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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Assange is a bit of a scumbag, but unrelatedly, his efforts for freedom of information should not land him in US torture prisons like many others.
Not a single non US citizen should be extradited to the US. The US has the worst prison system and punishments outside of some really cruel regimes. They also refuse to work with international criminal courts.
Besides I'm pretty sure the guy only committed a crime in Sweden and not the US.
Does he deserve to be in prison for the rest of his life?
How is he full of shit? Care to pick up leaks from wikileaks and point out which ones are bullshit and which ones aren't?
And what does that have to do with the fact that he faces over 100 years in prison?
His moral righteousness is irrelevant to the fact that he is being persecuted for journalism.
The fuck does this mean? The core thing he did to be noticed is also the thing that's getting him persecuted.
I feel like you’re not allowing two statements to be true.
Assange is being doggedly pursued by the US for leaking state secrets. No I do not think he deserves to be punished for information he released like with Afghanistan. I think we are better for it and clearly this is the US making an example of him. Obviously we all knew he would be pursued, but again, I think that was the morally right thing to do, and I believe in protecting whistleblowers
I also take umbrage with any attempts to make him out to be a good person or in any way virtuous, which is what the comment I responded to did. He isn’t. He had my support when he was standing for transparency, and he lost it when it became clear he saw leaks as a tool for his political preferences and friends.
We can hold these two ideas at the same time.
As for the sexual assault allegations against him, I have no clue what to think the waters are too muddy there. So I just don’t engage that generally.
Did we read the same comment? They literally called him a scumbag. 🙄
“A bit of a scumbag” dilutes the fact that he failed at the very mission people praise him for. I am happy to admit that I am was somewhat off in my initial reading of their comment. I do not want to get bogged down in that.
The point is that Assange was a useful tool for a certain brand of politics and certain parties. We all need to recognize that. “He’s a bit of a scum bag” isn’t even close to the reality of how nefarious his actions were.
The first thing @seSvxR3ull7LHaEZFIjM said was: "Assange is a bit of a scumbag" ...
The closest thing to "righteousness" said was: "his efforts for freedom of information should not land him in US torture prisons like many others."
Which, being true, it's absolutely not challenged or contradicted by anything you said in response.
Note that "freedom of information" is totally compatible with "picking and choosing" the manner in which you exercise that freedom. In fact, I'd argue that the freedom of "picking and choosing" what's published without external pressure is fundamentally what the freedom of press is about.
Assagne (like any other journalist) should have the freedom of "picking and choosing" what facts he wants to expose, as long as they are not fabrications. If they are shown to be intentionally fabricated then that's when things would be different... but if he's just informing, a mouthpiece, even if the information is filtered based on an editorial, then that's just journalism. That's a freedom that should be protected, instead of attacking him because he's publishing (or not publishing) this or that.
Can you really blame the man for picking sides after all the US has done to him personally over the years?
Yes. Wikileaks is supposed to be a tool of transparency. Not a tool for his political revenge.
How was wikileaks used for revenge? Are you saying that they shouldn't have publish all these leaks concerning USA such as Vault 7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
There's plenty of stuff about russia on wikileaks too, you can just search for it.
I'm not saying I condone what he did, but I can understand it from his perspective. I'd probably do the same thing if there were a country responsible for ruining my life and health and I had the information to inflict some damage.
I’m not sure what we are debating/discussing. If you’re going to claim you are a bastion of transparency and information for the general public, then no, you can’t weaponize your site and omit politically damaging information about political groups you agree with/are aligned with.
That’s not just revenge against the US. That’s failing to provide the transparency you claim to stand for. He chose to obscure information based on his own whims. How is that not an issue?
Wikileaks had their own leak and it was a very interesting read.
If you care about transparency so much i don' think you would be here trying to belittle someone who spent the past years in jail for the sake of transparency.
What does this have do with the fact he's been jailed for years and is waiting extradition to usa? It literally looks like you are trying to spread dirt on him for no reason other than choosing what story to cover, something most publisher do on daily basis and on a much worst scale.
"Trump totally didn’t offer him a pardon to say Russia had nothing to do with it."
You may have missed the part where he's still in jail and the trump government had a plot to have him assasinated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Later_years_in_the_embassy
@BolexForSoup just to be clear are you saying that journalists with a political or ideological slant should not be afforded the same protections as other journalists?
No, I believe it's pretty clear they're saying journalists who claim total transparency should have total transparency, not obscure some things because they want to. If you claim to want to protect children and then do a bunch of things to hurt children, you lose your standing as a protector of children. The same here. If you claim total transparency and then hide certain things you lose the claim of total transparency.
Especially since he isn't a citizen and shouldn't be subject to US laws.
Unfortunately the whole “isn’t a citizen” thing might work against him. IIRC courts have ruled the Bill of Rights applies to citizens, including freedom of the press.
The whole situation is absurd though.
Oh yeah, US courts justifying their continuous rights abuses of foreign detainees is absurd and should be legitimized by no international judgements.
One more reason to not extradite Assange. Let him sit trial for everything else he's allegedly done in countries with humane criminal justice systems, but do not subject him to either Manning's, or worse, as you say, non-citizen's torture in places like Guantanamo Bay.
I'd say since the first full year of him living in an embassy ended, we can't be justified to call him a scumbag.
Other than that - his sense of humor in the NetBSD fortune files and other traces in the Internet maybe sucks, but he's a better role model than Snowden (whose life is somehow much easier, which is suspicious really).
Why would he be a better role model than Snowden?