to share my own opinion, but
| what are the achievements you laude them for, and what
| failures are they to be weighed against?
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Off the top of my head: saving the NHS from decades of
| under-investment; introducing the National Minimum Wage;
| putting in place a huge school repair programme; ending
| the Troubles in NI; writing off the debts of poorer
| countries; Scottish devolution; and, for the majority of
| their term at least, fiscal stability and consistent
| economic growth.
|
| The other side of the coin is, of course, the Iraq War.
| We needn't debate that, because we'll surely violently
| agree, but let's not pretend the Blair/Brown partnership
| didn't lead to many positive things for the UK. It did.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm not sure about the NHS. They instigated outsourcing
| work to private companies.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| New Labour more than doubled the NHS budget in real
| terms, and maintained that level over time [1].
|
| Having worked in both environments, it's not particularly
| important to me whether work gets done by a private or a
| public entity, the most important thing is that money is
| spent efficiently. If the public sector is spending
| public money then efficiency usually means ensuring that
| pointless work is stopped, and that staff who have become
| ineffective are shed. If the private sector is spending
| public money then efficiency usually means hawk-like
| contract negotiations are required to prevent a good
| chunk of the cash from being siphoned off by middlemen.
|
| [1] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-
| analysis/data-and-c...
| hardlianotion wrote:
| "Namely it paves way for Farage to be PM."
|
| This is very much a minority opinion.
| omnimus wrote:
| Let's see how really decimated tories will be. If will
| Reform get more votes than Conservative party then they
| become leading right wing party in UK and natural
| candidate for leading the country.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| The phrase 'do not mistake my kindness for weakness'
| springs to mind
| n4r9 wrote:
| His biggest issue is that in Labour's first shoe-in
| election in my lifetime, he's U-turned on basically all of
| the left-leaning pledges that he made in his leadership
| campaign, such as:
|
| - Scrapping private schools charitable status
|
| - Ending the two-child benefit limit
|
| - Ending tuition fees
|
| - Increasing income tax for the top five per cent of
| earners
|
| - Nationalising public services
|
| - Reforming the House of Lords
| dmje wrote:
| The question is whether his backbone will grow back once he's
| in power. I'm in two minds. In our house I'm of the opinion
| that Labour should go "Full Left" and be strong and confident
| about it; my wife thinks they should get in using whatever
| means possible (including the slightly pathetic not-very-left
| agenda they're currently sporting) and then hope they'll make
| proper changes once in. Let's see what 4th July brings. At
| least it'll be the end of the current horrorshow.
| GordonS wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I find this kind of ridiculous - Starmer is
| being pretty clear about the kind of man he is. Fervent
| capitalist, previous member of the CIA-linked Trilateral
| Commission, notorious U-turner, War on Drugs(TM) supporter,
| outright liar, genocide supporter, and absolutely
| _completely_ beholden to Israel (he has even said he 'll
| put Israel lobbiests into the highest echelons of gov -
| he's practically a foreign agent at this point).
|
| He's telling you who he is, so please believe him - the
| idea that this man will become PM and then suddenly turn
| into Jeremy Corbyn is, frankly, delusional. I can
| understand why someone would _want_ to believe that, but in
| all likelihood we 're just getting more of the same.
| Closi wrote:
| People on the whole don't want a Jeremy Corbyn anyway -
| he led his party to the biggest labour defeat since 1935.
|
| Don't know why the labour party would want to replicate
| that shit-show.
| GordonS wrote:
| He was smeared with false antisemitism claims, hence the
| massive defeat. One of those involved in the smearing
| was... Starmer.
|
| Corbyn was never going to be "allowed" to be Prime
| Minister. Also, listen to his recent interview where he
| says he was asked by a committee if he would guarantee to
| be 100% behind any military action instigated by Israel.
| fathyb wrote:
| If anybody is interesting in learning more about that
| smearing campaing:
| https://www.ajiunit.com/investigation/the-labour-files
|
| > An investigation based on the largest leak of documents
| in British political history. The Labour Files examines
| thousands of internal documents, emails and social media
| messages to reveal how senior officials in one of the two
| parties of government in the UK ran a coup by stealth
| against the elected leader of the party.
| Closi wrote:
| Politician smeared during election? Shock horror, it
| happens during every election.
|
| Leader of the party can't unite their own party so there
| is a plan to oust them? That's politics.
|
| Jeremy couldn't particularly unite the party, didn't take
| the center ground, and while I don't think he was a true
| antisemite there were enough mis-steps there that it
| meant that the claim could stick (along with the IRA
| sympathizer claims).
| vidarh wrote:
| People on the whole want the policies, though.
|
| That even Corbyn - the most vilified British politician
| of a generation - got that close to a win is a strong
| demonstration of that. Since then the Tory party support
| has collapsed to historic lows. A win on a program close
| in ambition to the 2017 manifesto - which was not in any
| way radical - should be a walk in the park for someone
| like Starmer in current conditions if he actually had
| dared try.
| GordonS wrote:
| I think you're right - people are desperate for
| _anything_ other than the Tories.
|
| We have a political environment where the Greens are
| smeared as "crazies", people remember the Lib Dems for
| their deception, and mass media has many believing Reform
| will win if they don't vote for Labour. A Labour win is
| all but guaranteed, so Starmer doesn't _need_ to be the
| other cheek of the Monoparty arse - he _chooses_ to be.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| But would the media have abandoned the Conservatives if
| Labour were offering something much different?
| holbrad wrote:
| >Fervent capitalist
|
| That isn't the own you think it is. It's the position of
| every single successful modern state.
|
| >genocide supporter
|
| Sigh...
|
| >suddenly turn into Jeremy Corbyn is, frankly,
| delusional.
|
| Brillant, people voted for him for exactly this reason.
| GordonS wrote:
| You're being pedantic; we obviously live in a capitalist
| world, but Starmer is fully inboard with taking orders
| from corporate overlords (lobbyists) in the same way as
| the Tories. More balance is needed.
| vidarh wrote:
| > That isn't the own you think it is.
|
| It is, however, a condition of membership under the rules
| of the UK Labour Party that you are a democratic
| socialist, and in favour of goals that include democratic
| socialism. Whether or not you think that is right, it is
| what Starmer signed up to when he joined.
|
| > Brillant, people voted for him for exactly this reason.
|
| His pledges when he was elected leader was to largely be
| "continuity Corbyn". A lot of the Labour membership voted
| for him _for that reason_. The extent to which he has
| been willing to lie and deceive his own party membership
| to get his position is quite scary given he 'll likely be
| PM soon.
| dralley wrote:
| > genocide supporter
|
| If Starmer is a "genocide supporter" for being tepidly
| pro-Israel, then Corbyn is a genocide supporter for his
| pathetic Russian apologism on Syria and Ukraine.
|
| If that's where your line is, then there's no chance
| Corbyn hasn't crossed it either.
| GordonS wrote:
| This is pure whataboutism, but to call Starmer - a rabid
| member of Labour Friends of Israel who has parachuted an
| Israel lobbyist into a safe seat, and who plans to staff
| his new government with pro-Israeli stooges - "tepidly
| pro-Israel" is beyond disingenuous.
|
| I'd ask you to consider that the situations in Syria and
| Ukraine are not _nearly_ as straightforward as the US
| would have us believe; indeed, the US and Israel are, as
| usual, the main instigators.
|
| Regardless, Corbyn hasn't "crossed any lines" - he
| certainly hasn't publicly stated that it's OK to cut a
| civilian population's water supply as collective
| punishment, for example. Corbyn takes a more considered,
| nuanced, _sensible_ view on world politics, which
| unfortunately doesn 't play well with our right-wing
| press's simplistic "good guy, bad guy" gov-sponsored
| narrative. This is why Corbyn was smeared - he stands up
| for what's right, even if it means going against the US
| and Israel.
| dralley wrote:
| >he certainly hasn't publicly stated that it's OK to cut
| a civilian population's water supply as collective
| punishment, for example
|
| neither has Starmer... also this never happened...
| GordonS wrote:
| If you're going to rewrite history, and ask me to ignore
| what I've seen and heard with my own eyes, then this
| thread has reached it's end. I bid you adieu.
| n4r9 wrote:
| To be fair, this is one issue on which much of the left
| splits from Corbyn. Even former shadow cabinet ministers
| such as John McDonnell and Clive Lewis are distancing
| themselves from pacifist rhetoric around Ukraine.
| Closi wrote:
| Going 'full left' is the exact reason Labour hasn't been in
| power for 14 years.
|
| You are describing the recipe for a one-term government IMO
| - Elections are won from the center, and moving Left will
| open a center gap for someone else to claim.
|
| The last time a 'full left' Labour government ruled was
| probably just after the war (i.e. Clement Attlee).
| vidarh wrote:
| Firstly Labour went mildly social democratic, offering
| policies to the right of Nordic conservative parties in
| some areas. Just to contextualise what "full left" means
| in this respect. (A concrete example is parental leave,
| where the Norwegian conservative party is fine with far
| higher statutory pay than Labour would even dare suggest
| even under Corbyn)
|
| Secondly, I see this, but at the same time Corbyn was the
| most vilified politician in the UK in a generation and he
| still got close to a win with that program. Suppose
| Corbyn could do that at a point where the Tories were not
| historically unpopular. In that case, it's clear Starmer
| could have stuck to his pledges to be "pragmatic
| continuity Corbyn" and walked this election - most of the
| actual policies in the 2017 manifesto were highly popular
| when polled, _including with conservative voters_.
| dmje wrote:
| Agree.
|
| I mean - from my point of view there are two glaring
| issues in this election that are just being coughed aside
| in a deeply disingenuous way, by all parties (with maybe
| the exception of the LibDems, a bit):
|
| 1) Brexit. For this not to be on the agenda when it has
| been the most ruinous decision made in the last 10 years
| of our political history is just ...well, weird at best,
| totally surreal at worst. Widely recognised [even by
| many? most?] of those who voted for it as now being a
| mistake, it just seems insane to leave any discussion off
| the table.
|
| 2) Tax rises. Everyone knows that for our UK standard of
| living to continue (or even - lol - rise), the money has
| got to come from somewhere. And that place can only
| really be taxes. All of the parties seem to be pulling
| out a magic hat full of magic money - an honest
| conversation would have all the parties in a room
| agreeing that someone, somewhere has got to pay for all
| this stuff.
|
| Anyway, wow, gone well off topic. Sorry Dang!
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| RE 1, it was pretty much the sole discussion of the last
| election and the winning party slogan was "Get Brexit
| Done" (ie let's stop this endless talking about this).
|
| There's very little public appetite to focus on it again
| for now. I disagree with Starmer on a lot but he's right
| to totally shut down discussion on this until after an
| election
| tim333 wrote:
| 1) It's politically toxic. As soon as anyone says
| anything they'll be accused of betrayal etc
|
| 2) The UK's in a bit of a hole that it can't really tax
| and spend out of. What we need is more like sane
| government and economic growth. Just not having something
| like Boris's "fuck business" and tearing up our trade
| agreements for a while would help.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > It's politically toxic.
|
| I think you're probably correct, as only the Green Party
| seem to be committing to moving back in (one reason I'm
| considering voting non-Labour for the first time in my
| life). I wonder though, do you think this will last
| forever, especially in the face of consistent polling
| suggesting that twice as many people think it was a bad
| idea as think it was a good one? [0]
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-
| opinion-po...
| tim333 wrote:
| My guess is Labour once in power will move to undo some
| of the more stupid bits of Brexit like having different
| animal health regs so you can't export fish or meat
| without great difficulty. I can't see full rejoining in
| the near future but maybe becoming more like Norway or
| Switzerland.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Just to put this in context, the last time as you say a
| "full left" government ruled, over the span of six years
| we:
|
| - Built the NHS
|
| - Decolonised India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, and
| Jordan
|
| - Nationalised the coal industry, electricity utilities,
| railways and long-distance haulage
|
| - Established a national childcare service
|
| - Paved the way for the creation of National Parks and
| introduced public rights of way
|
| There is a _lot_ of progress that can be made with a
| genuine left-wing government with a majority, even in a
| time of economic upheaval. With Reform splitting the
| right-wing vote this is the best opportunity the left has
| had in my lifetime. But Starmer is in the lead, banning
| MPs from attending strike pickets and talking about how
| he 's had to give up his pledges on the NHS in order to
| "grow the economy".
| Nursie wrote:
| > In our house I'm of the opinion that Labour should go
| "Full Left" and be strong and confident about it
|
| Unfortunately the UK public doesn't seem to buy into that
| sort of thing. Sure, a large, vocal minority does, but
| enough to win an election against the hoards of basically-
| tory-supporting middle-englanders?
|
| Not as far as I can see. Labour has to claim the middle
| ground to win, at least if it wants to win more than once.
| The next session is probably in the bag either way.
| n4r9 wrote:
| We've also never before had a party like Reform splitting
| the right-wing vote in two.
| holbrad wrote:
| I really hate this line of thinking. Your blatently
| encorauging politicians to lie to voters.
|
| Campaign on a platform of comprimise and sensible polices
| to attract moderate voters... And then just completely
| ignore everything you said you would do...
|
| This is the exact opposite of what we should encourage from
| politics.
| lordnacho wrote:
| We're constrained by the electoral system. The UK
| desperately needs PR, and so does a certain former
| colony.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure "get in using whatever means possible" and
| then switch to policies the voters dislike is terribly
| democratic.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I would genuinely love to know which media your parent
| watches and reads to come to such a conclusion. It is
| remarkable. I've never heard such a statement about Stamer,
| but it's clear that I don't read the same sources.
| hoseja wrote:
| Yeah, now they can give him aggressive cancer without it
| looking too bad.
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| >innocent until proven guilty and all that
|
| To be fair, he was refusing to face trial. And he is expected
| to plead guilty, so he isn't innocent.
|
| That said, there may be legitimate questions about whether the
| United States should be entitled to exercise jurisdiction over
| foreign nationals who are not physically present in the
| jurisdiction for national security offences.
| vidarh wrote:
| Pleading guilty under the threat of either continued
| incarceration in inhuman conditions or extradition somewhere
| that could potentially murder you says nothing about guilt in
| anything but strict legal terms. It's a coerced plea.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Aren't all pleas basically coerced pleas though? The entire
| point is that you plead guilty to a lesser punishment in
| order to avoid the chance of a much more severe punishment.
| vidarh wrote:
| When accompanied by promises of a less punishment: Yes.
|
| And so I think _even with_ a guilty please, there ought
| to be a requirement for the prosecution to prove the
| case. Maybe lower the bar a little bit, but not much. And
| that is indeed how pleas work most places.
|
| Few jurisdictions have US-style plea bargains where the
| prosecutor can negotiate large "discounts" to the
| potential maximum sentencing _and get judges to agree_.
|
| To me, a country that allows that and where they are
| frequently taken does not have a functioning justice
| system.
|
| There's also a significant difference with respect to the
| coercion when sentences are long, and when the possible
| variation in sentence length is huge, and the US stands
| out as particularly bad with respect to both of those
| factors as well.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| The usual standard in the UK is for a sentence to get a
| reduction of around 1/3 for a guilty plea. The situation
| I hear of in the US where people are threatened with a
| 537 year sentence if they plead not guilty or a 3 month
| sentence if they plead guilty is a travesty and surely
| leads to vast levels of injustice.
| rand846633 wrote:
| Did the US army or its participating individuals ever get
| charged for killing the "collateral murder" Reuters
| journalists? Or for doing the same to the proximate other
| civilians? Or for covering it all up?
|
| The question who is guilty by a US court does not determine
| the guilt of an individual in any relevant or moral way under
| these extreme circumstances. It just indicates if you are
| part of the system or if you rather are uncomfortable and
| need to be silenced.
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| The first paragraph is whatabouttery, the second may be
| accepted, but the claim I replied to was he was _legally_
| innocent until proven guilty. That is what I was
| addressing, not some broader notion of morality.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Legal precedent is just what aboutism then. Doesn't make
| it any less important in a normal judicial system
| formerly_proven wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstr
| i...
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Definitely whataboutism, but the crew were investigated
| before the leak and it was found that the reporters were
| with armed fighters and were not distinguishable as
| civilian reporters. While its unfortunate, walking around
| in an active warzone with armed combatants and not taking
| steps to clearly identify yourself as a non combatant isn't
| wise. These things happen in war. They were not
| intentionally targeted and they weren't murdered. War
| reporters know the risk they are taking on and this is why
| they usually clearly mark themselves as press.
| rand846633 wrote:
| Victim blaming.
|
| Yes the killed journalists were in a country that was
| being attacked by a foreign nation. This does not make it
| their fault that they were murdered.
|
| While this might be a common occurrence in war, it does
| not excuse anything: if wars are fought in a way that
| these kill innocent people then they should not be fought
| in the first place. Something is not morally excusable
| only because it is expected when done.
|
| Thirdly, sure the crew was investigated (here i
| admittedly only know what wiki has to offer) but there is
| no known outcome of said internal investigation.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man
| with some actual principles and backbone
|
| You are speaking of the "human rights lawyer" who at best
| acquiesced in Starmer being locked up in Belmarsh.
|
| You are speaking of the man who became Labour leader on the
| strength of six promises, all of which he repudiated as soon as
| he was leader.
|
| He doesn't have a principled bone in his body.
| cryptica wrote:
| The US treatment of Assange did a lot of damage to the
| reputation of the US government internationally and also within
| the US itself. It contributed to a general feeling of
| institutional decay, decay of the media, decay of law and order
| which has caused a loss of trust in the current system.
| sobellian wrote:
| In the USA defendants are guaranteed the right to a speedy
| trial. I'm sure Sweden has similar protections. Assange denied
| himself that right by evading authorities and fighting
| extradition. The former is wholly inexcusable. The latter is
| his right, but to then complain about not receiving a trial
| places the justice system in a catch-22.
|
| I do think it's right to accept a guilty plea and time served,
| but it's hardly a story of exoneration for Assange.
| igravious wrote:
| > And of course there's also the issue that the UK is very
| likely to get a new government that would have likely been
| leaning to just letting the man go in any case. At least the
| current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some
| actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be
| a decent thing to do.
|
| If you knew anything about British politics you'd know that
| this is horseshit.
| csours wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy ... is an asshole.
| yobid20 wrote:
| A very sad day for justice. This man deserves to be tried and
| executed for his crimes.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| By the laws of a country he's never been to?
|
| Your comment actually violates the laws of my micronation.
| Please come here and face summary execution.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Is there any risk that he could face further charges in
| Australia?
| threeseed wrote:
| He broke no laws in Australia.
|
| But the fact he is pleading guilty to a serious crime will have
| further implications for his life e.g. preventing travel, not
| allowed to apply for certain jobs etc.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The fact his name is assange already makes him ineligible for
| a bunch of things, and his connections and popularity already
| open lots of doors for him that aren't open for you and I.
|
| I think he'll be fine.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| I doubt he'll ever be fine after what he's been through.
| closewith wrote:
| I think most likely his life is already over and he's being
| allowed to return to remaining years of psychological and
| physical ordeal following an experience most of us have no
| context to imagine.
|
| I'm glad he's going home to his family, but this is a
| least-worst outcome to an awful miscarriage of justice that
| destroyed many lives.
| yzydserd wrote:
| The Australian government brokered the deal [0] after their
| parliament voted for him to be freed [1]
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-
| assange-...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2024/feb/14/austr...
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| Interesting, I'm guessing he didn't expose many Australian
| secrets? Their government is fresh off of jailing a
| whistleblower (David McBride) for the rest of his life 5
| years who exposed a so called war hero as someone who
| actually committed war crimes.
| yzydserd wrote:
| The phrase used by the attorney general was "enough is
| enough". He was found guilty today and sentenced to time
| served, which was 5 years 1 month. David McBride seems to
| have been sentenced to 5 years 8 months. Where did you read
| he was jailed for life?
|
| I don't agree with either sentence, but they do not appear
| at odds with one another.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| Ok, before he was sentenced he was told he was looking at
| life, I didn't actually know about the sentencing. Thanks
| for the correction.
|
| I disagree on the lack of connection.
| Hawxy wrote:
| > who exposed a so-called war hero as someone who actually
| committed war crimes.
|
| Worth mentioning that this wasn't David's intentions. He
| leaked the documents as he thought special forces soldiers
| were being "unfairly" restricted via tighter rules of
| engagement & defense oversight in order to protect
| civilians. He wanted the ABC to tell everyone that special
| forces were being kept on too tight of a leash, not report
| on war crimes.
| berdario wrote:
| What you're talking about is a smear campaign from ABC:
|
| https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-
| display/a...
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| This story about McBride's motivations really only makes
| sense if you're motivated to come up with some kind of
| post facto reasoning for why McBride is a bad guy for
| leaking the documents, while ABC reporters are heroes for
| selectively publishing them. Never passed the pub test,
| thanks for the link.
| Hawxy wrote:
| I'm not splitting hairs about if he's a (accidental)
| whistleblower or not (which is what that article seems to
| be about). He's never denied that his initial intentions
| for the documents were completely different than what
| transpired.
|
| "He told another media outlet at the time that it was a
| "different story to the one I wanted. They (ABC)
| published something about SAS soldiers shooting people by
| accident, which I found disappointing.""
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Wow that's the greatest news of this year! Congrats Julian!
| jesterson wrote:
| That's something to drink to - tomorrow. Still can't believe
| US/UK government thugs would just let him go after torturing in
| prison 15 years for something every journalist out there should
| be doing.
| light_triad wrote:
| The whole saga is an interesting lesson in how a noble cause can
| end up helping anti-democratic forces.
|
| Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not
| have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the
| hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton.
|
| Politics is complicated.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Road to hell is paved with good intentions.
| webninja wrote:
| Yes, and politics is not about supporting only one side either.
| If transparency makes for more informed decisions, who's to
| judge the better outcome? Meritocracies die in darkness and
| evidence of corruption scares lots of voters away. Especially
| the unaffiliated/independent ones that decide elections.
| bandrami wrote:
| Weird that he had the hacked emails of two political parties
| in the US and only released one of them, then
| lukan wrote:
| Are there sources for this?
| bandrami wrote:
| Both the Mueller report[1] and the Senate report[2].
| There is apparently _some_ question whether Wikileaks
| even got the RNC data and didn 't release it or just
| didn't bother asking for it in the first place[3].
| Assange himself has discussed why he was only interested
| in hurting the Democratic party in the US[4].
|
| 1: https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl
|
| 2: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/file
| s/docu...
|
| 3:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/12/10/report-
| russi...
|
| 4: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-
| wikileaks...
| lukan wrote:
| The intercept link is quite good in quoting his
| motivation, which is indeed quite contrary to the stated
| goal of Wikileaks being neutral.
|
| But in [1] and [2], could you hint where in there that
| information is to be found? Those are quite long
| documents and wikileaks is not the main subject there.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It wouldn't have mattered in the RNC case even if it was
| leaked. It was well known that Republican party insiders
| disliked Trump, but Trump won anyway. The DNC leak was
| motivated by Bernie's treatment in the primary.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| A shame there aren't any other journalists that could have
| leaked the other party's emails, clearly Assanges fault
| bandrami wrote:
| I mean, yes, great example, that's the kind of sad
| argument Assange's defenders have to say with a straight
| face
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| This has been heavily disputed already... it's not clear
| that wikileaks even had access to the RNC data.
| darby_nine wrote:
| A rich demagogue getting elected over a rich career politician
| technocrat who was smeared by right-wing money for decades
| sounds like "democracy" working well as it's ever worked.
|
| It's easy to blame one entity or another for these sorts of
| upset events, but national elections are media circuses largely
| run by private spending on the terms of private parties and
| blaming any one party seems like missing the forest for the
| trees.
|
| Again, election "interference" is not unfamiliar ground for
| democracies or republics, liberal or classic, so it confuses me
| why people blame the electorate rather than the flaws in our
| implementation of democratic ideals (eg the citizens united
| ruling) that allowed private capital to run rampant over our
| election mechanics.
|
| To illustrate how inevitable this is, the roman republic had
| statute stipulating the width of the halls leading up to the
| ballots to physically restrict voters from being harassed or
| intimidated. Otherwise the richer candidate would simply pay a
| mob to physically bully you into voting a certain way
| regardless of your original intentions--or perhaps they might
| outright buy your vote out if they knew which way your ballot
| cast. It was completely understood by all involved that voting
| (& armies) could be bought with sufficient money and ingenuity
| by even single people.
|
| Why we are discussing anything other than restricting the
| ability of money to interfere with our modern processes when it
| comes to "democratic health" is beyond me.
| fmnxl wrote:
| > Why we are discussing anything other than restricting the
| ability of money to interfere with our modern processes when
| it comes to "democratic health" is beyond me.
|
| That's the point though, not that many people care about the
| implementation of a democracy, which itself is a form of
| democratic will (or the lack thereof). The problem with
| simply "more democracy" is we might end up with these
| contradictions.
|
| People don't care much about the fine details of the
| implementation of their governance. In an ideal world, they
| would have voted in people who'd tear up these "money is
| speech" laws, but we live in a world where the average Joe
| only cares and are receptive to catchphrases.
| 12907835202 wrote:
| Played into the hands? Didn't Assange personally hate the
| Clinton's, that seems less played into the hands of and more
| intentional?
| Applejinx wrote:
| That's really how that works, in practice. That would be why
| he proved useful and had a willingness to do what he did HOW
| he did it.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| If you actually read all the material on the Clintons, it's
| hard to imagine anyone not hating them. That's just evidence
| the man's got a soul.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Yeah, I see a lot of celebration here, but I don't see what
| part of this worked out well for anyone. Assange spent over a
| decade either running from the law or in prison. None of the
| charges against him are ever going to be heard either way, and
| the original issues he raised have largely been ignored. And
| over the period he and his fellow travelers have done a great
| job trashing their own cause by lining up beside genocidal
| dictators.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I'm prepared to celebrate if he gave up a lot of useful
| information on who he was working with, and who ELSE was in
| there with him. As I see it, Assange got used, by folks who
| are a bigger problem than his former idealism could ever be.
| badgersnake wrote:
| If he's not actually a Russian agent then there are likely
| plenty of actual Russian agents doing a worse job of it than
| him.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| If he is a Russian agent, Russia does more to help the US
| democracy than the US itself.
| 0dayz wrote:
| How exactly has Assange help us democracy.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Leaking information about war crimes (1) deters from
| future war crimes (2) helps government transparency.
| dralley wrote:
| He repeatedly inferred that Seth Rich was his DNC source
| even though his emails showed he continued communicating
| with his "source" long after Seth Rich was found dead
| (the source was Russian military intelligence). He was
| also messaging Donald Trump Jr. during that time period.
|
| That's not journalism, that's dishonesty and activism.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You'll have to link sources on the above quote. But even
| if he was a Republican-oriented journalist, that would
| make him one of the most endangered species on the
| planet.
| 0dayz wrote:
| 1. This has been done before Wikileaks and after.
|
| 2. Doesn't seem to have made much difference beyond
| spreading cynicism as it was never appropriately
| published.
|
| 3. This would have been despite Wikileaks.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Sometimes. I think it was published just fine. If you
| admit it's a good thing or that it would have happened
| regardless, why persecute for 15 years?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Speaking truth to power.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Information must be free.
| gklitz wrote:
| Clinton is not democracy. Anti-Clinton is not anti democracy.
| Being anti the US government is not anti democratic.
|
| And no, letting USA or any other nation for that matter commit
| war crimes quietly does not support democracy.
| seanieb wrote:
| When Russia enables it, amplifies it, builds their
| disinformation and propaganda machine around those facts and
| there's no counter weight it gets into the realm of anti-
| democratic adjacent.
|
| There's nothing simple when it comes to international
| politics. But foreign meddling by an adversary is a pretty
| bright line.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The US enabled it. If there were no wrongdoings, there
| would be nothing to leak.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Every government/corporation has some "wrong doing" if it
| hadn't been the military there's plenty in the police
| force if not that then I'm sure there would have been
| cases of corruption.
|
| Your statement doesn't add any nuance to said concerns.
| gklitz wrote:
| "But Your honor! yes my client murdered his wife, but
| every country has murderers, so why should we punish him
| for that? Isn't the true criminals his kids who went to
| the cops and thus caused permanent damage to his and
| therefore their chance of them having a happy household
| again?"
|
| Not "adding any nuance" is suggesting that publishing the
| truth about warcrimes is worse than committing war
| crimes.
| 0dayz wrote:
| That's a nice defense towards the straw man you
| constructed.
|
| I'll repeat my point so maybe you can focus on that than
| the straw man.
|
| It's not hard to find scandals, that's the whole point of
| having institutions meant to watchdog corporations and
| governments.
|
| But of course governments/corporation will try and cover
| it up or deregulate said institutions, but this doesn't
| make an obvious adversary (Russia) a helping hand in
| holding the corporations /governments accountable because
| it's not meant to, it's meant to create cynicism and a
| feeling of hopelessness.
|
| So no publishing truth is never bad, the issue is how you
| do it.
| the_optimist wrote:
| You take the self-contradictory position that "publishing
| the truth is never bad," but in some cases "how you
| publish the truth" is bad. You weight the perceived
| interpretation by the consumer of information against the
| information itself. While consistent with in-your-face
| Russell-conjugated "news" stories and "accountability
| journalism," this is practical nonsense, unjustifiable,
| unprincipled, and a loophole for terrible excuses that
| countervail the entire purpose of a successful free
| press.
| 0dayz wrote:
| There's no contradiction as this example will show:
|
| If I publish an internal report that has good undercover
| agents doing good things but also has bad undercover
| agents that are acting against the country's interest, it
| would be absurdly dumb and reckless of me to publish the
| internal report as is without redacting names that has
| nothing to do with said bad actors.
|
| There are correct guidelines specifically about doing
| whistle blowing and failing to do so can and will cause
| lives to be lost.
| the_optimist wrote:
| This relies on an artificial and false morality. You
| reference "correct guidelines." Please cite them, and
| what is definitely good and bad outside a local construct
| within a modern Westphalian political nation state.
| Separately: Should nationally critical information
| controls survive mere legal disobedience? If they don't
| how much security theater fulfills your appetite?
| underlipton wrote:
| You want me on that wall etc. He was the villain, you
| know.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Chelsea Manning leaded a bunch of random diplomatic
| cables and medical information on the families of
| servicemembers.
|
| How does any of that constitute a 'war crime'?
|
| Please, name the war crimes that Chelsea Manning exposed.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Manning leaked multiple files relating to the execution
| of surrendering fighters and murder of civilians.
| "Collateral Murder" being the big one.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Foreign meddling in what? Foreign meddling in the Clinton
| campaign's lies and obfuscations?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| That has nothing to do with democracy. On the contrary, a
| democracy needs the electorate to be informed and officials
| not having secrets or starting a war on the basis of lies.
| nataliste wrote:
| The failure of the United States to provide a positive
| counterweight to propaganda due to launching two wars of
| aggression filled with warcrimes is not Russia's fault, nor
| Assange's.
|
| The United States is responsible for sowing the good, not
| Russia for not hiding the bad.
| kelnos wrote:
| "Not hiding" is a pretty disingenuous way of putting it.
|
| "Being better at targeted propaganda" isn't really how
| I'd like our leaders to be chosen. Obviously that's where
| we are, but I wish we could do better.
| nataliste wrote:
| I don't want domestic propaganda from government. I want
| policy from government that creates good will
| domestically and abroad. "Russia might use this against
| us" is a good policy litmus test to _not_ do those
| things.
| 0dayz wrote:
| No one said Clinton is democracy that title goes to the dear
| leader Kim Jong-un.
|
| That however does not mean you are the good guy for playing
| into the hands of an adversary that wanted to rig a
| democratic election.
| gklitz wrote:
| Is people knowing more truthful facts to you considered
| "rigging an election"?
| 0dayz wrote:
| No? Please point out where I said this.
|
| But then if we care about truthful facts then why didn't
| Assange release rnc documents?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Wikileaks only leaked what they got handed to them. In
| the DNC case, it seems that the leaker was motivated by
| Clinton railroading Bernie in the primary. Meanwhile on
| the Republican ticket, the populist, Trump, was able to
| sweep aside the established Bush dynasty and other party
| insider favorites.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| SVR/Cozy Bear were fans of Bernie?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2018/01/dutch...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Damning evidence is not rigging.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Damning evidence is not a conclusion especially when said
| evidence is inconclusive.
|
| And then I have to ask yet again, why did not Wikileaks
| release the RNC leaks?
| TheArcane wrote:
| This has the same energy as labelling any critique of Israel
| anti-semitic
| oldandboring wrote:
| Our problem isn't with the critiques of Israel, it's with
| the fact that the people critiquing Israel are almost
| universally singling Israel out for critique.
| racional wrote:
| _The people critiquing Israel are almost universally
| singling Israel out for critique._
|
| They're not, of course.
|
| But labeling them as such is one of the myriad ways by
| which criticism of Israel gets automatically branded as
| you-know-what.
| oldandboring wrote:
| I love the "of course" you threw in. Do please try to
| appreciate the emotional toll of having non-Jews out
| there all helpfully informing us Jews what is, and isn't,
| antisemitism. It must be nice not having to endure that
| kind of thing in your daily life, to say nothing of
| having to bring my children past armed guards to get into
| synagogue.
| racional wrote:
| _Do please try to appreciate the emotional toll of having
| non-Jews out there all helpfully informing us Jews what
| is, and isn 't, antisemitism._
|
| I have no idea what your essential attributes are. Nor do
| you have any idea as to mine. And I'm not telling you
| what to think about anything.
|
| This thread is getting far from the original topic.
| Recommend we both close shop here, and move on.
| oska wrote:
| I wonder if you ever listen to the many, many, many Jews
| who state that criticism of Israel is _not_
| 'antisemitism' and that blowback from the state violence
| and the intensely evil persecution & genocide of the
| Palestinian people perpetrated by Zionist Israel over
| more than 70 years now is the single biggest contributor
| towards them ever feeling 'unsafe' as Jews?
|
| Again, there are many, many, many such Jewish voices that
| have emphatically dismissed the format of your attempted
| victimisation play here.
| oldandboring wrote:
| I wonder if you have any idea what the term
| "tokenization" means.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| If Assange showed any interest in also undermining Russia or
| other authoritarian regimes I would feel more compassion. I
| think criticization of the US foreign policy is fine and the
| press has a role. To me his case has always been grey. States
| have secrets its just the nature of the world.
| yesco wrote:
| Personally as an American, I'm far more interested about
| the shit my government is hiding from me than getting yet
| another reason to hate Putin, what could possibly be leaked
| from Russia that would make their optics worse than it
| already is? This was true even pre-invasion.
|
| The whataboutism surrounding this feels completely
| disingenuous to me considering much of what was leaked by
| Wikileaks was war crimes, media collusion with Clinton's
| campaign and embarrassing mistakes the government tried to
| cover up, that they had no business trying to cover up.
|
| States have secrets, but that is a privilege granted to
| them by the people to protect national security, their
| abuse of this privilege has been completely unacceptable
| even if the reveal made your preferred candidate look bad
| for actions they were personally responsible for.
|
| If Wikileaks accomplished anything, it was revealing the
| hypocrites and those who lack even an inch of integrity.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| Its not like what wiki leaks did is new. The pentagon
| papers were published 50 years ago. The us government
| should be held to high standards and we need a press to
| do that. At some level however in a world of competing
| states if an organization is only interested in
| undermining one state it makes it less trust worthy in my
| eyes. I think Assange views the US as an evil actor and
| that informs what he thinks is worthy of coverage. Its
| why he could call Afghans who worked with the US as
| collaborators as in his eyes working with the US makes
| you evil. I think that world view is insane and naive.
|
| However as I said there is real utility to publishing
| information which shouldn't be kept from the public.
| Which is why I think Assange is a hard case.
| gklitz wrote:
| > States have secrets its just the nature of the world.
|
| So let's just check your bias. Assuming an American
| journalist living in England exposes video of Russia
| gunning down civilians and shows they are covering it up.
| Would you say the right cause of action would be for that
| American to be procedures in Russia because " States have
| secrets it's just the nature of the world." and apparently
| hiding war crimes and prosecuting journalists who expose
| them is also just states rights?
| sabarn01 wrote:
| I think this is a grey area. If you commit a crime via
| the internet like fraud can a state go after you? I guess
| I think so. Should Assange have been prosecuted is a
| different matter. Can journalists be prosecuted seems
| also like a hard case by case question. In general if you
| are acting in the public interest and only act as a
| publisher IE do not recruit or gain secrets yourself you
| shouldn't be prosecuted. I also think it's 100% in an
| other nations right to deny extradition. So what I think
| is that this is a hard case with lots of grey area that
| isn't as clear cut as people pretend it is.
| kzzzznot wrote:
| States do have secrets. And when those secrets are grave
| and destructive, their citizens have a right to know about
| them.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| This is obviously false. All states have intelligence
| agencies military secretes ect.
| nmacan wrote:
| The Guardian thinks the election loss had mainly economic and
| personality reasons:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clin...
|
| Then, Assange probably thought that Hilary Clinton really tried
| to drone him, despite denials:
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/4/hillary-clin...
|
| It isn't the first time that she made unwise statements:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-s...
|
| I'm pretty sure that the charismatic Obama, even if he had had
| a similar email affair, would have won the elections.
| Personalities really matter.
| gosub100 wrote:
| A public officer running their own private email server and
| wiping it when authorities ask to see it is anti-democratic.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't believe Assange ever believed in a noble cause. He did
| what he did for personal vanity and any good he did in the
| world is purely by coincidence. When he blamed the DNC hack on
| Seth Rich he had an opportunity to do the right thing and
| instead he impugned a victim of a heinous crime. Rich's
| successfully sued Fox for defamation over exactly the same
| thing Assange said.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| I hate to break this to you, but Trump was and is a participant
| in liberal democracy, not a March on Rome figure.
| kelnos wrote:
| The events of 1/6/2020, and the proliferation of unfounded
| 2020 election fraud claims, would suggest otherwise. Not to
| mention his plans to "be a dictator for a day" and persecute
| his political opponents if elected this fall.
|
| The man and those in his orbit have a hard-on for
| Putin/Xi/Kim-style autocracy.
| hsod wrote:
| Anyone else remember when wikileaks directly collaborated with
| the trump campaign, gave them advice, etc.?
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/563996442...
|
| Also interesting that they didn't Wikileak these messages, some
| mainstream journalist had to do it for them. Probably they just
| hadn't gotten around to it
| DaoVeles wrote:
| All around my neighborhood is the graffiti of "Free Assange, Oz
| hero". Just this morning I saw a large amount of it in a new
| place. Was thinking "I really hope one day it happens but I am
| doubtful".
|
| And then I just saw this... wow! I am so glad to be wrong, to see
| my pessimistic side be completely wrong. Julian is free!
| noahlt wrote:
| What part of the world is your neighborhood in?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I'm thinking OZ hero implies Australia.
| fsckboy wrote:
| we're certainly not in Kansas, at least not any more!
| hoyd wrote:
| :-)
| oska wrote:
| It's actually quite rare for Australians to refer to
| Australia as Oz, at least in my experience. Seems to be
| much more a thing in the US and, to a much lesser extent,
| the UK.
|
| If that graffiti were written in Australia, I think it
| would be far more likely written as 'Aussie hero'.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| What's the actual view on him in oz? We've got exiled Aussie
| politicians here in the U.K. saying that he's universally
| reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a "real" Australian,
| and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their
| privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints,
| looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?
| contingencies wrote:
| Oz is like most places, there's a large number of people for
| whom thinking for themselves from an even vaguely informed
| position presents too much of a logistical challenge (re.
| literacy, education, breadth of interest, pretense to regular
| reading, range of sources, adequate life experience to judge
| bias, ready echo chamber availability, swamp of familiarity,
| etc.). The minority of people who are educated, do hold broad
| enough interests and are capable of critical thinking are
| almost all in support of Wikileaks, IMHO. Some of them have
| been done in by the smear campaign, unfortunately.
| corimaith wrote:
| People are only capable of informed decisions in their
| specific area of expertise. Outside of that the difference
| in opinion between a university educated and a working
| class is irrelevant.
|
| When the people whose specific jobs and lives revolve
| around the topic have a contrary opinion you should
| probably take more seriously. Those who don't and elevate
| their opinions are what we call cranks.
| mistermann wrote:
| What is your area of expertise that facilitates knowing
| the truth of all of your claims here today?
| contingencies wrote:
| The entire earth is affected by Assange's revelations,
| and the legal wranglings thereafter. It is unclear which
| specific subset to which you refer, but I don't think
| their opinion is any more valid than others'.
|
| Further, perhaps it is unwise to place much faith in the
| relevance of formal education to matters of complex
| political and technical insight deeply mired in populist
| information warfare and wiser to consider education level
| to be generally quite independent of formal training in
| most cases?
| jgord wrote:
| He is a much beloved gentleman rogue.
|
| Invariably well-informed and well-spoken, even if somewhat
| self-centered or arrogant at times.
|
| For him and his family, Im glad hes free.
|
| Five years seems a pretty harsh sentence for publishing
| leaked information about governments behaving badly - isnt
| that what good journalists are supposed to do ?
| tim333 wrote:
| The argument against is he conspired with the leaking.
| Draiken wrote:
| Does it really matter?
|
| We argue semantics around incidents like this when it
| comes down to: people doing bad stuff and trying to hide
| it.
|
| If anything, these laws are completely broken. People
| should never be punished for exposing bad actors, period.
| Imagine if that ever happened. Maybe governments and
| companies would think twice before acting
| illegally/immorally.
|
| Governments do not want these incidents to happen because
| they want to keep doing it in secrecy and they enact laws
| to make uncovering these schemes illegal. Arguing if
| that's illegal or not is missing the whole point. It will
| never be legal in a corrupt society like ours.
| colechristensen wrote:
| He has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage
| Act, it's no longer an argument, he's admitting it in
| court. He's going to go to a US court in one of our tiny
| pacific island territories to plead.
|
| He directly participated in stealing a bunch of
| classified information with Manning.
| vidarh wrote:
| A guilty plea faced with the choice of continued
| imprisonment in inhumane conditions or the risk of
| extradition to a country that might jail him for life or
| execute him does not end the argument of whether or not
| he is guilty of anything. It's a coerced plea.
|
| It only ends the argument of whether or not there is
| still a legal case against him.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I really would hope more people would understand this.
| Faced with indefinite detention and infinite legal cost
| would you admit to something you didn't do to walk free?
| I'm pretty sure most people would.
|
| It's a difficult area of research, but there are various
| law schools[0] and charities[1] trying to help people who
| took pleas because they feared a harsher sentence if they
| couldn't adequately defend themselves.
|
| 0 - https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documen
| ts/NRE.... 1 - https://innocenceproject.org/
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > a country that might jail him for life or execute him
|
| I've always found this claim to be extremely shrill --
| and doubly so now. This is the same country that just
| agreed to let him plead guilty in exchange for,
| essentially, time served (~5 years). It's also the same
| country whose president commuted Chelsea Manning's
| sentence down to 7 years.
|
| Your basic claim is not an unreasonable one: people plead
| guilty because they'd rather take the deal than face the
| possibility of a worse outcome at trial. But what will it
| take to stop the rhetoric about the U.S. wanting to lock
| him up and throw away the key?
| vidarh wrote:
| It's also the same country that agreed to it only after
| it became clear that there was a real chance they might
| suffer the embarrassment of not getting an extradition
| and/or have to deal with a government after the election
| come the July 4 election that might - despite how I
| dislike Starmer - be at least somewhat less receptive to
| US pressure.
|
| > It's also the same country whose president commuted
| Chelsea Manning's sentence down to 7 years.
|
| The same country who may have a different president come
| November with a history of calling the Assange case a
| priority.
|
| Why would anyone feel safe relying on the luck of the
| draw of the president at any given time to get out of
| what was an initial utterly extreme sentence?
|
| > But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the
| U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?
|
| When the US stops sentencing people to 35 years like with
| Chelsea Manning's initial sentence, and there's been a
| long period without e.g. illegal rendition flights, when
| Guantanamo Bay has been closed for a few decades and no
| new camps have taken it's place etc. Maybe when a couple
| of generations have passed, in other words.
| tremon wrote:
| _But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the
| U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?_
|
| Actually acknowledging and prosecuting the war crimes
| that were exposed would be a good start.
| CalChris wrote:
| If you are going to call his guilty plea an expedient
| choice then Assange should have taken Trump's more
| expedient offer of a pardon 7 years ago: less time, no
| felony.
| vidarh wrote:
| I didn't call it an expedient choice. And it's easy to
| say 7 years later that it would have been better for him
| to have taken it than after years of imprisonment in
| inhuman conditions to soften him up.
|
| People have breaking points.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| I am really glad that your government is gradually losing
| influence and power. I wouldn't have expected it 20 years
| ago, but I will probably live to see you completely lose
| your global hegemony and your fantasies of power become
| nothing more than embarrassing, self-castrating
| nostalgia, just like in the former colonial powers of
| Europe.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _will probably live to see you completely lose your
| global hegemony and your fantasies of power become
| nothing more than embarrassing, self-castrating
| nostalgia_
|
| And then you'll enjoy more experiences of aggressively-
| expansionist governments, Houthi-like groups, and the
| equivalent of Haitian gangs and Sudanese militias, _all
| over the world_ , fighting to advance their leaders' own
| narrow parochial desires wherever they think they can get
| away with it. They'll be using WhatsApp, Starlink, and
| cheap drones in their efforts, and enlisting like-minded
| allies.
|
| You'll find yourself looking back wistfully on the days
| of the _Pax Americana_ , which for nearly 80 years has
| maintained a flawed but workable rules-based
| international order. That's even granting that the U.S.
| has done some bad things -- on occasion, very bad things
| -- in furtherance of its own perceived interests and
| those of some of its powerful interest groups.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| This! The US hegemony is flawed but:
|
| 1. There is no other country (not even close) that could
| be trusted with that amount of power (especially
| considering size)
|
| 2. Held up the (illusion of) "neutral" international
| institutions like the UN. They barely worked in the
| presence of a "benevolent" power, and will probably
| completely lose relevance to anarchy and the "right of
| the stronger" (on local levels), shall the US hegemony
| subside.
|
| Then on the other hand the US has started undermining
| their own most important principles:
|
| 1. 1971: Removing the gold convertability from the $
|
| 2. 9/11: Starting to spy on each and everyone, eastern
| germany/soviet-style
|
| 3. Removing personal freedoms during COVID (not as severe
| as other countries, though)
|
| If it weren't for silicon valley, the us would already
| look like a stagnating state where the economy is mainly
| driven by government spending. The problem is larping EU
| socialism will only yield even worse results in the US,
| since the government seems to be even less efficient.
|
| On the other hand the US is also one of the few countries
| that have turned around non-violently in the past.
| Attractiveness for international talent is still immense.
| So with a few adjustments I'm pretty sure it could be
| turned around
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| The illusion of a neutral global institution like the UN
| is a result of US hegemony too. They could not tolerate
| international courts but prosecute Assange...
|
| I would go even further and blame the state of the
| developing countries on the west too, because their
| selfish competetivly oriented globalisation left them as
| vasals since the end of colonization.
|
| This is actually the sadest part, what will remain of
| this hegemony: a world order made by and for the corrupt.
| Maybe china makes it better since they resisted IMF, WHO,
| etc but i have my doubts.
| Agentus wrote:
| It's clear to me many of the European colonies post &
| during Monarchal Empires were exploited. But Korea,
| Japan, Taiwan, Phillipines, Germany, and a lot of the
| places that were sorta "vassals" of the United States
| faired well off-ish. I see a lot of examples in history
| where the United States actually played hardball with the
| colonial powers of Europe post WWII siding with the
| exploited more, forcing concessions on the European
| powers.
|
| Not that the United States isn't flawed or doesn't do
| hypocritical or unilateral diplomacy (Israel or anything
| related to communism, & I guess installing/supporting
| dictators that support US interests), but is it too much
| to ask if you can provide me a few examples where the US
| acted like an exploitative colonial power that hindered
| developing countries (at least in the past 80 years)?
| Agentus wrote:
| What's your background and what injustice did the US
| hegemony do upon you?
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| > but I will probably live to see you completely lose
| your global hegemony and your fantasies of power
|
| Not sure where you live, friend. And perhaps America
| never should have attempted to be world's policeman.
| Neither an international awareness nor an appreciation
| for the subltiew of diplomacy have never been America's
| strong suit.
|
| But rest assured it is tired and over such a role, with
| two plus decades of military veterans having seen up
| close and personally how ugly the world can be in places.
|
| Perhaps you are merely a troll but I'm guessing you have
| seen the most recent trendlines on this planet. They
| don't look good. And it appears will get exactly what you
| seek.
|
| Enjoy...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > He directly participated in stealing a bunch of
| classified information with Manning.
|
| and a good thing that was too, exposing our government's
| wrongdoing and lies
| colechristensen wrote:
| >and a good thing that was too, exposing our government's
| wrongdoing and lies
|
| What exactly of value was exposed?
| belorn wrote:
| A few months ago in Sweden we had a major news story
| about a journalist who went under cover as an employee of
| a political party media department in order to follow a
| story. They explicitly took the job in order to leak
| information which their employee contract disallowed.
| They will, practically guarantied, not get in legal
| problems for it.
|
| People occasionally talk about this tactic as being a bit
| of a morally grey zone but under cover journalism with an
| intention of leaking information (if they get their hands
| on it) do happen from times to times.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > They will, practically guarantied, not get in legal
| problems for it.
|
| Maybe things are different in Sweden, but violating an
| employee contract seems like a civil matter, not
| criminal, which is hugely different.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > They explicitly took the job in order to leak
| information which their employee contract disallowed.
|
| I get the feeling if they'd joined the Swedish military
| and leaked national secrets, things would not have worked
| out so nicely for them.
|
| That's what Assange was accused of, not being in the
| military, but actively conspiring with the leaker to
| steal the documents rather than merely receiving the
| leaked documents.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Further, if that reporter claimed to be all "free the
| secrets!"
|
| ...but when handed documents from one another foreign
| government refuses to publish them
|
| and then it becomes obvious that the leaks were targeting
| liberal Swedish politicians facing election versus
| conservative candidates favored by that same one
| particular other foreign government...
|
| I don't understand why people don't see wikileaks as
| anything other than a proxy Russian foreign intelligence
| operation.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If they leak info against our opponents, they are free
| speech heroes and paladins of truth. If they leak info
| against our party, they are filthy dirty spies. I don't
| understand why people can't see it.
| A1kmm wrote:
| Wikileaks has also leaked things the Russian political
| establishment almost certainly doesn't like, e.g.
| https://wikileaks.org//spyfiles/russia/.
|
| Apparently Wikileaks were given documents that had
| already leaked elsewhere before and refused to publish
| them because their purpose is novel leaks, not repeating
| leaks from elsewhere. That has been spun into a narrative
| that they refused leaks because they are biased, without
| much evidence.
|
| When there are a lot of disingenuous arguments like this
| being made to discredit someone that turn out to be
| unreasonable once you dig a little deeper, like we see
| with Wikileaks and Assange, it generally is a strong
| suggestion someone is trying to manipulate people into
| believing a false narrative.
| belorn wrote:
| There is actually some funny history around that, since
| after the world war 2 there was laws restricting news
| papers from publishing national secrets. One case was a
| map that the military official accidentally leak
| themselves, but which was classified, so when the news
| papers published an article discussing the leak
| (including a image of the map) the news paper were
| charged with leaking national secrets.
|
| The result from the political fallout was creation of one
| of the four constitutional laws that exist in Sweden, the
| Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1949.
|
| One result of that is that if a military personal were to
| leak information to the press, the journalist would by
| law be forbidden to ever disclose who that person was.
| The journalist can be sent to jail if they just happen to
| disclose it, and must take active steps to prevent it.
|
| The publisher themselves must have the intention to
| inform the public. If that is true, then the constitution
| allows the publisher to ignore any other Swedish law like
| national secret classification for the act of publishing
| (explicit right given in the constitution).
|
| Legal professors were discussing the situation back
| during the initial periods when the leaks occurred that
| Julian Assange now has plead guilty for. The conclusion
| was that he can not get charged for disclosing national
| defense information. The constitution do not allow that.
| He could be charged for conspiring to steal documents
| (ie, hacking), if the original whistle blower did not
| have access to the documents in the first place and had
| material help from the journalist or if they paid the
| whistle blower to steal the documents (proportional to
| that action). Conspiracy charges are quite messy however,
| and since military personal are under different legal
| laws than civilians, the consensus was unclear if such
| conspiracy charges is possible, and what if any
| punishment is available for the courts.
| bigfudge wrote:
| They've been ruining his life for longer than five years
| haven't they?
| highcountess wrote:
| ~14 years now
| smdyc1 wrote:
| Much beloved? Maybe in your circle, certainly nobody i know
| considered him beloved. I mean, the guy admitted to a room
| full of journalists he was happy to burn a bunch of Afghan
| informants. The guy is a narcissistic wanker who put lives
| at risk.
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| I'd say a fairly large percentage would be disappointed that
| we let a citizen get treated like that and we did nothing as
| a country to assist, independent of anything else. Maybe I am
| out of touch though.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Just googling around it seems Assange had support of the
| overwhelming majority of Australians (going by a 2023 poll
| conducted by a Sydney newspaper)
|
| > 79 per cent of people said the Biden administration should
| drop its pursuit of Assange. Only 13 per cent disagreed.
| Eight per cent were unsure
| Maxious wrote:
| > Mr Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, was part of a
| group of politicians across the political spectrum who had
| long campaigned for Mr Assange's release and visited the US
| to lobby legislators there on the matter.
|
| > "There were so many people who were part of this process,
| and what it showed was people from both sides of politics,
| for different reasons, arrived at the same place," Mr Joyce
| said on Tuesday morning.
|
| > "I don't agree with what he did, and I won't, but it wasn't
| illegal," Mr Joyce said.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-
| encouragement-j...
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Fascinating. Here's an equivalent snippet from the BBC, who
| are doing a good job of making it look like Stella is his
| only supporter:
|
| > Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says
| "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a
| journalist.
|
| > "We can now... say he was guilty of a very serious
| offence," he tells the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
|
| > "Most people in Australia would agree it's not
| appropriate to steal national security information and
| publish it - governments have to have some degree of
| privacy in their communications."
|
| > He adds: "I don't think many Australians have sympathy
| for him. Just because he's Australian doesn't mean he's a
| good bloke."
| gearhart wrote:
| The BBC has a laudable goal of trying to be "balanced"
| which unfortunately is often poorly implemented as giving
| equal credence to both sides of an argument, even when
| doing so paints a wildly innaccurate picture.
|
| If you look at the totality of the BBC's coverage, it's
| clear that the general consensus is that he did a good
| thing for humanity that hurt some powerful people, and
| he's been unjustly punished for it, but that there is a
| small cohort of people (including some very vocal,
| powerful ones who get headlines) who disagree with that
| opinion and think that he did something negative and was
| justly punished for it.
|
| The trouble is that when you summarise that argument, you
| lose the "general consensus" and "small cohort" bits and
| you just get the two points, which together make a rather
| different story.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| > Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer
| says "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a
| journalist.
|
| The Downer family have recent history in misjudging what
| "most people" in significant chunks of the Australian
| public think. Chunks, for example, like the electorate
| they're trying to be members of parliament in.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Well, i guess the same "most people".Where(p => p.money >
| 1billion) .. dont like friendly jordies and were part of
| a crooked clan the day there ancestors got shipped in. So
| Assange is in good company..
| sharken wrote:
| He sounds like a Downer with those statements.
|
| I guess it is to be expected from a person whose power is
| threatened by people like Assange.
|
| At least the PM seems like a more sensible person.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > do not see Assange as a journalist.
|
| Sure, a "journalist" is somebody who works for a mega-
| corporation, preferably owned by a billionaire with
| political ambitions, and reports whatever the party that
| controls his outlet considers to be fit to print at the
| moment.
|
| > he was guilty of a very serious offence
|
| When somebody is caught on camera robbing or stabbing,
| the "journalists" always insist he is "allegedly" guilty
| until the court decision is made. These rules, however,
| do not apply to people who publish dirt on politicians.
|
| > would agree it's not appropriate to steal national
| security information and publish it
|
| "Journalists" have done it many times though. And got
| prestigious awards for it. Of course, the situation is
| different here - his wasn't approved for anybody powerful
| and didn't benefit any billionaire with political
| ambitions, so no awards for him.
| intothemild wrote:
| > "I don't agree with what he did, and I won't, but it
| wasn't illegal," Mr Joyce said.
|
| One of the rare moment's I agree with Barnaby Joyce.
| LilBytes wrote:
| Surprising for me also.
| caf wrote:
| The Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom is apparently
| flying with him today, so that should give some indication.
|
| (It is probable that if those politicians had been
| particularly in touch with the views of Australians, they
| wouldn't have ended up in exile!)
| shric wrote:
| I live in the center of Sydney. Every Friday in the city for
| as long as I can remember there's been a small but dedicated
| group of peaceful protesters gathering outside Town Hall.
| They must be over the moon today.
| cryptica wrote:
| I think he is viewed very positively. Australians appreciate
| law and order but we also love to see a rebel break through
| and restore common sense once in a while.
|
| Australia has been a loyal US ally historically and so our
| politicians avoid criticizing US as not to jeopardize that
| relationship. It's been a thorny issue in the relationship
| though as it has made our politicians look weak/cowardly
| whenever the topic of Assange was approached.
| starspangled wrote:
| Politicians and corporate journalists lie to you, and they
| hate Assange because he exposes their lies. That pretty much
| gives you your answer -- he is not universally hated by
| normal people at all.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> We've got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K.
|
| Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done
| away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in
| Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even
| informal exile only normally happens between countries that
| do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians
| are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or
| tax reasons.
| golemotron wrote:
| It might be turnabout. The settlers of Aus were exiles from
| England.
| michaelt wrote:
| This is meant jokingly.
|
| Sometimes when a public figure fucks up their career in
| their home country, they'll move to another country where
| people don't know about the fuck-up.
|
| This isn't a _literal_ exile, it 's figurative.
| highcountess wrote:
| Could you clarify for me how he violated people's privacy?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > We've got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K.
|
| Who are those? I can't think of any Australian politicians
| who are prominent in UK discourse, on Assange or any other
| topic.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| My general impression is that Australians vary between
| neutral (they don't know and don't care what he did) to
| positive toward him.
|
| Where I live (way out in the boonies), many people have told
| me that they have a lot of admiration for him. In some spaces
| in Melbourne, he seems to almost have a cult following.
|
| I am sure he has his detractors in Australia but, so far, I
| have either not met any in person or they have kept their
| opinions to themselves.
|
| I think politicians are more likely to dislike him than the
| general public does, which makes sense; after all, he
| targeted politicians and policy decisions.
| DaSexiestAlive wrote:
| whatever happened to the r--- allegations from Sweden, I
| understand that Sweden has dropped the charges but.. can we get
| some closure about that as interested followers of this entire
| saga? Hope that's not too much to ask..
| chgs wrote:
| He fled and let the statute of limitations expire. His excuse
| was Sweden might extradite him to the US, but the UK wouldnt.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| > Sweden might extradite him to the US, but the UK wouldnt
|
| An excuse that was always made zero sense.
|
| It later emerged that at the time of the Swedish
| investigation, there was no indictment from the US.
| lukan wrote:
| And you do not think, that would have changed the minute,
| he was in jail in sweden?
| blitzar wrote:
| > but the UK wouldnt
|
| The UK routinely extradites people to the US (and
| facilitated extraordinary renditions from UK soil). The
| claim he could not leave the UK for fear of being
| extradited to the US was always a nonsensical lie.
| lukan wrote:
| I did not comment on that. But it seems he was right that
| he was in fact not extradited to the US after all while
| being in the UK.
|
| (there was no claim that the UK does not extradict to the
| US in general, but in this specific case they might not)
| blitzar wrote:
| > it seems he was right that he was in fact not
| extradited to the US after all while being in the UK
|
| He is on his way to US soil right now and will appear in
| US territory before a US judge, he has been extradited.
| lukan wrote:
| "the only reason he is not "extradited" is he is
| surrendering himself."
|
| He was already in prison. Usually you do not let people
| go out to let them extradict themself.
|
| It is a weird comprimise to put an end to this farce.
| blitzar wrote:
| It is perfectly normal - If the judge orders the person's
| extradition, he must remand the person in custody or on
| bail pending the extradition. He was granted bail by the
| High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport
| during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and
| departed the UK.
|
| In reality he is not "free" till the judge slaps their
| hammer down.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| No, I don't think that would have changed, because the
| decision making of the Obama administration and DOJ at
| the time is now known.
| chgs wrote:
| No more than if he was in the UK.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| You can say "rape". It's not a dirty word.
| weberer wrote:
| So many people are trained nowadays to self-censor certain
| words so that "the algorithm" won't shadowban their comment.
| Thankfully, HN is one of the few websites on the modern
| internet to not have such censorship algorithm.
| MaKey wrote:
| Some things have become pretty dystopian these days.
| xandrius wrote:
| Is the secret word "rape"?
| dav43 wrote:
| The lack of support and lack of agitation by the Australian
| Government on both sides of parliament is a testament to how bad
| Australian politics is.
|
| He was an Australia citizen left out to dry.
|
| Disgraceful.
| damsalor wrote:
| Aus can hardly antagonize us/uk
| iamtedd wrote:
| Don't help our own citizens in trouble, in case we offend a
| foreign country?
| 2a0c40 wrote:
| Depends on the foreign country. It's the US, so yes.
| onethought wrote:
| Just go look up former prime minister Julia Gillard
| address US congress.
|
| I cringe every time I rewatch.
|
| (Then again thanks to Wikileaks we now know US were
| "assessing" whether Gillard would be a good replacement
| to Rudd a year before it all happened... so I guess that
| made her a fan!
| coldtea wrote:
| It's not just a foreign country, it's their boss.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Our core military strategy is to suck up to naval
| superpowers in hopes they'll include us in their own
| defense strategy. It's sound policy, but it means that
| ultimately we can't afford to piss them off.
| pydry wrote:
| Yup. It's a bit like the relationship between Belarus and
| Russia - perhaps even more supplicative.
|
| Aus sent troops to the invasion of Vietnam too. You dont
| do that unless you _badly_ want to suck up to the US.
| Even the UK who will do virtually anything else for the
| US didnt do that.
| globalnode wrote:
| oh geez, youre right. cant stop shaking my head. i always
| knew we were terrible at being independent (we voted to
| keep the monarchy ffs).
| graemep wrote:
| How appropriate you have the same monarch as other
| countries with the same relationship with the US though.
| I am British and feel the same about our relationship
| with the US.
| codedokode wrote:
| Why does Australia need help with defence though? I don't
| remember any country having conflict or issues with
| Australia, and it is a remote, hard to reach island
| anyway.
| nailer wrote:
| Anywhere in south east Asia is within China's grasp, In
| Asia, which is Next Door and closer than New Zealand,
| strongly dislike Australia due to supporting East
| Timorese independence.
|
| Part the Random Caps I use iOS voice dictation
| perilunar wrote:
| > I don't remember any country having conflict or issues
| with Australia
|
| During WW2 we were bombed by the Japanese.
| Wissenschafter wrote:
| Is this comment sarcastic or a joke or something?
| China...
| m0llusk wrote:
| Australia is a long time critical ally of the US that has
| accumulated significant political and social capital and can
| expect any requests to be considered seriously.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Good for him, and I'm glad he's out. But this remains a lesson to
| whistleblowers: "we. will. make. you. suffer". At least he's
| alive.
| bandrami wrote:
| What whistle did he blow?
| bandrami wrote:
| Weird how many people could downvote this and how few people
| could give an example of him blowing a whistle on something
| zpeti wrote:
| Now do Snowden.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| I'm happy that he's been freed from Belmarsh because being locked
| up for 5 years without a conviction is madness.
|
| However, I won't cheer for Assange, the person. He's using the
| guise of impartial journalism to be anything but impartial.
|
| His selective disclosure of leaks, with a heavy bias towards NOT
| disclosing Russian caches, is pretty damning. Assange was
| shouting from the rooftops that WikiLeaks "doesn't have targets",
| but at the same time chose to focus on the DNC campaign leaks and
| decline to publish 2016 caches showing Russian involvement in
| Ukraine, and Wikileaks declined to publish documents revealing a
| 2 billion euro transaction between Syrian regime and a Russian
| bank. WikiLeaks also handed information on Belarusian dissidents
| to the Lukashenko regime.
|
| Not to mention the infamous leaks of Taliban informants details,
| to which Assange was quoted saying: "Well, they're informants, so
| if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve
| it.", as well as the 2015 Saudi leaks which revealed the
| virginity status of multiple Saudi women, several Saudis
| suffering from HIV as well as being arrested for being gay.
|
| The level of care and privileges he's had while being imprisoned
| weren't afforded to the many Afghan informants, Belarusian
| dissidents and the LGBTQ members in Saudi that he's exposed.
|
| (TL;DR - if Assange was on modern Twitter, I bet he'd be a Assad-
| loving, anime-pfp-displaying, Putin-bootlicking tankie)
| dindobre wrote:
| Couldn't have said it better
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What's your point? That journalism is biaised? Sure! The
| important part was that it uncovered important stuff. Saying
| "what about the Russian documents!!" Is just that, whatboutism
| beardyw wrote:
| Also here;
|
| Julian Assange leaves UK after striking deal with US justice
| department
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/25/julian...
| gorgoiler wrote:
| In the centenary year of Kafka's death.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| This isn't something good though, in fact it's really bad.
|
| He's actually agreed to confess to something which the US should
| have no legal authority over.
|
| We must remember that the US are torturers who tortured people
| here in Sweden, right at Bromma airport, even after specifically
| agreeing not to torture them. It is not a country which should
| have any influence whatsoever outside its borders; and this is
| someone who exposed very severe crimes and who had no duty
| whatsoever to keep any US defence information secret.
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you for caring. Sincerely, an
| afghan.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I should be clear that I'm particularly friendly to Afghan
| culture, but nobody should be tortured.
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| this feels like a mistype. if it's not, unfortunately there
| isn't much afghan culture left at this point, at least the
| lovely parts. blown to bits and driven into diaspora,
| infested with the drug trade and extremism to cope with the
| state of their country and lives. we still love to be hosts
| and cook for people tho, so there's that. My heart still
| aches for a future where at least the poppies are of the
| pharmaceutical thebaine-kind. Things are downright horrible
| atm.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, sorry, I misread my own comment and realised the
| absence of a 'not'.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| > It is not a country which should have any influence
| whatsoever outside its borders
|
| I wholly agree, as an American citizen
| pavlov wrote:
| Be careful what you ask for.
|
| The United Kingdom went from a country with enormously
| outsized global influence to just another European nation.
| The downward spiral has been stark. The economy stagnates,
| more and more people live in poverty, and voters decided to
| inflict further self-harm by cutting themselves off from
| economic treaties with neighbors based on an illusion of
| self-importance.
|
| If America ends up in the same place, its collapse will be
| harder and more dangerous.
| silver_silver wrote:
| Utter nonsense. The UK has lost its outsized influence but
| the economic problems are at worst the same as in America.
| Property is less expensive even, and nobody's at risk of
| being bankrupted by a medical emergency. The armies of
| homeless in American cities don't exist across the
| Atlantic.
| pavlov wrote:
| I lived in London for a few years and saw the armies of
| homeless every day, no different from New York City.
|
| In my experience, UK is a country that has managed to
| combine the worst of America with the worst of Europe
| with very few redeeming benefits except for the richest
| 0.1%, who are indeed very well taken care of in England.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| I'm not sure it's apples to apples on property; the
| average US house might be slightly more expensive, but
| it's also three times the size!
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| > The armies of homeless in American cities don't exist
| across the Atlantic.
|
| Are you assuming nobody here has lived or visited the EU
| or UK?
|
| There are tons of homeless in London, Berlin, and Paris.
| It is equivalent to the worst American cities.
|
| London is definitely a better city for the super rich
| though. It is essentially a butler economy - most
| residents are involved in the industries that cater to
| super rich foreigners.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| London is equivalent to SF in terms of homelessness? Pull
| the other one.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Ok not SF. SF is a major outlier. That city is truly a
| homeless apocalypse
| swores wrote:
| Every time I've seen statistics comparing, they disagree
| with your anecdote.
|
| Spending two minutes to look on Wikipedia shows that, for
| example, comparing UK to USA: the UK is technically worse
| in "homeless per capita" (where homeless includes people
| forced to sleep in the houses of friends or family) - at
| 56.1 per 100k for UK, and 19.5 per 100k for USA. However
| when it comes to "unsheltered", i.e. what people
| generally think of "homeless" as meaning, and what's
| visible on streets, the US is _far_ worse at 12 per 100k
| compared to UK 's 0.9 per 100k. (France at 4.5 per 100k,
| Germany doesn't have a comparable number listed and I'm
| too lazy to look for one.)
|
| I have lived in two of the European cities you mentioned,
| visited many others as well as a number of major US
| cities, and I agree that in all of them it is possible to
| see extremely depressing scenes with far too many people
| forces to live on the streets. But it's ridiculous to
| think you could compare any two city's
| homeless/unsheltered problems based on visiting or even
| living in those cities without actually studying the
| situation / looking at statistics.
|
| Perhaps you read parent comment as implying there are
| literally zero homeless people in Europe, which obviously
| isn't true, and technically US and European unsheltered
| numbers are indeed "comparable" as I've just proven by
| comparing them - but I feel if the difference is the US
| having 12x as many people in that position it's
| misleading, to the point of being effectively wrong, to
| call that a comparable situation.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| It sounds like a definition/data-collection issue.
|
| What are we calling 'unsheltered' versus 'homeless'?
|
| America is full of oddballs who live #vanlife or couch
| surf or bounce between motels. Is that what we are
| calling 'unsheltered'?
|
| > Every time I've seen statistics comparing, they
| disagree with your anecdote.
|
| We both know the Churchill saying. Hard to parse the
| statistics you provided but what I am talking about is
| bona-fide homeless on the street that you walk past in
| the city. Not some Barista who is technically not on a
| lease but lives at her boyfriends house.
| swores wrote:
| Please re-read my comment as it already addressed what
| you're talking about and shows the opposite to your
| claim. (I've just re-read what I wrote and think it's
| clear, but maybe I'm missing that the way I wrote
| something is only clear to me so feel free to ask if any
| of it doesn't seem to make sense.)
|
| The stats in it differentiate between those two types of
| homelessness, and says that US is actually better than UK
| when counting "some Barista who is technically not on a
| lease but lives at her boyfriends house", however
| _drastically_ worse for "bona-fide homeless on the
| street" (the official term for which is "unsheltered").
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Ah. You point at a pile of shit that's long been festering
| but the selfish bastards that left it have long since
| departed. Some people are still around adding to it here
| and there (brexit, etc) but the malaise and
| disconnectedness of the proletariat are what protects these
| problems from being solved because they still benefit a
| small group of powerful people who would very much rather
| their wealth, lazy existences and the like be undisturbed.
| A key hurdle for the proletariat is to find a way to unite
| across cultural boundaries - a very difficult problem in
| any country.
| sbarre wrote:
| > The United Kingdom went from a country with enormously
| outsized global influence to just another European nation.
|
| You should read the book Treasure Islands by Nick Shaxson.
|
| The UK may not be the global military/political power it
| once was (and that's probably a good thing), but it is
| still very much in the middle of the global economy (and
| not in a good way).
|
| This isn't to refute any of your points, but it was an eye-
| opening read.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > If America ends up in the same place, its collapse will
| be harder and more dangerous.
|
| Seems to be not only inevitable, but currently in progress.
| supersanity wrote:
| A lot of people say something like this but are also fine
| with sending weapons and money to Ukraine, pushing for the
| legalization of gay marriage abroad, etc. Usually what these
| people really mean is "I'm against US influence outside our
| borders unless it's something that I agree with."
| level1ten wrote:
| You would have a hard time convincing Israelis of this too.
| As if you should be left to fend for yourself when
| surrounded by enemies.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I don't like that you agree, and I feel I should moderate my
| position somehow, when I see this agreement.
|
| I don't want to infinitely limit US influence, and want
| something more like no one country being able to dictate
| anything to others, an increased capacity for all countries
| to be free from both overt and covert influence of all sorts,
| etc., perhaps with the exception of some particularly
| horrible countries.
| CivBase wrote:
| > It is not a country which should have any influence
| whatsoever outside its borders
|
| I'm not going to defend US autrocities, but why exactly is
| Sweeden and the EU allowing this stuff to happen on their soil?
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Sweden is a country that enthusiastically supported the Nazi
| regime. If we are comparing crimes I think Sweden should also
| stay within it's own borders.
|
| Yet the calls from Swedes for the US to provide more Ukraine
| aid are deafening at this point. Swedes want the US to
| intervene when it benefits them, regardless of their chest-
| beating.
|
| Where is the criticism from Swedes when Russia murders its own
| journalists or China restricts freedom of speech?
|
| Please, if you are so anti-american, impress upon your
| countrymen to stay away from NATO. You people are clearly not
| interested in allying with the US.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| How do you mean that we are to have enthusiastically
| supported the Nazis?
|
| We even warned the Soviet Union of Operation Barbarossa,
| using information we obtained from cracked Nazi codes. When
| one of my grandparents fled Norway due to the Nazis they were
| given asylum. During WWII Sweden was led by a political
| coalition consisting of the peasant's party and the social
| democrats, and in Germany, social democrat leadership got put
| into concentration camps as they were seen as communist-
| adjacent.
|
| >Yet the calls from Swedes for the US to provide more Ukraine
| aid are deafening at this point
|
| The Russians have probably threatened us behind the scenes
| and have probably been saying things that are quite extreme.
| Otherwise the social democrats wouldn't have flipped and had
| us join NATO. Furthermore, it's not like the US didn't want
| Ukraine to join the western block, so why shouldn't they
| help, now its attempt to do so is being met with an invasion?
|
| I don't hate America. There's much good about it, but the US
| should rule the US, the Swedes Sweden, and the Ukrainians
| Ukraine. Just as we help Ukraine, it is reasonable that the
| Americans do too, since it's near us, and since we're kind of
| in this together.
|
| >Where is the criticism from Swedes when Russia murders its
| own journalists or China restricts freedom of speech?
|
| Literally all the time? When has Swedish media stopped caring
| about people Politovskaya, etc
|
| >Please, if you are so anti-american, impress upon your
| countrymen to stay away from NATO. You people are clearly not
| interested in allying with the US.
|
| I am kind of personally opposed to our membership, but I
| don't hate America, nor am I necessarily anti-American as
| such. But I don't want US power in Europe, we should rule our
| lands, and the Americans theirs.
|
| If the Americans have influence here, then that is influence
| we ourselves do not have. Consequently, it can't be
| permitted. But this doesn't mean that we can't be friends. It
| means that the US can't have the keys to our house, or put
| cameras in it, or hang around the windows with binoculars, or
| decide what we buy, etcetera.
|
| I understand the US wanting to get at the maniacs after 9/11.
| 9/11 was much worse than is immediately apparent and there
| are details that anger me even now, that make me want to
| reach across the world and dash a whole bunch of people
| against walls and furniture, so I understand the desire to do
| something, even the extraordinary rendition stuff, to some
| degree, but you can't do this kind of thing. You weren't
| willing to actually go after the Saudis, which you probably
| should have, instead of the aggression against less relevant
| countries.
|
| Justice for individuals is important and soverignty is as
| well and even justified lashing out, when it is at odds with
| justice for an individual or soverignty of some foreign
| country, then it's not easy to go along with the lashing out
| of a country that is justified.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40784625.
| Rakshith wrote:
| is this Biden campaign move because they know they have literally
| nothing to sell people to?
| corinroyal wrote:
| Sentences start with a capital letter.
| richrichie wrote:
| Not sure how many at HN saw the Apache gunship mowing down
| civilians and journalists with cannon fire. Assange did a great
| service to shine light on the barbarians in action under the
| guise of saving freedom and democracy and paid a heavy price.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I saw it. I also saw the scores of other Apache videos mowing
| down legitimate targets (people launching rockets and mortars
| from vehicles)
| dewey wrote:
| What are you trying to do with that comparison?
| richrichie wrote:
| There is such a thing as war crime. US may be exempt at this
| moment, but things will change. They always do.
| atoav wrote:
| The damage to freedom of speech is already done. Any free society
| can't afford to _not_ investigate the way the justice system has
| been abused in multiple democratic nations to achieve a
| punishment without conviction. The people who carried that out
| should be held to account.
|
| I get that the US has (had?) an interest to make him pay and that
| the only thing that really counts in geo-politics is power -- but
| I don't see why my country should be allied with a nation that
| punishes the people uncovering their war crimes instead of (at
| least: also?) punishing those who carried them out.
|
| That being said I can't shake the feeling that it would also be
| to some degree in the self interest of US citizens that their
| government respects the rule of law. Hard to claim to be the good
| guy while you are the driving force behind such things or
| propaganda campaigns against vaccines1 or all2 the3 other11
| things12 the13 has111 done112
|
| 1: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
| covi...
|
| 2: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67582813
|
| 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
|
| 11: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MKUltra
|
| 12: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1953_Iran_coup
|
| 13:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9...
|
| 111:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%...
|
| 112: You get the point, also not all superscript numbers seem to
| be supported on HN
| bjornsing wrote:
| Paraphrasing Winston Churchill: "You can always trust the
| Americans to do the right thing, after having exhausted all other
| options."
| layer8 wrote:
| Forcing Assange to plead guilty is the right thing?
|
| To me that plea creates a bad precedent.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Although often quoted as such, that's not a Churchill quote.
| And the original quote itself isn't actually about America. [1]
|
| [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-
| alternative...
| pipes wrote:
| My view of him changed when I saw a recording of him in a
| documentary saying that murdered Iraqi translators who worked
| with the US military got what they deserved for working with the
| enemy.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Considering what America did to Iraq, I think that's an
| understandable viewpoint.
|
| However, Assange has always displayed a great respect for human
| life, and so, this doesn't sound like him at all.
|
| I can't find any clip of this, nor anyone discussing this, and
| have never heard of it before your claim. Care to bring
| receipts?
|
| Edit: Looking more into it, I found the source - people said
| that Declan Walsh said that he heard Assange say this at a
| dinner party. You really ought to be a little more
| discriminating when using a single quote to try and completely
| dismiss someone.
| varjag wrote:
| What makes you think he values human life? He sent his buddy
| with the cables to my home country to share with KGB prior to
| the public release.
|
| I hope the rest of his life is equally miserable now that he
| is a free person.
| pipes wrote:
| KGB? Please can you expand on this, I'm genuinely
| interested (see my comment above).
| varjag wrote:
| Here's a summary:
| https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/02/wikileaks-
| belarus-...
|
| It was reported in several major publications as well at
| the time.
| mandmandam wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > Wikileaks response:
|
| > A representative of Wikileaks responded, 'We have no
| further reports on this "rumour/issue". Another Wikileaks
| representative told Index "obviously it is not approved".
|
| Following back the Guardian story linked in the above,
| there's this:
|
| > Assange subsequently maintained he had only a "brief
| interaction" with Shamir: "WikiLeaks works with hundreds
| of journalists from different regions of the world. All
| are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and are
| generally only given limited review access to material
| relating to their region."
|
| As far as I can tell, it looks like Wikileaks paid Shamir
| ~$2,000 for reviewing a batch of documents, but he
| _maybe_ broke his NDA and tried to sell the docs (even
| the evidence for this, as far as I can see, is purely
| circumstantial).
|
| It's all a far, far cry from "Assange gave cables to
| KGB". Small wonder this isn't even in the top 3 attempts
| to smear Assange as 'linked' to Russian agents (all of
| which have never had a shred of direct evidence btw).
| varjag wrote:
| It was in Belarusian govt news at the time where they
| openly bragged about getting the cables. Really really
| doubt they wanted to frame Assange for anything as just
| as Russians they are entirely sympathetic bunch.
|
| Notice also how I never said "Assange gave cables to KGB"
| but that his buddy did. Are you going to bicker over whom
| Shamir got the cables from?
| mint2 wrote:
| One of the things about the whole asssange wikileaks
| affaire that always bothered me is how many people would
| pick a sides and then consider anything the opposing side
| to claim to be suspect and likely false, while taking
| everything "their" side said at face value without
| inspection. It was nonstop extreme confirmation bias on
| display.
|
| Of course wikileaks/assange aren't going to admit to
| doing something terrible. Whether or not it's true,
| they're going to give the same answer!
|
| I haven't looked into that Belarusian thing, so I don't
| know what evidence there is but it doesn't make sense to
| take Wikileaks at face value - it's obvious confirmation
| bias. Even if one doesn't want to accept that it's
| confirmation bias, one should be aware that it comes off
| as it to everyone else.
|
| The whole wikileaks thing was so annoying because it was
| 95% of the time of two different choirs preaching
| opposite sermons based only on faith not objective facts.
| pipes wrote:
| Looks like someone did my homework for me, see the comments
| above.
| nova22033 wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian...
|
| David Leigh and Luke Harding's history of WikiLeaks describes
| how journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish
| restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange
| would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American
| forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic
| precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants,"
| Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming
| to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the
| reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the
| pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death
| lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names
| before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But
| Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to
| expose "informants" niggled in his mind.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah Afghans too "Well, they're informants," Assange replied.
| "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They
| deserve it."
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian...
|
| I'm ambivalent about his jailing. If you are going to get
| heroic people killed then you can't cry too much if you get
| jailed a bit.
| kome wrote:
| Well, his words were unfortunate, but considering how the
| Americans left Afghanistan in total chaos a few years ago is
| even more unfortunate, to put it mildly. They threw most of
| their allies and collaborators under the bus. The American
| government has NO moral superiority. And they just need to
| shut up.
| thesis wrote:
| It's a weird vibe going on in this post. A lot of people
| are cheering the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I wonder how
| many know that the Taliban has all biometric/financial data
| that the US left behind enabling them to round up anyone
| who ever helped the US.
| dieortin wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? It seems pretty hard to
| believe
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| "his words were unfortunate"
|
| Many you really couldn't possibly sanitize the situation
| any more. He said an absolutely heinous thing out loud that
| reflects values I definitely don't want from someone
| running a "neutral" dissemination platform for secrets
| sabarn01 wrote:
| The US government responded to popular will and left
| Afghanistan. We abandoned far too many, in an incompetent
| withdrawal.
| pipes wrote:
| I didn't say the American government had moral superiority,
| I'm saying he thinks it's alright to kill people who worked
| with the American government. He supports transparency in
| government but at the same time supports killing people for
| the alleged crime of working for their enemy. No judge, no
| jury, just murder. This calls into question what exactly he
| stands for.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| There's nothing heroic about supporting a government that
| institutionalized pedophilia (Bacha Bazi), ran entirely on
| corruption, and passively accepted the sale of opium out of
| kickbacks from warlords. Especially not one installed through
| a foreign invader.
|
| The Taliban are awful, but they're the awful legitimate
| government of Afghanistan. And they've already ended two of
| these problems. If you inform against a paramilitary that has
| no concerns with rule of law, you're already inserting
| yourself into their war and accepting the risk of being
| outed.
| oska wrote:
| There is _no such_ recording.
| CalChris wrote:
| "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get
| killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
|
| https://archive.is/rSL9K
| alach11 wrote:
| This is a quote, not a recording. Assange disputes the
| accuracy of the quote.
| handity wrote:
| G That's not a recording.
| steve_gh wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the merits (perceived or otherwise)
| of Assange's case.
|
| Assange was never going to be extradited to the USA, because of
| the US Govt's behaviour in the Harry Dunn case (finally closed
| this month):
|
| Harry Dunn was a UK teenager who, while riding his motorcycle was
| struck and killed by a car driving on the wrong side of the road
| close to a US Airforce base. The driver, Anne Sacoolas, was
| reported to be the wife of a US Intelligence Officer. Under the
| UK- US Govt agreement, Intelligence Officers could be prosecuted
| locally, but their husbands / wives had diplomatic immunity. The
| US Govt asserted diplomatic immunity (probably aided and abetted
| by the UK Govt), and Sacoolas was swiftly hustled out of the UK
| on a private flight by the NSA or CIS). Anyhow, after a long
| campaign for justice by Dunn's family, it turns out that Anne
| Sacoolas is herself a senior US Intelligence officer, so should
| not have had diplomatic immunity. Charges were brought in the UK,
| but the US Govt refused to extradite, despite a direct request
| from the UK Prime Minister (Johnson) to the US President (Trump).
| There has been huge and sustained public sympathy in the UK for
| the Dunn family in their quest for justice, and the UK legal
| system and civil service was seriously angered by the attitude of
| the US Govt. Anne Sacoolas finally pleaded guilty over video link
| to charges of causing death by dangerous driving earlier this
| year. The inquest on the death of Harry Dunn (which was delayed
| until the conclusion of the criminal case) concluded earlier this
| month.
|
| The UK was not going to extradite Assange as the US Govt refused
| to extradite Sacoolas. There was enough noise around the
| conditions that Assange could be held in, or the possibility of
| him facing the death penalty, for UK judges (who have a lot of
| independence) to raise questions on Assange's possible treatment
| in the US, and refuse an extradition request - it had already
| been going round in circles on this question for years.
|
| Everyone wanted a face saving resolution - and with the
| possibility of a Trump presidency next year, the UK Govt did not
| want to have a point of contention with Trump, and his severely
| transactional approach. So, this is a face-saving compromise for
| the UK and US Govts. Assange pleads guilty (so the US says they
| have brought him to justice), Assange goes home (not to the US),
| and the UK Govt gets a nasty diplomatic problem resolved.
| jwmoz wrote:
| Amazing news.
|
| #FREEDASSANGE
| frereubu wrote:
| I'd encourage people to read this excellent piece in the London
| Review of Books by someone who was contracted to ghostwrite
| Assange's autobiography, and who initially felt very sympathetic
| towards the aims of Assange and Wikileaks:
| https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost... I
| found it very insightful and nuanced when it comes to Assange and
| his motivations, presenting him as neither hero nor villain, but
| someone who started something that he couldn't really handle.
| shoo wrote:
| that is indeed an excellent read, thank you for sharing it
| frereubu wrote:
| You're welcome. I dread these Assange threads on HN because
| they often seem to devolve into people shouting past each
| other, and this is the most thoughtful piece, with direct and
| lengthy access to Assange, that I've read.
| pradn wrote:
| Andrew O'Hagan's article on Assange is rather famous, not only
| for its contents, but also for being 25,000+ words in a
| magazine that still pays per word. The LRB can pull it off
| because they're subsidized by the editor's family funds.
| tootie wrote:
| Or like read the Mueller Report which paints him squarely as a
| villain. He worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election
| in Trump's favor and then tried to blame Seth Rich. I
| absolutely cannot fathom how so many people still worship him.
| He has done some good here and there, but the benefits of
| things he's leaked are vastly overstated and the harm he has
| done is very, very real.
| dmix wrote:
| > He worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election in
| Trump's favor
|
| That is not at all a conclusion you can safely take from the
| Mueller report. Which makes me question whether you actually
| read it or you consumed it entirely via 2nd hand media
| reports like Buzzfeed and WaPo.
|
| There is no evidence he was colluding with them, he had
| encrypted conversations with a GRU agent who had concealed
| his identity as a hacker, contents of the messages which were
| never revealed.
|
| Even if he eventually did learn the source why should
| Wikileaks care where a goldmine of documents comes from? As
| long as they are authentic.
|
| There's more than enough motivation for Wikileaks to leak
| docs by a figurehead of the post 9/11 nation security state,
| regardless of RU or Trump or petty politics.
|
| I'm sure if the NSA sent him documents about some
| geopolitical matter they'd leak them too.
|
| > and then tried to blame Seth Rich
|
| He never once directly implicated Seth Rich, the worst thing
| he did was during a TV interview made a reference to Seths
| murder and then merely declined to talk about it more:
|
| >> Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When
| asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange said "we
| don't comment on who our sources are". Subsequent statements
| by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming
| Rich as a source.
|
| He also claimed he had physical proof of an inside job, which
| is entirely possible he was completely taken by the GRU agent
| who manufactured plausible sounding proof and Assange bought
| it. These agents are extremely clever and capable, and
| Assange was in a very poor mental state at the time.
|
| His only true 'crime' is not talking about Seth after to
| appease crazies on the left who see RU conspiracy around
| every corner nor tamed the right looking to fan the flames on
| US gov conspiracy theories.
|
| but let's be honest, that wouldn't have stopped the hyper
| partisans on either side. They don't care either way.
|
| All they want is black/white villains.
| FrostKiwi wrote:
| FINALLY! 12 years stuck in embassies and jails. Such a shame no
| one will be punished for making him go through that.
| varjag wrote:
| Should not have skipped that bail, could have saved a lot of
| time.
| lhnz wrote:
| It's bittersweet. It seems likely to me that the US government
| didn't really want an open trial due to the possibility of
| scrutiny and that indefinite detention without trial followed by
| setting the legal precedent that aiding and abetting legal
| whistleblowers is a criminal conspiracy was their goal.
| jacknews wrote:
| The mainstream press are all over this now, seemingly sharing the
| jubilation.
|
| Where were they in the dark days of the semi-secret travesty of a
| trial in London?
|
| Thankfully people like Craig Murray stepped up to the crucial
| fourth estate role they abdicated, to witness it for us.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE
|
| No, he is not. Nobody can go through what he has been forced to
| suffer in all those years without lasting consequences that can't
| be undone: years of his life have been taken away, his health has
| been damaged, his family has been hit as well. He may be free to
| roam around, but he's not the same person anymore. I don't see
| any happy ending here, especially if there are no consequences
| for the psychopaths dressed as patriots who forced him into that
| ordeal.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah, 5 years in a 2x3m cell with total social isolation?
| People almost went mad locking down 2 months during covid an
| they had internet. I doubt he'll ever be the same, or even a
| functioning person again.
| joenot443 wrote:
| John McCain spent a little over 5 years being tortured in
| solitary confinement in a Vietnamese POW camp and later
| became Arizona senator. Exceptional people are capable of a
| lot, I'm sure Assange hasn't lost his spirit yet.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Doesn't change the fact solitary confinement is torture and
| he underwent it.
| joenot443 wrote:
| You're totally right about that.
| olalonde wrote:
| Why was he put in isolation? Seems harsh, especially given
| that he is not a violent criminal.
| okasaki wrote:
| Yeah, I was once harassed by cops for five minutes and I still
| think about it sometimes. I can't imagine what Assange has been
| through.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I had an appiffanny recently and it goes like this;
| Everything that happens is an aggregate of what happened
| before it, it was unavoidable, however that doesn't stop one
| from trying to change the composition and try to alter the
| next aggregates
| RunSet wrote:
| > I had an appiffanny recently
|
| You might want to trademark it.
| stef25 wrote:
| He did poke a rather large stick at a rather large bear.
| nailer wrote:
| So did Woodward and bernstein but they were imprisoned for
| five years.
| nailer wrote:
| _Weren 't_. Sorry, I'm using voice dictation and it makes
| errors like this.
| zarzavat wrote:
| The timing of this less than 2 weeks before the UK gets a new
| Prime Minister can't be a coincidence.
|
| I don't believe that Starmer would have actually have dropped
| extradition proceedings against Assange as he's extremely stingy
| with his political capital, but I guess things look different on
| the other side of the Atlantic. Easy to see a "left wing"
| government incoming and think "oh shit we'd better agree a plea
| deal".
| nova22033 wrote:
| Now that he's free to speak truth to power, I hope someone leaks
| the details of Putin's secret bank accounts.
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...
| cryptica wrote:
| It will be great to have him back in Australia. This is a win for
| press freedom and hopefully the beginning of rehabilitation of
| the political system.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| As a fellow aussie I'm proud of Assange. I am kind of surprised
| other Australians feel the same because we're kind of a nation of
| bootlickers. I'm curious what happens now though. If he returns
| to Australia. Is he actually going to have real freedom and
| privacy? Or is this going to be kind of superficial where
| everything he does is monitored by like 5 different agencies and
| he can't even use the Internet. Like, I've got to see the result
| to believe it...
| globalnode wrote:
| we arent bootlickers, thats just our politicians and business
| leaders.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| You're probably right given ned kelly and all
| jampekka wrote:
| How do the politicians get elected then? You're not (on
| average) bootlickers but do prefer to be ruled by
| bootlickers?
| globalnode wrote:
| ungh this is going to bring the crazies out -- im glad hes
| finally out although nothing is going to undo the suffering he's
| had to go through. I guess he can maybe be thankful hes still
| alive? unlike the people he originally called the US out for
| murdering.
| Hitton wrote:
| It would be ludicrous to say that justice won, but I'm glad he is
| finally free.
| eql5 wrote:
| ...and the most important WikiLeaks will be published sooon...
| (in a web-wide-shut near you).
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| It's sad to see that Julian Assange, through all his suffering,
| has achieved so little. I'm not only talking about whether he was
| able to bring accountability to governments and policymakers.
|
| Here on HN, people tend to think highly of "journalists",
| especially those involved with foreign policy-related stories, as
| being some sort of guardians of democracy. Yet Julian Assange has
| shown that many journalists are in fact working closely together
| with governments to generate consent for war. To this day,
| journalists are still actively misleading the public with
| fearmongering for the Next Big Enemy(r) with whom who we should
| go into war with next. And a large part of the public --
| including the HN crowd -- are still falling for this.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Legally speaking, my understanding is that he did something that
| the US does not approve of (and is presumably a crime in the US).
|
| Then the US requested the countries he happened to be in to
| extradite him to the US.
|
| If this is correct, if he were in Australia (his country) when
| the US issued their request, he would have been free, right?
| (without the possibility to travel I guess as other countries may
| follow the US request).
| _heimdall wrote:
| > and their children, who have only known their father from
| behind bars.
|
| Well thats fascinating. Were his kids somehow all born _after_ he
| was imprisoned?
| luc4sdreyer wrote:
| The youngest was born in 2019, the same year he was
| incarcerated (April 2019). Pregnancy lasts 9 months, so even if
| the child were born in early 2020, there would be no reason to
| assume infidelity.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I wasn't assuming infedlity, I could have been more clear
| there. I really was just curious on timing how none of his
| children could have met him before he was imprisoned.
| danielvf wrote:
| I was somewhat surprised as well at the phrasing here, and had
| to look it up. During Assange's time in the Ecuadorian embassy,
| he fathered two children by a female lawyer hired to be on his
| defense team. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Assange#Personal_life_a...
| _heimdall wrote:
| Not sure how I missed the timing in that Wikipedia note,
| thanks
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| The celebration is premature. The deal could fall through. Don't
| you remember what happened last year with Hunter Biden, he had a
| deal until he didn't.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| I wonder how people would have felt if, instead of releasing
| stuff about the USA, he had released it about your country's
| doings instead.
| bradley13 wrote:
| If we were torturing people, I sure hope someone would leak it.
| jml78 wrote:
| My issue is that he was influenced by Russia. Aka they threatened
| his life and he then proceeded to leak information about the US
| but keep Russian secrets.
|
| I mean I don't blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia
| but he isn't a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for
| countries that don't directly threaten his life.
| Draiken wrote:
| I agree with you on that. I dislike the partisanship that was
| demonstrated (even if coerced).
|
| However, for me, personal feelings about him should not matter
| in this case. It's a question of how our society treats people
| that expose bad actors. He's a flawed human being like every
| other one, but what he did was not wrong even if deemed illegal
| (by the justice system from the exposed party, who would've
| guessed).
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _he was influenced by Russia_
|
| This argument is completely nonsensical, this idea that who
| revealed the crime matters more than the _actual crime_.
|
| What does it matter who "influenced" him, if the information
| was legit? And is it your opinion that none of this information
| should be released unless it covers all countries equally? Do
| you honestly think he should have thought, _I can 't reveal
| this crime until I find an equal Russian crime, for equality_.
| What a wonderful, open world that would be! Utterly ridiculous.
|
| This is the same stupidity as "Hunter's laptop". It allows the
| Idiocracy to dismiss anything because "the Russians!".
| lisper wrote:
| > What does it matter who "influenced" him
|
| Because they may have influenced the timing and content of
| the leaks to further their own ends. Revealing sensitive
| information is not a neutral act. It has consequences far
| beyond the exposure of bad actors.
| gorlilla wrote:
| Again, the fundamental argument is that the bad actors
| still had time, chance and opportunity to own and be
| accountable for the misdeeds but chose to hide them
| instead. Any ability to influence the timing of the release
| is still a direct consequence of their underlying
| malfeasance.
| lisper wrote:
| I don't dispute that. But just because it is good to
| expose bad actors does not mean that any mode of exposing
| bad actors is an unalloyed good. The exposure of bad
| actors can (and usually does) have ancillary effects, and
| those ancillary effects can be bad. They can in some
| cases be bad enough that they are arguably worse than the
| original malfeasance of the exposed bad actors. Assange's
| release of Clinton's emails, for example, may well have
| swung the 2016 election in Trump's favor, but it would be
| a stretch to claim that the emails contained evidence of
| bad acts that merited this outcome.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Because the US has never used the timing or content of
| leaks to further their own ends.
|
| Grow up.
| causi wrote:
| Then maybe you shouldn't commit atrocities that can then be
| used against you. I already know the government of Russia
| is evil. They're not accountable to me. The American
| government, ostensibly, is. I want every single evil act
| they ever willingly partake in exposed with the maximum
| possible impact, because that's _my_ tax dollars being used
| to murder people.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| This "my tax dollars" argument is so facile. Does this
| mean then that your employer gets to control your actions
| because it's their dollars funding your actions? The
| money changed hands - it's the governments.
|
| The underlying principle is the rule of law and the
| Constitution codifies the powers of the government with
| legislation codifying more details. That's why the
| government is accountable to you, not because of your tax
| dollars. If you are a citizen who doesn't need to pay any
| taxes, the government should be as equally accountable to
| you as to the very wealthy because of the rule of law and
| everyone being equal to it.
| causi wrote:
| _Does this mean then that your employer gets to control
| your actions because it's their dollars funding your
| actions?_
|
| ...yes. That 's what a job is. There are also off-duty
| codes of conduct employees must adhere to.
|
| _That's why the government is accountable to you, not
| because of your tax dollars._
|
| I didn't say my taxes are why they're accountable. I said
| my taxes are why I want any and all evil actions taken by
| them exposed.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You should want transparency as a matter of the rule of
| law - you can't know what laws are broken or what changes
| to the law need to be made if there isn't transparency.
|
| Again, we're aligned on that. But the "ma taxes" argument
| is facile because for nearly 100 years there wasn't even
| income tax so it was secondary taxes through purchases or
| tariffs. As for off duty codes, there usually aren't any
| meaningful ones and they generally are very constrained
| by the legal system (eg they can't punish you for
| political activity). It's the same reason someone
| standing up to a politician and screaming "my taxes fund
| your salary" is blatantly incorrect. The economy is a
| circular dependent system. For example, government tax
| dollars pay corporations which then pay your salary which
| you then get taxed on. You're over privileging your
| personal role in the economic system when you make this
| argument and then the next follow up argument is "well I
| pay more taxes than you so I should get more of a say
| than you in how government is run". It's a flawed premise
| that leads to all sorts of directly harmful lines of
| reasoning. Just argue that we're a country based on the
| rule of law and no one is above that. That's literally
| the founding principle of the country.
| causi wrote:
| Again, I am not and have not said my taxes are the reason
| I do or should have a say over the behavior of the
| government. I'm saying my taxes are my personal
| connection to the actions of the government, that they
| are _why I care_ , nothing else. The taxes are my
| emotional motivation to assert my Constitutional rights.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Your personal connection is the society you, your family,
| and your friends live in and voting in said democracy and
| participating to protect it. I'm not sure connecting
| money to emotions is a healthy endeavor.
| causi wrote:
| Money is a proxy for life and time. If my money is used
| to hurt someone, that means the product of my time and my
| effort was used to hurt someone. That makes me angry.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's a tool. It's an important tool no doubt. Perhaps
| _the_ most important tool in our lives. And you have to
| know how to wield it appropriately. But do not mistake a
| tool that enables you to survive for the life itself.
| Would you get angry if someone used your hammer to kill
| someone? Or an even more representative analogy, you gave
| it away to someone, they gave it away to someone, & then
| that person used the hammer to kill someone. Would you be
| angry that it was "your" hammer? If yes, how do you
| define possession? If not, then consider that the hammer
| and money isn't all that different here.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| So he's a victim of horrible abuse. Why are you blaming him?
| CaptWillard wrote:
| I really don't want my government acting like my ex-girlfriend.
|
| When presented with evidence of her infidelity, her first and
| only reaction, "Who sent you those screenshots?! It was Sarah,
| wasn't it? You know she hates me. Why are you talking to her?!"
| josefresco wrote:
| A better analogy would be if one of your friends had dirt on
| your whole friend group. One of those people then (allegedly)
| threatens your friend, and as a result they release
| information to harm everyone _BUT_ the one who threatened
| them. "Sarah's" information might be accurate, but her
| choosing what information to reveal makes her actions
| suspicious.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| If anything, Sarah is a victim too.
| CaptWillard wrote:
| This "fairness" angle (if true) is such an embarrassing
| reach.
|
| IDGAF if Russia and China do the same things. I ASSUME they
| do them.
|
| The west enjoys the "free world" moniker and the
| distinction it implies. It should be held to an accordingly
| higher standard.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| The good 'ol gas-lighting. Nice.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| The relentless "Russia bad!" parroting is very exhausting. Not
| saying it couldn't be true, but it just seems like such a low
| effort copout for anything that seems to be rooted in
| malevolence in 2024. Every single topic seems to be aimed at
| Russia on reddit and HN.
| rubytubido wrote:
| > on reddit
|
| Agree with it, I want to read news about different countries,
| but it looks like the people\bots are obsessed with Russia on
| reddit.
|
| Also it's interesting to see how people react to the same
| news about civilian deaths. People are happy when Russian
| civilians die. I with these forums had a feature to hide/swap
| country names in a news/posts so people can realize how evil
| they are.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Plainly said, the Russia story was mostly for gullible people
| to be distracted from the failings and sins of their own
| government.
|
| Not saying Russia doesn't engage in propaganda attempts, but
| they are more or less irrelevant for any domestic discussion
| then and now.
| knodi wrote:
| Lets not forget this dude colluded with Russian intelligence to
| interfere with 2016 US elections. He's not freedom fighter he's
| an assets to some intelligence service.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Interfered by publishing real, truthful documents. Right.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Julian Assange reminds me of Martin Luther. Both men struck a
| devil's bargain with autocrats because they feared persecution by
| a powerful empire, and in doing so, they sacrificed the more
| utopian elements of their political/religious project.
| skilled wrote:
| If you care about this news and you are able to do this
| financially, consider supporting Julian's fee for having have had
| to take a private plane for this entire process:
|
| > Julian Assange has embarked on flight VJ199 to Saipan. If all
| goes well it will bring him to freedom in Australia. But his
| travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: he will owe USD
| 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian
| government for the charter flight. He was not permitted to fly
| commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia.
|
| Links:
|
| https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/free-julian-assange
|
| https://x.com/Stella_Assange/status/1805573781303308326
| trogdor wrote:
| >He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to
| Saipan and onward to Australia.
|
| Not permitted by who, and on what basis?
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Presumably either the US or UK as part of his plea deal or
| bail conditions. Maybe some form of house arrest where he's
| not to be in public.
| tylergetsay wrote:
| I would bet it is Saipan local goverment, they probably
| don't have (or dont want to expend) the resources to secure
| him.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| With how much the AU gov loves to waste our tax money on
| useless crappy programs, this would be the one instance where I
| would wholeheartedly support giving the $500k of tax money
| away.
| aredox wrote:
| How much of that price is real, and how much of it is grift?
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| That depends how dangerous you want air travel to be. The
| world is currently spending way too much on air travel
| security, the number of deaths is too low compared to
| automobile travel.
| Symbiote wrote:
| A few searches for charter flights from England to Australia
| give figures roughly around this amount.
| Spod_Gaju wrote:
| This man spends almost five and a half years in prison
| fighting for press freedom and now you think he is suddenly a
| grifter?
|
| What planet do you live on or what U.S.Intel agency do you
| work for?
| whycome wrote:
| I don't think they're accusing Assange of the grift here.
| manquer wrote:
| OP is implying government or its contractors is the one
| grifting, not Assange . Basically forcing a large bill on a
| person who has no choice but to accept .
|
| It is not grift though, it does cost in that ball park for
| international private long distance flights in the 10,000+
| mile range . Planes that can do this like say gulfstream V
| would seat 15-20 people , so like 25k per seat , it is not
| that much more expensive than a first class ticket cost
| wise if you think about it
| algorias wrote:
| not the OP, but I think they meant to imply that the AU
| government is grifting. It does look like attaching a $520k
| bill to the man's freedom. Totally not part of the
| punishment...
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Well, I hope we all learned a lesson about whistle blowing.
|
| Keep your name and any trace back to you out of it.
|
| No idea how but I have yet to see a story of a whistleblower not
| getting fucked over.
|
| Probably the answer is to not bother and try and destroy the
| system from within.
| Marazan wrote:
| "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get
| killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
| misterbishop wrote:
| Liberal abandonment of Assange for 10+ years was completely
| fucking shameful.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I always imagine what his first meal is gonna be like
| m3kw9 wrote:
| What was the deal?
| seanw444 wrote:
| I'm still holding out hope that the next guy pardons him.
| cluster-luck wrote:
| Quite literally this is the best news of 2024.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| I am amused they are flying him from London to "a remote Pacific
| island" and announcing it in public and pointing out his route
| and stopovers along the way. Sooo many "wrongness" buttons being
| pressed, haha. Assange is among a small set of Westerners who
| I've assumed that if they dont end up in US prison would either
| end up in Russian exile or have an "accident" arranged for them,
| or disappeared by Russia. Snowden is in this set -- and he's
| already fled to Moscow. Trump is in the set too. A few others.
| Though Trump is a special case becsuse of the complexities of his
| US SS protection. But they are all the kind of traitors/assets
| that either Putin would want to keep a close eye on if they
| couldnt off them entirely.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| What are the chances he "commits suicide" now?
| babypuncher wrote:
| I wouldn't call his work on Wikileaks "groundbreaking", he was
| clearly only willing to leak documents his benefactors wanted him
| to.
|
| I agree that whistleblowing shouldn't be punished like we usually
| do, and the attempts to imprison him were a farce, but I still
| think he's a piece of shit who ruined any journalistic
| credibility he had when he got in bed with Putin.
| rvnx wrote:
| And whistleblowing is for a different case, it is when you work
| for an organization and see illegal or dangerous things, and
| choose loyalty to the law / public interest instead of the
| organization whom you work for.
|
| Here it is different, it is an activist sponsored/supported by
| an enemy state actively seeking to create chaos in a foreign
| government.
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| Agreed, but I wonder if the west is stronger for it. If he
| had spread only lies and propaganda that the people ate up,
| maybe we'd only be stronger from the experience, but
| revealing actual problems in our system allows us to fix what
| otherwise lacked incentive to fix. Maybe.
| rvnx wrote:
| True.
|
| I wonder what is the end result.
|
| It could be that these leaks actually improved the
| practices and government entities act nicer, due to the
| fear of getting caught.
|
| Or, just worse:
|
| It could have actually improved the information-protection
| practices, and serious crimes that would have "naturally"
| leaked to the press, are now even better guarded than
| before Wikileaks.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I am going to hold the celebrations until we are sure there isn't
| anything else on the horizon. He isn't getting a pardon and being
| declared free and clear of charges in the US is very difficult.
| Who knows what state prosecutor might want to bring new _state_
| charges. He may also be wanted as a material witness. If I were
| him I wouldn 't set foot outside Australia ever again.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Trouble is, as part of the deal he is headed to an US territory
| next to Australia, right?
|
| Seems like the perfect place to kidnap him
| elif wrote:
| That would be a great way for Biden to blow the election for
| no reason.
| drawnwren wrote:
| Or a great way for Russia to secure it for a pro Russian
| candidate...
| tradertef wrote:
| ewww.. horrible comment.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| I get that your comment is a hyperbolic jab at Trump
| supporters but why is a pro-Russian candidate actually
| bad - besides the tiresome comparisons of Putin to Hitler
| and similar claims? It seems like NATO didn't disband or
| let Russia join after it asked to multiple times because
| we have a military industrial complex that requires
| perpetual war to sustain itself. Why risk nuclear war
| over vague political goals like "containment" and
| "spreading democracy" when engaging Russia in this way
| will mean Russia is fighting for its survival. Honestly
| asking because I don't understand.
| immibis wrote:
| Putin is compared to Hitler because he is like Hitler.
| You are not honestly asking. This, and the rest of it,
| has been explained to you countless times before.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| I'm earnestly and honestly asking. Is there some good
| source material you can point me to that explains how
| this is in US citizens' interest? All I can find is
| hyperbolic nonsense that seems markedly similar to the
| kind of information that was available during the
| invasion of Iraq. I really would rather feel good about
| US/Western foreign policy.
| tremon wrote:
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
|
| If all source material that you can find is hyperbolic
| nonsense, then you have made up your mind before looking.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| I haven't, and I'm familiar with this page. I am honestly
| worried about the US foreign policy. I'm not JAQing off.
| I want some credible source material from a community I
| trust. I'm sure other people reading this do too.
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| Like actually why the fuck would I be pro-Russia? What's
| in it for me? Seeming edgy or something? Do you assume
| I'm unable to read the room? I'm a liberal computer nerd
| from a highly liberal locale. It's obviously so much
| easier to just agree that the US is bringing democracy or
| freedom or greater security to eastern Europe. Why would
| I bother unless it was actually deeply disturbing to me
| the more I earnestly dig into it? Have I been brainwashed
| by Russian agents through the internet or something? I am
| willing to accept this I just don't think that's actually
| the case upon close inspection.
| immibis wrote:
| Many people are pro-Russia because the Russian government
| pays them to be. Many others are pro-Russia because most
| of what they read or hear is from the first group.
| CaptWillard wrote:
| "This, and the rest of it, has been explained to you
| countless times before."
|
| Yes, that's how propaganda works. But in the face of new
| information, that propaganda has to be tweaked or
| abandoned. To keep hammering the same message produces
| quickly diminishing returns.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| you would give russia a platform in NATO? I think russian
| wars with its neighbors speak for itself (and not just
| with Ukraine) to keep them out. NATO is for instance
| needed to keep russian imperialismus away from europe.
| It's also a deterrent against China, North Korea, Serbia
| etc
| cupcakecommons wrote:
| George Kennan (Diplomat, "Architect of the Cold War
| Containment Policy") - Criticized NATO expansion as a
| severe mistake in a 1998 interview with the New York
| Times .
|
| Henry Kissinger (Former U.S. Secretary of State) -
| Expressed concerns about NATO expansion increasing
| tensions with Russia over several years, particularly
| noted in discussions and forums during the late 1990s and
| early 2000s.
|
| William Perry (Former U.S. Secretary of Defense) - Voiced
| apprehensions about the strategy and pace of NATO
| expansion, particularly in the late 1990s during his
| tenure and in reflections thereafter.
|
| Sam Nunn (Former U.S. Senator, Co-Chairman of the Nuclear
| Threat Initiative) - Warned of strategic miscalculations
| and heightened conflict risks due to expansion,
| prominently during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
|
| Jack Matlock (Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)
| - Criticized NATO expansion for potentially setting the
| stage for conflict with Russia, in articles and public
| lectures, particularly during the 1990s.
| immibis wrote:
| And?
| Kye wrote:
| AFAIK the only proven meddling from Russia was stirring
| stuff up in a party- and faction-neutral way. They were
| trying to cause chaos, not try and get one party or
| another elected. Their agents would, for example,
| organize a protest on Facebook, then organize the
| counter-protest at the same location.
| drawnwren wrote:
| I'm not clear what you're arguing against, but you seem
| to be making an argument about a previous election and
| not a future one.
|
| Do you believe that Russia benefits equally from the
| election of either candidate this time around?
|
| Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_assas
| sinations
| CaptWillard wrote:
| Do you believe that's a meaningful metric? Because it's
| not.
|
| The distinction between Biden and Trump is that Trump is
| opposed to the machine that's been responsible for
| decades of disastrous foreign policy, while Biden is the
| face of that very same machine.
|
| Putin is far from the only foreign leader who would
| prefer Trump. It's silly to attempt this framing.
| CaptWillard wrote:
| I mean, sorry if you're one of those "electricians on the
| Death Star" just trying to pay your mortgage, but your
| downvotes aren't going to put that toothpaste back in the
| tube.
| CalChris wrote:
| Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping would prefer Trump as well.
| af78 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the
| _20...
|
| It went far beyond a couple of artificial protests.
|
| Russia did support Trump in 2016 (and beyond), Trump was
| quite happy about it.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> They were trying to cause chaos, not try and get one
| party or another elected.
|
| But what if the decision is between a stability candidate
| and a pro-chaos candidate? I think then that Russia would
| take a side. And I doubt many would debate that one
| candidate is clearly more pro-chaos than the other.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Maybe. And yet it did rather work out in their favor.
|
| If you were Russia in 2016, would you have preferred that
| the next US President be someone competent with
| significant foreign policy experience, or a Putin-
| idolizing fool with zero foreign policy experience?
| oxide wrote:
| The Cold War never ended and criticism of Russia is not
| criticism against Russians.
|
| If the Cold War was truly over when the wall fell, we'd
| have welcomed Russia into NATO. That would have been a
| huge mistake, as Russia has proven to be antithetical to
| democracy and an aggressor against the interests of the
| West, despite dressing up in its skirt.
|
| Instead we've engaged in proxy war after proxy war with
| very little changing in the best part of 40 years or so.
| That's no accident.
|
| Suggesting otherwise IMO is to take talking points from
| the mouth of the Kremlin. I get tired of the "Russia is
| being bullied by the mean ol' United States" narrative,
| they're malignant and hostile. I think you're right to
| raise this point.
| af78 wrote:
| | If the Cold War was truly over when the wall fell, we'd
| have welcomed Russia into NATO.
|
| This was offered by NATO: Partnership for Peace, NATO-
| Russia Founding Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%
| E2%80%93NATO_relations It's Russia that wasn't
| interested.
| starttoaster wrote:
| When one of the parties of a "war" elects not to leave
| that "war", can you argue the "war" ever truly ended,
| even if one side sent an olive branch?
| af78 wrote:
| Absolutely. Most Western leaders (though not all) deluded
| themselves thinking Russia wanted better relations and
| that all the problems were somehow the fault of the West.
| Countless confidence-building measures were taken. Most
| Western countries reduced defense budgets. Russian
| leaders, ridiculously claiming that they were threatened
| by NATO, were dishonest the whole time. As the USSR
| collapsed, Russia surrounded itself with, and fueled,
| many "frozen" conflicts: Transnistria in Moldova,
| Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Nagorno Karabakh
| in Azerbaijan, Japanese Islands. Gestures of goodwill,
| escalation management, appeals to political solutions
| were seen as weakness by Russia. Putin attacked Georgia
| in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 not because he felt
| threatened in any way, but to the contrary because he
| thought that no one would do anything about it.
| drawnwren wrote:
| Yeah, everyone made this a comment about a specific
| candidate. But objectively one candidate is pro-
| supporting Ukraine and one is against it this time
| around. Regardless of your prior beliefs, Putin benefits
| far more from a specific candidate this time around.
|
| And they have repeatedly been caught meddling directly in
| Western countries (see i.e. multiple assassinations in
| the West).
| oxide wrote:
| Exactly. I treat anyone suggesting Russia should be
| treated with kid gloves with suspicion. The sentiment
| that they are being bullied is flatly offensive. Russia
| made its bed in the 90s and complains about lying in it.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I'm pretty sure he spilled the beans, I don't think he
| has to worry about prison, staying alive is his new main
| story line.
| theonething wrote:
| Oh boy. How about we do just don't have this here?
| nvy wrote:
| I think you're dramatically overestimating the percentage
| of US voters who give a flying shit about Assange.
| paulnpace wrote:
| My understanding is that a pardon cannot be granted without a
| conviction.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| He is getting a conviction. This is a plea deal. He will be
| admitting to the crime of conspiracy after which he will be a
| convicted by the court. He will then be a convicted felon and
| could be pardoned, but I doubt that is really an option. (Not
| 100% on the felony thing, I haven't seen how this is being
| charged.)
| which wrote:
| Marc Rich was pardoned while a fugitive for much more serious
| crimes.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| there is no such constitutional restriction. A pardon can be
| issued for crimes that are not even known to have occurred or
| are purely imagined.
| CalChris wrote:
| Richard Nixon would like a word with you.
| jayknight wrote:
| You can definitely get pardoned before getting convicted.
| Trump pardoned Stephen Bannon after he got indicted wire
| fraud and money laundering, so he never went to trial for
| that.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/05/25/steve-b.
| ..
| plorg wrote:
| The pardon power seems to be very broad, and is most likely
| constrained by politics more than by statute. Set aside the
| idle speculation about a president pardoning themselves,
| pardons have been granted to whole classes of people for
| crimes you have yet to be charged with. Consider Jimmy
| Carter pardoning draft dodgers or Abraham Lincoln pardoning
| soldiers who fought for the Confederate army.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Assange wasn't pardoned. He agreed to a deal to plead guilty
| with retroactive detention which meant no additional
| imprisonment.
|
| A pardon can cover previous crimes with or without
| conviction.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Special thanks to Donald Trump for spooking the current admin so
| much that they actually did something good!
| which wrote:
| If Australia truly loved Assange they would've done the thing
| Russia does where they start their own bogus competing
| extradition proceeding in order to repatriate the person. Not to
| mention that they stuck him with a $500k bill!
| nojvek wrote:
| Seeing how much censorship Australian govt wants on it's own
| public, "love Assange" is a far cry from reality.
|
| Also Australia is beholden to US and has deep ties with it.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Australia is on an America-led course to humiliate and destroy
| whistleblowers. Our governments were upset in public, but no
| doubt cheering on Assange's treatment in private. Just look at
| what they did to David McBride.
| drojas wrote:
| This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's
| finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because
| this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of
| our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things
| as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership.
| This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every
| day it seems like humanity is losing more and more of itself to
| evil and greedy powers that be. Assange did a great thing by
| exposing corrupt and criminal behavior at the highest levels and
| got such a inhumane treatment from the most powerful
| organizations on earth. He should not have been punished, he
| should have been protected and praised and his case should be a
| matter of study on every school on earth.
| jfax wrote:
| This is beautifully articulated. I myself thought for a long
| time that if the day ever came that Assange walks free, I'd
| cry, but instead I feel a strange emptiness inside. The world
| isn't the one I'd imagined for this day.
| resters wrote:
| Indeed. Though it is still inspiring that there are people
| like Assange who are willing to face personal hardship in the
| name of democratic values such as press freedom and
| government accountability / transparency.
|
| None of the US leaders whose crimes were exposed by Assange
| have faced any consequences whatsoever, and many of them
| remain influential, lauded figures in American society.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Democratic values ??
|
| He is a Russian asset, he never released anything
| significant that could harm the Kremlin.
|
| Same as Snowden. Displayed as role models while their main
| purpose is to make the West look like evil dictatures, so
| that the actual dictators can grab land, extinguish press
| freedom and turn their countries into textbook fascist
| military dictatorship while everyone agrees that the west
| is the reason for all the evil in the world...
|
| I'm all for criticizing the US, but then why stop there?
|
| Who is hypocritical, really?
| 9dev wrote:
| Well, might it be that Assange did never receive
| something comparable to the US cables? You do remember he
| used to run a platform to publish whistleblower files,
| right?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I think we have vastly enough material to criticize
| Russia, we don't need more.
|
| Our societies are already convinced those are
| dictatorships.
|
| But it took Snowden and Assange to show us how deeply
| messed up our societies are.
|
| It's very possible they are both Russian assets, but what
| they reported have been verified, and we needed to know
| it.
|
| The way you are reacting is close to a religious
| interpretation of the world. It's not us VS them. It's
| not a football match.
|
| We have a society to build, and it's been taken from us,
| one piece at a time. If we don't want to end up like
| Russia, we need all info we can get.
|
| And given the huge price they paid for it, yes, I
| consider them heroes. And I think history will remember
| them as such.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I still remember the day they arrested him and how awful it
| felt. He is an incredibly strong person to withstand that
| level of isolation and see the light of day.
| meroes wrote:
| I'm genuinely not sure if we are in different bubbles or just
| different. How can you be pure toward him when he is fine
| getting informants and others killed, and asking for and
| telling how to go about getting classified info. Are the facts
| in dispute? I reserve judgment on whether it was ultimately
| moral to do what he did until all the facts are known, which
| might be never. You seem to know a different set of facts or
| have very different judgments. I wonder which and if, with the
| same facts, how you come to such thoughts.
|
| To me purity towards Assange seems like willful ignorance or
| some kind of "ends justify the means". But the means are lives
| and conspiracy to steal+spread classified info, and determining
| such a moral quandary should be hard, no? Purity of admiration
| seems impossible with these givens, so what's going on?
| user3939382 wrote:
| > he is fine getting informants and others killed
|
| The US testified in court that his disclosures didn't get
| anyone killed, this is misinformation stemming from early
| propaganda against him by the political establishment that
| was humiliated by WikiLeaks' publications
| meroes wrote:
| "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they
| get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve
| it."
|
| The US's testimony makes it barely better given the quote
| (I'll take your word for the testimony) and leaves me
| equally puzzled regarding his admiration.
| realce wrote:
| Is a non-US citizen culpable for publishing US secrets?
|
| In sincere good-faith: is there even a US law about
| publishing the names of undercover informants? Isn't that
| what Dick Chaney and the New York Times did?
| hartator wrote:
| > "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if
| they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They
| deserve it."
|
| Did he say that? It's a secondary witness from someone
| who hate him. You need to double check sources.
| oska wrote:
| I had never seen this purported quote before. And I found
| it extremely dubious that he said such a thing. Seeing as
| you didn't provide a source I went looking for one. I
| found first a recent NYT piece [1] with the purported
| quote. Here's the first paragraph of that piece :
|
| > Fourteen years ago, at a human rights conference in
| Oslo, I met Julian Assange. From the moment I encountered
| the wraithlike WikiLeaks founder, I sensed that he might
| be a morally dubious character. My suspicions were
| confirmed upon witnessing his speech at the conference,
| in which he listed Israel alongside Iran and China as
| part of a "rogue's gallery of states" and compared the
| Guantanamo Bay detention facility to a Nazi concentration
| camp
|
| I think it's pretty obvious from that opening that it's a
| hit piece on Assange. Anyway, that piece links to an
| earlier Guardian piece [2] for the source of the quote.
| That Guardian column is another, and even more obvious,
| hit piece on Assange. Here's its first paragraph :
|
| > You did not have to listen for too long to Julian
| Assange's half-educated condemnations of the American
| "military-industrial complex" to know that he was aching
| to betray better and braver people than he could ever be.
|
| Vomit. But finally in the Guardian piece we find the
| source of the purported quote. It's from David Leigh and
| Luke Harding's "history" of WikiLeaks. I think most
| people who have closely followed the Wikleaks story will
| understand how unreliable and compromised both David
| Leigh and Luke Harding are to serve as 'witnesses' or
| sources for any reporting on Wikileaks and Assange. But
| they've served their masters very well as yellow
| journalists engaged in a state backed smear campaign
| against Assange.
|
| [1] https://archive.md/FV0N0
|
| [2] https://archive.md/5kSgB
| hartator wrote:
| Revealing war crimes easily qualified for declassification of
| government documents. It's a straightforward of course the
| end justified the means situation
| Aloisius wrote:
| And the other 99.999% of documents that didn't allege any
| war crimes?
|
| I'm glad the darker side of the US operations came to
| light, but it would have been better if the leaks went
| straight to an actual news organization that had enough
| ethical standards to ensure names of informants and
| activists at risk were properly redacted.
|
| Snowden's leaks were far better handled.
| hartator wrote:
| > Snowden's leaks were far better handled.
|
| And didn't lead to any change.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Em.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_effect
|
| https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/appeals-court-
| strikes-do...
| ben_w wrote:
| Even ignoring all the public changes to the tech
| industry, wouldn't we need another whistleblower to even
| be able to tell that there hadn't been any internal
| change to what they considered acceptable behaviour?
| alexashka wrote:
| Right, news organizations are all about ethics unlike
| Julian Assange. They don't even have advertisers.
| segasaturn wrote:
| I don't understand why Assange should be treated more harshly
| for putting people's theoretical lives at risk than the
| people who were actually murdering civilians and committing
| war crimes?
| Draiken wrote:
| I'm unsure where the purity claim comes from. Parent said
| people should praise him for his actions. Nowhere it's stated
| ALL his actions, or that he is pure in any way, shape or
| form.
|
| Nobody is perfect and he's no different, all that they're
| expressing is that making the hard moral choice to expose bad
| behavior should be applauded instead of punished.
|
| I know the vast majority of us (including me) would not have
| the courage to risk personal retaliation to expose bad
| behavior. We all love to think we would, but we all witness
| corruption everywhere and never say a word for a plethora of
| reasons.
|
| If they were claiming "purity" as you imply, I'd agree. But
| that's not what was written, and it seems a lot of people
| have the same flawed interpretation. Yes, he's flawed, but
| that doesn't make what he has done any less brave.
| dcow wrote:
| There is _no_ dilemma! We need a harsh societal reminder that
| you are not responsible for the actions of other people. It's
| a moral fallacy to say that JA would be responsible for
| getting informants killed (if any were actually killed--they
| weren't) by exercising fundamental inalienable freedoms. If
| somebody kills an informant, that is on _them_. This mindset
| of culpability for consequences of exposing evil is literally
| how evil festers and wins. Don't fall victim to evil's
| rhetorical agenda.
| ngcazz wrote:
| tangential but ultimately the same mentality that thinks
| enacting collective punishment is okay
| virtualritz wrote:
| > How can you be pure toward him when he is fine getting
| informants and others killed, and asking for and telling how
| to go about getting classified info. Are the facts in
| dispute?
|
| No they are not in dispute, they are simply not facts.
|
| From [1]:
|
| The head of the IRTF, Brigadier General Robert Carr,
| testified under questioning at Chelsea Manning's sentencing
| hearing that the task force had found no examples of anyone
| who had lost their life due to WikiLeaks' publication of the
| documents.
|
| Edit: fixed link.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#:~:text=The%
| 20h....
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| This reads like AI generated rage bait.
| tootie wrote:
| Read some Steven Pinker. Your observations about our present
| state are not wrong, but seriously consider every other point
| in human history and realize we are not worse off in any
| measurable way. In fact, much better.
| resters wrote:
| In that argument, Pinker is playing the role of court
| academic.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I have no doubt Steven Pinker is very well off indeed.
| shafyy wrote:
| Steven Pinker is a moron. Everything is relative. What does
| "better off" mean anyways?
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| Probably he is indeed a moron, or perhaps the shrewd
| academic.
|
| The peasant who used to get one square meal in 3 days now
| gets one square meal a day. So objectively we are better
| off. ( And the HN idiot will gloss over the stats to point
| out how fortunate we are to have software jobs)
| wussboy wrote:
| In "Better Angels" he chooses "healthy, wealthy and wise"
| as his three benchmarks. We live longer (and suffer less
| violence). We have more wealth. We are smarter. That's what
| "better off" means. You can argue that's not what "better
| off" means, but you'd be arguing that we should strive for
| shorter lives, more poverty, and increased stupidity.
| calf wrote:
| How is that different than my dad saying the _cliche_ "Back
| in the day we had it much worse?" It's just a book to make
| the same conservative point. Since when did any child of a
| parent hearing that ("Back in the day, we didn't have food /
| shelter / etc.") respond in agreement? Talking about how much
| worse things were back then is beside the point, because it
| is the wrong category of comparison to make. It just shows
| the person - a parent, a teacher, Prof. Pinker - saying it is
| out of touch and doesn't understand the actual complaint in
| todays' context. It's just paternalism expressed with more
| words.
|
| In fact I can answer my question in another way. _We_ do not
| exist as a hive collective and nor ought we individuals
| compare our lives to an alternate life living in the past. A
| historical societal fact that is technically does not apply
| to the problems of individual people living today. It was
| wrong of Pinker to _inconsiderately_ apply those historical
| facts on the level of societies by further making his implied
| political points about the individual needs of the
| marginalized and the oppressed today, but in public that is
| what he has constantly done.
| wussboy wrote:
| It is different because one is a human mind falling prey to
| selective memory and sympathy, and Pinker's book is about
| facts and data.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I see two sides:
|
| - we're better off because there is less human suffering "per
| capita" for lack of a better word.
|
| - we're worse off because technology has allowed us all to
| instantly see and learn about every human (and animal)
| atrocity anywhere in the world.
|
| I'm sure if I keyed up a gore site right now I could find the
| latest mexican cartel atrocity, or a necklacing in Africa, or
| someone somewhere else being cruelly hurt. But in the 1950s
| you had to pay for a paper which was excessively rate-limited
| and narrow in scope.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high
| minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after
| refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are
| hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years
| that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised.
| Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to
| fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing or
| doctoring videos.
|
| The list goes on, they are not the BBC or Al-Jazeera. The DNC
| hack/wikileaks release timeline is absolutely disgusting and
| shows the true nature of the organization.
|
| Just such a bizarre take completely divorced of reality.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| This fact isn't stated often enough.
|
| Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly
| edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley
| fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in
| the audio. And I can't fathom why a journalist, accompanied
| by men with AK's themselves, would be pointing what obviously
| looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight-
| not to mention bringing women and in children with him in the
| minivan.
|
| If this highly edited footage was the worst that could be
| found in such a large dump of documents- I'm highly
| underwhelmed.
|
| Evidence of war crimes? Hardly. A chance to see how ugly
| these conflicts are and another reason why Americsn troops
| perhaps should never have been there in the first place? Yep,
| absolutely.
|
| But my hunch is that the entire event is a Rohrschack test
| where most people will take away from it the same perceptions
| that they walked in with.
| ktallett wrote:
| It wasn't the worst that was found but it did show a war
| crime. It wasn't the only one by any stretch.
|
| It showed a cover up of the number of civilian deaths in
| Iraq and Afghanistan which had been caused by American
| Troops.
|
| It showed significant horrific human rights violations
| against innocent and untried inmates at Guantanamo Bay. (As
| if just the existance of that wasn't enough.)
|
| It showed illegal spying by the NSA on governments around
| the world.
|
| Plenty of good done by wikileaks.
| robxorb wrote:
| The "edited" version's edited. The unedited version,
| released by WL at the same time, isn't. The entire war was
| a crime and killed 150K+ innocents. If the release of video
| of a fraction of those deaths puts attention on that;
| excellent journalism.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > The DNC hack/wikileaks release timeline is absolutely
| disgusting and shows the true nature of the organization.
|
| in my experience people who condemn wikileaks for this almost
| universally praise wikileaks for other releases (just so
| longs as the other releases happened to paint their political
| opponents in a bad light).
| Thoreandan wrote:
| Reminder, for context, since news stations that should know
| better are parroting the narrative that he published unredacted
| stuff as soon as he got it, instead of What Actually Happened:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110901064746/https://wikileaks...
| randomopining wrote:
| Remember that a site like this only exists in the sphere of US
| hegemony. If we lived in NK, Russia, or China and debating
| decisions by the government... whelp that wouldn't exist there.
|
| Wrong and right are not absolutes.
| consumer451 wrote:
| He should not have spent all of this time being persecuted by the
| US government, but he should have been ostracized by the public
| long ago. I believe that if not for the prior, the latter would
| have occurred much more readily.
|
| > A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who
| had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online
| without taking the basic precaution of removing their names.
| "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get
| killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A
| silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man
| the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency
| was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded
| Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department
| Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates
| suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his
| mind.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian...
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Didn't know that and yes, that is condemning. The conclusion
| for future leak prevention is clear, all sensitive data storage
| must be tainted with false positives, that only a need to know
| filter window exposes time and access sensitive.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| The sources are out of context quotes coming from hear say
| sources; those sources being clearly politically motivated
| think tanks.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The source was Declan Walsh, who was a journalist for the
| Guardian and now the NYT.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| So definitely not politically motivated!
| 4bpp wrote:
| What part of the US government or its decision-makers spent 10
| years stewing in prison for bribing Afghans to expose
| themselves to that same risk of death, or straight up killing
| many more Afghans for no other reason that they happened to be
| at the wrong place at the wrong time? Does the US government
| have some special natural right to toy with the lives of
| Afghans that Assange does not have?
|
| Unless you believe it to be so, it seems quite strange to
| assign any significant share of the blame to Assange for any
| hypothetical deaths that may occur as a result of him taking
| actions to reduce the US government's ability to kill people
| abroad, akin to blaming police who stop a hostage-taker because
| this might have prompted the hostage-taker to kill the hostage
| but holding the hostage-taker himself blameless.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Does the US government have some special natural right to
| toy with the lives of Afghans that Assange does not have?
|
| Your argument appears to boil down to the idea that two
| wrongs make a right.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Obviously there is more nuance than that. If police kill an
| active school shooter, is your response "Tsk, tsk, two
| wrongs don't make a right"?
| consumer451 wrote:
| In your analogy, Assange publicly outing Afgan
| translators is equivalent to police killing an active
| school shooter? Maybe I am misunderstanding.
| calf wrote:
| The argument is simply that the ultimate responsibility
| falls on the entity that created the problem, and so it
| is inherently not symmetric. Whereas you made the
| assumption that two "wrongs" are symmetric and so have
| equal moral status. Another standard way for explaining
| this is that when judging something, one ought to account
| for the actual power dynamics between the conflicting
| parties. The problem is, prejudice, classism, and bigotry
| tend to distort what people think and perceive as the
| actual power dynamics, hence long and controversial news
| threads like these.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I really appreciate your reply. I learned a lot already.
| It might be best if I didn't reply, but I can't seem to
| help myself.
|
| > Another standard way for explaining this is that when
| judging something, one ought to account for the actual
| power dynamics between the conflicting parties.
|
| I was ready to get all riled up in response, thinking
| that Assange had much more power here than the Afgan
| translators.
|
| > The problem is, prejudice, classism, and bigotry tend
| to distort what people think and perceive as the actual
| power dynamics, hence long and controversial news threads
| like these.
|
| I am settled down now. Yeah, this is not an easy, I
| appreciate anyone identifying the complexity.
|
| Meta: this is not an easy topic. I am very thankful that
| this political item didn't get flagged, and we were
| allowed to get deep into these difficult issues.
| kzzzznot wrote:
| This seems like some real mental gymnastics. Not sure how
| true the above is, but your argument has some serious holes.
|
| Does the bad entity that is doing bad things have a right to
| do bad things? No
|
| Does a man exposing the bad entity have a right to do bad
| things? Also no
| meowface wrote:
| I suspect even the vast majority of decision makers in the US
| government wouldn't have a conversation like that. And even
| if they somehow _did_ , how does that change how one should
| feel about what Assange said? "Well, he was psychopathically
| toying with people's lives, but so do other people."
|
| Assange seemed virtuous at first but it appears he pivoted
| into an agenda-driven propagandist after Wikileaks grew more
| successful and he realized what could be done with it.
| blast wrote:
| Assange denies having said that, according to the article
| linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40786073. Is
| there proof that he did, such as a recording?
|
| "Willing to hand death lists to psychopaths" is the language of
| a hit piece so your link seems a little biased.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Since this was written in the UK, couldn't he use their libel
| laws to sue if he hadn't said it?
|
| The article states that there were multiple journalists who
| could be called as witnesses, and could testify as to what
| happened, one way or the other.
| blast wrote:
| "he didn't sue me for libel" is not much of an argument.
| Most false reports don't end up in a libel suit even in the
| UK.
|
| I'm not saying it's false, I don't know, but the reporting
| on this has been hotly contested and there are charges of
| politicization all around.
| consumer451 wrote:
| If I was him, and never said this, I would fight tooth
| and nail to prove that this was the case. He certainly
| appears to have enough supporters to fund such an
| endeavor.
| ben_w wrote:
| In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle
| that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death.
|
| (I don't buy the argument that it _was_ actually that,
| but I 'm willing to believe that _he convinced himself
| that it was_ ).
| consumer451 wrote:
| > In fairness, he's been busy with another legal battle
| that he appears to consider a matter of life-and-death.
|
| Agreed, it will be very interesting to see how this
| particular thing goes forward from today. Ideally, he
| would defend himself. I wouldn't hate to be proven wrong,
| as heroes are few and far between these days.
|
| However, post-release, becoming a main character in a
| certain political branch of the podcast-sphere might
| allow him to ignore any of these annoying factual issues
| and do just fine.
|
| /cynical
| animex wrote:
| Now do Snowden.
| znpy wrote:
| My guess is that the US government will have him killed within
| the year.
| husamia wrote:
| Bitcoin sell off happened around the release of JA
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| Doesnt mean anything
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'd still like to see a full pardon and record expunged.
| demondemidi wrote:
| I have trouble being happy for a man that was bought off to
| facilitate Russian intervention in my country's government.
| nikkwong wrote:
| Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free
| is so overwhelmingly positive? Assange certainly did great work
| to reveal government corruption and abuses of power. At the same
| time, some state secrets are best kept secret for national
| interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of regard for
| protecting this type of information. It often seemed that he was
| working in his own self interest rather than one that prioritized
| the interests of the US, humanity and civilization on the whole.
| I guess.. I just expected more nuanced discussion around this on
| HN.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being
| free is so overwhelmingly positive?
|
| Not really, though I am frustrated as it does feel like he's
| only popular because he's an underdog sticking it to The Man.
|
| Even in isolation and ignoring the preceding case -- for which
| he fled to the embassy in order to not risk the very outcome
| he's now facing (c.f. going to the USA, "Assange would appear
| in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled
| territory north of Guam", even though that wasn't even on the
| cards at the time he fled) -- many other journalists manage to
| publish damning evidence that seriously upsets their
| governments without having to solicit for it (AFAICT, no
| journalists have gotten into trouble for publishing Snowden's
| leaks, just Snowden himself), while some other journalists who
| _broke the law to get their scoops_ also faced court for
| _breaking the law to get their scoops_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_arrested_in_the...
| EnergyAmy wrote:
| There's a pretty big difference in breaking the law to get
| hot goss vs breaking the law to expose corruption at the
| highest levels of government.
|
| There's limits of course, but whistleblowers should be
| afforded a lot of leeway, particularly because quite often
| doing things the "right way" is engineered to accomplish
| nothing.
| skilled wrote:
| But of course it is positive. This is a huge deal, even if only
| one that will benefit himself. I don't know anything about any
| secrets that he showed any lack of regard for, but I definitely
| know about the files he exposed that showed the US government
| is a bunch of cowards who manipulate people and then use the
| full force of the law to defend themselves when caught with
| their pants down.
|
| Instead of making people guess what you mean by _nuanced_ , you
| simply should go ahead and provide that nuanced perspective and
| see if anyone wants to engage it.
| nikkwong wrote:
| The US government needs to prosecute actors who infiltrate
| secure systems with the aim to leak state secrets as a way to
| prevent this type of behavior from happening in the future.
| Say what you want; even if the premise of leaking is seeking
| to enrich the interests of the public--there are many state
| secrets that are secret for very good reasons, such as
| protecting the lives of informants, diplomats, etc.
|
| There were many documents that WikiLeaks released that seemed
| to have been released under the auspice of "full
| transparency" but really served no public good and inflicted
| a lot of harm. Releasing the names of afgan informants,
| cablegate, that airstrike video where journalists were killed
| (can't remember the name specifically), etc. I just don't
| know if I agree that the public should know everything.
|
| Think about the case of the NSA--yes they were spying on
| Americans in egregious ways and overextending the scope of
| their mission and authority. But at the same time, we do want
| a lot of their methods to remain secret. They have thwarted
| many potential terrorist attacks since 9/11; and if we, and
| our adversaries, knew exactly how and who they were spying on
| --I'm sure Americans would be less safe.
| ktallett wrote:
| That information has been leaked and has the US been any
| less safe because of it. I would argue there is nothing to
| suggest it. Governments aren't above the law and the
| journalists that were killed and the spying was rightfully
| publicised. As was the Guantanamo Bay leaks. The public
| shouldn't know everything but if the public find out
| because the government act illegally and need to be held to
| law like anyone else, it is an unlucky consequence of the
| governments actions.
| EnergyAmy wrote:
| > They have thwarted many potential terrorist attacks since
| 9/11
|
| Is there a source for this claim that isn't just the NSA
| saying "trust us"?
| nikkwong wrote:
| Yes. There was a 60 minutes episode that went into pretty
| deep detail on the different types of attacks that have
| been attempted since 9/11; most of which the NSA and/or
| the FBI were involved in thwarting. There was a very high
| profile train bombing that was would have been
| successfully executed if not for the power of some of
| these 3 letter agencies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The same three letter agencies which routinely give fake
| bombs to heavily egged on idiots incapable of building
| them on their own?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I don't think Assange operated in any kind of self-interest
| per-se, I think he operated based on a principle of maximum
| transparency.
|
| I definitely don't think that is always a positive thing but I
| struggle to think of anything which Assange leaked which I
| really disagree with. Probably some parts of cablegate should
| not have come out as they were very "inside baseball" talk
| between diplomats and were too easily construed negatively in
| the media, though, I think for the most part our allies
| realized that they said the same things about us in their
| private communications and there was really no major fallout
| from it.
|
| Now, all that said, Assange did break the law and I don't think
| there should be no consequences for that but the way the US
| went about this (across 3 different presidencies) is just
| terrible. Nudging and cajoling and perhaps berating our Swedish
| allies to jin up a "rape" case against him so he could be
| extradited from the UK to Sweden and then obviously to the US,
| and, denying that we were doing that was just dirty on our
| part. I'm sure if there is a cablegate 2.0 we'd find we did
| some fairly terrible stuff to persuade our Swedish allies to
| prosecute this.
|
| Ultimately the simple reason I think there is near positive
| reaction to this news is that everyone understands that even
| given what he did, it does not merit almost 15 years of prison
| in some really terrible conditions. Should he have walked away
| free? Maybe, maybe not but he should have had a fair trial with
| fair charges and faced a fair jury and he never got any of
| that, he was effectively extrajudicially jailed.
| rudolph9 wrote:
| > he should have had a fair trial with fair charges and faced
| a fair jury and he never got any of that
|
| Could he have had that if he turned him self when he was
| originally charged?
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Well, maximum transparency on why he never published anything
| significant on Russia would be great.
|
| To me it's a very bad smell when you pretend to fight for
| press freedom and democratic values, but never say anything
| bad about regimes where presidents-for-life are extinguishing
| the free press and poisoning opposition leaders.
|
| It's like these all the crazy conspiracy theories that
| flourished online during the last decade, that are somehow
| never hurting Russian interests...
|
| But I must be paranoid, right?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Well, would he still be alive if he'd published similar
| quantities of info on Russia? That's a pretty simple
| explanation, he thought his chances of survival were better
| with Western leaks.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| I think also you can't really do reputational damage to
| an already well-known corrupt pariah state.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| We need more of his type of self-interest and less of the kind
| shown in the Panama Papers and Epstein flight logs.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _At the same time, some state secrets are best kept secret
| for national interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of
| regard for protecting this type of information._
|
| Julian Assange was an irresponsible arsehole. Doesn't mean his
| treatment was anything _resembling_ just. While he probably put
| a lot of people _at risk_ , I've not heard of anyone actually
| getting hurt as a result of his actions. Given that, and given
| his treatment in prison, he's more than served his time.
| grumple wrote:
| Same. Assange was an actor for Russia, and acted against
| American interests, whether by design or by accident. He played
| a role in the election of Trump and in the weakening of US
| standing and intelligence.
|
| This soft-handed approach towards anti-American behavior is the
| culmination of multiple movements in the post-Soviet era where
| the remnants of Soviet-sponsored communists and other home-
| grown agitators align themselves with anti-western groups
| around the world (Russia, Iran, China, various terrorist
| groups, etc). These groups have a lot of influence in the left
| in general, and in the current US administration, so it's not
| surprising that now is the time that Assange gets a friendly
| deal. Between this and Manning's sentence being commuted, I
| think a lot of damage has been done to our security
| apparatuses. What's the dissuade the next kid with delusions of
| toppling the corrupt American empire from exposing state
| secrets in a noble act on behalf of our comrades in the benign
| and honorable states of Russia, China, and Iran?
| metabagel wrote:
| > These groups have a lot of influence in the left in
| general, and in the current US administration, so it's not
| surprising that now is the time that Assange gets a friendly
| deal.
|
| You lost me there. Assange got a deal because the prosecution
| needed a deal to resolve the case. They didn't do it out of
| the kindness of their heart, nor because there was any
| pressure from the administration to do Assange a favor.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Try not being a corrupt empire for a change? Unthinkable I
| know, choosing to not be guilty of horrible crimes for a
| change! So long as they engage in fucked up shit and cover it
| up there will be reactions against it in one form or another.
| Whistleblowers are the most benign form, and themselves are
| the result of internal channels just being honeypots instead
| of policing themselves. If they truly cared for their
| precious opsec they would have robust internal investigations
| instead of retaliation.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Yeah, sounds like overwhelming positive opinions...
|
| JULIAN!! The guy that embarrassed evil powers all over the
| world!
|
| What evil powers? Well, the US, the US, and... the US.
|
| I got down-voted by just mentioning he didn't release anything
| significant on Russia for some reason.
|
| I wouldn't be surprise if some of the massive support we're
| seeing here in this thread is not completely legit.
| zerofs wrote:
| Russia hacks the DNC, Wikileaks distributes the hacked emails,
| Trump gets elected. Assange is a POS.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Congrats to Mr. Assange! He paid a high price for showing us what
| our governments are doing in our name (i.e. war crimes).
| r721 wrote:
| LIVE: Julian Assange arrives in Saipan for his court hearing
| [Reuters]
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZI0YIqeAE
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