I can’t stand Assange. He disgusts me on multiple levels. I have not tended to support the actions and alignments of Wikileaks for a long, long time.
And yet this action disturbs me immensely. It is deeply troubling and concerning — significantly more so than Wikileaks itself. As it’s been said, I do not support what they say, but I vehemently support their right to say it.
This is yet another sign that the Trump administration and its corrupted Justice Dept. are beyond the pale.
Thanks for that mental image.
Trump is going after the first amendment. It’s not the russian investigation that is the reason that Trump has to be impeached, it’s his authoritarian reaction to the investigation. Trump is arbitrarily trying to reorder the government away from a constitutional republic into an authoritarian state. The treasonous senate may not convict the president at the moment. This is why it is more important to win the senate. The presidency is secondary. We must make sure that a president can never damage the constitution again.
There was a time not so long ago when Assange’s acolytes here were stridently insistent that the moment he left the embassy he would be instantly disappeared down the black hole of rendition. What seems to be actually happening is that process in three imperfect countries (the UK, Sweden, and the US) is playing out more-or-less according to the rule of law. Most likely the country with the prior claim (Sweden) will extradite him, he will be tried and either found guilty or not and punished if guilty, and then he might or might not, after whatever punishment, be extradited to the US, where it seems that the stage is being set for him to stand trial (and not simply be sent to Gitmo or wherever). As one of the most famous, white, privileged people in the world, he will likely get a fair trial with good legal representation in both countries (unless he specifically insists on crap lawyers, which is not beyond him).
For me the enduring issues here have little to do with Assange. He is a propagandist whose selective information dumps have had negligible-to-negative impact, and not worth fretting over. Much worse is the continued criminalization of whistle-blowing against the government, which is bad for democracy, and further reinforcement of the terrible principal that civilians acting outside the US can be charged with and extradited for crimes as if they took place within our borders, a principal which is sure to backfire.
The whole point is that Assange is not my hero and it doesnt matter if he’s anyone else’s hero either. This is not about Assange.
The rightwing have many tricks to take massive power grabs under the noses of their would-be opponents. And as we dont learn from past experience often enough, they persuade even Progressives to cheer our own descent down the slippery slope.
“Rally against a common enemy” gave us Iraq War, Patriot Act, HSA, TSA, ICE… with the public and media enthralled by our brave leaders
In this case, Trump and his cronies see this as a great opportunity to expand their arsenal of weapons against potential enemies. The opportunity is naturally that since many Dems are still angry at Assange, and as he himself is odious , Trump is calculating that this power grab will not be resisted. He is not entirely right (most journalists seem to be protesting individually, as are watchdogs like ACLU and EFF), but too many are falling for it.
His primary business was publishing information that (certain) powerful entities didn’t want published.
Yes, that’s precisely journalism.
Why do you think motivation matters for what acts are classified as journalism ?
Actual anarchists don’t. Ayn-caps aren’t anarchists.
Imagine if China were to expect the me to be extradited to their country and prosecuted for posting the above image, even though I am neither a Chinese citizen nor a resident of China nor even located in China. It seems to me that this is what is happening in this case. In what way does the US have any jurisdiction over Assanges behavior if he isn’t a citizen of the US or located in the US and what he did was not illegal in the location where he did it?
US Government:
Hey, now that Assange is no longer the darling of the press, we can punish him for embarrassing us!
Everyone else:
WRONG.
Just because he is an asshole doesn’t mean we’re going to throw him under the bus. All you really want to do is scare off future whistle blowers, and that is still wrong!
Did he check the facts? Did he get confirmation from an independent source? Did he do all to protect his sources and innocent people connected to the leaks? These are basic journalistic duties, and if he didn’t follow them, he is not a journalist.The fact that Chelsea Manning is still not off the hook let’s me think “no”. Of course “real journalists” are not perfect either (see Reality Winner), but I think the way he acted was maybe well intended but totally careless.
Documents referred to in the Mueller report indicate that wikileaks’s motive was not to support Trump’s campaign for any benefit for wikileaks/Assange or because he didn’t think Trump would win.
It was allegedly because they thought Hilary would be so much worse. Reasoning being that Trump would be an obviously terrible President and the Democrats and the media, etc. would work together to render him unable to actually implement his policies and thereby minimise the damage he could do.
Hilary on the other hand would ostensibly be the ‘mainstream’, reasonable candidate and the combination of her own views and policies and the need to work with the Republicans would mean that her, in their view, shitty policies would get shittier (through compromise with the Republicans) and would actually be implemented (likewise).
He suffers from anarchistic narcissism.
Pity, because for a while he did very useful work.
The former general counsel for the New York Times argues that there’s little or no legal distinction between Assange’s activities and the activities of mainstream, “responsible” journalists. Which is what Obama’s justice department concluded some time ago, too.
Even if you believe Assange is an undeserving asshole (which I can understand) this move is changing the rules of the game retroactively. It’s an injustice. For many of us, this is one of those difficult principle-testing situations.
And the real concern, the real damage, is the way the new rules will work to suppress any similar cases in the years ahead:
Barack Obama’s Justice Department seriously considered indicting Assange under the Espionage Act and convened a grand jury for that purpose. The legal theory behind such a prosecution involves charging Assange with conspiring with Manning to release classified materials. Using this “conspiracy” theory, the Espionage Act would be made to apply to a reporter—not directly but indirectly—by using the reporter’s relationship with sources. In other words, the reporter would be made responsible for the actions of his sources.
…
If reporters can be indicted for talking to their sources, it will mean that the government has created the equivalent of a UK Official Secrets Act—through judicial fiat, without any legislative action.
The charging of an Assange-in-the-wind, all by itself, achieves most of their goal.
I think an actual trial is unlikely to ever take place. This means that no judge of any type will rule that charging him in this way is unconstitutional.
That means that anyone in a similar scenario will be unsure of how protected they are, and it will have a chilling effect on an unknown number of future whistle-blowing cases.
The Pentagon Papers ruling ensured that generations of journalists knew there was a line wherein they could operate, even in the face of government bluster and threats.
A big problem with this charge is not that it was used, but that it won’t be argued and shown to be without merit.
Yeah I own most of his books and that’s what I gleaned from reading all of them. While informative, the books about Wikileaks painted him more as an anarchist than a journalist.
Once we go down the road of who is and isn’t, we won’t come back.
This is an interesting example of a false dichotomy. Thanks!
These are not mutually exclusive, and as @anon73430903 has already mentioned, regardless Assange is not an anarchist.
Just because Saul Goodman was a criminal lawyer, it doesn’t make him not a lawyer. Or Michael Avenatti, if you want a non-fictional example.
All of those questions speak not to whether he’s a journalist, but to whether he follows your journalistic ethics, but I want to call out one in particular:
Requiring this neuters all national security reporting. It’s not a workable standard.
Of course, the idea that the government’s determination of who’s a journalist somehow has anything to do with what acts should be protected is ridiculous. Assange’s latest indictments are not for insufficient fact-checking, nor failure to protect sources. They’re for one of the most common things journalists do: solicit newsworthy information and publish it. Further, there doesn’t appear to be anything in the indictment that would limit the government’s theory to Assange or that in any way distinguishes what he did from what we want mainstream journalists to be doing.
