631–640 of 1001 posts
Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything. But it’s great he’s free, or it sounds like.
> Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything. He didn't serve 12 years. He locked himself in his room for 7, then he actually served 5.
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Personally I'm more or less ambivalent whether he walks free or not today, what matters is deterrence is established.
Congratulations! I share in the popular jubilation and sense of epoch-making reconciliation, that aligns with the stars, even tho I think Assange acted like an egotistical fool who squandered the great lens of transparency and accountability he had created through misjudged self-importance and vulnerability to manipulation by his sources for their own ends. Hopefully his Second Act brings good fruits without the thor…
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I'm personally glad that the Allies were able to keep the information about their plans to land on the beaches in Normandy from "being free", in order to catalyze their victory in WWII. But I think, charitably, what people mean when they say things like this is that more information should be free. And I think agree with that. But I'm not entirely convinced it applies to everything Assange is responsible for releasin…
Does this qualify as some sort of variation of Godwin's law? Keeping war crimes classified until everyone responsible is dead is not the same as keeping plans secret during a war. Hard to mix those two up to the point I'd say it was done in bad faith.
It's also worthy of outrage when keeping secrets leads to monsters escaping accountability.
But don't pretend it isn't the same thing! It would be very nice if all military secrets that get leaked were only of the "exposing war crimes" sort, but all that information is all mixed together with the "jeopardizing people and plans" information.
It's just not this clear cut "leaking is always good because information should be free" thing that a lot of people want it to be. It also isn't the clear cut "people who leak information are bad" that a lot of other people want it to be. It's a mix of good and bad and the details matter.
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What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a “real” Australian, and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints, looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?
Oz is like most places, there's a large number of people for whom thinking for themselves from an even vaguely informed position presents too much of a logistical challenge (re. literacy, education, breadth of interest, pretense to regular reading, range of sources, adequate life experience to judge bias, ready echo chamber availability, swamp of familiarity, etc.). The minority of people who are educated, do hold br…
When the people whose specific jobs and lives revolve around the topic have a contrary opinion you should probably take more seriously. Those who don't and elevate their opinions are what we call cranks.
As a fellow aussie I'm proud of Assange. I am kind of surprised other Australians feel the same because we're kind of a nation of bootlickers. I'm curious what happens now though. If he returns to Australia. Is he actually going to have real freedom and privacy? Or is this going to be kind of superficial where everything he does is monitored by like 5 different agencies and he can't even use the Internet. Like, I've…
we arent bootlickers, thats just our politicians and business leaders.
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> At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent thing to do. (massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished) The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituen…
Have you actually read their policies? There are plenty of big changes. Maybe you are referring to them not stating that they will change taxes significantly? Well, yeah no shit. a) they can't, taxes are at their highest level since WW2, and b) they don't want to destabilise things like Truss did. I think his biggest issue is that his voice sounds a bit wet and that makes people think he is wet.
- Scrapping private schools charitable status
- Ending the two-child benefit limit
- Ending tuition fees
- Increasing income tax for the top five per cent of earners
- Nationalising public services
- Reforming the House of Lords
> Julian Assange has embarked on flight VJ199 to Saipan. If all goes well it will bring him to freedom in Australia. But his travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: he will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for the charter flight. He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia.
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My issue is that he was influenced by Russia. Aka they threatened his life and he then proceeded to leak information about the US but keep Russian secrets. I mean I don’t blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia but he isn’t a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for countries that don’t directly threaten his life.
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Not everything is russian propaganda. A lot of the internet is, but them getting it right one time, or WikiLeaks and russian state assets having the same goals for a period of time, or russian propaganda getting a boost out of WikiLeaks does not mean WikiLeaks is russian propaganda. If the US didn't want to fuel russian propaganda with crimes against humanity, they shouldn't have fucking committed crimes against huma…
Raising awareness about government surveillance is a laudable goal but it does not seem to be that of Wikileaks. How does publishing Clinton's or Macron's campaign e-mails reveal anything about government surveillance? Unlike most human right groups, for example, that cover human rights abuses no matter who the abuser is, Wikileaks consistently acts in ways that further the cause of Russia and maximize the damage done to adversaries of Russia.
Getting allies Trump and Le Pen to power in the USA and in France is a goal of Putin, this is not a secret. https://x.com/TheoLaubry/status/1512009330991763457/photo/1