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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#931

Post by peterashford »

jorblumesea wrote: post #840
drojas wrote: post #764

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more an…

The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised. Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing…

Embarrassing the US is worth being jailed for years or being extradited to a country where you don't reside and are not a citizen and being tried for sedition in said country?

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#932

Post by peterashford »

qsdf38100 wrote: post #895
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Assange operated in any kind of self-interest per-se, I think he operated based on a principle of maximum transparency. I definitely don't think that is always a positive thing but I struggle to think of anything which Assange leaked which I really disagree with. Probably some parts of cablegate should not have come out as they were very "inside baseball" talk between diplomats and were too easily const…

Well, maximum transparency on why he never published anything significant on Russia would be great. To me it's a very bad smell when you pretend to fight for press freedom and democratic values, but never say anything bad about regimes where presidents-for-life are extinguishing the free press and poisoning opposition leaders. It's like these all the crazy conspiracy theories that flourished online during the last de…

What evidence do you have of information about Russia which he refused to publish?

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#933

Post by epanchin »

nikkwong wrote: post #850

Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive? Assange certainly did great work to reveal government corruption and abuses of power. At the same time, some state secrets are best kept secret for national interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of regard for protecting this type of information. It often seemed that he was working in his own self interest rather tha…

In a democratic society, laws should exist to protect state secrets.

Assange’s imprisonment was widely considered to be caused not by democratically formed laws, but by the whims of politics.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#937

Post by guappa »

pavlov wrote: post #712
d_burfoot wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not a country which should have any influence whatsoever outside its borders I wholly agree, as an American citizen

Be careful what you ask for. The United Kingdom went from a country with enormously outsized global influence to just another European nation. The downward spiral has been stark. The economy stagnates, more and more people live in poverty, and voters decided to inflict further self-harm by cutting themselves off from economic treaties with neighbors based on an illusion of self-importance. If America ends up in the s…

> The economy stagnates, more and more people live in poverty

If the only way to sustain that was to starve people in india… perhaps it is good to learn how to survive on one's own means instead?

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#938

Post by lmm »

frereubu wrote: post #503

I'd encourage people to read this excellent piece in the London Review of Books by someone who was contracted to ghostwrite Assange's autobiography, and who initially felt very sympathetic towards the aims of Assange and Wikileaks: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost... I found it very insightful and nuanced when it comes to Assange and his motivations, presenting him as neither hero nor vill…

That was indeed interesting, although his claim that the rape charges were a separate issue that had nothing to do with the US trying to get hold of him, and that Assange made a mistake by not going to Sweden to fight them, has aged pretty badly.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#939

Post by guappa »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #734
impossiblefork wrote: post #443

This isn't something good though, in fact it's really bad. He's actually agreed to confess to something which the US should have no legal authority over. We must remember that the US are torturers who tortured people here in Sweden, right at Bromma airport, even after specifically agreeing not to torture them. It is not a country which should have any influence whatsoever outside its borders; and this is someone who…

Sweden is a country that enthusiastically supported the Nazi regime. If we are comparing crimes I think Sweden should also stay within it's own borders. Yet the calls from Swedes for the US to provide more Ukraine aid are deafening at this point. Swedes want the US to intervene when it benefits them, regardless of their chest-beating. Where is the criticism from Swedes when Russia murders its own journalists or China…

> impress upon your countrymen to stay away from NATO

Well well well… the request to join NATO was done just a few months BEFORE the election, after several changes of government since the previous elections.

People in power specifically didn't want the people's opinion about that one.

But just to be on the safe side, they also did a lot of mediatic fear mongering about russia invading sweden very soon™, which is ludicrous if you look at a map and see that there's a sea in between.

Anyway in sweden the ruling class had wanted to join NATO for at least 10 years, if not more. But the people would have not liked severe welfare cuts to buy expensive bombs. However the invasion of ukraine provided the perfect excuse.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#940

Post by guappa »

impossiblefork wrote: post #748
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is a country that enthusiastically supported the Nazi regime. If we are comparing crimes I think Sweden should also stay within it's own borders. Yet the calls from Swedes for the US to provide more Ukraine aid are deafening at this point. Swedes want the US to intervene when it benefits them, regardless of their chest-beating. Where is the criticism from Swedes when Russia murders its own journalists or China…

How do you mean that we are to have enthusiastically supported the Nazis? We even warned the Soviet Union of Operation Barbarossa, using information we obtained from cracked Nazi codes. When one of my grandparents fled Norway due to the Nazis they were given asylum. During WWII Sweden was led by a political coalition consisting of the peasant's party and the social democrats, and in Germany, social democrat leadershi…

> How do you mean

He means like letting their troops cross sweden, sell iron to them, ask them to specially mark the documents of jews. Perhaps he's seen the photos that nazi and swedish soldiers were taking together at the time, on the border with occupied norway.

> Otherwise the social democrats wouldn't have flipped and had us join NATO

Or… hear me out… they're corrupt and got something from the owners of weapons factories?

They had been waiting for a literal casus belli for several years.

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