It was the cat, wasn’t it? It’s always the cat.
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Even more if one of the other BB editors adds yet another thread about JA to the two they started this week.
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Oh well, at least it’s not yet another Jordaddy or Muskrat post; their zealot fanboys are far more numerous, and even more tediously annoying than Assange’s.
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The Australian government’s already declined to assist Assange, as far as I know. So Greg Barns saying the gov should help him seems like a last-ditch attempt to get the fucker moved from the embassy without being extradited.
Oh, and as for “retiring into obscurity”? Unfortunately the chances of that are pretty low, given Assange’s narcissism and apparent fear of ‘relevance deprivation’ (see also fellow fuckwits Tony Abbott and, to a lesser degree, Kevin Rudd).
Barns, btw, is a well-known right-winger. I wouldn’t have said far right-winger previously, but who knows these days?
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Wow that sounds scary and bad. Do you have any sources with examples of someone who was sent to Guantanomo who hadn’t done something extremely serious, like take part in an insurgency campaign or terrorist attack with zero charges after rendition from a western nation? I’d love to read more about this issue.
There was a 60 minutes story of a person recently who was sold to US forces in the wake of 911. Had no connection with terrorism, was held for like 6-8 years, his family thought he was dead. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Your characterization is, as my grandmother used to say, “full of prunes”. Here’s a link to the WL video:
You’ll note that there’s considerable interpretation, analysis, and commentary provided by WL. Typical of this is at :18, where the context for the video is given. This is journalism, not a data dump, unless you recommend we exclude all videos and original source material that are extensively annotated, commented on, and analyzed from the bounds of journalism. Another True Scotsman is rearing his head.
I welcome your departure from this debate! Thank you, Gracchus! I think I’ll like your comment:)
Most “enemy combatants” the US took prisoner were just guys turned in for money or to settle local disputes. I’d say most of the folks originally in Gitmo couldn’t be charged with anything or they would have been. Most were released many years later after years of torture.
No, sorry, Collateral Murder was propaganda, not journalism.
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What poured out the reporters “embedded” with the US military during the Iraq War, that was propaganda. Much of what pours out of Fox News is propaganda. So are the presidents lies repeated and trial balloons floated by seasoned White House correspondents who wished they had the scoops that WL did.
Sure, the WL video was manipulative. However, I had no doubts watching the 18-minute version of CM that the US soldiers thought they were firing on legitimate targets. The content was manipulative and so was poor journalism in that respect, but what I’m saying that it WAS journalism. I don’t think a reasonable person could deny that. It certainly was a scoop, like much else released by WL.
Just looking back a few years, WL leaked drafts of the TPP treaty that aroused such outcries here on BoingBoing. The StratFor leaks. Banking leaks. BoingBoing also covered the materials in the NSA leaks about one-day exploits. There’s a lot of scoops there and BoingBoingers have expressed their interest and concern in what was released. That speaks for their newsworthiness. How about a new definition: journalism researches, verifies, analyses and publishes items that are newsworthy?
In all seriousness, I think we all have the potential to contribute to a better journalism. It’s kind of old hat that everyone with a phone or access to a computer can report on and publish news. Katia Kelly, a blogger, uncovered a property used by Paul Manafort to launder money:
I don’t want to draw the line anywhere for fear of being caught on the wrong side by authoritarians like Trump. Just because someone published something that hurt the chances of our favorite candidate in an election doesn’t mean we define that person out of being in the press. Just because someone did a manipulative news story doesn’t make them not a member of the press.Set that bar to where you’re putting it for Assange and a lot of card-carrying members of the official media wouldn’t make it over with a ladder.
Yours was another True Scotsman argument I just realized! Congratulations!
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If you carefully and cynically edit out content that you know is counter to the point you want to make, then you are engaging in propaganda, not journalism. That is practically the definition of propaganda, and is what all serious analysts came to understand had been done with Assange’s little piece of agitprop. The idea that this is what journalists actually do is only shared by Donald Trump and maybe the Daily Mail.
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And their attorney general told them that Assange wasn’t committing a crime, so all they had was rhetoric. This is what no one gets that defends this nut job…he has not committed a crime in America. He may never be allowed to come into the states again, but he hasn’t committed a crime, therefore has no worry about being brought here in a hood and kangaroo court.
Factually false about him having no need to worry about the U.S., and a false and misleading headline as well. Shame on BoingBoing.
Here’s a letter written nine days ago in which a ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs and a Chair Emeritous of that august body call Julian Assange “a dangerous criminal and a threat to global security.” They lean on Ecuador to essentially hand him over to the U.S.
Pretty indisputable proof that Assange is correct and the naysayers wrong when they claim the U.S. isn’t a direct and serious threat to Assange’s freedom and safety.
The U.N. ruled Assange was being “arbitrarily detained” and that he should be allowed to go free and even be compensated for the injustice. He needs medical care he can’t get, and his mental and physical health are deteriorating from being in essentially solitary confinement for 8 years. We’re watching the slow-motion assassination of a journalist in the heart of London and people are still smearing him for his hygiene. SMDH at how easily the Overton Window is controlled among even well-educated Americans.
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Uh huh.
Nowhere in that letter do they suggest he be handed over to the U.S.
However, if you like I can find a video of the current President of the United States leading people in a chant of “lock her up”; do you think that Hillary Clinton should seek safety in a Latin American embassy? Or do you not understand how political posturing works?
I am suddenly reminded of schoolyard discussions with a classmate who insisted against all reason that The Monkees was the greatest rock band around; one thing I’ve learned in the ensuing 50 years is that there is no effective argument against an adolescent hormonal infatuation with Peter Tork.
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No, he ran when it became clear his legal bid to escape Swedish extradition on sexual assault charges had failed. That’s not any kind of grounds for asylum so he made the US a bogeyman to save face and his ass.
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He certainly seems to be hated by partisans on both sides. He didn’t make the world a crueler place as some people here seem to think. He pulled back the curtain and showed us what a cruel place it had been the entire time. The partisans on the left hate him for Mrs. Clintons mistakes, they’re not as mad at her for making them as they’re mad at him for telling us about it. The partisans on the right seem to hate him for everything else regardless of source or reason, even going so far as to call him a “traitor” despite the fact he’s not from here, and doesn’t actually owe the USA any loyalty. Yet another reason that the Democratic and Republican parties need to stop existing. They’ve made public discourse pointless and public participation unbearable.
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I haven’t actually commented much, so I am really new here:)
My posts are hidden now. How is it off topic to reference that Assange ducked a rape accusation, in a thread about Assange’s embassy conditions?
(rhetorical question, I don’t need the topic to be about my post, but it’s silly to ignore the reason he’s in the embassy, or handwave it away completely)
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Collateral damage; notice that the comments you’d replied to were modded as well.
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Thanks, I gets it now. (first time that happened for me) 
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No worries.
I’m outta here; real life calls…
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