But those were always false even considering only the overt facts, and without the US issuing an extradition request (which there is still no indication it has, though there is an administrative error that seems to indicate that there is a sealed indictment); depending on the point in his flight from criminal process you examine, he was always either going to face the Swedish extradition request and/or the British bail jumping charges once he wasn't shielded from British authorities.
Now though he’s wanted by British police for avoiding arrest, which is a different felony.
That puts him under the control of the UK government, which are very likely to agree to any extradition requests the US may send.
They haven't completely dropped the charges. They've dropped the investigation, canceled the arrest warrant and aren't seeking extradition. But if he visits Sweden before the statute of limitations runs out then he can technically still be brought in for questioning and the investigation can be re-opened.
Even leaks like the Stratfor files are certainly in the best interests of the "little guy," if anyone actually gives a shit about them.
But if "all a man is, is what others say of him," then by watching the news, Assange is just a Russian agent.
Or maybe my left-leaning echo chamber is portraying him as that, and the alt-right bubble sees him as a Russian agent?
It'd be interesting to compare notes... is there a service for matching up people in different bubbles so we can compare facts?
Really I have the feeling that they have gotten played like a goddamn fiddle by the intelligence agencies - after they faced the right turning against them for believing what their lying eyes were telling them about Trump's blatant Putin connections. So they are trying to save their behind after they were the brunt of rightful left-wing grudges over things like the Iraq intelligence, spying on activists, and spying on everyone pissing off the general public that doesn't drink the red white and blue "we need to destroy our freedoms to save them" koolaid.
I'm personally of a liberal of a 'free market but intervene when it works better and highly value civil rights' view who believes that the sheer dark history of the intelligence agencies makes the moderate option be to purge every last organization and make sure they never work in anything peripherally related again.
Strip away all labels and contexts and you would probably agree that an agency of torturers who trains dictators, overthrows democracies for short term petty economic interests at great suffering, invented depravities like 'rape dogs', and 'rectal feeding', practices torture despite knowing it doesn't work and more means that they deserve far worse.
Currently, the alt-right does not see him as a Russian agent, because Russia doesn't meddle in elections and stuff. That's just crazy talk propaganda. They are dangerous with some nuclear stuff so we have to build more nukes. But they are good in Syria and we need to either step away completely from that shit-show or give them a hand and fight on their side. It's complicated.
The left-leaning have Assange see him as a tool of right-wing US politics which are 100% bought by Russian oligarchs, or maybe the US politics bought the Russian oligarchs. It's unclear.
Questions?
Whatever you do, do not cross the streams. Gotta keep both (can never have more than 2 sides in a debate! that's we call it bi-partisan! have you heard of tri-partisan?! Is that some kind of cheese?! lol) sides hot and angry. Don't mind the man behind the curtain.
You're just like Mitch McConnell calling for bipartisanship and fairplay after years of crap. Completely disingenuous.
if you can read in any flattering from me on either red or blue, I don't know what to say.
And I'm poking fun of the whole "calling for bipartisanship" for ignoring that there might be more than two parts to any one issue, and then you compare me to (red team) Mitch McConnell!
Handing over the microphone to you, my comedy act can't match this. How's that knee?
I'm wondering why the downvotes though? Do we not understand that we inhabit bubbles?
Bubbles are what OTHER people inhabit, see. We're all special and unique free-thinkers immune to unconscious biases. Or something.
One of the most interesting aspect of the assange story is how the news industry celebrated assange in the early part of the 2010s and then started to demonize him in the past few years. It was all so sudden as if someone flipped a switch and everyone got on the same message.
It's also interesting how sexual assault accusations were used to take down assange just like it was used for kavanaugh.
The DNC/Podesta leaks were timed specifically to cause maximum negative effect to Clinton and the Democrats.
Then there's the lack of curation in some of the leaks. A lot of personal data that shouldn't be public by any means (e.g. medical information, sexual identity) has been leaked by Wikileaks. There is a limit to what information should be open and available to the public.
I also can't help but feel like they've stopped being transparency campaigners and whistleblowers, and now do it for the social media spectacle and publicity. Just look at how they released Vault 7, with their viral cryptic posts before the release. Wikileaks feels more like a media agency than a group of transparency crusaders these days.
What's wrong with this? Assange didn't steal this information, he just published it. That's the freedom of speech.
Also, US wants to prosecute Assange not because of leak of personal information, but rather because of political reasons. Only because he is against the wars that US started in the Middle East.
Wikileaks has always been anti-US, when they finally manage to deliver a good punch they’re suddenly a bad actor?
> also can't help but feel like they've stopped being transparency campaigners and whistleblowers, and now do it for the social media spectacle and publicity. Just look at how they released Vault 7, with their viral cryptic posts before the release. Wikileaks feels more like a media agency than a group of transparency crusaders
Publicity brings more leaks. They’re simply doing a good job.
If the best a state level actor can do to "bring down" a person, they'd most likely manage something more untoward than "had consensual sex with someone, but questionable consent over the use of a condom".
I think that more points to a narcissistic type, than a conspiracy on a state bent on character assassination.=
The FBI apparently sent agents to other countries trying to frame Assange. Iceland told them to fuck off: www.katoikos.eu/interview/icelandic-minister-who-refused-cooperation-with-the-fbi-ogmundur-jonasson-in-an-interview.html
Many also claim Assange has proof he was conspired against, or at least was innocent: https://abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/julian-assange-goes-publi...
And well, as someone who grew up in Australia, that article is full of nothings:
- while 'rape' is used repeatedly, no-one, including either the woman involved, nor the prosecutor has ever claimed that rape or non-consensual sex occurred, only that there was a "disagreement about the use of condoms".
- In the statement Mr Assange says he has been subjected to "six years of unlawful, politicised detention without charge" - well, yes. He does say that. Others say he has subjected _himself_ to detention and exile.
- these are all claims of Assange, who hasn't released any of the text messages, just said "he has [some, but not all] of them
So when you say "Many also claim", the more accurate statement is "Assange claims".
1-https://medium.com/@helen.buyniski/free-julian-assange-or-yo...
And it is how propaganda works. There is no coordination between the 5 or 6 or however many media outlets but it seems as if there is turn almost based on how quickly he went from a martir to Russian puppet in just a year or less.
Same thing kind of happened to Greenwald though to a lesser degree.
What evidence do you have for that claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
It's well known and has good research on how multiple media outlets can produce the same output basically.
Did you mean they do explicitly coordinate? I haven't seen or heard of that happening. Not that it's impossible.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-06/prism-prob...
https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/803464221786677248?s...
Technically free to leave the embassy, so it's not a false statement. But would definitely be arrested and extradited if he did, so it's not quite a fair statement either.
Also found this article which said he wouldn't be prosecuted by the U.S. in 2013: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...
Also, lol @ this article from a right wing publication: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/27936-trump.... I wonder what the spin will be now that Trump's administration is going after Assange?
Indeed.
>But would definitely be arrested and extradited
Who has ever denied that he'd be arrested? To say that he'd definitely be extradited is speculation.
It's still not at all clear that he will be prosecuted by the US, so I can't see anything particularly silly about someone predicting in 2013 -- before the Russian links were widely known -- that Assange would not be prosecuted by the US.
The New American does not appear to be a serious publication. No doubt you can find people on the internet who've said silly things on all kinds of topics.
Don't forget tortured. Manning was tortured prior to trial, as determined by the UN following an investigation[1].
Indeed, Manning attempted suicide twice under this "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" (words from the UN).
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...
Unclear what article you are referring to in the 'staying for attention' reference.
> February 2016 - A UN panel rules that Mr Assange has been "arbitrarily detained" by UK and Swedish authorities since 2010
Because there is just no logical reason why an accused should have the option of getting all charges dropped because somehow being prosecuted for them violates his rights?
The analogy with shooting someone is obviously different, in that shooting someone tends to be a violation of their rights. Arresting them when they skipped bail is not quite the same as a bullet to the head.
Are you saying it’s ok to let people off the hook for war-crimes, but reporting them should put you in prison?
What kind of society would that be? Certainly not one I would want to live in.
Somehow, Assange managed to turn that prospect into the self-inflicted and unlimited golden cage that is the Ecuadorian Embassy. Guy's a true genius...
The OP's claim was that people are saying he is free to leave. I'm saying that is technically true, but I agree it isn't in reality.
But I dont't think any sensible commentator has ever made the claim the OP is referring to.
If a WP headline from 2013 saying "Julian Assange unlikely to face U.S. charges over publishing classified documents" is the limits of that argument, then I think it's fair to say that is much weaker then any claim that "he is practically free to go". In addition, maybe he was free to go in 2013, but a lot has happened since then which may have led to more charges being possible.
If they can capture that audience and reinforce their beliefs, that is I suppose more effective than really trying to change how people think.
Which part of that article seems to be political propaganda? It seems to be a decently piece of reporting on justice department thinking at the time?
There are some good articles but I personally would not rely upon the paper's content as accurate unless all of the facts and assertions were independently verified elsewhere.
I personally am strongly anti-Trump but also broadly dislike both major parties, so citing a WaPo article that is unfair to Trump sounds to many people like I must be a rabid Trump supporter. But in reality I'm just someone who wants journalism to be journalism and focus on facts and strives to do analysis that would be respected by people on all sides of an issue politically.
The decline in quality and shift to partisan and sloppy reporting is the most dire consequence of the Trump era. It's impacted the big newspapers the most. I think part of it is that they feel responsible for getting him elected, but part of it is that their new way of thinking about their KPIs rewards them for writing anti-Trump clickbait.
So they are at once reinforcing Trump's ability to control the news cycle and make whatever story he wants front page news, while writing coverage in a way that loses the trust and respect of anyone whose goal of reading news is non-partisan or even partisan from the other major party perspective. Sadly this allows Trump and orgs like Fox to be viewed by some as the only form of true news. It's really horrible.
No political party or news org benefits from any common ground or shared truth, they all benefit from loyal fans who pay them a monthly subscription fee for content that is mostly entertainment. This is the Fox News model, but it's now been adopted by the WaPo and NYT in their own way. They still do produce some very solid journalism, but it took the NYT several years to write the story on Trump's inherited wealth (which was excellent) while in the meantime it published a LOT of garbage stories every day that fanned the partisan flames and generated revenue while providing zero journalistic value.
This has always been a problem (TV news was making the shift long before print media) but it's only gotten worse. It became impossible to ignore in 2016, but it was building before that.
I hear that the WSJ is still fairly reliable (if you ignore the opinion columns), and FT as well. But I can't confirm, because I'm part of the problem and I don't pay for news either.
I really love Eliezer Yudkowsky's concept of least convenient possible worlds as a heuristic for evaluating the sorts of truth claims made or implied by politicians (and often echoed by journalists).
We are drawn to belief systems that make hard decisions easy, but what if some of the assumptions we take for granted are less clear cut. So the exercise is to imagine the least convenient world, one in which a key idea or conviction we lean on for other aspects of our belief system is completely incorrect.
In my view we should not expect journalistic work to strengthen existing convictions but to challenge them and add empathy and nuance to our views of the world.
Likely for the same reason that they don't actually care about the cost-effectiveness (or even statistical effectiveness) of their medical treatments. Their stated goal, learning about what's going on in the world, is not the same as their actual hidden goal.
Hypothesizing here, but a few possible reasons why people might not care that much about finding the truth in the news:
* They are more interested in having the news support their preconceptions about the world -- which are in turn based on whatever benefits them most -- so they can then use the media as "evidence" in persuasion, arguments, and other political conversations * They believe that having "their" news channels dominate the public sphere will lead others to passively accept their tribe's opinions, which then has benefits for them * They are eager to reinforce their own beliefs, choices, and biases so they can avoid the painful and expensive process of reassessing their beliefs and reconfiguring their life around those new beliefs
Again, this is all conjecture, but it is moderately supported by the anger that people hold toward news outlets that cater to the opposition.
> In my view we should not expect journalistic work to strengthen existing convictions but to challenge them and add empathy and nuance to our views of the world.
We should, and those of us who think about these things will. But sadly most of us won't. The incentives aren't there, and they likely won't be there until it's too late. Thus the endless cycles of conflict throughout history.
Both are very sorry excuses for journalism.
I don't think anyone has ever seriously claimed anything else.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/26/russi...
The KGB was trying to sponsor the Civil Rights movement to weaken the US. What I mean by it being a lie even when it is true is that the statement implies that the movement is fabricated or unworthy by their support. It is a distraction.
In reality the merit of groups exist completely independent of who sponsors it and even giving money is no guarantee of control. Even if the KGB gave millions to Martin Luther King that wouldn't make fighting segregation the wrong thing to do suddenly any more than accepting Soviet funding of a smallpox vaccination means that eradicating smallpox is suddenly wrong.
It is especially bad since it is used to discredit /the movement/ itself as opposed to any actor being questionable. Martin Luther King cheating on his wife didn't make the civil rights movement wrong.