• derphurr@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    His lawyer in Sweden to help him avoid the rape charges extradition who got into the embassy as his lawyer and secretly got pregnant twice and had two children while Assange was in an embassy annoying everyone… That married him in 2022.

    The only good thing about her is that she doesn’t sound like a Russian operative like Assange and whatever the fuck happened to WikiLeaks.

    In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records.

    WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68 gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry, according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.

    In the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of potentially damaging emails about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign, information the U.S. intelligence community believes was hacked as part of a Kremlin-directed campaign. Assange’s role in publishing the leaks sparked allegations that he was advancing a Russian-backed agenda.

    • ralphio@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      So the argument from Assange was that all relevant information from the cache was already public from previous publication. The entire cache was public when FP published the article you’re referring to so they could have pointed out what was actually worth reporting if there was anything.

      Here’s the article for everyone else:

      https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/

      The point about the 2012 Syria emails is more interesting, but the whole point about Wikileaks running cover for Russia never made a lot of sense to me since they have published damaging info about Russia.

      ETA: I’d be remiss not to mention that the discussion of Assange’s biases is a red herring to the real problem which is the US’s attempt to criminalize publication of state secrets.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If this was reddit, it would be full of the admin approved “factual opinion” with a wave of deleted & hidden comments, and banned users.

      This is miles better than getting force-fed actual propaganda.

    • spez_@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Agreed. I’ve been blocking these accounts. People really do have brain rot. Absolutely stupid dumb fuck idiots. I hate them all

      • derphurr@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Lol the guy who registers fediverse username with live letter to Reddit. Lol. Go back you bot lover

      • davel@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Not a fan of the first amendment, I take it? Not only did Assange not break any US laws, he wasn’t even within US jurisdiction at the time.

          • davel@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            The Guardian, Nov. 2022: ‘Publishing is not a crime’: media groups urge US to drop Julian Assange charges: First outlets to publish WikiLeaks material, including the Guardian, come together to oppose prosecution

            The letter:

            Publishing is not a crime: The US government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.

            Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel – published a series of revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks that made the headlines around the globe.

            “Cablegate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US state department, disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.

            In the words of the New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.

            For Julian Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks, the publication of “Cablegate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On [April 11th] 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organised crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum-security prison.

            This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.

            The Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DoJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during world war one), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.

            This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press.

            Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.

            Twelve years after the publication of “Cablegate”, it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.

            Publishing is not a crime.

            The editors and publishers of:
            The New York Times
            The Guardian
            Le Monde
            Der Spiegel
            El País

            • Pronell@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Okay.

              Make that argument in court.

              I know there are lots of people who disagree with me. I’m okay with that. But I’m also in no position to make a difference here.

              What he did wasn’t publishing. He dumped sensitive data. In my opinion.

              It’s just silly to think he doesn’t have to deal with the trial. If he is innocent, let the fucking system decide that.

              I can think that Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange did brave things and still think they should stand trial.

              In Assange’s case I think he went way way too far, but was still brave.

              I’m mostly annoyed by all this yammering that there is one true opinion here and that everyone else is deluded, as if this wasn’t a huge event with ongoing consequences.

              Nuance is important if you’re gonna understand anyone’s viewpoints.