The rape allegations do seem to be farcical, but I don't think he should be in prison for releasing classified material - it's not like he hacked the Pentagon to get it.
However his apparent biases definitely do raise questions and point towards other issues.
The apparent bias where he released documents about the Democrats but did not release documents about the Republicans and/or Russians, having received said Democrat documents from the Russians.
Maybe it's a little more nuanced, I dunno. I can't remember all the shit I've read over the years, the freshest stuff is from the comments in these threads.
My guess is that he didn't actually have dirt on the Republicans, as one commenter suggested. Why would Russia provide that, when the supposed goal of Russia was to get their Republican man in the White House?
Then, maybe, he got some other dirt on Russia from somewhere else, but didn't release that. However there could be any number of valid reasons there. I do vaguely remember something about him saying like (my complete paraphrasing) "reporting on Russian corruption isn't of journalistic interest to me, of course Russia and Putin are corrupt."
So yeah, his "apparent biases" raise questions. That doesn't mean those questions can't have valid answers.
But that also doesn't mean the questions are invalid in and of themselves. They should be addressed openly and succintly every time, such that objective truth wins over incessant lies.
The only stupidity here is in your 3 word comment. Try harder.
Then he should be found innocent rather than hide away for a decade.
People fucking died because of the information he just dumped out there. But no, we are not allowed differences of opinion.
This isn't supposed to be an echo chamber!
You think I'm wrong then convince me, don't insult me. If you think the First Amendment applies to dumping government files... make that argument in court and good luck, but don't fucking condescend to me in an internet forum.
Publishing is not a crime: The US government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel – published a series of revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks that made the headlines around the globe.
“Cablegate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US state department, disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.
In the words of the New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.
For Julian Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks, the publication of “Cablegate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On [April 11th] 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organised crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum-security prison.
This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.
The Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DoJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during world war one), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.
This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
Twelve years after the publication of “Cablegate”, it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
Publishing is not a crime.
The editors and publishers of:
The New York Times
The Guardian
Le Monde
Der Spiegel
El País
I know there are lots of people who disagree with me. I'm okay with that. But I'm also in no position to make a difference here.
What he did wasn't publishing. He dumped sensitive data. In my opinion.
It's just silly to think he doesn't have to deal with the trial. If he is innocent, let the fucking system decide that.
I can think that Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange did brave things and still think they should stand trial.
In Assange's case I think he went way way too far, but was still brave.
I'm mostly annoyed by all this yammering that there is one true opinion here and that everyone else is deluded, as if this wasn't a huge event with ongoing consequences.
Nuance is important if you're gonna understand anyone's viewpoints.
Act like a spy and rapist, be treated like a spy and rapist.
Whistleblowers are impartial. They don't withhold information to help tip the scales. Edward Snowden is a whistle blower. Julian Assange is a Russian asset and a rapist.
Assange got e-mails for both Republican and Democratic parties from a Russian hacker associated with the Kremlin and then specifically chose to withhold the Republican e-mails and release the Democratic e-mails. If he meant anything he said about transparency, he would have released everything, but that's not what he or his employers wanted. They wanted their puppet president in Trump, and Assange was happy to help like the Russian asset he is.
Even if this were true and from a credible source within WikiLeaks, the idea that whistleblowers should be impartial is not something I have ever heard. Assange is trying to stop the world's most violent and virulent warmachine. Working with Russia and likely China by proxy, there are sophisticated theories of action about how best to do that.
But honestly, Clinton was losing no matter what because her strategy was flawed, which we have ample evidence of because she still won the popular vote! You can't have it both ways.
As someone who was around for all of it, nah, you are not going to convince me Assange is an impartial good guy. Sory, but I am with camp "Russian asset" and he can reap that shit.
Maybe, perhaps probably. He just so happens to end up in Russia?
It doesn't mean I don't believe what either of these dudes put out in the world, it just means I am not sure that their motives were as pure as so many people today seem to think they were. (Note: back THEN, I thought these guys were the good guys, many years later having seen the way the data has been handled, where they ended up, how they've handled themselves, I'm much less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.)
Russia just so happens not to extradite people to the US.
Assange has always been a bit of a dick, but sometimes being a good journalist requires people to be dicks.
At the same time, some people are Piers Morgan.
I don't think Assange is Piers Morgan. I think Piers Morgan far more deserves what Assange has experienced so far, let alone whatever may face him in future.
Why do people keep saying this? It doesn't even make sense. Why would the Russians give Assange the RNC emails if they didn't want them to be published? There is no evidence that I can find that the RNC emails were ever given to anyone.
That's because they didn't. What happened was someone subsequently released info about Russian corruption, and Wikileaks didn't publish it, citing the fact that Russian corruption was obvious and not newsworthy.
Assange got e-mails for both Republican and Democratic parties from a Russian hacker and then specifically chose to withhold the Republican e-mails
but that’s not what he or his employers wanted.
Why would Russia give him information on both parties if Russia wanted to support one party over the other?
I think you've got things confused. I think the controversy was that he released information on the Democrats, provided by Russia, but then subsequently did not release information on Russia being corrupt. This was then construed as him being in support of Russia, when, by his argument, he simply did not think reporting on Russian corruption was newsworthy - of course Russia is corrupt.
If you can please provide evidence that Assange or Wikileaks were provided evidence of Republican corruption by the Russians, that would be appreciated.
I'm not saying Putin is a good guy, he obviously isn't. I'm critiquing the fact that Americans can't seem to take responsibility for their own fuckups.
For instance: Trump is horrible, and he might do evil things with Putin. But then democrats keep framing it as if he's Putin's puppet. As if he, an American, can't just be evil on his own terms. Russians must be pulling the strings, causing every shitty thing.
Every time Lemmy discusses this, there are people going on about bias in journalism, as if that's somehow relevant to how many human rights he should be allowed to have.
His lawyer in Sweden to help him avoid the rape charges extradition who got into the embassy as his lawyer and secretly got pregnant twice and had two children while Assange was in an embassy annoying everyone.... That married him in 2022.
The only good thing about her is that she doesn't sound like a Russian operative like Assange and whatever the fuck happened to WikiLeaks.
In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records.
WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68 gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry, according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.
In the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of potentially damaging emails about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign, information the U.S. intelligence community believes was hacked as part of a Kremlin-directed campaign. Assange’s role in publishing the leaks sparked allegations that he was advancing a Russian-backed agenda.
So the argument from Assange was that all relevant information from the cache was already public from previous publication. The entire cache was public when FP published the article you're referring to so they could have pointed out what was actually worth reporting if there was anything.
The point about the 2012 Syria emails is more interesting, but the whole point about Wikileaks running cover for Russia never made a lot of sense to me since they have published damaging info about Russia.
ETA: I'd be remiss not to mention that the discussion of Assange's biases is a red herring to the real problem which is the US's attempt to criminalize publication of state secrets.
Assange’s fate could be decided at the end of the two-day hearing Wednesday, but it’s more likely that it could take weeks for the judges to decide on his conviction
