Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he is considering a request from Australia to drop the decade-long US push to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing a trove of American classified documents.
Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he is considering a request from Australia to drop the decade-long US push to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing a trove of American classified documents.
Yes, this guy. This messenger you’re currently shooting deserves a pardon and multiple awards.
He exposed more corruption and illegal actions than either of us ever will. We need to encourage these heroic deeds. The FBI planted evidence on him. His client attorney privilege was violated. If he was actually such a bad person, these illegal lengths should never have been used to frame him.
His human rights should absolutely be respected, but I think the world will be a worse place with this guy running around.
As a messenger, his organization turned a blind eye on one side (WikiLeaks refused to publish Russian government documents: Report, WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign) and instead collaborated with them, to the degree of forging messages and using leaks to distract from equally newsworthy dirty laundry.
I’d compare him to a cop who selectively polices crime gang A but ignores crime gang B. And whose phone number is found with members of crime gang B, together with evidence that they could call the cop at any time (and did so) to appear inside crime gang A’s territory. Yes, technically, the cop has apprehended more criminals than either of us ever will and we could give him a medal for his work (and crime gang B is certainly motivated to help that along to get this cop more entrenched and promoted).
Literally from the article you posted:
Assange has mentioned on numerous occasions that they get a lot of fake leaks sent by ABCs designed to hurt WikiLeaks’ credibility. Unless there is concrete evidence of him being a Russian asset (and it has to be concrete, especially knowing that he has literally been framed by the FBI on multiple occasions), I’m not going to immediately drop my support for whistleblowers.
Also literally from the article I posted:
Neither of our quotes really adds anything to the discussion.
A nebulous policy to reject “anything WL can’t verify” or “has been published elsewhere” or “is likely to be considered insignificant” or is “diversionary (to WL’s election interference)” is a carte blanche for Assange to turn down anything that he doesn’t like.
What I have seen concrete evidence for is that Assange wanted Trump to win (In Leaked Chats, WikiLeaks Discusses Preference for GOP Over Clinton, Russia, Trolling, and Feminists They Don’t Like <- contains verified excepts from leaked internal WikiLeaks chats). And for strongly pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy theory (hinting in multiple interviews that Seth Rich was behind the DNC leaks and even posting a $20000 reward for the murder case).
I won’t even ask for concrete evidence that the FBI has framed Assange, because in the big picture, it doesn’t change who he is or what he does. To me, it’s been sufficiently proven that he takes sides (that’s an ‘F’ for integrity, report the story, don’t be part of the story), that he collaborated in anti-democratic GOP activities and that his promotes views that align with the gunk spread by “Russia Today” or “Sputnik.” Whether that’s because he a Russian asset or because he’s had a false awakening into the conspirational world view Russian information warfare uses to twist people, who knows. I’ll withhold judgment on that one, but I also won’t expect him to do anything good for the world.
I just want to say I don’t disagree with anything you said on in facts of your comment (like WikiLeaks’ chatlogs). Those are facts. The other things like what WikiLeaks can or cannot verify are the he said/she said, and I’m cautious to blame WikiLeaks for it because of all the BS and slander (much of which was later found out to be false) that Assange faced.
Even if we ignore the fact of who Assange is - I don’t want future whistleblowers to get the same illegal treatment (like the attorney client privilege abuse) as Assange. Precedence matters in cases like this. It determines what future whistleblowers will face.
Here it is anyways: https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/the-fbi-tried-to-make-iceland-a-complicit-ally-in-framing-julian-assange,13277
The quotes are from the Minister of the Interior, and later the Minister of Justice in Iceland, in case you were wondering on the reputabilitiy.
He would be easier to support if he had just kept releasing important news/evidence when it was morally justified, and not got into the more questionable activities of private intelligence - such as election meddling.
Bad move on his part, makes him a lot harder to defend.
A million people died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite global protests and outrage. Sometimes it feels like there must be better systems than the current set up of “democracy”.
I din’t think we have to defend what he did in order to defend his human rights.
The US itself has spies and espionage in many countries.
It’s crazy hearing people talk like Assange’s journalism/espionage/whatever is somehow this unheard-of thing that is deserving of whatever torture gulag/Guantanamo type situation the US wants to dream up.
He’s an absolute scum bag and is directly responsible for Trump’s election.
That said, my personal feelings about him are irrelevant. Whistle-blowers are an important part of democracy and must be protected.
How so? Everything released was genuine. Maybe the Clinton campaign shouldn’t have been so shitty.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
As you well know, the release was timed to maximise the damage to Clinton’s campaign. Assange’s hatred of Clinton was well established long before.
No. Timed to maximise the exposure for wikileaks, to encourage more leaking.
More because she hates him. She was pushing to indict him after publishing the 2010 diplomatic cables showing complicit spying during her tenure as secretary of state. The same ones he’s now being held in prison for.