If Assange showed any interest in also undermining Russia or other authoritarian regimes I would feel more compassion. I think criticization of the US foreign policy is fine and the press has a role. To me his case has always been grey. States have secrets its just the nature of the world.
> States have secrets its just the nature of the world.
So let’s just check your bias. Assuming an American journalist living in England exposes video of Russia gunning down civilians and shows they are covering it up. Would you say the right cause of action would be for that American to be procedures in Russia because “ States have secrets it’s just the nature of the world.” and apparently hiding war crimes and prosecuting journalists who expose them is also just states rights?
I think this is a grey area. If you commit a crime via the internet like fraud can a state go after you? I guess I think so. Should Assange have been prosecuted is a different matter. Can journalists be prosecuted seems also like a hard case by case question. In general if you are acting in the public interest and only act as a publisher IE do not recruit or gain secrets yourself you shouldn't be prosecuted. I also think it's 100% in an other nations right to deny extradition. So what I think is that this is a hard case with lots of grey area that isn't as clear cut as people pretend it is.
Personally as an American, I'm far more interested about the shit my government is hiding from me than getting yet another reason to hate Putin, what could possibly be leaked from Russia that would make their optics worse than it already is? This was true even pre-invasion.
The whataboutism surrounding this feels completely disingenuous to me considering much of what was leaked by Wikileaks was war crimes, media collusion with Clinton's campaign and embarrassing mistakes the government tried to cover up, that they had no business trying to cover up.
States have secrets, but that is a privilege granted to them by the people to protect national security, their abuse of this privilege has been completely unacceptable even if the reveal made your preferred candidate look bad for actions they were personally responsible for.
If Wikileaks accomplished anything, it was revealing the hypocrites and those who lack even an inch of integrity.
Its not like what wiki leaks did is new. The pentagon papers were published 50 years ago. The us government should be held to high standards and we need a press to do that. At some level however in a world of competing states if an organization is only interested in undermining one state it makes it less trust worthy in my eyes. I think Assange views the US as an evil actor and that informs what he thinks is worthy of coverage. Its why he could call Afghans who worked with the US as collaborators as in his eyes working with the US makes you evil. I think that world view is insane and naive.
However as I said there is real utility to publishing information which shouldn't be kept from the public. Which is why I think Assange is a hard case.
> If Wikileaks accomplished anything, it was revealing the hypocrites and those who lack even an inch of integrity.
It revealed some hypocrites who lack integrity. The main effect, if any, of their exposure was to pave the way for other hypocrites who lack integrity to take over the positions of power and influence of the former.
I was specifically talking about the ones who wanted to crucify Assange the moment he revealed something inconvenient for their side after years of praise for what he did under Bush, which likely applies to you as well considering your twisted perspective on this.
Someone with integrity supports whistleblowers no matter who they blow the whistle on, I'm sure this revelation must be a surprise for you.
Our problem isn't with the critiques of Israel, it's with the fact that the people critiquing Israel are almost universally singling Israel out for critique.
My overwhelming experience is that people who are critical of Israel's actions in Palestine are also critical of Russia's actions in Ukraine and, back in the day, were critical if the US's actions in Iraq. This comes from a generally anti-war (or anti-invasion/occupation) political philosophy.
There are also a lot of people in the Republican Party who go the exact opposite way: They support Israel's actions and Russia's actions, and they were also in favor of the US's invasion of Iraq (though they shut up about that now). They have a very hawkish political philosophy.
Then there is a third group of people I've identified, who confuse me: they oppose Russia's actions in Ukraine, but they support Israel's actions in Palestine. (I do not know what their opinions were in Iraq because this is a group of people I have only encountered online, not in person.) I do not understand their political philosophy at all because it is seemingly self-contradictory; most of my attempts to understand it suggest that it is not really a philosophy so much, but more about nationalism or racism — they like Ukraine more than they like Russia, and they like Israel more than they like Palestine, and that's all the thought they put into it.
I love the "of course" you threw in. Do please try to appreciate the emotional toll of having non-Jews out there all helpfully informing us Jews what is, and isn't, antisemitism. It must be nice not having to endure that kind of thing in your daily life, to say nothing of having to bring my children past armed guards to get into synagogue.
I wonder if you ever listen to the many, many, many Jews who state that criticism of Israel is not 'antisemitism' and that blowback from the state violence and the intensely evil persecution & genocide of the Palestinian people perpetrated by Zionist Israel over more than 70 years now is the single biggest contributor towards them ever feeling 'unsafe' as Jews?
Again, there are many, many, many such Jewish voices that have emphatically dismissed the format of your attempted victimisation play here.
When Russia enables it, amplifies it, builds their disinformation and propaganda machine around those facts and there’s no counter weight it gets into the realm of anti-democratic adjacent.
There’s nothing simple when it comes to international politics. But foreign meddling by an adversary is a pretty bright line.
The failure of the United States to provide a positive counterweight to propaganda due to launching two wars of aggression filled with warcrimes is not Russia's fault, nor Assange's.
The United States is responsible for sowing the good, not Russia for not hiding the bad.
"Not hiding" is a pretty disingenuous way of putting it.
"Being better at targeted propaganda" isn't really how I'd like our leaders to be chosen. Obviously that's where we are, but I wish we could do better.
I don't want domestic propaganda from government. I want policy from government that creates good will domestically and abroad. "Russia might use this against us" is a good policy litmus test to not do those things.
The diplomatic cables contain all sorts of information about extraordinary rendition, about the use Turkish airbases, Irish complicity, etc.
This isn't small potatoes. Here in Sweden it wasn't just the extradition from Bromma in 2001, but the US flew multiple illegal flights with prisoners through Sweden, possibly to the US torture camps in Poland and eastern Europe.
I also think these cables revealed information about the Thailand black site, where the US was torturing some people.
>fascinating how Swedes are so concerned about the small number of crimes committed by the US and want the US to withdraw.
Withdraw from what?
>Yet they remain steadfastly silent on the crimes committed by Russia and China.
How have we been silent on those crimes. We have been quite concerned, they are almost next to us.
I don't myself want to be part of NATO, but evidently the government is to afraid not to be, so now we are.
>Should the US withdraw from geopolitics and allow those other two to fill the vacuum?
The US has not gained anything of geopolitical value by storing people in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp or by flying suspect terrorist to torture camps in Europe, or by inhuman treatment of prisoners, as happened at Bromma. It hasn't gained anything geopolitically by going after people who revealed war crimes.
The US actions that I oppose are for the large part neither of benefit to the US itself, nor to me. On the whole these actions are just stupid.
To the degree that I want to avoid US troops in Sweden, this stupidity, these useless and harmful decisions that get implemented are one of the problems. Because if the US can this stupid on matters like Assange, or can desperately want to torture some random nobody, and are in such a hurry to do so, that they fly him through Bromma just because can refuel there, then they can do any kind of idiocy, and it can end up being me, or something Swedish that matters that pays the price.
The US can defend its interests in a more co-operative way and with greater respect for international law and for its partners.
>Like Julian Assange himself - I suspect many Russia supporters are hiding in plain sight.
If you're implying that I would like Putin, who I consider basically a Chechen-cuddler. I've had less problems with him historically, and I don't think I fully understood how vengeful he was until he did as he did against the Karabach-Armenians. I'm probably more pro-Russia than Zelensky is-- I don't hate the Russians and I like many aspects of Russian culture, including their mathematics tradition and some of their music.
I don't see the Ukraine war as per se very different from the Iraq war. This means that I view Russia and the US as closer on the level of morality than most people, who I feel have a bit of short term view of the world. These things 20 years ago are like yesterday to me. Details matter though, and scale, and many other things.
Rather, when it comes to support of Ukraine my view is not based on morality as such, although I do believe that the Ukrainians have a right to rule their country, but rather on Swedish defence needs. We Swedes need to support them and ensure that Russia does not expand and get a border against Poland or some other unnecessarily forward position. There is no reason why we should allow such a situation, which will only cause us problems.
> If you're implying that I would like Putin, who I consider basically a Chechen-cuddler.
Oh yeah, that's the big problem with him. Sheesh...
> I don't see the Ukraine war as per se very different from the Iraq war.
Yeah, I distinctly remember how Shrub denied that the Iraqi people exist, claimed they were all Americans anyway, and set out to annex Iraq to the USA. And who can forget the moving ceremony when he bestowed Statehood upon those four Iraqi provinces? Sheesh... Try as I might, I can't come up with any reason for why you would want to pretend to be this stupid, so...
> This means that I view Russia and the US as closer on the level of morality than most people, who I feel have a bit of short term view of the world.
Yeah no, that means it's you who are... If not morally blind, at least severely short-sighted.
Every government/corporation has some "wrong doing" if it hadn't been the military there's plenty in the police force if not that then I'm sure there would have been cases of corruption.
Your statement doesn't add any nuance to said concerns.
“But Your honor! yes my client murdered his wife, but every country has murderers, so why should we punish him for that? Isn’t the true criminals his kids who went to the cops and thus caused permanent damage to his and therefore their chance of them having a happy household again?”
Not “adding any nuance” is suggesting that publishing the truth about warcrimes is worse than committing war crimes.
That's a nice defense towards the straw man you constructed.
I'll repeat my point so maybe you can focus on that than the straw man.
It's not hard to find scandals, that's the whole point of having institutions meant to watchdog corporations and governments.
But of course governments/corporation will try and cover it up or deregulate said institutions, but this doesn't make an obvious adversary (Russia) a helping hand in holding the corporations /governments accountable because it's not meant to, it's meant to create cynicism and a feeling of hopelessness.
So no publishing truth is never bad, the issue is how you do it.
You take the self-contradictory position that “publishing the truth is never bad,” but in some cases “how you publish the truth” is bad. You weight the perceived interpretation by the consumer of information against the information itself. While consistent with in-your-face Russell-conjugated “news” stories and “accountability journalism,” this is practical nonsense, unjustifiable, unprincipled, and a loophole for terrible excuses that countervail the entire purpose of a successful free press.
There's no contradiction as this example will show:
If I publish an internal report that has good undercover agents doing good things but also has bad undercover agents that are acting against the country's interest, it would be absurdly dumb and reckless of me to publish the internal report as is without redacting names that has nothing to do with said bad actors.
There are correct guidelines specifically about doing whistle blowing and failing to do so can and will cause lives to be lost.
This relies on an artificial and false morality. You reference “correct guidelines.” Please cite them, and what is definitely good and bad outside a local construct within a modern Westphalian political nation state. Separately: Should nationally critical information controls survive mere legal disobedience? If they don’t how much security theater fulfills your appetite?
>This relies on an artificial and false morality
Okay this says nothing, like me telling your comment is banana-split with cherry.
>You reference “correct guidelines.” Please cite them, and what is definitely good and bad outside a local construct within a modern Westphalian political nation state.
I just told you with my example, but here's ICC's guidelines about whistleblowing:
Pretty much any whistleblowing guideline will have similar statements about whistleblowing.
>Should nationally critical information controls survive mere legal disobedience? If they don’t how much security theater fulfills your appetite?
Why do we have to present this as a black and white issue? The best is a compromise to ensure that the power abuse gets pointed out and the adversaries that are responsible be highlighted as the alleged perpetrators (as this is still something that a court has to decide on) without putting national security/innocent lives at risk/at harms way.
As mentioned, this highly-subjective, parochial, hegemonic view survives neither border crossing nor the reality that rules apply only to rule-abiders. It is non-viable in a cooperative, networked world. It enforces the lowest-common-definition of rights on the most vulnerable, while ignoring the practical reality of sophisticated malicious actors. Examine here what rules certain parties in Brazil seek to apply to X, or the contempt proceedings against Herridge domestic to the US.
You throw examples that are not whistleblowing nor does these cases have anything to do with whistleblowing guidelines but laws regarding whenever or not sources should be disclosed.
Especially the herridge case which is part of a broader case of the federal government employees allegedly leading government documents of an innocent person's information (specifically information about them from the investigation)
Even more it's not even a shut case and what a surprise the judge is also following concrete guidelines.
I suggest whistleblowing carries no particular journalistic weight. But you mentioned whistleblowing, not me. To reiterate for clarity: published truth is an unmitigated good.
That has nothing to do with democracy. On the contrary, a democracy needs the electorate to be informed and officials not having secrets or starting a war on the basis of lies.
Wikileaks only leaked what they got handed to them. In the DNC case, it seems that the leaker was motivated by Clinton railroading Bernie in the primary. Meanwhile on the Republican ticket, the populist, Trump, was able to sweep aside the established Bush dynasty and other party insider favorites.
This article refers to something occurring in 2014 with State Department email credentials and somehow loosely connecting that with the 2016 DNC email leak.
Besides showing that email is not really that secure in the first place (and evidenced by Ms. Clinton's own maintenance of a personal email server), it doesn't show any evidence that Cozy Bear was behind the DNC leak.
> This article refers to something occurring in 2014 with State Department email credentials and somehow loosely connecting that with the 2016 DNC email leak.
Thanks, that's a good point, I was motivated to read a bit more about it; the article I linked is indeed a bit vague.
The source for it is a de Volkskrant article, I found it in an archive: https://archive.is/S5KeI
This has more detail and contains the claim that the Dutch did observe Cozy Bear breaking into the DNC network.
However, elsewhere we can read that the emails were leaked to WikiLeaks not via Cozy Bear but via Fancy Bear, which is part of GRU; see the Mueller report Volume I, Ill. RUSSIAN HACKING AND DUMPING OPERATIONS, A. and B. page 44-56 in the PDF.
Both the SVR and the GRU infiltrated the DNC network:
"Cozy Bear" had access to DNC systems since the summer of 2015; and "Fancy Bear", since April 2016. There was no evidence of collaboration or knowledge of the other's presence within the system. Rather, the "two Russian espionage groups compromised the same systems and engaged separately in the theft of identical credentials".
From what I've read that's a common way of authoritarian state organization: to prevent any security service from becoming too powerful and thereby becoming a threat to the dictator, there are multiple services with overlapping responsibilities and they compete with each other.
> Assange himself seemed to implicate Seth Rich...
Apparently Aaron Rich's defamation lawsuit got some results:
Conclusions are for citizens to make once they see the evidence, regardless of whether it harms the chances of powerful people maintaining their grip on power.
I've already covered it in a different thread. It's most likely that the DNC leaks were from an internal source.
Assange implied Seth Rich. The emails that were leaked were largely about the DNC railroading Bernie to favor Hillary during the primary. That's not some state-level propaganda. That's how party politics work. A disgruntled Trump supporter would have little reason to leak RNC emails, since it was publicly known how much they hated him and since Trump won in spite of the RNC's antagonism.
Honestly though it doesn't matter who leaked it. It was standard faire political controversy. It was a much bigger deal that Clinton herself maintained a private server to conduct state department affairs. Hard for her to spin that one on the Russians though.
I rather have courts look over it and have a fair and honest conclusion rather than everyone doing their 'conclusion'.
And according to the intelligence report it was Russia who indirectly hacked the DNC (via guccifer) so I don't know where this "internal source" comes from, would love to see a report that shows otherwise.
The irony is that Wikileaks allegedly did have RNC leaks, but Assange choose not to publish it.
And no, letting USA or any other nation for that matter commit war crimes quietly does not support democracy.