Meanwhile, don’t rush to attribute any good intentions to Washington nabobs who let Assange go free. They tried their damndest to break him and lock him up for life. According to the Washington Post June 27, “the near-collapse of the case in a British court sent prosecutors hurtling toward a plea deal.” Washington was gonna lose, so its manipulators grabbed what they could, namely a pledge from Assange never to pursue CIA rendition plans, and then stampeded the exists.
The “real scandal of this,” journalist Matt Kennard tweeted June 29 “is the English courts took five years to send this signal. [The] U.S. indictment was unconstitutional, criminalized journalism, and was brought by a country on record as plotting to assassinate the defendant. How did U.K. judges let it get this far? Who runs Britain?” One can only imagine what would have happened had Assange sought refuge in, say, Argentina, currently ruled by Donald “Dictator for a Day” Trump wannabe Javier Milei – it’s doubtful he would be a free man now thanks to someone in the judiciary showing spine.
Assange pled guilty to a single count of obtaining and revealing national security information, something investigative journalists do all the time. According to Matthew Ingram in the Columbia Journalism Review June 27, one press expert said the Justice Department’s allegations described “everyday journalistic practices as part of a criminal conspiracy.” That includes “cultivating sources, protecting sources’ identities and communicating securely. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said the charges pose ‘a dire threat’ and the Freedom of the Press Foundation called them ‘terrifying.’”
Any journalist who does what Assange did, namely profoundly embarrassing the U.S. military with revelations of its war crimes in the Middle East or indeed anywhere, would be well advised to take up residence in Russia, China or some other nation without an extradition treaty to the United States. Who cares what lies such a move might generate? As Edward Snowden demonstrated to the entire planet, sometimes the better part of valor is self-preservation. At least, after all, if a journalist survives, he or she may continue to act as Snowden and Assange did, namely serving truth. That’s very tough to do in any public way for someone buried alive in a dungeon.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
The English courts took five years to decide and also Assange took eight years avoiding the courts so they could make their decision.
Seems like a guy who has time to waste. I think he has learned his lesson and wont be a naughty boy again. He is not being mentioned in the news over here so I presume he has gone to ground spending his money and enjoying long walks in the bush.
I wonder how the Wikileaks data compares with the Mitrokhin Archive.
BritDownUnder wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 00:14
I think he has learned his lesson and wont be a naughty boy again.
Assange pleaded guilty in order to secure his freedom, not because he or anybody else has suddenly acknowledged that he actually did anything wrong. The lesson here is that the US believes it can silence whistleblowers, when in reality it can do no such thing. The test is this -- if evidence of another US atrocity comes to light, will journalists be sufficiently intimidated that they will refuse to publish it because they fear the US coming for them like they came for Assange? Of course not. The lesson they will take from this is to make sure they are beyond the reach of the US before they publish, or to do so anonymously. Assange's mistake wasn't publishing evidence of atrocities, but failing to anticipate the immoral and illegal depths the US would go to in order to attempt to silence whistleblowers and journalists. His mistake was to go to the Ecuadorian embassy when he should have taken the opportunity to get out of Europe completely when he still could - as Edward Snowden did. The US wants people to believe his mistake was publishing the evidence, and in this they have failed spectacularly. In terms of morality, the US lost and Assange won. He will ultimately be remembered as a heroic defender of the truth who became a victim of US atrocities himself, not as a criminal. Forced confessions impress nobody but fools.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
BritDownUnder wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 00:14
I think he has learned his lesson and wont be a naughty boy again.
Assange pleaded guilty in order to secure his freedom, not because he or anybody else has suddenly acknowledged that he actually did anything wrong. The lesson here is that the US believes it can silence whistleblowers, when in reality it can do no such thing. The test is this -- if evidence of another US atrocity comes to light, will journalists be sufficiently intimidated that they will refuse to publish it because they fear the US coming for them like they came for Assange? Of course not. The lesson they will take from this is to make sure they are beyond the reach of the US before they publish, or to do so anonymously. Assange's mistake wasn't publishing evidence of atrocities, but failing to anticipate the immoral and illegal depths the US would go to in order to attempt to silence whistleblowers and journalists. His mistake was to go to the Ecuadorian embassy when he should have taken the opportunity to get out of Europe completely when he still could - as Edward Snowden did. The US wants people to believe his mistake was publishing the evidence, and in this they have failed spectacularly. In terms of morality, the US lost and Assange won. He will ultimately be remembered as a heroic defender of the truth who became a victim of US atrocities himself, not as a criminal. Forced confessions impress nobody but fools.
We'll see about that. Once Albanese goes as Australian PM he will be in the US very quickly if he does it again.
The US does not have a monopoly on atrocities and in most other countries and most other times Assange would have been silenced very quickly.
I wonder how Snowden is getting on? Any interviews recently? Assange can live his life again and Snowden has to worry every day about being killed when his usefulness to Russia ends.
BritDownUnder wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 00:14
I think he has learned his lesson and wont be a naughty boy again.
Assange pleaded guilty in order to secure his freedom, not because he or anybody else has suddenly acknowledged that he actually did anything wrong. The lesson here is that the US believes it can silence whistleblowers, when in reality it can do no such thing. The test is this -- if evidence of another US atrocity comes to light, will journalists be sufficiently intimidated that they will refuse to publish it because they fear the US coming for them like they came for Assange? Of course not. The lesson they will take from this is to make sure they are beyond the reach of the US before they publish, or to do so anonymously. Assange's mistake wasn't publishing evidence of atrocities, but failing to anticipate the immoral and illegal depths the US would go to in order to attempt to silence whistleblowers and journalists. His mistake was to go to the Ecuadorian embassy when he should have taken the opportunity to get out of Europe completely when he still could - as Edward Snowden did. The US wants people to believe his mistake was publishing the evidence, and in this they have failed spectacularly. In terms of morality, the US lost and Assange won. He will ultimately be remembered as a heroic defender of the truth who became a victim of US atrocities himself, not as a criminal. Forced confessions impress nobody but fools.
We'll see about that. Once Albanese goes as Australian PM he will be in the US very quickly if he does it again.
If he's got more dirt on the US then he would be well advised to leave Australia before publishing it. However, I doubt he has got any. The real question here, as I said, is about whether or not people actually believe he did anything that ought to be illegal, and the answer is no. Even you are only glorifying in US bullying -- in the fact that the US is apparently above the law, or has a special law all for itself, in this sort of case. Nobody is any doubt about the lengths the US will got to in order to intimidate people, or the extent to which less powerful western nations will do their dirty work. The question is about whether people believe Assange was right to publish the material in at the heart of this, or whether everybody on the planet has some sort of unique legal duty to protect the US from whistleblowers. And why any reasonable person would side with the US over Assange on this question is beyond me. The claim was that US lives were endangered. The truth is that US reputation was endangered.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
My God!!! MTG said something vaguely intelligent!! She opens her mouth so often though that something sensible is bound to come out at least once in her lifetime.
