I fail to see where Assange is being “irresponsible”. He’s not doing prank calls, spreading lies or shouting fire in a crowded theatre; he’s revealing the sausage-making process behind visible politicians, including one who will likely be Leader Of The Free Nuclear-Armed World in less than three months. When other people do it, it’s called journalism. Is he biased? Likely, but that accusation cannot be taken seriously in the land of Fox News.
1 Like
with a minimal amount of “analysis”: Lawrence Lessig’s classy response to being insulted in John Podesta’s leaked emails - Vox
2 Likes
This line of reasoning would have been perfectly legitimate… 4 years ago. Now it sounds a bit hypocritical.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if the UK dropped its bullying stance, but the chances of this happening under “Mini-Maggie May” (or “Mad May”, if you’re less charitable) are zero.
1 Like
I’d be more sympathetic if I didn’t live under a government (or rather, a ruling class) hell-bent on stripping any privacy from the common man, purely for its own benefit. Powerful people are mad at Assange because they got a taste of what “little people” experience every single day - our emails are datamined, our phones are hacked, our web habits are monitored. If they keep up this position (and they do - there is no support whatsoever for repelling PATRIOT Act, Snoopers Charter, Great Firewalls etc etc, and Secret Laws accrue unabated), then it’s only right that they should not get special treatment.
2 Likes
No, he’s an egotistical asshole for publishing private actors’ credit cards and other personal information. Public figures are (and should be) fair game, but not redacting other folks’ PII is just a dick move.
It would also be nice if he released a Trump tax document or racial spewings, but instead he seems hellbent on destroying only one of the two major candidates running in the election.
10 Likes
Serious question: why? So far as I’m aware, Equador’s stance has always been about giving Assange refuge, not necessarily a voice.
3 Likes
He’s also very isolated at this point in time, which means having limited manpower to do this sort of redaction. He’s done it in the past.
The mainstream press is already pretty happy to demolish Trump on its own (and it’s really, really easy, to be honest), where’s the fun in piling up? It’s much harder (and hence interesting) to show how the other candidate, while undoubtedly more competent and less morally repugnant than Trump, is not exactly a saint herself.
To be honest, I don’t get the anger over this leak. Yeah, they show a bit of behind-the-scenes, but there’s nothing particularly incriminating, just a bit of predictable duplicity on political positions. Nixon would have laughed at all this and carried on. The rage coming from the Clinton camp is unbecoming.
Because they’ve actively helped him for 4 years, during which he’s published a lot of other material. Now it’s clearly not about principles, and all about realpolitik. Which is perfectly understandable, of course, but let’s just call a spade a spade.
1 Like
They published names of Afghan civilians way back in 2010, two years before Assange sought asylum. It’s pure laziness born of a desire to release data on his timetable. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/292320-wikileaks-exposed-rape-victims-personal-information-report
8 Likes
I get what you’re saying, but for the record, Assange is not and never was a l33t h@xx0r. He was the late phreaker/early dial-up era equivalent of a script kiddie, and he got caught.
That said, he could be a level 70 Cyber-mage, and it wouldn’t help him get online if Ecuador didn’t want him online. For that matter, he doesn’t eat unless Ecuador feels like letting him eat. He’s had exactly zero personal autonomy and zero internet privacy since the instant he set foot inside the embassy. I’m not saying Ecuador is abusing that fact, just that it’s the inescapable reality of the situation.
11 Likes
What exactly is the UK’s ‘bullying stance’ in this?
The UK gave him plenty of leeway. Assange was on bail (paid for by his former friends), he jumped bail committing an offence that will almost certainly end in a prison sentence in the UK whether or not he ends up in Sweden.
3 Likes
So, while I wouldn’t describe it as rage, there’s the obvious violation of privacy that went on here. So far none of these leaks have shown anything worthwhile as far as wrongdoings, but what it does do is give people with agendas ammunition to quote-mine and bring up all sorts of things out of context to poision the well. I would be okay with this if there were something nefarious going on, but at this point we can tell there isn’t, and this is very likely being done for political reasons on Assange/WikiLeak’s behalf. This reeks of what Lamar Smith is trying to do with his crusade against the NSF about climage change and the IPCC email leaks; a fishing expidition for getting more out-of-context quotes for more bad politics.
2 Likes
Seems fair enough. I think Assange is generally doing a good thing here, but Ecuador’s under no obligation to allow him to continue. This mostly underscores the need to get him the hell out of that Embassy. If only certain states would agree not to send him to the US…
Well, many agendas I agree with can do with that sort of ammunition, thanks. Like the TTIP /TTP, items on which Clinton-President is very likely to backtrack from Clinton-Candidate “public position”.
1 Like
I can absolutely understand Ecuador’s desire to not get caught in the middle of the current Russian/US boxing match. Assange is publishing material that was exfiltrated from the DNC by Russia for the sole purpose of trying to influence the US election and make Donald Trump the president. While I am all for transparency and disclosure, blindly and earnestly publishing documents stolen from a nation by one of its largest geopolitical opponents is naive at best. Less charitably (but IMO more accurately), it signals that Assange and Wikileaks are willing to play along with Russia as they try to undermine our election for their own benefit. And they’ve already been caught publishing fabricated material once this year.
7 Likes
That is the classiest thing I think I’ve ever seen. Wow.
Now, if we can just get enough voters in a small electoral state to write him in (oh crap, now we also have to make sure Hillary doesn’t take Texas!)
3 Likes
This highlights the fact that Assange isn’t a journalist, he is a gatekeeper of a depository of information.
Snowden’s leak was supposed to be curated and released by journalists, and even by his own admission, they fucked up in a few places.
Assange doesn’t even have journalistic integrity to attempt to uphold. I don’t think he is being malicious about things necessarily, but he simply doesn’t care about separating the wheat from the chaff.
1 Like
But he’s been given asylum by Ecuador, and it would be the right thing to do, for the UK government, to let him go to Ecuador. When a defector runs into a UK embassy in some regime or the other, we applaud it and ask that the hosting country give him safe passage under diplomatic agreements. When it happens in our backyard, we say he’s a common criminal and force him into self-reclusion for years. That is bullying.
Btw, Glenn Greenwald and Naomi Klein published a good conversation around the moral and political implications of this round of leaks: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/19/is-disclosure-of-podestas-emails-a-step-too-far-a-conversation-with-naomi-klein/
1 Like
I think about this video reenactment and wonder if Ecuador is just getting sick of him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le3jrp6LzjI
(or maybe they suspect the next POTUS might hold a grudge)
He is a common criminal. Aside from the alleged sex crimes in Sweden, he jumped bail imposed by a UK court. Whatever the outcome of the Swedish charges, he’ll be arrested and have to answer for the bail-jumping in a UK courtroom when he leaves the embassy.
9 Likes
So are most of those defectors / dissidents, in their countries of origin. Usually convicted under trumped-up charges and / or for fleeing trumped-up charges.
But of course other countries = bad, our country = good. Keep on brexin’ in the free world.
