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the_optimist

What an absolute joke. FBI/CIA recruits a child molester to lie about Assange.

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/09/25/siggi_the...

Who on earth isn’t asking at this point “Are we (US intel agencies) the baddies?”

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> are we the baddies

I'm quite torn. I feel like a dissonance in theory and practice is at play here. If you ask people about "American values" a lot of times you'll come up with things around freedom, liberty, in general individualism and protection from the "other" of tyrannical government. That's the theory. In practice, those individuals that make up U.S. intelligence agencies justify the dissonance between their tyrannical actions and their ideals by arguments such as "if it were the Russian/Chinese/Other on top things would be worse", etc. All boiling down to "necessary evils".

So, which is better, a tyrannical regime that professes values of liberty or a tyrannical regime that tacitly admits that it's tyrannical?

I feel like I may be betraying a bit too much of my lack of authority and competence on the subject, but there's something that has stuck with me as the central point of one of the sides at the end of the anime "Legends of the Galactic Heroes". SPOILER Paraphrasing: "Democracy may be just as bad for the people as autocracy, but at least in democracy the people deserve their fate".

I think this is a false dichotomy all together. Staying true to the values you promised to defend does not mean you are automatically hand over the power to the next, much worse tyranny. If Assange would have gone free and unbothered the only real hard consequence for our governments would be a PR debacle (which arguably already happened). And a strong precedent that whistleblowers can blow their whistle without having their lives destroyed by tyranny.

That means more people can blow the whistle which should be no issue if you are the good ones and act ethically sound.

> So, which is better [...]

Your juxtaposition is wrong in the first place, but yes, that is a common line of thought in rationalizing breaking the laws you are supposed to protect. On the contrary, it leads down the same road, so there isn't any practical difference.

> Who on earth isn’t asking at this point “Are we (US intel agencies) the baddies?”

There's a whole political party whose dominant position is to go "rah rah" and paint pretty much any criticism of these agencies as unpatriotic. It is still not a settled opinion in the US that waterboarding is torture.

So glad Barack Obama closed down Guantanamo and stopped the persecution of whistleblowers...oh wait

Obama did try to close Guantanamo several times early on in his term.

Congress passed amendments and bills that prohibited actually transferring detainees into the mainland US, because people went full NIMBY over “terrorists” in their backyard. The President’s power is not absolute.

Also, he punished those responsible for the CIA torture program. Oh, wait, he didn't because "morale was so bad". Americans are a joke when it comes to their supposed values.

Truth and justice have no political affinity, stated nor implied.

To be fair we don't know whether he's telling the truth now - but it certainly creatges reasonable doubt

More than reasonable doubt. The case will need to be thrown out. Between the false allegations of rape and now this their case is hanging by a thread if not dead in the water.

Who exactly thinks the CIA does any good in the world?

I do, but such polarity isn’t the question. The real question is whether or not it’s appropriate to have an independently governed, extra-national paramilitary organization funded by the US but not limited by its laws or oversight. What we can and should do as citizens when that group renders monstrous, rogue injustice under your name and funding.

The polarity is the result of asking the question. It's not a presumption. Any basic knowledge of CIA history would conclude that they're a complete geopolitical and moral liability. Must be worth it to some maniacs though.

If you ask, "Do they do ANY good?", then yes. Organized criminals are also active in charity. A good question is, is the net effect positive, and are the downsides worth the upsides? Arguably not at all. Possibly in a severely restrained, reformed, governed manner.

JFK was quite bitter about his experience, for example, and suggested he wished to "splinter the C.I.A. into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."

https://www.nytimes.com/1966/04/25/archives/cia-maker-of-pol...

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/JFK-scatter...

I guess “I and most of my associates (including the ones who provided evidence against me) are pathological liars and criminals” is one kind of defense Assange can mount, but it doesn’t exactly build sympathy from at least this disinterested third-party reader.

Well, you invented the “most of my associates” part which is the substance of your smear, so you seem a bit disingenuous.

As for this fellow, intel agencies don’t get to both conjure lies AND claim guilt by association--with 5-year gap in the timing to boot--though surely they are not beneath trying. Surely the ends justify the means, right?

Quite the contrary to your misguided assertions, way back in 1993, Assange consulted for the Victoria Australia police to apprehend child molestors and pornography distributors.

As they take Assange to court, they’ll have to mount credible legal arguments, present convincing evidence, and deal with counter-evidence / cross examination from the defense. As I said, “these witnesses who worked with my client have admitted to being liars” can sometimes be a good legal argument. But as a third party observer, it doesn’t seem like the slam-dunk vindication of Assange that some here are implying.

For better or worse, when bringing legal action against criminals, law enforcement sometimes needs to use evidence from other criminals and various kinds of unsavory characters.

Well aware of the supposed "'need' to use unsavory characters," given Mueller's direct role in the Whitey Bulger affair [0]. I also recognize how aggressive and cavalier that behavior is in practice.

I appreciate your applied view of the legal system but it's reasonably likely that such derogatory evidence would not even be admitted in court.

This is middle-age justice with a modern veneer. Might as well torture confessions.

[0] https://technofog.substack.com/p/when-the-fbi-framed-four-in...

> Durham - now Special Counsel - still quietly looks for the truth

I have no insight into the body of the post, but LOL at this conclusion. Durham has been running his “investigation” now for more than two years and has found diddly squat. The sole product of the Durham investigation is breathless “just wait for the bombshell” punditry from disingenuous right-wing extremist pundits, the same crew who are convinced Hillary Clinton is running a child sex dungeon in a pizza parlor.

One person here strewing random, quite absurd theories about, and that's not me, nor the author of that in-depth historically factual piece. Not sure why you LOL at innocent people dying in prison, strikes me as a bit indecent.

We've reached max depth. The answer to your question is: it doesn't reflect at all on Assange, but it does shine quite a bright light directly on the FBI/CIA.

What is the “absurd theory”? I have not presented any “theories” at all.

The entire premise of the article under discussion in this thread is (1) “Assange associate who provided evidence to the FBI is an attenion-seeking sociopath and pathological liar” (everyone seems to more or less agree on this point), and (2) “you should believe what he just told a random journalist”.

A bunch of people are claiming here that this proves Assange is an oppressed freedom fighter or something. Personally I think it furthers a general impression that Assange and a bunch of other people in the Wikileaks orbit were liars and criminals with questionable agendas and methods.

Anyone still following along here may be interested in Marcy Wheeler’s close examination of the article under discussion, and how it relates to the Assange indictment:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/06/27/wikileaks-and-edward-s...

That is a very poor analysis and it reads like someone is trying to fire cheap shots at strawmen.

> This is what Assange’s boosters are now staking his defense on: convincing you to accept the words of liars as truth.

The people this article calls "Assange boosters" aren't rallying behind this person or claiming that he's not lying now, they're saying: "This man is a pathological liar either way, can't be trusted, and thus is useless as a witness. This man's words carry precisely zero weight at this point, whatever he claims."

That blog entry goes on to address a bunch of other strawmen that resemble no argument made in this HN thread. I don't know why you would link it.

Marcy Wheeler holds a PhD in comparative literature. Long blogging about Russiagate and addicted to close reading of legal documents without the least connection to law, Marcy has developed a steady following to which she misinterprets information and presents it as factual. You can see how stoopid this is right off the bat, couched in thousands of words:

A guy provided evidence, and then he said he lied, so he was telling the truth the first time. Thanks Marcy.

I do encourage you all to open the link and note how she writes in what is effectively a context-free grammar, presupposing conclusions, discussing casually about how they're correct, and linking back to more incorrect interpretations. The only way to even try to parse such nonsense is to click on endless links, which will eventually get you back to absolutely nothing. Like Lord of the Rings, except backwards and the characters travel in circles.

If you like this, Seth Abramson is similar, slightly more legal authority, equal intellectual weight.

I believe it should give you pause to adjust your point of view of the history.

Not that it'll matter if you're truly disinterested, but you posted a reply, so I guess you're not.

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