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Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

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Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#81

Post by grandalf »

19eightyfour wrote: post #28
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo... Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also…

I don't know why people still support Assange so clearly. It was interesting to me that people on /r/The_Donald love Assange so much. Before this documentary, I posted there criticising Wikileaks and it was totally hated on. I find that weird because the idea that Assange is unreliable and fake, was the kind of somewhat-counter-main-narrative idea that I thought people of T_D would appreciate. They seem to see him as…

Donald Trump is completely irrelevant to my support of Assange.

Like many of his critics, you are making a lot of ad hominem attacks on Assange rather than focusing on his massive contributions to democracy and journalism.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#82

Post by grandalf »

matt4077 wrote: post #60
belorn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seem political when people criticize Assange political refuge to a embassy. There need to be some insight to show why it is not political. It also need to explain from a historical (ie scientifically) why the actions are not rational. I personally have collected enough reason to be very skeptical against such criticism. The first Swedish prosecutor dropped the case. When it was restarted by a second prosecutor, se…

It became a much bigger deal once he fled first Sweden, and then British jurisdiction. That set up it as a test of the powers of the legal systems of those countries. If you allow someone to escape prosecution simply by raising the costs/creating inconvenience, you all but guarantee others to try to do the same, and/or to lose faith in the equality of justice. Regarding the common conspiracy theories: always remember…

> If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#83

Post by grandalf »

belorn wrote: post #69
empath75 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am totally willing to believe that it was a setup by the CIA or some allied intelligence service. That said, once he was stuck in the embassy, he left himself vulnerable to being manipulated by the Russians and now it seems he is acting as a Russian agent. I think the us badly botched its handling of Wikileaks, Snowden and manning and allowed Putin to use them to his advantage.

The Russian deal has a fairly good explanation. Clinton made some very direct threats and attacks towards Assange in media after the diplomatic leaks, resulting in a personal vendetta between the two. All that talk about treating him as an enemy combatant, drone attacks, assassinations and so on has made it personal. In that context, if Russia gave him political ammunition then I am not very surprised that he used it…

> He is no more a neutral party when talking about Clinton than Clinton would be talking about Assange.

This may or may not be true, but it does not matter since the approach WL takes is to release materials in full without editorial discretion/bias.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#84

Post by Operyl »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #67
tzs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone tested several on Reddit using two different validators. There were some that failed validation with one of the validators. Details are in the document linked to in the Reddit submission. Here is the Reddit submission: https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/58w8nh/the_podes...

Yeah, but the author claims that they are valid at the end of the post. Also see: https://www.reddit.com/r/DNCleaks/comments/58v1if/dkim_verif...

I mean, you can go verify it yourself. This is the way I feel: even if some of them are valid, what prevents someone from adding in a bunch that aren't? Just because some are valid, doesn't make the entire dump valid imo.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#85

Post by grandalf »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo... Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also…

What difference does Assange's personality make?

If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not.

But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc.

I think we should all realize that Assange has shown us outrageous and deeply disturbing revelations about many governments, the US Government in particular. The scale, deceitfulness, and human toll revealed by this information is many orders of magnitude larger than any minor concerns about Assange's personality or personal conduct.

That this isn't obvious to more people is deeply troubling to me. How did we become so compliant, so loyal to a government that would do this? How can we allow this to happen? Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange?

I think the unfortunate answer is that Americans do not care that brown-skinned people are being murdered all over the world due to US policies, and that hundreds of thousands of children go to bed every night hearing the buzz of drone aircraft, terrified that their home might be targeted.

Assange has given American democracy the opportunity to have some teeth and to allow the basic decency of a free society to rise up and correct for some of the wrongs that were revealed, but instead we talk about Assange's personality quirks and use the hashtag resist in support of the most establishment politician since Dick Cheney.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#86

Post by brute »

matt4077 wrote: post #60
belorn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seem political when people criticize Assange political refuge to a embassy. There need to be some insight to show why it is not political. It also need to explain from a historical (ie scientifically) why the actions are not rational. I personally have collected enough reason to be very skeptical against such criticism. The first Swedish prosecutor dropped the case. When it was restarted by a second prosecutor, se…

It became a much bigger deal once he fled first Sweden, and then British jurisdiction. That set up it as a test of the powers of the legal systems of those countries. If you allow someone to escape prosecution simply by raising the costs/creating inconvenience, you all but guarantee others to try to do the same, and/or to lose faith in the equality of justice. Regarding the common conspiracy theories: always remember…

> always remember that he was arrested, then freed on bail, in both countries

That's not how I remember it, but given that it has been a long time (2010), I accept that my memory could fail me here, so I tried to google it.

Assange was questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation. He left Sweden about a month after the start of the investigations. The sources are a bit fuzzy then, Wikipedia writes: He left Sweden on 27 September 2010. According to one source his departure was with the permission of the Swedish authorities. Another source claims that the Swedish authorities notified Assange's lawyer of his imminent arrest on that same day.

So he was neither arrested in Sweden nor freed on bail in Sweden.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#87

Post by moomin »

somebehemoth wrote: post #73
reitanqild wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever. Sources? Because this is the exact opposite of what I read: that Swedish investigators had repeatedly refused to interview him there. Edit: I googled and I'm still convinced I'm right: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+inte... Edit2: unless someone can show sources moomins answe…

He was interviewed in the embassy by Swedish prosecutors[1][2][3][4]. 1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-poli... 2 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idU... 3 http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren... 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...

You're correct. Sorry, I misremembered.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#88

Post by unityByFreedom »

grandalf wrote: post #85
WhitneyLand wrote: post #26

I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo... Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also…

What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we…

> Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange?

Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.

Re: Wikileaks Documentary Makers Accuse Assange of Censorship

#89

Post by grandalf »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #88
grandalf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we…

> Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.

Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior.

We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd.

The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fighting age citizens...

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