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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

#951

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This fact isn’t stated often enough. Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in the audio. And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s themselves, would be pointing what obviously looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight- not to mention brin…

> And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s

I don't remember the bystanders to the camera man being armed?

Also, the camera might look like a RPG barrel on the ground, not from the helicopter.

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

#952

He should not have spent all of this time being persecuted by the US government, but he should have been ostracized by the public long ago. I believe that if not for the prior, the latter would have occurred much more readily. > A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "W…

Given the complicated relationship at least between David Leigh and Julian Assange of which I have personal knowledge: If there are not tapes or video recordings, I would not trust the memory or perception of even a group of people around Assange.

Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?).

I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question.

To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows.

But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight.

And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.

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

#955
post #939

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…

> 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 lud…

> 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.

Perhaps you need a better map. Gotland is a prime target for Russians. Establishing air defense batteries on Gotland, along with capturing the Suwalki gap between Poland and Lithuania, are two key steps of invading the Baltics. Suwalki cuts the land supply route and Gotland the air and sea routes.

To prevent liberation of Gotland and keep Swedish armed forces busy, they would then terrorize the remaining parts of Sweden with drones and missile attacks on cities the same way they do in Ukraine. Even Sweden isn't rich enough to buy enough air defense systems for that, hence the need for NATO to get access to pooled resources.

It's a simple calculus.

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

#956

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sounds like overwhelming positive opinions... JULIAN!! The guy that embarrassed evil powers all over the world! What evil powers? Well, the US, the US, and... the US. I got down-voted by just mentioning he didn't release anything significant on Russia for some reason. I wouldn't be surprise if some of the massive support we're seeing here in this thread is not completely legit.

> What evil powers? Well, the US, the US, and... the US. How dare you Julian? No Russia or China is on the list? No! US can't be evil, only Russia/China can.

Notice how I didn’t say that the US can’t be evil.

US certainly can be, but, why stop there? Why not mention other evil powers while you’re at it?

Why focus on the US while Russia is going for textbook land grab à la Hitler?

Invading a country is very concerning, annexing it should considered unacceptable. Russia is doing the later.

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

#957

If you care about this news and you are able to do this financially, consider supporting Julian's fee for having have had to take a private plane for this entire process: > 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 gover…

>He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. Not permitted by who, and on what basis?

Once he was tried, convicted, sentenced and released in Saipan there can be no possible basis for restricting the mode of travel to "PJ or better".

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

#958
post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that price is real, and how much of it is grift?

This man spends almost five and a half years in prison fighting for press freedom and now you think he is suddenly a grifter? What planet do you live on or what U.S.Intel agency do you work for?

If you are going to beg for donations to pay for your private jet then I dont care if you are Mother Teresa, I am going to wonder if you are just grifting.

Wikileaks has $250mil in bitcoin, they could chip in a bit surely?

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

#959
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…

> we have lost control of our leadership

In what locale and at which time did humans have control of their leadership?

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

#960
post #45

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators…

Julian Assange, on his leaking of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants into the hands of the Taliban: "Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." that's rich coming from an informant.

If it has been leaked, then show me the name of one of the hundreds of names of Afghan informants that has been leaked.

You can't because no Afghan informant names were leaked.

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