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Personally I'm more or less ambivalent whether he walks free or not today, what matters is deterrence is established.
And if he did, it would make perfect sense to charge him with that.
Sure, they implied it might possibly maybe have happened and some suckers believed it. Why wouldn't they? They hated his guts because he exposed a war crime so naturally they'll sling any kind of mud they can - whether there is evidence or not.
In this case not.
For a person in his position - he must’ve been very naive to have a show on ruzzia today.
If you're a dissident rival foreign powers will give you a platform which you won't get domestically.
Plenty of Russians think Navalny was a traitor because he made western documentaries. It's good to know you agree with them that releasing dissident material with a hostile foreign power means he is automatically a traitor I guess.
I wouldn't say that that is a position I agreed with though. I would say the principled stance is that dissidents should use the options available to them to avoid being silenced - hostile power or no.
We can't all be principled though, can we?
Assange was told he would be falling out a window if he published it. Then he buried it.
He is only about publishing leaks about western countries that don’t directly tell him they will murder him.
That isn’t a free society.
I think Assange deserves what he got.
The differences in what they did and how make the distinction.
Snowden saw something the public needed to know and filtered it through a journalist who did everything reasonable to filter and publish what the public needed to know. And the public really did need to know it.
Assange tried to find anything and everything to publish in bulk and did so with no regards to the content or the need for anybody to know. He actually put things in danger and the things he leaked were of limited value and often hyped up to be much more than they were.
If you're an edgy teenager with a "fuck the system" mentality sure you'll appreciate Assange, but I'm not. That's not dystopia.
If, however, I am suspected of committing a crime, the police expects the whole untempered truth and anything else can be considered as obstruction of justice. If I can be held to this standard, so does our public servants in the government.
The government, however, has the power to hide stuff from the public. Leakers and whistleblowers are the only thing that can hold them accountable.
So - you are saying that governments should not be accountable and transparent in their operations? Transparency within the limits of safety (intelligence gathering/criminal investigation (while it is underway - once it hits the courts and convictions are made, should be transparent) - yet - what happens when those who have the power are abusing it and committing criminal acts?
Yeah - give me the leakers, give me the dissidents - because you end-up with an out-of-control fascist police-state otherwise.
I never saw anything on Wikileaks I thought needed to be leaked.
>Because they (or myself - or yourself) are not empowered to systematically commit crimes by their/our citizens - who pay for the privilege of that through taxation.
You have power over, say, your children, spouse, parents, maybe you manage folks? Do they have a right to dump all your information to each other?
>Yeah - give me the leakers, give me the dissidents - because you end-up with an out-of-control fascist police-state otherwise.
This is exactly the kind of teenage rebel logic I'm talking about. Snowden exposed an actual significant abuse of power issue. Assange didn't, as far as I know with the things I've seen and remember. People who want to blindly rebel but have nothing but vague charges and cannot point to real issues supporting anything anti-government.
Adults need to focus on understanding the real problems of government and providing real feedback on logically sound arguments. Not ambiguous "down with the man" rhetoric. You live in a world that needs government to function and governments need to keep secrets.
This is essentially a pro war crime position.
How is that "fuck the system" ?
How is trying to uncover warcrimes a bad thing?
Perhaps journalists are not the best choice, though, don't you think? In a democracy I'd say the most trustworthy people we have to be tasked with filtering our information are our freely elected politicians!