Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”
Keep in mind that he fully admitted to holding back info on Trump. He exercised editorial control over submitted content in order to push an agenda.
Now, so does a lot of the media, but he was portraying Wikileaks as a beacon of transparency.
Yeah, the man literally had a show on RT. He’s problematic at best.
Can I hold my breath for Tucker Carlson’s arrest then?
Assange isn’t an American citizen, it’s disturbing to see so many psychopaths out for blood for the simple crime of telling the truth, especially when he’s not even a citizen of said country which sets a very disturbing precedent.
the US is falling into the trap Russia wants, and if we had intelligent leaders, they would drop the charges and move on from it. We know Afghanistan was a failure and we know why, it’s not a mystery anymore and the US doesn’t even deny any of the wikileaks accusations so this entire witch-hunt is just disturbing at this point and does nothing to give anyone any confidence in this country
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That’s called “telling the truth”
Just because you attempt to hide crimes doesn’t mean people have no right to expose them, it’s simply a matter of being upset someone found out
And like I said, the US doesn’t even deny any of the leaks, so the only reason they want to persecute an innocent person is an overtly authoritarian show of force. If we’re going to simply abandon our principles willy-nilly whenever we feel like it then we’re not a democratic country
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Then you either work for the government or you’re a Trump voter, there’s no other option here
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you’re misinformed and making a silly argument based on your misinformation.
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What did they charge Al Capone with?
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That the US law forbids such acts is a no brainer. But it’s still “Telling the truth”. imho this qualifies him for the nobel peace price rather than incarceration.
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Assange is a rapist (alleged) narcissistic psychopath. He uses everyone and throws them away. Chelsea. The women he raped (cough ‘allegedly raped’), his own Wikileaks team. You name it, he’s pumped it and dumped it.
Assange is a Putin puppet piece of shit who deserves to rot in a cell for the rest of his miserable life.
Assange gave us Trump. Trump gave us COVID disinformation. COVID disinformation gave us over one million American deaths.
So fuck Assange and fuck everyone and everything associated with him.
Love that word “alleged”
Also love the 0 proof of anything you posted
Proof is how I spend my time.
Here is a 30 part profile of Wikileaks, with sources on every page.
An overview of the 2010 Wikileaks Document dump.
2010. United States. Wikileaks Document Dump.
A majority of a chapter on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Russia Is A Terrorist State: Part 2 (2000s)
An overview on U.S. and Russia Intelligence that I’m working on.
Profile In Focus | United States Intelligence & Russian Disinformation (In Progress)
In addition to an overview on the 2016 Election that I’m also working on.
2016. United States Presidential Election Interference. (In Progress)
I’ll be working on an overview of Assange directly in the next chapters, but the accumulating sources can be found in the middle of this page.
Russia Is A Terrorist State: Part 4 (2016 - 2019) (In Progress) You can CTRL-F " Profile In Focus | Julian Assange " to find them.
And here’s a 37 part overview on the U.S. Green Party that I’m finishing up.
Profile in Focus | The Green Party of the United States (In Progress)
Again, sources are at the bottom of every part.
Proof asked. Proof offered.
#DeetsBringsReceipts
You’d have to have had your head in the ground for the last decade to not know that stuff.
“Telling the truth” and “Asking someone to steal classified information to be selectively revealed in order to further the interests of Russia” aren’t identical concepts.
It’s a matter of intimidating possible future leakers.
Dude dropped a bunch of stuff from well before that. What’s more they caught him editing the stuff he dropped to make it look like war crimes were committed, interfere in our elections, and to damage US relations with other countries.
Then they managed to to track some of his material back to the GRU. This is not the Pentagon Papers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
I highly suggest anyone not knowledgable on the subject to quickly read his wiki to get an idea of what he leaked.
We wouldn’t know his name if the us had kept it’s nose clean. He isn’t the bad guy, the country drone striking and killing civilians while illegally spying on its citizens is. State secrets don’t deserve to be kept secret if it’s literally poison and corruption.
"During this time, the organization published internet censorship lists, leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. The publications include revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world, extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police, 2008 Tibetan unrest in China, and the “Petrogate” oil scandal in Peru. From its inception, the website had a significant impact on political news in a large number of countries and across a wide range of issues.
During this period WikiLeaks had only four permanent staff: Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and two others using pseudonyms. It had a far larger group of volunteers. Assange was the most powerful individual, as the editor-chief, but he relied upon networks of others with expertise.
From its inception, WikiLeaks sought to engage with the established professional media. It had good relations with parts of the German and British press. A collaboration with the Sunday Times journalist Jon Swain on a report on political killings in Kenya led to increased public recognition of the WikiLeaks’ publication, and this collaboration won Assange the 2009 Amnesty International New Media Award."
He sounds like a Saint
His problem was then exposing the US, which didn’t have a problem with him before. The US was fine with him uncovering corruption in Russian and Chinese backed coups, but then when he specifically targeted the US is when the witch-hunt started
Assange was the tool of a foreign intelligence service who salted WikiLeaks with disinformation harmful to national interests. I believe the term of art is “useful idiot”.
Do you have evidence for that or should I don the proverbial tinfoil hat?
Thank you for the link, it was an interesting read. Allow me to unpack your previous statement for the sake of argument.
Assange was the tool of a foreign intelligence service
No argument here. Wittingly or not, he was used as a destabilizing force by Russia, and that is corroborated in the article.
who salted WikiLeaks with disinformation
Disinformation implies he shared falsehoods. However, the article and the state both treat his disclosures not as fabrications, but as factual. This is what I was really looking for in terms of evidence. It would indeed be quite a revelation to me.
harmful to national interests.
That is a matter of opinion. Here’s another take: The crimes the state committed were harmful to the nation. Exposing them was beneficial as it allows the nation to set the state back on the right path.
I believe the term of art is “useful idiot”.
That might very well be the case. One could make the case that Assange was merely working with the information he got. It just turned out the information was one sided because one side had external help in espionage resources. The article is ambiguous about it but does tend to put him in a less innocent light though.
The problem with a salted archive is that some percentage of it is true - let’s say 99.9%. So if you start to verify material it all appears to be factually correct. The agency will slip some very damaging falsehoods into a mountain of embarrassing but true material. The accurate material “cleans” the falsehoods. Welcome to WikiLeaks, and probably Hunter Biden’s laptop as well.
Part of the game is that the salting doesn’t get acknowledged. You don’t want them to know what you know and by revealing what’s false you implicitly verify the remaining material. You can game this out by slipping in a couple of whoppers and some subtle lies. The whoppers get denied implying the subtle ones are true. So not revealing the salt is the equivalent of " no comment".
There used to be more chatter about Assange and the intelligence community but it has gone quiet for the last few years. That alone might suggest something is up.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/mar/18/wikileaks-russias-useful-idiot-its-agent-influence/
Another great article, thank you.
He’s not an idiot, just a foreign agent.
If anyone is interested, I try to profile political events and figures. My Wikileaks profile can be found here. I plan to do a Julian Assange one in my next chapter, and I am currently finishing up one on The U.S. Green Party.
Basically, I’m trying to illustrate in plain language how Putin became the greatest threat to human existence.
Wikileaks is a far-right organization that orchestrated to raise Donald Trump’s political profile by attacking Hillary Clinton. Julian Assange is a criminal and deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Wow, thank you for the article!
Wait, the New York Times edits video and email evidence to make things look like crimes that aren’t?
Wow. News to me.
Do you have any credible sources for that or are you just regurgitating claims from your social media bubble?
It goes all the way back to the beginning with the Apache gunship video they released. They edited that, and the Army released the full video. They edited the DNC emails, and the DNC released the actual emails. They edited the cables and those weren’t released publicly but all that heat died within a week. Read between the lines.
This shit has been open knowledge for years. They were compromised by the GRU and either didn’t care or accepted it willingly. Here’s a Time article directly implicating WikiLeaks in helping Russia interfere with our elections. U.S. Intelligence Report Identifies Russians Who Gave DNC Emails to Wikileaks
That alone is enough to declare them enemies and go after them militarily but we’re still inside the justice system talking about charges and trials. While you guys whine about freedoms, the government is actually holding back.
The ironic part is that had he not squatted in that embassy, he’d probably be out by now.
And just for the record, I’ll remind everyone that
beforeduring that fiasco, he tried to flee to Russia. And I heard he called top bunk in Snowden’s flat.had he not squatted in that embassy, he’d probably be
outdead by now.there, fixed it for you.
There is a reasob to fleeing to Russia and other places.
Do you know what happens to the ones they catch?
Even someone like Epstein only lasted a bit before going to hang with the reaper.
Then indict the fuck on espionage and threatening national security.
There’s more than enough Russia collusion with Assange and Wikileaks to tie him up on one of Trump’s many RICO cases.
I would rather give him a medal for his journalism and leaks.
Freedom of the Press is important.
Censorship does not stop at just things you do not like.
Russiagate was false and overblown, to my understanding the Clintons had a hand in it.
I am way more critical and distrustful when news likes this breaks out know, while also the MSM follows suit in agreement.
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We see the world in different ways.
I see it as exposing corruption within our institutions of power.
I think you see it as, just crimes… and you miss the importance of what these people have risked to inform the public.
It was ground breaking everytime these leaks happen. The problem is that propaganda machines and MSM twist it to lessen the impact everytime. Pitting the common people against those that help see the truth.
edit: words
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I don’t know in which reality you live that state secret takes precedent over criminal activity.
How are you going to handle Trump’s indictments then?
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Maybe you should care about what your government does in foreign countries. Particularly when it is routinely murder and manipulation, as is the case with the U.S. government.
That aside, I invite you on a thought experiment:
Let’s say everyone took your advice and just let the government hide whatever it wanted because it is a “state secret”. Let’s say then the government goes ham and commits a bunch of atrocities. What would stop it from declaring them state secrets to prevent the public from knowing about them?
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US involvement in those countries vs the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine are completely different.
“The post-conventional level [of morality], also known as the principled level, is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from society, and that the individual’s own perspective may take precedence over society’s view; individuals may disobey rules inconsistent with their own principles. Post-conventional moralists live by their own ethical principles—principles that typically include such basic human rights as life, liberty, and justice. People who exhibit post-conventional morality view rules as useful but changeable mechanisms—ideally rules can maintain the general social order and protect human rights. Rules are not absolute dictates that must be obeyed without question. Because post-conventional individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior, especially at stage six, can be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.
Kohlberg has speculated that many people may never reach this level of abstract moral reasoning.”
That I can find two ways to apply this here and get opposing results, I’m curious to know what context you’re sharing this.
Interesting, I don’t see the other one. I meant to imply that this guy seems to like to conflate the law with morality with regards to the outrage over Assange, as if he has not reached the post-conventional stage. “Why are people outraged, he broke the law, you can disagree but the law’s the law.” is how I interpret his thinking, and I think that’s childish.
Watergate was a state secret.
No ot wasn’t. The break in was not in the name of the US Government. It was in the name of a presidential candidate.
The information given to the reporters was confidential information. I don’t know how to tell you this other than that confidential information held by the government is a state secret. There’s no actual term “state secret”. There’s just public and non-public information and various tiers within that framework.
Yeah you make good points. I think Watergate is still very different because the initial crime wasn’t on behalf of or sanctioned by the government. The wider cover-up was to an extent. I think there is some gray area too. Like you say there is no “state secret”. But when is confidential information held by the government vs individuals within the government holding confidential information? An individual within the government can keep a secret from both the broader government and the public.
The information Felt released wasn’t just something only he knew. It’s simply that it wasn’t enough on its own and no one was chasing down the proper leads due to the coverup in play. The White House is the government. The administration partook in the coverup. Its just fewer people in the government being part of a coverup. Anything that’s illegal is still illegal. The government is behind both, it’s simply a matter of how much and what parts of the government.