Assange release

[belboid]

3) More broadly, is Assange someone we should be making it a priority to support in whatever way? I would say no. Yeah, he faced (espionage) charges that he shouldn't have had to serve time for, but so have a lot of people. As mentioned above, Assange's support of Trump during the 2016 election puts him outside of any kind of liberatory political project as I understand it. It's always bothered me that Assange gets so much more support than others associated with wikileaks and the like did - admittedly, Manning got a bit of publicity and support too, but how much of this attention got paid to Hammond, Hale or Brown?
3a) I suppose there's an argument that Assange's case should be of more interest to UK audiences because of the UK state's role in the case, but it still seems disproportionate to me - there are lots of other people who've been locked up by the British state who don't get that much of a fuss made about them. Does anyone even know what happened with Dr Issam Hijjawi Bassalat in the end?

The thing with these is two fold.

Firstly, it matters because it is there first use of the Espionage Act against journalists. Not for releasing names, but for getting them (and the rest) in the first place. As such it does present a special danger that is much wider than just one man.

Is he more important than <insert name here>? Very possibly not, but that isn't really relevant, is it? Anyone would need a campaign to support them in such circumstances, it's hardly Assange's fault that he has managed to create a large and successful one. Whether his winning would help anyone else much if at all, I dunno, but hislosiong would certainly have done them no good at all.

 

[SpookyFrank]

yeah, much better that US war crimes were ignored and not written about.

And all those guilty parties brought to justice as a result, all without a single whistleblower going to jail.

Oh wait no, the opposite of that.

 

[Spymaster]

Assange shouldn't have done one day for the leak, which was both in the public interest and a moral requirement to publish for the sake of exposing war crimes, and the manic US drive to punish journalism enabled him to dodge accountabitlity for whatever he did or didn't do in Sweden. The end.

What a load of old shit.

 

[hitmouse]

The thing with these is two fold.

Firstly, it matters because it is there first use of the Espionage Act against journalists. Not for releasing names, but for getting them (and the rest) in the first place. As such it does present a special danger that is much wider than just one man.

I mean, Manning and Hale were both convicted under the Espionage Act on charges related to leaking/handling information, so it's a bit of an arbitrary distinction. Maybe you can argue for journo as a special category here, but I don't really see "oh no, this law that was previously used to criminalise journalists' sources is now being used against a journalist" as that much of a dramatic expansion.

Is he more important than <insert name here>? Very possibly not, but that isn't really relevant, is it? Anyone would need a campaign to support them in such circumstances, it's hardly Assange's fault that he has managed to create a large and successful one. Whether his winning would help anyone else much if at all, I dunno, but hislosiong would certainly have done them no good at all.

I mean, we can evaluate the political basis of his campaign and how healthy we think it is. I think it is Assange's fault that, for instance, he's managed to create an organisation that withdrew support from a fellow victim of state repression on the grounds that the latter had publicly voiced criticisms of him:

Julian Assange Went After a Former Ally. It Backfired Epically.

WikiLeaks’ founder tried to retaliate against hacktivist hero Barrett Brown and prompted a crack-up at a whistleblower protection group, losing an asset in an extradition clash.

www.thedailybeast.com

Rather unfortunately, I have been obliged to resign from Courage. An explanation:

On Thursday afternoon three of Courage’s trustees wrote to me demanding that I inform Barrett Brown that he could no longer be a Courage…

medium.com

There's defensive infrastructure that can be useful to a wider movement, and then there's flimsy cult-of-personality shit built around uncritical worship of a Big Man. I think we all know which side the Assange campaign falls on.

 

[tim]

Don't quite get the antipathy towards him on here. He called out the US military for committing war crimes which would otherwise have been covered up. Amazing result for him though getting out of this before Trump returns.

The rape stuff is a separate thing completely and a bit of a straw man set up by the US IMO, but he should have confronted it and gone to Sweden to defend himself. All in all, a crazy fucking story.

The "rape stuff" is what led him to claim asylum in the Ecuadorian Consulate. As to the women who accused him of rape, do you doubt their stories? What leads you to believe that they're US stooges rather than victims of a deeply unpleasant man?

 

[hitmouse]

The thing with these is two fold.

Firstly, it matters because it is there first use of the Espionage Act against journalists. Not for releasing names, but for getting them (and the rest) in the first place. As such it does present a special danger that is much wider than just one man.

Is he more important than <insert name here>? Very possibly not, but that isn't really relevant, is it? Anyone would need a campaign to support them in such circumstances, it's hardly Assange's fault that he has managed to create a large and successful one. Whether his winning would help anyone else much if at all, I dunno, but hislosiong would certainly have done them no good at all.

Also, just to come back to this question again - like, if we're just talking about making posts on the internet, then I guess we're in agreement, I've already said I don't think he should go to prison for breaking the espionage act and I'm happy to say it again if you want. But if we're talking about what it's politically useful to put time and energy into, then it is relevant to ask "do I want to prioritise putting effort into a defence campaign for some dodgy Trump supporter who already has a large and active support base, over, say, defendants near me facing charges for Elbit-related actions?"