We argue semantics around incidents like this when it comes down to: people doing bad stuff and trying to hide it.
If anything, these laws are completely broken. People should never be punished for exposing bad actors, period. Imagine if that ever happened. Maybe governments and companies would think twice before acting illegally/immorally.
Governments do not want these incidents to happen because they want to keep doing it in secrecy and they enact laws to make uncovering these schemes illegal. Arguing if that's illegal or not is missing the whole point. It will never be legal in a corrupt society like ours.
I mean I don’t blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia but he isn’t a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for countries that don’t directly threaten his life.
This argument is completely nonsensical, this idea that who revealed the crime matters more than the actual crime.
What does it matter who "influenced" him, if the information was legit? And is it your opinion that none of this information should be released unless it covers all countries equally? Do you honestly think he should have thought, I can't reveal this crime until I find an equal Russian crime, for equality. What a wonderful, open world that would be! Utterly ridiculous.
This is the same stupidity as "Hunter's laptop". It allows the Idiocracy to dismiss anything because "the Russians!".
Because they may have influenced the timing and content of the leaks to further their own ends. Revealing sensitive information is not a neutral act. It has consequences far beyond the exposure of bad actors.
Grow up.
The underlying principle is the rule of law and the Constitution codifies the powers of the government with legislation codifying more details. That’s why the government is accountable to you, not because of your tax dollars. If you are a citizen who doesn’t need to pay any taxes, the government should be as equally accountable to you as to the very wealthy because of the rule of law and everyone being equal to it.
...yes. That's what a job is. There are also off-duty codes of conduct employees must adhere to.
That’s why the government is accountable to you, not because of your tax dollars.
I didn't say my taxes are why they're accountable. I said my taxes are why I want any and all evil actions taken by them exposed.
Again, we’re aligned on that. But the “ma taxes” argument is facile because for nearly 100 years there wasn’t even income tax so it was secondary taxes through purchases or tariffs. As for off duty codes, there usually aren’t any meaningful ones and they generally are very constrained by the legal system (eg they can’t punish you for political activity). It’s the same reason someone standing up to a politician and screaming “my taxes fund your salary” is blatantly incorrect. The economy is a circular dependent system. For example, government tax dollars pay corporations which then pay your salary which you then get taxed on. You’re over privileging your personal role in the economic system when you make this argument and then the next follow up argument is “well I pay more taxes than you so I should get more of a say than you in how government is run”. It’s a flawed premise that leads to all sorts of directly harmful lines of reasoning. Just argue that we’re a country based on the rule of law and no one is above that. That’s literally the founding principle of the country.
For consistency, you should then feel guilty that criminals use the roads we’ve built. After all that was government dollars used to create jobs infrastructure that murderers use to travel to kill their victim and to escape justice. And what about guns in the first place. Government tax dollars go to sustaining those gun manufacturers in the first place, otherwise we wouldn’t have guns for our military. Those guns are then used for murder and all sorts of bad things. And heck, the internet was created through government funding and many big tech companies make a lot of money from the government and that’s got a lot of crime and victimization that happens. So you should feel guilty about that too.
However, for me, personal feelings about him should not matter in this case. It's a question of how our society treats people that expose bad actors. He's a flawed human being like every other one, but what he did was not wrong even if deemed illegal (by the justice system from the exposed party, who would've guessed).
When presented with evidence of her infidelity, her first and only reaction, "Who sent you those screenshots?! It was Sarah, wasn't it? You know she hates me. Why are you talking to her?!"
IDGAF if Russia and China do the same things. I ASSUME they do them.
The west enjoys the "free world" moniker and the distinction it implies. It should be held to an accordingly higher standard.
Agree with it, I want to read news about different countries, but it looks like the people\bots are obsessed with Russia on reddit.
Also it's interesting to see how people react to the same news about civilian deaths. People are happy when Russian civilians die. I with these forums had a feature to hide/swap country names in a news/posts so people can realize how evil they are.
You know what's even more exhausting? Russia being so bad.
Also, whining about 'relentless "Russia bad!" parroting'.
The way to end the "parroting" is for Russia to stop being bad.
Not saying Russia doesn't engage in propaganda attempts, but they are more or less irrelevant for any domestic discussion then and now.
He directly participated in stealing a bunch of classified information with Manning.
It only ends the argument of whether or not there is still a legal case against him.
I've always found this claim to be extremely shrill — and doubly so now. This is the same country that just agreed to let him plead guilty in exchange for, essentially, time served (~5 years). It's also the same country whose president commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence down to 7 years.
Your basic claim is not an unreasonable one: people plead guilty because they'd rather take the deal than face the possibility of a worse outcome at trial. But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?
> It's also the same country whose president commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence down to 7 years.
The same country who may have a different president come November with a history of calling the Assange case a priority.
Why would anyone feel safe relying on the luck of the draw of the president at any given time to get out of what was an initial utterly extreme sentence?
> But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?
When the US stops sentencing people to 35 years like with Chelsea Manning's initial sentence, and there's been a long period without e.g. illegal rendition flights, when Guantanamo Bay has been closed for a few decades and no new camps have taken it's place etc. Maybe when a couple of generations have passed, in other words.
Actually acknowledging and prosecuting the war crimes that were exposed would be a good start.
It’s a difficult area of research, but there are various law schools[0] and charities[1] trying to help people who took pleas because they feared a harsher sentence if they couldn’t adequately defend themselves.
0 - https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE.... 1 - https://innocenceproject.org/
People have breaking points.
And then you'll enjoy more experiences of aggressively-expansionist governments, Houthi-like groups, and the equivalent of Haitian gangs and Sudanese militias, all over the world, fighting to advance their leaders' own narrow parochial desires wherever they think they can get away with it. They'll be using WhatsApp, Starlink, and cheap drones in their efforts, and enlisting like-minded allies.
You'll find yourself looking back wistfully on the days of the Pax Americana, which for nearly 80 years has maintained a flawed but workable rules-based international order. That's even granting that the U.S. has done some bad things — on occasion, very bad things — in furtherance of its own perceived interests and those of some of its powerful interest groups.
1. There is no other country (not even close) that could be trusted with that amount of power (especially considering size)
2. Held up the (illusion of) “neutral” international institutions like the UN. They barely worked in the presence of a “benevolent” power, and will probably completely lose relevance to anarchy and the “right of the stronger” (on local levels), shall the US hegemony subside.
Then on the other hand the US has started undermining their own most important principles:
1. 1971: Removing the gold convertability from the $
2. 9/11: Starting to spy on each and everyone, eastern germany/soviet-style
3. Removing personal freedoms during COVID (not as severe as other countries, though)
If it weren’t for silicon valley, the us would already look like a stagnating state where the economy is mainly driven by government spending. The problem is larping EU socialism will only yield even worse results in the US, since the government seems to be even less efficient.
On the other hand the US is also one of the few countries that have turned around non-violently in the past. Attractiveness for international talent is still immense. So with a few adjustments I’m pretty sure it could be turned around
I would go even further and blame the state of the developing countries on the west too, because their selfish competetivly oriented globalisation left them as vasals since the end of colonization.
This is actually the sadest part, what will remain of this hegemony: a world order made by and for the corrupt. Maybe china makes it better since they resisted IMF, WHO, etc but i have my doubts.
Not that the United States isn't flawed or doesn't do hypocritical or unilateral diplomacy (Israel or anything related to communism, & I guess installing/supporting dictators that support US interests), but is it too much to ask if you can provide me a few examples where the US acted like an exploitative colonial power that hindered developing countries (at least in the past 80 years)?
It looks like china is trying the same thing the west did after WW2: debt trap diplomacy. [0]
The linked article focuses alot on china in a negative way but the origin of debt trap diplomacy began with the bretton wood institutions (IMF, WHO, world bank) in 1944 and resulted in the debt crises of 1980s [1,2] and the globalized developing countries. These institutions where handing out massive loans meant for development but bound to sometimes very harsh economic reforms [3,4]. The effect was not the promised growth but the debt crises and the (imo intentional) economic opening of resource rich but otherwise poor countries to the well developed economies of the west.
Afaik the US did not directly acted as an expoitative power but hindered developing countries as a proxy for multinational corporations. Like for chiquita banana in latin america or for shell in nigeria [5,6].
This story is decades old, explains well the current corrupt-but-useful leaders all over the southern world and i dont even have to go into the petrodollar and its meaning for small oil exporting countries. The US/the west is imo very responsible for the global state of affairs and the gain of power/wealth is the only explaination for the development we took. This is my bridge to exploitation but propably not the smoking gun you where looking for. This topic is so vast to just focus on a single country.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy
[1] https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_debt_crisis
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20100226180656/http://www.africa...
[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2010/12/10/how-shell-infil...
"Freedom" — to be ruled by armed gangs battling for territory (Haiti, Sudan)? To be imprisoned or even killed for disagreeing with the ruling regime (Iran, Russia, China, North Korea)? Or for not wearing the proper head covering as a woman (Iran)? To be poisoned or thrown out a window because you're on the autocrat's shit list? That's certainly "worse," but it's hardly "material conditions."
If you want real "worse material conditions," ask yourself whether North Korean commoners think that their "freedom" makes up for the deprivations that they endure.
The U.S. has been the de facto world policeman for going on 80 years now. Not entirely, but on the whole, the world has been the better for it. Sometimes police make mistakes. Sometimes police are venal or corrupt or vicious. But a world without police would be Haiti, writ large.
Those are all conditions that exist in the current state of the world, so clearly US hegemony doesn't prevent them. The US intervenes only where it serves its interests to do so, and happily cosies up with equally vicious regimes (e.g. Saudi Arabia) when that serves their interests.
I'll take a world where my country has to pay for our own defence, even if it means higher taxes for me, over one where US personnel can kill someone like me and the US will give them a getaway flight with no repercussions.
By that reasoning, murder, robbery, etc., all exist everywhere, so clearly the existence of police forces doesn't prevent them — so sure, let's get rid of the police and other law-enforcement agencies. (Or more succinctly: Half a loaf ....)
> I'll take a world where my country has to pay for our own defence, even if it means higher taxes for me, over one where US personnel can kill someone like me and the US will give them a getaway flight with no repercussions.
If you can make such a world happen, you're of course free to do so. Until then, you might consider acknowledging that the U.S. — for its own mixed reasons, to be sure — provides the key support for an international rules-based order that, on the whole (and with tragic exceptions), has allowed billions of people to live better lives than they would have otherwise.
Right, to justify police forces you have to actually show that they don't cause more crime than they prevent, and by a big enough margin to make it worth the trouble.
> you might consider acknowledging that the U.S. — for its own mixed reasons, to be sure — provides the key support for an international rules-based order that, on the whole (and with tragic exceptions), has allowed billions of people to live better lives than they would have otherwise.
Every gang chief or warlord (including some of the examples you specifically picked out as bad places to live) makes that kind of argument.
I realize that other countries act similarly in terms of foreign policy when they can. Germany hasn't exactly covered itself in glory either. I'm not just referring to the Nazi era. But I am not at all as pessimistic about the multipolar future that probably lies ahead of us as some others are.
Not sure where you live, friend. And perhaps America never should have attempted to be world’s policeman. Neither an international awareness nor an appreciation for the subltiew of diplomacy have never been America’s strong suit.
But rest assured it is tired and over such a role, with two plus decades of military veterans having seen up close and personally how ugly the world can be in places.
Perhaps you are merely a troll but I’m guessing you have seen the most recent trendlines on this planet. They don’t look good. And it appears will get exactly what you seek.
Enjoy…
and a good thing that was too, exposing our government's wrongdoing and lies
What exactly of value was exposed?
People occasionally talk about this tactic as being a bit of a morally grey zone but under cover journalism with an intention of leaking information (if they get their hands on it) do happen from times to times.
I get the feeling if they'd joined the Swedish military and leaked national secrets, things would not have worked out so nicely for them.
That's what Assange was accused of, not being in the military, but actively conspiring with the leaker to steal the documents rather than merely receiving the leaked documents.
...but when handed documents from one another foreign government refuses to publish them
and then it becomes obvious that the leaks were targeting liberal Swedish politicians facing election versus conservative candidates favored by that same one particular other foreign government...
I don't understand why people don't see wikileaks as anything other than a proxy Russian foreign intelligence operation.
Apparently Wikileaks were given documents that had already leaked elsewhere before and refused to publish them because their purpose is novel leaks, not repeating leaks from elsewhere. That has been spun into a narrative that they refused leaks because they are biased, without much evidence.
When there are a lot of disingenuous arguments like this being made to discredit someone that turn out to be unreasonable once you dig a little deeper, like we see with Wikileaks and Assange, it generally is a strong suggestion someone is trying to manipulate people into believing a false narrative.
You know that Russia isn't happy with someone when they end up dead. If the Russian files that Wikileaks published didn't make Russia happy, Assange would be in a box right now, and not headed home.
The result from the political fallout was creation of one of the four constitutional laws that exist in Sweden, the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1949.
One result of that is that if a military personal were to leak information to the press, the journalist would by law be forbidden to ever disclose who that person was. The journalist can be sent to jail if they just happen to disclose it, and must take active steps to prevent it.
The publisher themselves must have the intention to inform the public. If that is true, then the constitution allows the publisher to ignore any other Swedish law like national secret classification for the act of publishing (explicit right given in the constitution).
Legal professors were discussing the situation back during the initial periods when the leaks occurred that Julian Assange now has plead guilty for. The conclusion was that he can not get charged for disclosing national defense information. The constitution do not allow that. He could be charged for conspiring to steal documents (ie, hacking), if the original whistle blower did not have access to the documents in the first place and had material help from the journalist or if they paid the whistle blower to steal the documents (proportional to that action). Conspiracy charges are quite messy however, and since military personal are under different legal laws than civilians, the consensus was unclear if such conspiracy charges is possible, and what if any punishment is available for the courts.