Eyewitness to the Agony of Julian Assange | Hacker News Reader

Eyewitness to the Agony of Julian Assange

counterpunch.org

I wish they'd just skip the facade of a trial at all - pretending like there's any kind of justice here.

Railroad whistleblowers. People in power caught out never even get the pretense of a slap on the wrist.

It's not a trial, it's an extradition hearing.

He's not a whistleblower (even if you think wikileaks does what it claims, he is not), he's a guy who pushed out the idealists from wikileaks so he could selectively release material to further his own agenda.

There are better places for actual whistleblowers to go. Cryptome was the better Wikileaks since forever, and it's massive shame that wikileaks took the space in the minds of the public from them. They do a much better job.

From Craig Murray's articles from the past days, it comes up that cryptome is one of the parties that released early the documents Assange is charged for, and which Wikileaks was trying to sanitize at the time. The evidence for this includes testimony from numerous journalists involved in the sanitizing effort at the time and one of the people in charge of cryptome.

You ad-hominem's do nothing to clarify the matter. Whatever your opinion of Assange may be, at the moment he's just a dude trapped in a Kafkian legal battle for not spending his remaining life in a US maximum security prison for exposing war crimes. If that doesn't deserve a little empathy, I don't know what is.

Assange founded Wikileaks. Who are the idealists you're talking about?

The most senior person to leave, Domscheit-Berg, left because he had an ideological objection to publishing information about the United States. Wikileaks was sitting on a huge trove of extremely interesting information about the US (diplomatic cables, war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq), but Domscheit-Berg wanted to focus on other countries.

I feel like I have to repeatedly make this point, but I'll do it again:

> an Australian on trial for truth-telling journalism

This is not what he's on trial for, and the supporters of Assange don't do themselves favours by refusing to engage with the facts of the accusations.

Wikipedia certainly makes it sound like he is. Maybe you should update the article with your superior information?

> On 23 May, Assange was indicted on 17 new charges relating to the Espionage Act of 1917 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.[41] The Espionage Act charges carry a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison.[42] The Obama administration had debated charging Assange under the Espionage Act but decided against it out of fear that it would have a negative effect on investigative journalism and could be unconstitutional. The new charges relate to obtaining and publishing the secret documents. Most of these charges relate to obtaining the secret documents. The three charges related to publication concern documents which revealed the names of sources in dangerous places putting them "at a grave and imminent risk" of harm or detention. The New York Times commented that it and other news organisations obtained the same documents as Wikileaks also without government authorisation. It also said it is not clear how Wikileaks's publications are legally different from other publications of classified information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julia...

> The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (May 2019)

Why cite a page that admits its full of shit?

> Why cite a page that admits its full of shit?

Any editor is able to edit any article on Wikipedia.

For all it matters, it might have been you who tagged the article as non-neutral.

Additionally, non-neutral does not mean "full of shit". It just means someone feels that the facts listed in the article, albeit undisputed, might have been presented with a tone that they personally feel is not the right one (i.e., doesn't match their personal opinion or how they personally feel about the ordeal).

I was only citing it so that you would be aware of where people are getting their misinformation so you could fix it with your superior information.

In the same vein, justice isn't being done any favours by pretending that 'embarassing the US' isn't the real reason why he's on trial.

If you want to be technical about it, he's the subject of an extradition hearing for US charges relating to unauthorised access. If you read between the lines, the only way they can get him behind bars in the US without, as they say, putting the New York Times on trial, is by making these charges stick - otherwise, he's just a journalist like any other.

This is why people say he's on trial for journalism: because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that, if he is tried as a journalist, then by any interpretation of US law he cannot be held guilty for his actions unless they put the US fourth estate behind bars too - but the most recent US administrations have decided that he must be punished, and so will try to get him on anything they can.

> This is not what he's on trial for,

Could you shed some light on what you personally believe Assange is on trial for?

I mean, you're criticizing someone for giving context for the US's persecution of Assange, but avoid presenting your own alternative explanation.

> and the supporters of Assange don't do themselves favours by refusing to engage with the facts of the accusations.

Which facts are those? I mean, you're criticizing others with veiled accusations of lying but, in spite your apparent passion for the truth, you make no effort to correct what you accuse of being misconceptions.

In the end it reads that you simply are anti-Assange but have a problem substantiating your opinion with facts or establish a rational basis for your personal belief.

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