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.
Could he have had that if he turned him self when he was originally charged?
Dunno if there was any "nudging and cajoling and berating", but from all I saw, those Swedish women (yes, plural) seemed to legitimately have a case. As I understood it, the case was dropped only because there seemed no chance to get him to Sweden to stand trial.
So whether he should have had no punishment at all, or sixteen consecutive lifetimes of hard labour, for spying, he's sure no saint -- and quite possibly deserved jail time -- in other ways.
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?
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...
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.
Countless journalists solicit classified information all the time. They don't just sit there hoping a story falls into their lap. They make connections in government and actively seek out information, including classified information. This has been completely standard in American journalism for decades.
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.
Regardless, Assange has been punished enough, particularly given the distasteful manner in which he was found guilty and imprisoned.
Yes, war crimes committed by USA and its allies are best kept secret and those committed by others are best exposed, right?
He’s not American and America are not “the good guys”. For any given secret, consider if you feel that USA should honor a request by Russia to keep it secret for the best of Russian interacts, if you don’t feel the same then its best exposed.
It’s redicules that so many Americans feel that war crimes committed by it and its allies should be kept secret because “we’re the good guys” then turn around and argue that the reason “we’re the good guys” is because we don’t commit war crimes, or when we do we at least have the decency to try to keep it secret because we know it’s bad, unlike the evil enemy who commit war crimes and try to cover it up!
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.
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.
a) This applies to nuclear launch codes, not to the kind of things that Assange leaked even if leaking this is inconvenient or embarrassing for the nation.
b) Many of us aren't Americans and don't really care that much about US "national interests".
Assange’s imprisonment was widely considered to be caused not by democratically formed laws, but by the whims of politics.
Should USA really pass a law to protect Russian state secret? No? Why should Australia or England pass laws to protect US state secrets?
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?
You seem to have the impression that leakers are getting sweetheart deals. In actuality you have people like Reality Winner who got five years for leaking information that was pretty much already public. Natalie Edwards getting six months for the FinCEN Files is probably a little low. I am incredibly skeptical that given the number of news organizations with access to the documents that they remained private and that no one was tipped off. But she was actually doing it in an effort to put pressure on Russia!
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.
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.
How dare you Julian? No Russia or China is on the list? No! US can't be evil, only Russia/China can.
