I admit that I have never been Julian Assange's greatest fan. I met him once, and decided that I could not deal with him. Something made me uneasy, and on occasion, you have to act on instinct.
That said, his treatment by governments in the UK, US and maybe elsewhere, has been utterly inappropriate. So, I welcome his effective release today.
But I would still not handle the materials he leaked because I am not convinced he helped his cause by doing what he did.
We need a free press. We need the right to question. Most of all, we need an effective fourth estate. Democracy cannot exist without that.
But I am not sure by how much he advanced that cause and that is why I have never been persuaded that his judgement was worth trusting.
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I too have always been uneasy about Assange. I’ve never decided between seeing him as a useful idiot or as a malicious agent. Certainly he has hidden behind ‘free speech’ to do some very unhelpful things.
I have to disagree on this one. Assange had the full co-opreration of two mainstream newspapers here and in the US, who published and promoted Wikileaks, and who then abandoned him. He exposed government wrongdoing, as did Daniel Ellsberg in the Vietnam war. We need truth tellers, and these men were punished brutally for exposing government lies, crimes, and hypocrisy.
They didn’t just abandon him, they turned on him – and even unleashed their “satirists” on him. The campaign to demonise him was thorough and persistent. So persistent it is being reprised all over the MSM today. These are the people who refuse to call a genocide a genocide: why should we accept their judgment?
From what I have read , wikileaks revealed reports from company level army commanders ( captains, majors) in Afghanistan basically saying ‘what are we doing here? Who are the enemy?’ etc
If the senior ranks and State Dept., MOD officials had given more attention, the situation in Afghanistan might have finished very differently.
However, there may be other views.
It seems to me that Assange was acting in the capacity of a whistle-blower which has certain legal protections, and enables the press to hold governments to account. This has been taken away (despite the law).
The BBC says that “The plea deal is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory”. What could possibly go wrong?
I first came across Assange as the original author of the excellent surfraw search engine. This would have been before Wikileaks existed. The front page of its official web site is exactly as he wrote it all those years ago: http://surfraw.org/
I have never met Assange but I know several people who know him quite well. From what I have heard he is a difficult man to get on with and is a tad paranoid. But people have said the same about me so I can’t hold this against him. In any case it hardly justifies the way he has been treated.
My opinion on Assange in a nutshell.
It’s one thing whistleblowing to change the system. It’s another to selectively reveal negative information supplied by our enemies to swing an election, risking pulling the whole system down. He obviously colluded with the Russians & Trump to end Clinton’s campaign. The photo of Farage visiting him in the Chilean Embassy was the last straw, as far as I’m concerned. But he may one day come up with a convincing explanation of these shenanigans, in which case I’m open to revising my opinion. It was the Trump administration that initiated his prosecution, after all, & Biden’s that ended it.
You seem to be very misinformed. Assange was. holed up in the Equator embassy, nothing to do with Chile. I am 99.9% certain Farage never visited. There was a report and photo of someone, can’t remember who – but would have had negative implications, but was subsequently proved to be entirely false. CIA bugged the Equador embassy, listened in to Assange’s discussions with his lawyers, plotted to murder him. Assange exposed the murder by American troops, shooting from a helicopter innocent people and laughing about it.
Starmer’s role in the whole sorry saga – advising Sweden not to interview Assange when he was in the embassy, and his meetings with American intelligence, his total failure to ever speak up about the appalling incarceration in a high security prison where America constantly changed the charges because they never had any evidence for any of them reflects appallingly on a so called human rights lawyer.
Sorry yes you’re correct Assange was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy, not the Chilean. My mistake. However, Farage himself admitted to meeting Assange once there, & he was filmed leaving the embassy. So you’re suggestion that this claim was ‘subsequently proved to be completely false’ seems…odd….It seems equally uncontroversial that Assange selectively released information provided by Russian intelligence that would damage the Clinton campaign, thereby assisting Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/when-nigel-farage-met-julian-assange
He did this because he objected to her ‘ideology’, seemingly, so by inference one must conclude that he preferred/prefers Trump’s ‘ideology’. But regardless of his political preferences, using his platform as a journalist to advance a political goal is the very opposite of journalism: it’s political interference – in this case on quite a grand scale. Assange put his thumb on the electoral balance, how decisively is debatable, but indubitably he bears some responsibility for the Trumpian hellscape we’ve been experiencing for the past 8 years.
https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12929262/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-julian-assange-hate
I think this debate has run along enough
I remain unconvinced by Assange’s judgement
The Guardian was confidently reporting that Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chief had secretly visited Assange at the Embassy. Their article is still up at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy
Politico is not so sure this meeting ever happened.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/28/paul-manafort-julian-assange-222694/
AliB:
Yes, Starmer’s role in all this is extremely unsavoury. I’d bet (without any inside information, I hasten to add!) that he isn’t happy one bit about Assange being freed. Pocket over principle, contempt for legal proprieties, and subservience to the U.S. empire (as now, with regard to the genocide).
This talk about Assange reminds me of the comment about muckrakers needing to know when to stop raking the muck. I don’t think he does…
As a fellow whistleblower, I am in support of Assange and his efforts to expose atrocities perpetrated by the US Government. He only did what all good investigative journalists should have the courage and freedom to continue doing. When he passed information to several newspapers, he offered a version where names were redacted to protect US operatives. Several newspapers failed to respect this redacted version and the ‘crime’ of exposing US operatives was a decision for which they were at fault not Assange, but he paid the price as they all deserted him.
As Head of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer’s disgraceful involvement with the case was deeply flawed. Starmer did his best to obstruct the course of justice by disallowing an interview inside the Ecuadorian Embassy for no valid reason. There is evidence that Starmer attempted to persuade the Swedish legal team not to drop the case at a point where those involved no longer wanted it pursued. Assange resisted the baseless ruse to get him to a place where he could be extradited to the US which was the real goal.
The person who has diligently reported on the true relevant facts of the Assange case is Craig Murray, documenting the details on his blog. Craig is not a young or particularly fit man, but he queued in the freezing cold outside the court, determined to take one of the very few converted places at a number of critical hearings on the case; I admire Murray’s determination. Craig Murray was also a whistleblower in the past, so I fully understand why he felt so passionate about the Assange case.
There is credible evidence to support the serious allegation that the Ecuadorian Embassy was bugged to deny Assange the right to private consultation with his lawyer. The US legal team resorted to so many illegal practices like this that the case should have been thrown out, especially after their main witness was exposed as having been persuaded to lie. There was also a plot to kill Assange while he was in the Embassy. Why such extreme actions to silence the press? It was hoped that the extremely harsh treatment of Julian Assange would act as a warning to other investigative journalists: do not expose US wrongdoing.
If the US had succeeded with their demand for extradition, that would have set an extremely dangerous precedent, namely, that the US can extend the reach of their legal system anywhere in the world to punish those who expose US atrocities. In future, no journalist would have been safe from US overreach, as it is dedicated investigative journalists are on notice.
I have to admit I have little time for Craig Murray either. I am nit convinced by his judgement.
A very accomplished respected journalist on Assange
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/4ad915e82bd094195ce6be02e109653eddd9480895d8069cf933cc82997731e8/ISHYPZ7M6FCZFPHTN2I5QQE7DM/