What it was like ghostwriting for Julian Assange

Just for leaking that, he is going to give the Ecuadorian embassy a bad yelp review.

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Manning made a series of OPSEC errors in communication with Adrian Lamo which resulted in her downfall. Assange was not responsible for Manning’s role being revealed. Perhaps you mis-remembered the timeline of events?

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And let’s not forget that civilians were probably executed because their names were unredacted.

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Not to defend this but, many cooperating witnesses for the US were not given asylum or legal immigration status, found out, and killed or imprisoned anyway. 60 minutes ran a story about this months ago.

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I’m 90% sure I’d hate Assange and 100% sure he shouldn’t be in jail.

We are not slipping into authoritarianism, we are plunging into it.

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For what he is in jail for?

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I’m 100% certain that Assange should be in jail, as there isn’t much question over whether he jumped bail. Whether he should be extradicted to the US is a whole different kettle of fish.

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IIRC Lamo could have chosen to not turn her in. Is trust an “opsec failure”?

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This is very true. It benefits nobody but Assange if people keep blurring things into one another.

  • Assange being in jail for jumping bail is one thing.
  • The Swedish charges for sexual assault and rape, which may be reopened now that he’s now longer hiding from them in Ecuadorian embassy, are another thing.
  • The US charges for being Manning’s accomplice, plus the extradition request, are yet a third thing.

The first issue is pretty much open and shut case. Assange did jump bail, he’s undeniably guilty of that. The second one is far less clear-cut, but it’s not some nefarious honeypot trap cooked up by the CIA, like Assange and his fanboys try to imply. The third one is yet more complicated; it may be that Assange is entirely guilty by the letter of the law, but morally in the right, for example. (I kinda disagree, what with the reckless way Wikileaks released things, but this is a contentious issue.)

Do not let yourself be fooled into thinking that it’s all one big ball of Evul Conspiracy To Get Him by the nefarious American intelligence services. That’s an untrue, self-serving narrative Assange has been spinning from the start.

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I have read suggestions elsewhere that Assange is going downhill physically and cognitively due to vitamin D deficiency. There could be other effects of his confinement as well of course.

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Its the oldest in the book.

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I find it hard to believe the embassy wouldn’t be willing to get him vitamins

The interviewer clearly confabulated Assange with Snowden.

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Thank you, you’ve spelled out my concerns much more clearly than I was able to.

These days it creeps me out just how polarized everyone seems to be. Either Assange is blameless and its all a nefarious government conspiracy, or Assange is the asshole here, and since the narrative only needs one villian, Uncle Sam is off the hook.

As much nails-on-chalkboard annoyance as this story can generate, there is one entirely positive thing I can say about Assange and Manning and the way that played out: Like a Berenstain bear giving a bicycle lesson, they clearly showed Edward Snowden and any other future whistleblower, how NOT to do it.

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I have read suggestions elsewhere that Assange is going downhill physically and cognitively due to vitamin D deficiency.

“Crazy like a fox”. Vinny the Chin’s strategy.

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Yes, I know Chelsea Manning is a woman. But a decade ago, there was a historically important release of information that was committed by someone who was not, at that time, a woman. In consideration of Chelsea Mannings feelings, are we now expected to re-write the history of 2010 so that it was a woman who did that thing?

When its a president who wants us to be careful in what kind of language we use to describe their actions, I see journalists and historians push back and insist the doesn’t get final edit rights on what is written about them.
Maybe the person being written about is part of a historically repressed minority. Does that mean they should get the final say in how they’re written about?

The collateral murder video was leaked by someone who, at the time, was a man. How is it disrespecful to reference their gender at the the war crime was committed?

I expect Im going to run into similar problems if I ever want to talk about the Wachowski siblings at the time The Matrix was being made.

Easy:
Bradley Edward Manning - he/him
Chelsea Manning - she/her

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For a non-standard definition of easy, maybe.

Just because she wasn’t publicly identifying as a woman, doesn’t mean she wasn’t one.

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You’re talking about her today, you’re referring to her today. This is true even if you’re referring to her past actions. It’s not an unworkably weird theoretical that will confuse people, when everyone knows the person you’re talking about.

“She was born in the United States. She has an incredible history with whistle-blowing.”

See? In those sentences, I’m not “re-writing history” by using “she”. I’m referring to a person that exists in the present, today, and describing things that happened to her in the past. You’re not referring to a totally different person when you talk of what people did in the past.

If you say “Bob Dylan wrote this song this way because he was happy as a child." it’s silly for someone else to say, "But Bob Dylan didn’t exist as a child! Your sentence re-writes history!” It’s complaining about a perfectly understandable sentence in context.

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