He is being punished, tortured really for this “crime”.
He has been endlessly and baselessly slandered. All that alleged bad behaviour while he was imprisoned in the embassy ... funny how there’s been no footage of it, despite the fact that he was under 24/7 surveillance!
And these rape charges, clearly also designed to tarnish his name, now finally exposed as a fiasco.
Many newspapers had huge scoops thanks to Wikileaks, but have now turned on them. A particularly striking example is the supposedly liberal Guardian.
Journalists everywhere should be afraid as this sets a dangerous precedent for all of them.
Though O'Hagan is sympathetic in many ways he doesn't sugarcoat anything, and I came away with the impression that Assange is the author of a great deal of his own woes. (Among other things, much of the account involves Assange lying pretty incessantly, even to his closest allies about petty dramas, so I now find it hard to take anything he's said at face value.)
[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost...
----
Edit to add: there's a quoted exchange in the account, which now springs to mind every time I hear about Assange.
> There are few subjects on which Julian would be reluctant to take what you might call a paternalistic position, but over Snowden, whom he’s never met but has chatted with and feels largely responsible for, he expressed a kind of irritable admiration. "Just how good is he?" I asked.
> "He’s number nine," he said.
> "In the world? Among computer hackers? And where are you?"
> "I’m number three."
But, I think this is kind of hard to swallow at this point. I know you respond to someone else comment, and not directly to the story. But in this light i think it is not time to discuss if Assange lied at some point. The man deserves a fair trial, and some nobel prizes for the good stuff he did. Before Wikileaks we were some tin-foil hat /r/conspiracy readers. And now "deep state" a term you find in the MSM. Big progress necessary on the way to fix this mess, yet Assange's life got destroyed in the process.
Wow, he has a high opinion of himself! That's just terrible. Horrible. Only the humble and the meek are worthy of support when they're persecuted.
My uncle is a general in the Air Force, all three of my grandfathers fought in WW2 (my Dad's biological father was killed by a drunk driver when he was 7), etc etc. I have pictures of my grandfather standing under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with the tank squad he commanded.
Wikileaks helped change my mind quite a bit. Among the many things they published, there was one video that really stood out: POV camera from a apache as the pilot releases a missile into a group of civilians that included a number of journalists. Things like this couldn't be ignored, because of Wikileaks record. You couldn't start off down a path of rationalizing, etc. They made you face up to the ground-level reality.
I still support and appreciate the people who serve in our armed forces, but thanks to Wikileaks I have a much more nuanced,skeptical, and (I believe) more appropriate view.
The news media has consciously hidden and censored the ground level reality of war since Vietnam, where they made the mistake of showing families the graphic ground level realities of war in color while they ate TV dinners in their living rooms. This created what was perhaps the greatest anti war sentiment in US history -- it was not sustainable. Meanwhile Hollywood perpetually pushed out war and action movies glorifying violence while also censoring the disgusting reality of it.
To see the people responsible for getting that out - something that should never have been kept secret - imprisoned and hunted across the world has only confirmed those views.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airst...
Reading the Wikipedia entry seems to indicate the Apache’s has reason to believe they were hostile forces. Indeed, some of the men with the journalists had weapons and were in the same spot as harassing fire had come from earlier.
It made even one involved soldier to speak out: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ethan-mccord/
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-tech-assange...
For example:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-hel...
Say I put up a website that every day posted a story about a Jewish person who had been convicted of a financial crime. Say I promoted this site and built up a fan base. If every story was 100% true, nothing but real convictions.
Would you say this is an honest, faultless website?
If we saw that this number was appreciably higher than 2%, then we could immediately draw the conclusion that the justice system in this country is biased against Jews, right?
(This would be just like we do in the case of blacks when it comes to "more dangerous" crimes like assault, armed robbery, rape, and murder.)
See what the west here does to stop rather similar practices of which Assange happens to be at the receiving end? Very little. We let him die, and I include myself into "we". This is just abhorrent. And it seems we dont even know what to point our anger to, the US govt? The UK? The fucking-were-so-enlightended Swedish govt? Any (western) govt that fails to stand up for him?
To stay in xmas spirit: Assange is the modern day Jesus of reporting dying for our freedom and our right te be informed of our sick and twisted govts.
I'm angry now.
Psychological projection can be contagious, when used with blame: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intense-emotions-and...
There wouldn’t be. It’s an embassy. The met aren’t daft enough to do anything other than watch the front door.
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/09/25/inenglish/1569384196_65...
> After the installation of new video cameras at the beginning of December 2017, Morales requested that his technicians install an external streaming access point in the same area so that all of the recordings could be accessed instantly by the United States. To do this, he requested three channels for access: “one for Ecuador, another for us and another for X,” according to mails sent at the time to his colleagues. When one of the technicians asked to contact “the Americans” to explain the way that they should access some of the spying systems installed in the embassy, Morales would always be evasive with his answers.
> Morales ordered his workers to install microphones in the embassy’s fire extinguishers and also in the women’s bathroom, where Assange’s lawyers, including the Spaniard Aitor Martínez and his closest collaborators, would meet for fear of being spied on.
How about this bullshit Steve Jobs AIDS diagnosis?
https://file.wikileaks.org/file/steve-jobs-hiv/steve-jobs-hi...
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_purported_HIV_medical_...
Wikileaks explicitly noted:
> Due to the contradictory dates, possible evidence of forgery, strong motivations for fabrication, and few motivations for a legitimate revelation, the images should not be taken at face value.
Using Wayback machine, I can confirm that this text was associated with these images from the first moment that they were published on Wikileaks.
Also, HIV isn't AIDS and you should keep that in mind.
It’s hard to verify he deleted it because his Twitter account has been deactivated. Just found it interesting because I think his original tweet was accurate but it was strange that he backtracked.
Refusing to ever retract anything either means they're literally perfect. Fuck the New York Times, Guardian, BBC, Al Jareeza and every other news organisation that has ever existed.
Or they refuse to retract ever, despite sometimes making mistakes.
We - informed internet users, not just journalists - should be very worried about his treatment and try to act to support him and Wikileaks. If you can't act yourself, do consider donating:
https://defend.wikileaks.org/donate/
(there might be other relevant avenues of donating, this is one of them)
There's a Norwegian conservative newspaper who (somehow) got access to all the cable gate documents [1], and benefited tremendously on it - but now won't speak up about how Julian Assange is being treated.
(Sorry about the norwegian news article)
[1] https://finansavisen.no/nyheter/politikk/2010/12/aftenposten...
Speaking truth to power is something the corporate-owned fourth estate no longer engages in, and instead discards civil discourse and individuals with integrity because reality is inconvenient compared to fanning the flames with phony-outrage clickbait, replacing it with corporate-led fascism and intolerance masquerading as liberalism. Here are just some of the heroes of freedom:
- Phil Donahue (completely gave up a promising career)
- Jesse Ventura
- Cenk Uyghur *
- Chris Hedges
- Julian Assange
- Chelsea Manning
- Aaron Schwartz
- John Kiriakou *
- Daniel Ellsberg *
- Gary Webb
- Robert Parry *
- Max Blumenthal *
- Aaron Maté *
- Lee Camp *
- Jeremy Scahill *
- Glenn Greenwald *
* The few, lucky ones
I haven’t really been following this a whole lot, but as I understand it, the US wants him extradited because his platform was used to leak sensible information that put American soldiers in danger. But why is that a thing when it isn’t for other platforms? I mean, twitter, Facebook and YouTube have all been used as effective recruitment platforms for various Islamic terror organisations. That would have put American lives in danger as well.
Completely different from Facebook, Google, Twitter etc where they merely provide a platform for others to upload content and aren't actively involved in sourcing illegal content.
Also, I'm curious, where is the line between investigative journalism and criminal disclosure of information?
The question you should be asking is why Assange and not journalists in NYT, Guardian etc. who published what Assange provided?
The answer is that charges against Assange are not about publishing secret information. Charges are Assange actively helping to get that information. That's illegal. Journalist should never get actively involved getting the secret information.
That's a problem given the importance of investigative journalism - which by its very nature may require breaking laws to get the goods. For example, the "ag-gag" laws in states with strong farm lobbies that make it effectively illegal to report on animal welfare issues because any honest attempt at investigating reports will necessarily mean breaking farmers' recent "privacy" laws.
Torturing even a guilty person is not acceptable. Torturing an innocent one is presumably less so.
Governments still have control over Facebook and Google. They don't like WikiLeaks because they cannot control it. But it's still a good point though; I think Google and Facebook do much more harm to American citizens than WikiLeaks ever could.
It's just that with Google and Facebook, it's less obvious because the bad is mixed in with the good.
Most of the people in this group were Democrats or otherwise on the Left. They cheered WikiLeaks and loved that it was exposing the abuses of a group they didn't like.
Fast forward to 2016, and WikiLeaks begins publishing damaging information related to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The same people who cheered WikiLeaks as it published very damaging information about the US Military now condemned it because it was targeting someone they actually supported.
This was a major moment of clarity and realization for me. It showed me that those who are quick to use ideals to defend their positions ("freedom of information is good, it exposes the US' crimes!") will just as quickly discard those ideals when they stop working in their own interest ("WikiLeaks should not be publishing damaging information about Clinton!").
I was disgusted, because these people were so quick to use a moralistic position built upon high ideals to attack the US but they were themselves absolutely bereft of a true commitment to ideals. Within a few weeks the group's attitude on WikiLeaks shifted from gratitude and respect to hatred.
When I pointed this out, I was kicked out of the group.
I think your expectations of some random FB group were a bit too high in the first place.
People sided with him because they believed he was impartial, and turned away from him when it was clear he wasn't.
He literally provided evidence of mainstream media being highly impartial in favor of Clinton (against Sanders and Trump). If people cared about impartiality, they’d be on Wikileaks side here.
"Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange told Andy Greenberg at Forbes that he was in possession of a trove of documents that "could take down a bank or two." The documents wouldn't necessarily show illegality but they would reveal an "ecosystem of corruption" at one of the biggest banks in the United States. Wikileaks would release it "early next year." "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Claims_of_upcoming...
TBH, this bit in particular of wikileaks has always felt really scummy/sketchy to me. If you have the docs and have verified them and believe they are journalistically important then release them without delay. In every other scenario, why are you talking about them publicly?
Still, it's certainly better to limit such claims and it does feel a bit sketchy when they don't eventually publish something.
I want to remind us that rarely do enough credible (according to some formal and stringent definition) evidences exist for a given topic for an observer to make a conclusion with the kind of confidence we often display while remonstrating on these issues.
Specifically: it is naive to adopt a conclusive tone involving a person without liberty for over a decade, and possibly undergoing forms of punishment without due trial. I suspect not one of us here is trained enough in Law and have access to enough TRUE information to come to a judgment. If so, we are guilty of engaging in and spreading careless commentaries made about a case that combines possible human rights violation (its abundance in current time does not make this any less serious of a concern) with possible government interference in defining what constitutes journalism.
I want to leave you with this last thought - in majority cases in history, it has been profitable for the public to challenge the government on its policies, rather than to trust in its foresightedness and integrity.
And then expected the UK gov to keep him at a psychiatric ward as he seems a little unstable which they could embellish.
Did not expect him to still be in Belmarsh.
The UK spent 10s of millions on policing costs monitoring abscondment.
It is entirely right that he is serving a sentence as for reasons of deterrence.
They didn't have to. The fact they chose to throw ridiculous amount of money away besieging some guy because US dislikes him, is on them, not on Assange.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say "ill health".
And indeed he does. Some time ago Wikileaks/Assange distributed an encrypted insurance file. The torrent is about 90GB: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes2...
There was actually multiple versions fo this file, each larger than the previous one. This is the most recent version afaik.
It's likely this particular dead man's switch is actually trusted people though.
Fairly recent article with background https://heavy.com/news/2019/04/julian-assange-dead-mans-swit...
John Podesta and Hillary Clinton's emails allegedly found its way to Wikileaks through this path.
While I don't know, I would be very surprised if Wikileaks itself wasn't sitting on more than enough information to create such a dent. It seems things are effectively at a cross between stalemate and a Mexican standoff. Poor health is better than death, I guess?
It's very sad. If I was told all the details about the sequence of events, but not told which countries were behind the subsequent response, treatment and current conditions, I would not correctly guess on the first try, and probably not the second, or the third...
My 2c
For the torture part, which is not news, please see The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture: https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
Primary Source for the cited open letter https://medium.com/@doctors4assange/concerns-of-medical-doct...
There have been photos leaked by another person showing Assange looking relaxed interacting with other inmates. The leaker claimed that Assange was popular among the other prisoners.
In fact, Nils Melzer himself has confirmed Assange is not in solitary, but is apparently being "tortured" for other reasons. It is not clear why these reasons don't apply to every other prisoner on remand in Belmarsh.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
The horrors of physical violence are not often understood by keyboard heros who feel superior within their bubble of close nit computer expert friends. But as soon as things become bloody, the skillset requirements drastically change. This happens to blackmarket vendors too. They get lured into some AFK situation and quickly become victims of much less smart, yet truly hardened criminals.
Good luck hacking your way out of that.
Julian will (most likely, I have 0 contact with him) be in a most awful place with the whole "legally" allowed shit storm hitting him where it hurts. Not a place where smart skinny people flourish.
... kind of like Guantanamo.
Assange and his attorneys have, from day one, done everything possible to extend the process; there is nothing coincidental about the result.
> ... kind of like Guantanamo.
Guantanamo is a whole different problem, where people have actually received all the process there is, been determined to be innocent or not even subject to a y charges, and are still detained.
Is it:
1. Bruce Jenner won his gold medal in the Men’s Decathlon at the 1976 Olympics.
2. Bruce Jenner won her gold medal in the Men’s Decathlon at the 1976 Olympics.
3. Caitlyn Jenner won her gold medal in the Men’s Decathlon at the 1976 Olympics.
Side note: someone who goes by she/her pronouns could enter the Men's Decathlon as they don't use pronouns to determine eligibility.
So, sentence three is the most polite, but depending on the subject of the article, you may need to offer context at the top or in a footnote.
I would say there's certainly no harm in using the current pronouns
