As Julian Assange enjoys his first weekend of freedom in years, there appeared to be no question in the mind of his wife, Stella, about what the family’s priorities were.
The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.
What comes after that is one of the most intriguing questions for anyone familiar with how the site he founded in 2006 utterly changed the nature of whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission?
James Harkin, the director of the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism, (said) “In retrospect, it’s striking that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the era of “disinformation” – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now passed to blowhards and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps, in the light of our tepid new involvements in the Middle East and Ukraine, we need a new WikiLeaks.”
I expect this ass to go to prison soon
Ah, celebrating the freedom of a rapist who escaped charges by playing on his fame.
Fucking wild.
Fake rape charges dropped by the person claiming it happened.
It’s insane the lies people will tell to defend a rapist. I don’t know why so many people are just fucking alright with rape if it’s ‘their guy’ doing it.
Point out where he was charged with rape. Because if we’re basing an accusation of rape as actual rate then Biden is guilty of the exact same thing. Don’t assume that just because someone is critical of one white old senile piece of shit that they support the other white old senile piece of shit.
Point out where he was charged with rape.
When he fled Sweden, Jesus fucking Christ
It’s not even particularly believable rape apologetics you’re indulging it. Absolutely vile.
I don’t play games with rape apologists, so you’re on your own from here on out.
Can you not even read? Preliminary investigation is not the same thing as charged. If that’s how we are defining charged, then again Biden has been charged with rape
I don’t play games with rape apologists, so you’re on your own from here on out.
I don’t believe he was convicted of anything as the accusers recanted….
https://medium.com/@njmelzer/response-to-open-letter-of-1-july-2019-7222083dafc8
He wasn’t convicted of anything because he fled the fucking country before a trial could be held, and one of the women involved explicitly contradicts and condemns Melzer’s attempt at exonerating Assange
The charges were eventually dropped due to the time passed, not because the victims ‘recanted’.
I just expect he’ll do whatever Papa Putin tells him to do. That or rape someone again.
Careful, some tankies are going to wail about torturous prison experience he went through while having to simultaneously ignore the emaciated Ukrainian POWs
They’ve already started up the rape apologetics.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.
While it remains online – and would-be whistleblowers can theoretically use it to pass on secrets – to all intents and purposes the organisation around it has been repurposed in recent years to campaign for Assange’s freedom.
Assange himself told the Nation magazine in an interview inside Belmarsh prison, London, that it had not been possible to publish leaks due to his imprisonment, surveillance by the US government and funding restrictions.
The kind of cross-border, collaborative investigations into huge tranches of documents that WikiLeaks pioneered and its use of anonymous electronic information drops are now de rigueur – to a large extent passé.”
“In retrospect, it’s striking that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the era of “disinformation” – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now passed to blowhards and conspiracy theorists.
Before entering the Ecuadorian embassy, he had started hosting interview shows for RT, the Russian state media outlet, in a move that was relatively easier to defend at the time but which now takes on a different hue since the outbreak of the Ukraine war.
The original article contains 847 words, the summary contains 232 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I am not in any way going to defend what was done to Julian Assange, because it was abhorrent.
But, based on what he’s done in the past, I’m guessing ‘everything’ will be far more Biden-focused than Trump-focused.
The man has every reason to hate the USA. Helping getting Trump to power would surely be some sweet revenge, since another Trump presidency will be undoubtely be divisive and harmful
That really is not an excuse for his relationship with Russia.
It sounds a lot less like it would be revenge a lot more like it would be marching orders he would be happy to comply with.
That really is not an excuse for his relationship with Russia.
The enemy of my enemy is a short-term ally, that might be how he thinks, who knows. I have no side in this fight since I’m not a Assange fanboy and I have nothing but contempt for the USA.
Short-term? That article was from 2016.
In 2016 he had already spent years hiding inside an embassy. It’s not that hard to conceive that hatred tends to build over time.
Okay, but you said it was short-term. That is not short-term. And as far as I know, Wikileaks is still very easy on Russia. So how long is this favoritism of his going to last? Why should that be what Wikileaks is about?
Okay, but you said it was short-term. That is not short-term.
It was just a conjecture of how Assange might have thought about. I never said that there really is any link between him and Russia. And it was long ago, when he was still hiding inside Ecuador’s embassy, when the hypothetical link between him and Russia was new.
And as far as I know, Wikileaks is still very easy on Russia. So how long is this favoritism of his going to last?
I doubt he still runs wikileaks. Assange was in jail for years.
Why should that be what Wikileaks is about?
I don’t know and I don’t really care.
It is fair to remember, however, that his biggest bombshells were from the Iraq war, which was a decidedly Republican endeavor. But I do agree that he looked more and more like a Russian asset as time went on.
Those bombshells didn’t end the war.
His leak during the 2016 election changed the course of American history, and was directly coordinated with Russia. That was far more impactful.
That’s more a comment on how die-hard committed the political class is to perpetual war than anything else.
Also, while I don’t appreciate Trump being elected… the DNC seems committed to running some of the worst candidates they can find - the fact that there was information that damaging to Clinton that didn’t come out in the primaries is the part we should be mad at.
I think we should still be mad at foreign adversary nations colluding with one of our politcal parties and a not at all impartial “whistleblower” to turn the tide of a presidential election.
The emails themselves were barely relevant at all politically. Out of some 30k of them, 3 were found to be inappropriately controlled. Thats hardly an earth shattering discovery.
The spectacle that Assange, the GOP and Russia manufactured was the issue. It was a coordinated and targeted attack on our democracy, and he deserves to be derided for his outsized part in it.
If I had dirt on someone that speculated about drone killing me, I would have no problem releasing that dirt. WikiLeaks has never had to retract a story or cables because of bad information, even the DNC couldn’t refute the authenticity of the DNC cables.
