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> What difference does Assange's personality make?

quite a lot of difference, actually. if you know someone to be driven by ego, greed, or other negative influences, then you must always question why he chooses to reveal this particular thing, at this particular time, and what other similarly important things he might be choosing not to reveal, because it doesn't suit his agenda.

Exactly. Additionally, one might be forced to take a side in who they support with time or money. Assange and his ego has forced that decision before causing his co-founder to leave his ass with the data (destroyed it). Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on. His recent actions should be thought about with that in back of mind.

Are you serious? Your comment sounds like someone following a soap opera.

Would you care about the personal drama of the leaker of 10 years of Trump tax returns? The story is the leaked information, not the silly drama and rumor nonsense you describe.

If there was a leaker who leaked one thing, then I'd care less about their personal drama than if they were a continued source of leaks.

The only drama was what Assange caused which split up Wikileaks team. Would you rather give money to effective, honest people or drama-loving liars if you had the choice? And could you even rely on accuracy of most leaks from someone who would scheme on his people or mislead sources about their safety for his own gain?

Sourcd integrity is always relevant. It's why spies and journalists are taught to assess that about potential sources. Half-assed integrity gets corroborated extra before trusted. Low integrity often gets ignored unless an organization wants to benefit from it.

Assange always loved the spotlight, being in control, money, and so on.

Not in my experience. I had long discussions with him in 2009 and first met him in 1997. I have only seem him share information and resources and he is clearly motivated by genuine concern for the world. He was raised by left wing family on the east coast of Australia. He created an encryption system to resist torture from authoritarian governments. As early as the 1990s he released numerous hacks (strobe, traceroute spoofing, etc.) in good humour. He gave away accounts on his systems for free to others. This was all years before Wikileaks, and required mastering networking and mathematics to world-class levels at the time. These efforts and their shared results show that he has spent his lifetime motivated by factors other than greed and ego.

TLDR; In my view, which is nominally more informed than yours, you are basically re-spouting a baseless or near baseless government sponsored character assassination.

PS. Isn't this perfectly generic slander? Couldn't you mount the same accusation at anyone intelligent as soon as they get an audience?

"TLDR; In my view, which is nominally more informed than yours, you are basically re-spouting a baseless or near baseless government sponsored character assassination."

Or you're describing him in his youth which came before his fame plus how he presented himself in discussions with people that like him. I speak of his actions during Wikileaks not theory I gained from speaking to him. Most of his collaborators that left him said similar stuff. They didn't say it about their other associates.

"required mastering networking"

That's funny given his network security was shit until he hired some engineer to help him. He also lied to sources about what level of protection he offered. It's what all good people do. ;)

"He created an encryption system to resist torture from authoritarian governments."

Wow. You're the first, intelligent person I've heard describe it that way. It was actually designed for the total opposite: a person having encryption under a torture-loving, authoritarian regime would give them either nothing or a series of somethings they wouldn't believe. In other words, they'd keep getting tortured until the other side was satisfied with what they found or what damage they did. It was a brilliant, but insidious, system I'd never use for that reason. Incidentally, I never saw any report Julian Assange used it himself for Wikileaks. Cuz being tortured is for other people.

"Isn't this perfectly generic slander? Couldn't you mount the same accusation at anyone intelligent as soon as they get an audience?"

Most of them acted differently. Nothing psychotic or destroying their teams for ego. So, no I don't say the same thing about most other people when they get attention. If anything, they usually do similar stuff to what they were doing before but with more attention. Makes me wonder about Assange.

It's important to remember that Assange is not simply operating a content-neutral distribution platform. He has the ability to time or suppress releases at whim to influence global politics. And so his whims are of great importance in judging the risk-vs-reward of Wikileaks.

Yes. However since he is essentially captive and sources of funding to WL have largely been blocked, he must utilize guerilla PR tactics to the fullest.

Of course I'd prefer if the leaked docs were all thoroughly vetted and used as source material by The NY Times, but due to political pressure the NYT distanced itself from assange and became one of the main propagators of the character assassination campaign against Assange.

If Assange had the ability to present major front page stories to the world, he could ignore timing, but it's the only available tactic at present.

I agree with your point but think it furthers the above logic that personality (or editorial motivation) matter quite a bit. Assange and his motivation is important as he has seemingly near total control of WL.

Assange has been very transparent about his timing strategy, which is essentially a low budget PR strategy due to necessity.

If a single party came forward with information that had been sent to WL and ignored, you might have a point.

If you are a leaker and decide to leak to WL and the material is not published, then you can leak it elsewhere.

The idea that WL is a gatekeeper over what major leaked information sees the light of day is absurd. On the margin there may be a difference of opinion about the newsworthiness of a leak, but WL makes its policy on this extremely transparent.

> Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange?

Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.

Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior.

We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd.

The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fighting age citizens...

More ironic is how the declassified documents from when we backed him described him as a "presentable, young man" and other nice things. Later was called "in some ways worse than Hitler" as U.S. and Europe gave him money or "dual-use technology." All political BS.

Excellent point

Saddam was mild? He threw people off roofs. I saw the videos. The roofs weren't even high enough to kill them outright.

I don't think it was a good idea to go launch a war at him, but it's good he's dead. That was one of the few silver linings in the Iraq debacle.

Unfortunately, the suffering greatly increased after Saddam's death, mostly because we tried to occupy the country. If we hadn't done that, things might've turned out differently.

Your parent only claimed that Hussein was mild compared to other regimes. I tried to find the video you mentioned and immediately found articles about Syrian rebels throwing people off roofs and ISIS doing it to gays, so maybe this claim wasn't too far-fetched.

> Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole?

He's more than just an asshole, he lead a genocide against the Kurdish people [1] and invaded Kuwait. And, I didn't say any of that justified our entrance circa 2001.

> Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior.

He was a killer. That's not mild. I can't say why Reagan would've considered him an ally while he was gassing the Kurds. There are a lot of variables in play in foreign relations. Trump wants to be buddies with Russia while they've essentially admitted to messing with our elections [because we fund pro-democracy NGOs in Russia]. Who knows how Trump envisions the future of American foreign relations. He's certainly doing some unexpected things.

> the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd.

You feel personality causes a person to kill thousands of people and invade other countries? Okay. Hitler had a shitty personality too, but that's not a particularly useful descriptor when talking about dictators. Lots of people have lousy personalities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

> He was a killer.

George W. Bush killed more Iraqi people than Saddam ever did and caused massively increased suffering throughout the region for decades after.

> You feel personality causes a person to...

No, my point is that personality has nothing do do with it. Nations act out of national interest. Psychoanalysis of "enemy" leaders is what the US does to help the American population hate that person enough to go to war. We're told that any foreign leader we're supposed to hate has a diagnosable psychiatric illness.

Not only is that false (they are typically rational and just acting in their own interests) it is disrespectful of people who actually do have mental health challenges.

> George W. Bush killed more Iraqi people than Saddam ever did and caused massively increased suffering throughout the region for decades after.

Let's say there's a hostage situation at a bank robbery. The police manage to catch or kill the two robbers, but in the process five civilians are killed. Who's at fault there? What if nobody in the community responds, and the attackers get away with money and kill all the hostages? You think the robbers will just stop after one bank, knowing that they can get away with it?

> No, my point is that personality has nothing do do with it

Then why did you bring it up? Everyone else was talking about Saddam's actions. You're the one who simplified it to his personality. If you don't believe his invasion of Kuwait and killing of the Kurdish people make him a bad guy, worse than Bush, then I simply disagree.

Thank you for shining a light on this!

Americans don't even care that brown-skinned people are dying in their own communities. That's why Black Lives Matters was started.

You can support Wikileaks and it's goals, and still know Assange is a scumbag.

True but you in no sense is Assange's personal drama remotely relevant to the larger issues revealed by WL's publications.