Isn’t it great that a man who exposed governmental corruption and war crimes faced a harsher persecution and punishment than the corrupt governments and war criminals themselves?
Democracy™️
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Notice how you’re angry at the people who released the info instead of the people who were corrupt and deplorable? PsyOps mission accomplished!
My understanding is that, while it’s likely the source of those leaks was Russia, it’s never been proven wikileaks withheld info about Republicans. I’ve seen the claims dozens of times, but never the evidence, so please share if you do… Otherwise, it’s insane to hate a journalist for withholding information they don’t have, just because it hurts your preferred political party.
EDIT T+2hrs: 35% downvotes and zero replies or supporting evidence. FYI I asked the same thing on Reddit about a dozen times over the last decade, and the result was always the same — If your position is “I can find no evidence for my claims, and don’t know why I hate WikiLeaks or Assange. I just do.” then you’re probably a psychological warfare victim…
Yuck. I wish I could help you
Not saying it’s excusable, but I’m guessing he was exposed to a lot of Trump propaganda being in Russia and all
Are you thinking of Snowden?
But it’s sad that whistleblowers are even persecuted in a so-called democracy. Like you know you fucked up, but instead of feeling humble and ashamed you start persecutions of the people who have exposed you, while preaching what an exemplary democracy you are to the rest of the world.
Same with ICC, ICC exposes your ally as a war criminal and instead of upholding law, you start thinking how to sanction the judges and obstruct their actions, because you feel above the law. The US is acting like a school bully who is the only one who can say what’s right or wrong in big parts of the rest of the world, they try to influence foreign governments and install their own candidates, so in a way, they aren’t much better than China or Russia. Heck they even tapped the phones of their allies back then and probably still do.
Private companies do the same, often going as far as to have whistleblowers executed. People (and especially organizations) protect their interests, even (or especially) at the expenses of others lives.
You know, that whole issue is now just completely way up in the air. The man in question had no difficulty saying the same. If you think you have any proof, feel free to bring that down to land as hard and as destructively murderous as you’d like to be.
withholding law Did you mean upholding?
Yes, sorry, typo
Yea, my bad
Sounds like they got what they needed from him
Instilled fear in potential future whistleblowers.
What do you mean?
They wanted to make an example of someone. His thumbing his nose at the US government was well publicised, so they made their revenge on him very public too.
He pleaded guilty and agreed to delete “secret documents”, whatever the hell that would be, as part of the deal
some petty bullshit making him plead guilty to espionage but
Everybody will know that this is a forced confession anyways so who cares?
It does set a potentially dangerous precedent, but with how things are going (American newspapers declining in quality and SCOTUS selectively ignoring precedent and doing whatever), you’re right that it doesn’t mean much.
That’s what’s so concerning about the case. The USA tried to persecute an Australian citizen working out of the EU for publishing information.
As he is not a US citizen he was not able to use the X amendment to free speech.
America, after spending an insane level of resources and decades of man power to make someone say a phrase: HA! GOT EM!
It’s not over yet.
This might hurt future publishers of whistleblowers. Does this set the precedent that publishing info from whistleblowers can be prosecuted as espionage?
I don’t know the details of how the US legal system works but isn’t a plea bargain essentially the same as a settlement in civil cases?
If so, it should (at least in theory) have very little prejudicial value since the courts did not rule on the question if Assange’s culpability.
I know that in the real world the US regime once again learned that it can get away with murder and journalists all over the world have already learned the lesson that the evil empire will fuck them up if they air their dirty laundry. But from a legal nerd point of view a settlement should be quite useles as a precedent.
That sounds right
That’s the goal.
How many years would his prison sentence have been if he was extradided the year he fled to the embassy? I feel like he would have been out by now. Wasn’t he leaking early Iraq war corruption stuff? That was 20 years ago.
He didn’t leak, he published.
That’s what’s so concerning about the case. The USA tried to persecute an Australian citizen working out of the EU for publishing information.
If precedent was set they could kidnap anyone from sovereign countries based on US law
He might have been epsteined though
IIRC he had some kind of insurance file against that, I think there used to be some encrypted file you could download from Wikileaks and if he died the password would be released.
No idea what it was (if anything, it could have just been a bluff of course) but it seems to have had the desired effect so far.
As a terrorist they could torture and kill him without covering anything up.
No, they would have crucified him
Biden throwing a hail Mary to libs with a shred o conscience remaining for his trainwreck 2024. I mean it’s about damn time but he should have been free years ago.
I mean, I was so sure they wanted to incarcerate him until he commits suicide!
Wow
HANDS OFF
ASS
