Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 577 posts

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#411

Post by jiveturkey »

armenarmen wrote: post #251
anoncoward111 wrote: post #136

[clears throat] USA killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civillians and is now jailing the whistleblowers [cough]

Americans (and I sadly speak for all 300mm+ of us) no longer give a flying fuck about illegal wars or mass murder. There is no peace movement, there won’t be ever again. Citizens will ignore the wars and entertain them selves by rage posting about either the red or blue team

our leaders have gotten smart and now make sure the general public doesn’t directly feel the pain of war. bush 43 told folks to go shopping. wars are fought in the abstract for most americans.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#412

Post by sjg007 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #407
sjg007 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or timely.

Okay. Then why was it "timely" to release material critical of the left leaning factions of US government... ... but at the same time "not timely" to release material critical of the right leaning factions?

Does this ignore the fact that Wikileaks might have been played?

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#413

Post by brokenmachine »

jMyles wrote: post #315
tootie wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange is simply not an honest broker which is his one job. Even if you think the Chelsea Manning leak was valuable, what exactly was Assange's value add? The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted. The data was not protected. WikiLeaks was hacked and leaked all the raw data. The content was not shared in an objective way. Assange editorialized the content with his own opinions (ie Collateral Murder…

If this sort of assessment is the case against Assange (in terms of his character as a journalist), then I think he has a very strong case. > The leaker was not protected. She was caught and prosecuted. You're talking as if Assange or WikiLeaks disclosed the source. Are you suggesting that a journalist has a responsibility to protect a source unto the ends of the earth, even when that source openly and flatly confide…

>Let's keep things in perspective here: a person flying in a helicopter intentionally fired an explosive missile at a person standing on the ground. I know we're all pretty numb to this happening at this point, but I think it's still pretty shocking when you think about it.

Maybe he did think that he was firing on someone carrying an RPG. So? It's still a crazy act, carried out during an illegal war. Calling it "Collateral Murder" doesn't turn me off in the slightest.

Fine, a camera can look like an RPG from a distance. But maybe they should be looking a bit closer if everything is looking like an RPG.

For me, the most shocking part was when they opened fire on the van with an(other) unarmed civilian that made the mistake of stopping to help the injured people.

Then even more shocking when they later discovered the two children who were in the now-destroyed van. Just a man and his children driving in a van. Now murdered for the crime of trying to help a fellow human being.

Just a shocking lack of regard for human life. If that's how they operate - and it seems to be - they are nothing but war criminals.

What kind of monster would want to protect that kind of behavior from public scrutiny?

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#414

Post by lern_too_spel »

wallace_f wrote: post #394
lern_too_spel wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shep Smith and the news anchors at CNN at least do a reasonable job of reporting the news correctly (which Greenwald can't), though none of those does strong investigative journalism.

Ok can you give me a couple of examples of these egregious errors by Greenwald you're talking about?

Seriously? The first time most people heard of Greenwald was his PRISM reporting, which was so wrong that when I thought about how many separate errors he had to combine to come up with that one article alone, I was in awe that he was able to sneak that by an editor.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466438

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#415

Post by gremlinsinc »

resters wrote: post #310
nl wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link is broken - I think you mean this one, posted below: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia... If a WP headline from 2013 saying "Julian Assange unlikely to face U.S. charges over publishing classified documents" is the limits of that argument, then I think it's fair to say that is much weaker then any claim that "he is practically free to go". In addition, maybe he was free to go in 2…

Also wapo is pretty much all political propaganda of some sort now. It’s been getting worse by the day since Bezos bought it for some reason.

I'm betting you think Fox news is the epitome of news stations, as well.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#416

Post by onetimemanytime »

nyolfen wrote: post #381
onetimemanytime wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but that was a "mistake". Just as it was a "mistake" when NATO thought that the embassy was used as Serbia's military comm center. China stopped complaining after shown what NATO had on them.

sorry, what exactly do you think the US had to gain from bombing the chinese embassy in yugoslavia?

Dear China, stop helping them...

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#418

Post by onetimemanytime »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #409
onetimemanytime wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these questions his attorneys can try to answer during the trial. That he was /is a Russian asset, I think we pretty much know. Maybe he needed a bear hug in light of everyone behind against him...or maybe Russia had dirt on the country he wanted to hurt?

I see this claim a lot, yet no evidence to substantiate it. What evidence do you have that he is/was a Russian asset? And what does it matter if it's a Russian asset doing the leaking, instead of a selfless journalist? Is the leaking illegal or not? This "Russian asset" angle seems like ad hominem to make people acquiesce to violating freedom of speech.

CIA Director: 'It's time to call out Wikileaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.'

It's normal for us not to have any direct evidence, but to see the results of their behavior. CIA on the other hand might have recordings, communication etc. They have been digging for years.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#419

Post by codedokode »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #356
thanosnose wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if "all a man is, is what others say of him," then by watching the news, Assange is just a Russian agent. One of the most interesting aspect of the assange story is how the news industry celebrated assange in the early part of the 2010s and then started to demonize him in the past few years. It was all so sudden as if someone flipped a switch and everyone got on the same message. It's also interesting how sexua…

Assange and Wikileaks have been demonised because they decided to release information in such a way as to deliberately influence an election. The DNC/Podesta leaks were timed specifically to cause maximum negative effect to Clinton and the Democrats. Then there's the lack of curation in some of the leaks. A lot of personal data that shouldn't be public by any means (e.g. medical information, sexual identity) has been…

> The DNC/Podesta leaks were timed specifically to cause maximum negative effect to Clinton and the Democrats.

What's wrong with this? Assange didn't steal this information, he just published it. That's the freedom of speech.

Also, US wants to prosecute Assange not because of leak of personal information, but rather because of political reasons. Only because he is against the wars that US started in the Middle East.

Re: The US Is Preparing to Prosecute Julian Assange

#420

Post by codedokode »

As I understand, Assange is not an US citizen. How can they prosecute him?

Wikipedia page [1] says:

> Opinions of Assange at this time [2010] were divided. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard described his activities as "illegal," but the police said that he had broken no Australian law. United States Vice President Joe Biden and others called him a "terrorist". Some called for his assassination or execution.

That's ridiculous. American soldiers killing civilians are "good guys", and Assange is a terrorist?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

Post reply on HN