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Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

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Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#271

Post by dustingetz »

banads wrote: post #181
anongraddebt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a fairly strong supporter of our military. Not blanket support (since there are always exceptions to anything), and I wasn't super enthusiastic/patriotic like some are, but in general I had a pretty positive view. My uncle is a general in the Air Force, all three of my grandfathers fought in WW2 (my Dad's biological father was killed by a drunk driver when he was 7), etc etc. I have pictures of my grandf…

>They made you face up to the ground-level reality. The news media has consciously hidden and censored the ground level reality of war since Vietnam, where they made the mistake of showing families the graphic ground level realities of war in color while they ate TV dinners in their living rooms. This created what was perhaps the greatest anti war sentiment in US history -- it was not sustainable. Meanwhile Hollywood…

why was anti war sentiment not sustainable for tv news stations?

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#272

Post by big_chungus »

chmod775 wrote: post #6
sixQuarks wrote: post #2

I'm surprised Julian Assange doesn’t have a kill switch in place, where sensitive info which has been held up to this point will be released upon his death or conviction. At least none that we know of.

I'll read that as "[I'd be] surprised if Julian Assange doesn't have a [dead man's switch] in place". And indeed he does. Some time ago Wikileaks/Assange distributed an encrypted insurance file. The torrent is about 90GB: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes2... There was actually multiple versions fo this file, each larger than the previous one. This is the most recent version afaik. It's like…

I believe this version is more recent, perhaps a small update: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2017-01-25_WL-Insurance.a...

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#273

Post by lisper »

Lammy wrote: post #260
lisper wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declaring who is and is not a valid journalist is essential to democracy. The failure to distinguish journalism from propaganda is in no small measure responsible for the mess we're currently in.

If we allow a precedent like that it will some day inevitably be turned on somebody you think speaks objective truth. The past few years have shown me there is no such thing.

I didn't say anything about how this distinction is to be made, only that it needs to be made somehow. And yes, I'm aware of the dangers of false positives. That's a smaller risk than doing nothing and allowing misinformation to propagate unfettered and unlabeled.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#274

Post by iwintermute »

dustingetz wrote: post #271
banads wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They made you face up to the ground-level reality. The news media has consciously hidden and censored the ground level reality of war since Vietnam, where they made the mistake of showing families the graphic ground level realities of war in color while they ate TV dinners in their living rooms. This created what was perhaps the greatest anti war sentiment in US history -- it was not sustainable. Meanwhile Hollywood…

why was anti war sentiment not sustainable for tv news stations?

because "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#276

Post by 542458 »

einpoklum wrote: post #268
542458 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of documents that wikileaks has, at various times, claimed they’d release then have never mentioned again. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Claims_of_upcoming... TBH, this bit in particular of wikileaks has always felt really scummy/sketchy to me. If you have the docs and have verified them and believe they are journalistically important then release them without delay. In every other scena…

There are legitimate reasons for delayed releases, like fact-checking and cross-referencing, leaker security, Wikileaks operatives' own security, coordinations with establishment press channels and possibly others. Still, it's certainly better to limit such claims and it does feel a bit sketchy when they don't eventually publish something.

I'm not saying they shouldn't fact check - rather, if they aren't sure about a leak, it's irresponsible of them to talk about it before they're sure! Same goes for security - if delaying a leak helps security, surely it helps even more if you don't speak about it at all until ready to release.

Furthermore, announcing leaks gives the orgs being leaked on time to get their story straight and destroy evidence, so I'm really skeptical that announcing leaks like that is the responsible course of action.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#278

Post by dependenttypes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #206
plutonorm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authoritarians emphasise the fact he broke laws, everyone else appreciates the moral act.

> Authoritarians emphasise the fact he broke laws, everyone else appreciates the moral act. It was an immoral act done as far as I can tell, for immoral purposes, which were successfully attained. That it was also illegal is why it can be punished rather than merely pointed to as the kind of thing that must be tolerated despite its immorality. The argument has, however, been made that the law as it is prohibits some…

> It was an immoral act done as far as I can tell, for immoral purposes

The immoral purpose of letting the people know of the crimes that the US army has committed?

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#279

Post by matsdb »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #82

Wikileaks has a faultless record. They’ve never had to retract a publication. Assange, like him not not, was a reporter, who reported uncomfortable facts about the military and our ruling class. He is being punished, tortured really for this “crime”. He has been endlessly and baselessly slandered. All that alleged bad behaviour while he was imprisoned in the embassy ... funny how there’s been no footage of it, despit…

> Many newspapers had huge scoops thanks to Wikileaks, but have now turned on them. A particularly striking example is the supposedly liberal Guardian.

There's a Norwegian conservative newspaper who (somehow) got access to all the cable gate documents [1], and benefited tremendously on it - but now won't speak up about how Julian Assange is being treated.

(Sorry about the norwegian news article)

[1] https://finansavisen.no/nyheter/politikk/2010/12/aftenposten...

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#280

Post by mikojan »

lisper wrote: post #211
Lammy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declaring who is and is not a valid journalist is not a path we, or any society, should go down.

Declaring who is and is not a valid journalist is essential to democracy. The failure to distinguish journalism from propaganda is in no small measure responsible for the mess we're currently in.

There is no distinction. Everybody has an agenda. NYT for example openly(!) supported HRC in the last election. (And that is a good thing.)
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