Yes, indeed. Likewise one would need to actually be eaten before one could really predict the outcome of jumping into the lion enclosure. So hard to tell...it's 50/50 between a powerless journalist being imprisoned for literally anything they can pin on him or the most powerful government in the world conceding to an open and frank discussion of their war crimes...a real tough call...all to play for! — Isaac

I guess he should have done what journalist do these days, and prove his neutrality. LOL! I'm glad he dished on the U.S., but I think he's been sucking Putin's dick. So there's that.

It may be a digression from the thread, but I have questions about how one on the inside of the house should perceive the critiques coming from the outside. Critiques about how the house conducts itself in-house, and how it conducts itself outside, in the rest of the world.

For instance, there are many legitimate critiques about U.S. internal and foreign conduct. I agree with many of those critiques. But when does it go beyond mere critique and enter into the realm of actively inciting division within the house for the purpose of seeing it fall; and not for the benefit of the oppressed internal or external victims? When does it cross over to actual aid and comfort to a less magnanimous actor?

I understand that an outside actor might think that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but you'd think they would have some concern about the friend they are getting in bed with. Especially when that friend has a proven record of being much worse on the issues of concern to them.

If someone with legitimate critiques of my house wants to fashion himself my enemy, do I ignore him? As a gnat to my infinite and impressive power? Or do I deflate his concerns by entertaining them, and trying to address them? How do I distinguish between him and my real enemy, that would seek my downfall?

If those within my house start to divide, and take sides with an external actor who sews division within my house, should I become the oppressor they said I was all along, so they can say to the world "I told you so!"? Or should I fall by being the better angel of my of my nature? Should I let them have what they pray for? Is that a false dilemma?

At this point, I am inclined to perceive the external, non-state actor as a gnat: ignore here, swat there. Maybe even sew a little discord with the external state actor. Give them some of their own medicine, which they perceive themselves as giving me. Let the ultimate measure be the demonstrations of tolerance and magnanimity toward gnats. Is that the burden of the powerful?

P.S. Comparing his situation to getting eaten by lions, well, that's like comparing it to Khashoggi.

if you cannot tell the difference between the grotesque murder of the journalist and the effort to bring to justice Assange — tim wood

I'm sure the Saudis thought they "brought to justice" Khashoggi as well. Of course, if you count the years of effective imprisonment without trial - a pretty standard human rights abuse - resulting in Assange's psycological deteriorization and his recent stroke - the grotesque murder is simply happening in slow motion, and all the more sickening for it. If you can't recognize a murderous, illigitimate regime acting to persecute journalists for exposing its warcrimes then you're no better than some Saudi propagandist.

if you count the years of effective imprisonment without trial — StreetlightX

That's on him. He could have had better due process of law, right away, in the U.S. (and a zealous defender) than most places, like your mentor Putin.

Metaphorically, the United States speaking to the opposition (loyal or otherwise)?

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us."
Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now.

If you want to play the nationalist, populist game, that is fine. Everything has some merit. But you might want to make sure the king you strike really needs to die; that he isn't just a flawed entity, working on himself; asking for your honest input. Is his progress too slow for your liking? Maybe, but be careful what you wish for. You better have an alternative waiting in the wings; an alternative that can and will do better. Otherwise, I'll shed no tears to see your little arm in a pile. If you are just sniping from the cheap seats, you are a combatant. It's a rough life for a cloistered critic, offering nothing but critique. When you start comparing Khashoggi to Assange, you’re shaping a battle space you may not want to be in. But yeah, gnats. Remember, they’re just gnats. And . . . Putin. Poor little Putin. Just another one of the oppressed.

P.S. Hey Julian, where are the Pee Tapes? LOL!

He could have had better due process of law, right away, in the U.S. — James Riley

Lol

Lol — StreetlightX

Laugh at Saudis ripping you apart. Laugh a Putin, poisoning you. Laugh at a colosseum full of lions, ripping you apart. Now I know your colors. Thanks for the reveal.

I'm sure the Saudis thought they "brought to justice" Khashoggi as well. — StreetlightX

On the basis of what? The rare Saudi or two I have encountered - as students - aside from some quirks, seemed pretty reasonable fellows. Or are you representing what happened to Kashoggi as wholesomely representative of the Saudi judicial system. Because as I recall - subject to correction - the Saudis did claim to have arrested perpetrators.

Because as I recall - subject to correction - the Saudis did claim to have arrested perpetrators. — tim wood

Ah yes, I too take official statements of murderous regimes to be reflective of what they are really thinking. I mean if the Saudis didn't say something then *gasp* it can't be true!

The Saudi judicial system is not an institution you ever want to come into remote contact with.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/saudi-arabia#:~:text=Saudi%20authorities%20in%202019%20continued,rights%20activists%2C%20and%20independent%20clerics.&text=Most%20of%20the%20women%20faced,Arabia's%20discriminatory%20male%20guardianship%20system.

"Saudi authorities ... continued to repress dissidents, human rights activists, and independent clerics.

.... opened individual trials of prominent Saudi women before the Riyadh Criminal Court and dismissed all allegations that the women faced torture or ill-treatment in detention. Most of the women faced charges that were solely related to peaceful human rights work, including promoting women’s rights and calling for an end to Saudi Arabia’s discriminatory male guardianship system.

Prosecutors also accused the women of sharing information about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia with journalists based in Saudi Arabia, diplomats, and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, deeming such contacts a criminal offense....

Saudi prosecutors in 2019 continued to seek the death penalty against detainees on charges that related to nothing more than peaceful activism and dissent."

The Saudi judicial system is not an institution you ever want to come into remote contact with. — Baden

Amen. But our friend by the Southern Cross willfully conflates US with Saudi justice. I am simply trying to find his basis for doing so.

I favour leniency for Assange on humanitarian grounds, but it's fallacious to say that he should be afforded journalistic priviledges. He was never qualified as a journalist, never worked as a journalist, and Wikileaks observed none of the conventions of journalism.

As for Saudi Arabia, it's a medieval theocracy. The murder of Adnan Kashoggi and its coverup ought to put that beyond any reasonable doubt.

He was never qualified as a journalist, never worked as a journalist, and Wikileaks observed none of the conventions of journalism. — Wayfarer

Yes. Wiki is essentially a mail drop box service.

As for Saudi Arabia, it's a medieval theocracy. — Wayfarer

And conveniently overlooked during the appallingly named War on Terror.

The relationship between the USA and Saudi Arabia is sickening. If it weren't for oil, it would just be treated as a benighted backwards outpost.

He was never qualified as a journalist, never worked as a journalist, and Wikileaks observed none of the conventions of journalism. — Wayfarer

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/assange-is-not-a-journalist-yes-he-is-idiot-761fa437269f

"Yes he is. Publishing relevant information so the public can inform themselves about what’s going on in their world is the thing that journalism is. Which is why Assange was just awarded the GUE/NGL Award for “Journalists, Whistleblowers and Defenders of the Right to Information” the other day, why the WikiLeaks team has racked up many prestigious awards for journalism, and why Assange is a member of Australia’s media union. Only when people started seriously stressing about the very real threats that his arrest poses to press freedoms did it become fashionable to go around bleating “Assange is not a journalist.”

This argument is a reprisal of a statement made by Trump’s then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, who proclaimed that WikiLeaks is not a journalistic outlet at all but a “hostile non-state intelligence service”, a designation he made up out of thin air... So they’re already regurgitating propaganda narratives straight from the lips of the Trump administration, but more importantly, their argument is nonsense. As I discuss in the essay hyperlinked here, once the Assange precedent has been set by the US government, the US government isn’t going to be relying on your personal definition of what journalism is; they’re going to be using their own, based on their own interests.

The next time they want to prosecute someone for doing anything similar to what Assange did, they’re just going to do it, regardless of whether you believe that next person to have been a journalist or not. It’s like these people imagine that the US government is going to show up at their doorstep saying “Yes, hello, we wanted to imprison this journalist based on the precedent we set with the prosecution of Julian Assange, but before doing so we wanted to find out how you feel about whether or not they’re a journalist.”

--

The idea that the American destruction of Assange has any more legitimacy than the Saudi destruction of Kashoggi is what happens when one has swallowed so much propaganda that one jumps to the defense of a country emabrrased for murdering people overseas. It is not an 'accident' or 'unfortunate' the the US and Saudis are best friends. They operate out of the same playbook, attend each other parties, and laugh while they kill journalists. They're both irredeemable pieces of international shit deserving of each other.

Have people forgotten that American "justice" is a literal public health hazard to its own minorities and that if you're rich and white you can get away with rape and murder on the regular? A pay-to-win system with a sheen only barely brighter then Saudi mud.

Yep.

Thanks for this.

Those no-good rascals, Amnesty International, concur:

Julian Assange’s publication of disclosed documents as part of his work with Wikileaks should not be punishable as this activity mirrors conduct that investigative journalists undertake regularly in their professional capacity. Prosecuting Julian Assange on these charges could have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression, leading journalists to self-censor from fear of prosecution. — Amnesty International

:up: The idea that he has committed a crime of espionage is absurd. And as far as the claim that he endangered the lives of thousands of US agents; even if true it wasn't intentional.

In any case, has any one of those agents died due to the publication of the documents? If you do something that might cause someone's death and someone dies then it might at most be a manslaughter charge. If no one dies then there would be no charge.

source

"The prosecution in the Assange extradition trial has falsely alleged that WikiLeaks recklessly published unredacted files in 2011 which endangered people's lives. In reality the Pentagon admitted that no one was harmed as a result of the leaks during the Manning trial, and the unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a Guardian journalist recklessly included a real password in a book about WikiLeaks.

A key government witness during the Chelsea Manning trial, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr, testified under oath that no one was hurt by them. Additionally, the Defense Secretary at the time, Robert M Gates, said that the leaks were "awkward" and "embarrassing" but the consequences for US foreign policy were "fairly modest". It was also leaked at the time that insiders were saying the damage was limited and "containable", and they were exaggerating the damage in an attempt to get Manning punished more severely.

As Assange's defense highlighted during the trial, the unredacted publications were the result of a password being published in a book by Guardian reporters Luke Harding and David Leigh, the latter of whom worked with Assange in the initial publications of the Manning leaks. WikiLeaks reported that it didn't speak publicly about Leigh's password publication for several months to avoid drawing attention to it, but broke its silence when they learned a German weekly called Freitag was preparing a story about it. There's footage of Assange calling the US State Department trying to warn of an imminent security breach at the time, but they refused to escalate the call

The attempts to smear Assange as reckless, cold and cavalier with the Manning leaks have been forcefully disputed by an Australian journalist named Mark Davis, who was following Assange closely at the time filming footage which would become the documentary Inside WikiLeaks.

...Davis details how The Guardian, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel journalists were putting Assange under extreme pressure to go to press before Assange had finished redacting names from the documents. None of the outlets offered any resources or support to help redact them, and Assange had to pull an all-nighter himself and personally cleanse the logs of over 10,000 names before going live."

--

Basically almost everything published by the mainstream press and parroted by useful idiots like certain members of this board - @180Proof and @Wayfarer, to name names - is a lie

Cheers.


Here's what has upset the US:


Keep this in mind. It's the release of this video that is a the core of this issue.

Those no-good rascals, Amnesty International — Banno

Can't wait till some moron pipes up about how Amensty has actually been infiltrated by Russians or what fantasy liberals like to cook up in their heads.

Right, so he's been retroactively declared 'a journalist'. I'll take note.

Quite the opposite, he's been retroactively declared not to be one by power and it's useful parrots like yourself.

From one of the linked stories:

It has been one of the main criticisms of the WikiLeaks publications that they put lives at risk, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. The admission by the Pentagon's chief investigator into the fallout from WikiLeaks that no such casualties were identified marks a significant undermining of such arguments.

Didn't know that. I'll take it into account. As I've already said, I favour leniency for Assange and hope he gets it, but Wikileaks was in no way a journalistic enterprise, it was an anonymous drop folder.

No one needs to be infiltrated by the Russians. DOH!

1. The Russians have plenty of willing allies and useful idiots doing their work for them;
2. None of these so-called journalists are spilling on the Russians;
3. No one spills on the Russians because the Russians don't offer U.S. due process of law. Like the Saudis, they just fucking kill you;
4. Meanwhile, all the gnats in the cheap seats cheer and laugh while the one they perceive as a bully gets his due. Go, Putin, Go!

It's a spectator sport for those who haven't seen the horror.

Wikileaks was in no way a journalistic enterprise, it was an anonymous drop folder. — Wayfarer

It chose what to publish, with editorial control. Even the NYT has a goddamn tip line. You're just parroting what you've heard from American power, nothing more.

Journalist or not - irrelevant.

"there can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies”
– Walter Lippmann

This is about what is most important in differentiating democracy from tyranny: the capacity to self-correct. Democracy must allow criticism. Even if on takes the view that Collateral Murder is biased against the US and does not show the full story, it is of the utmost importance to a democracy to be able to openly discuss incidents that are embarrassing.

Tragically, the US is a failed democracy. The continuing persecution of Assange is as much a symptom of this collapse as the occupation of the Capitol.

Like a school kid yelling "He hit me back first!"

None of this is relevant. A Democracy needs to know what it is doing. Assange did the USA a favour.

And if the NY Times published any of the material that had been accessed via infiltration of encrypted databases, then it would face have faced the same charges.

Tragically, the US is a failed democrac — Banno

I refuse to believe that. It is true that American democracy is under threat and if it really is brought undone by those vicious hypocritical bastards on the Right. then it will be a dark day in history. But it's not here yet.

Liberals like @Wayfarer don't care about truth. They care about aesthetics, making sure everything is done according to the sanctioned titles, by the proper channels. If it isn't, it can be dismissed, because these people have no principles other than bureaucratic adherence. Who cares if the issue at hand are literal war crimes? It wasn't done by the book!

I refuse to believe that. — Wayfarer

I know it's tragic.

But the hypocrisy of claiming to be defenders of free speech while persecuting its critics speaks volumes.

Like a school kid yelling "We hit me back first!" — Banno

"We hit me back first." ? WTF does that mean?

None of this is relevant. A Democracy needs to know what it is doing. Assange did the USA a favour. — Banno

I know he did. I don't have a problem with that. What's relevant is the useful idiots doing Putin's work for him. You know, like Assange and his apologists. If he wants cred then he'd spill on Russia, China, et al. And if his apologists wanted cred they would not compare U.S. due process with Saudi or Russian "due process." You'd have to be a fucking idiot to think there is any kind of comparison.

I have a great deal of sympathy for @Wayfarer; he ought to be right. But wanting things to be other than they are is not enough.