"“Well they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it,” Leigh and Harding report Assange saying to a group of international journalists. And while Assange has denied making these comments, WikiLeaks released troves of material in which the names of Afghan civilians had not been redacted, an action that led Amnesty International, the Open Society Institute, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to issue a joint rebuke"
This really sums up Assange for me. I don't know if he is an idealist who believes in what he's peddling or an opportunist but either way he's someone willing to let people die.
That quote hit home for me too. And one a little later that expands on the same idea:
> "Assange, by contrast [to Snowden], appears to have no interest in anyone’s privacy but his own and his sources’. Private communications, personal information, intimate conversations are all fair game to him. He calls this nihilism “freedom,” and in so doing elevates it to a principle that gives him license to act without regard to consequences."
It doesn't really matter if the quote is real. He released the information when it was obvious it put peoples lives at risk. There is a reason why responsible journalists wanted to redact that information. Julian seems to just want to put everything out there and destroy privacy and I don't want to live in a panopticon.
Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.
Oh this is just beyond ridiculous.
They bring it up because people's lives were put at risk. I won't go so far as to claim people actually died, but that absolutely was a risk and Assange very consciously chose to take that risk.
Who cares if the "old media" also happens to see WikiLeaks as a "threat to their business model"? That's literally 100% beside the core point, here, though it's a mighty fine deflection on your part.
I'm super concerned that his "detention" has had an effect on his mental stability.
He is literally the definition of a basement dwelling keyboard troll... he isn't getting to socialise properly and is locked into a digital world that is quite separate from reality while simultaneously being put on a pedestal, idolised and demonised by power impressive people...
Even the best of us would develop weird quirks and poor thought processes in that scenario.
The author buries the main point under a lot of kvetching about Assange's personality and motivations:
This is where censorship begins. No matter what one thinks of Julian Assange personally, or of WikiLeaks’s reckless publication practices, like it or not, they have become the litmus test of our commitment to free speech. If the government successfully prosecutes WikiLeaks for publishing classified information, why not, then, “the failed New York Times,” as the president likes to call it, or any news organization or journalist? It’s a slippery slope leading to a sheer cliff. That is the real risk being presented here, though Poitras doesn’t directly address it.
I agree that Assange should not be prosecuted for such practice. However, I think this one person has too much power and seems to use it recklessly - and hence I am not nor will ever be a supporter of Wikileaks. Snowden was much more responsible imho.
This is a documentary about Assange himself. By definition that means a study of the man, not strictly a study of the issues. So "kvetching about Assange's personality and motivations" is exactly the flipping point.
Now, pivoting to the issues for a moment: the situation with WikiLeaks is complicated. To distill it down to a simple slippery slope fallacy without acknowledging that complexity is, at best, pretty shallow thinking.
It would be dishonest to claim that the kind of radical transparency WikiLeaks espouses has no downsides. Again, the potential threat to Afghani informants is a pretty damn good example.
Is that cost worth the 100% censorship free society that WikiLeaks seems to want? Personally, I don't know... because, again, it's actually pretty damn complicated.
"And then this spring, it emerged that Nigel Farage, the Trump adviser and former head of the nationalist and anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP) who is now a person of interest in the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, was meeting with Assange. To those who once saw him as a crusader for truth and accountability, Assange suddenly looked more like a Svengali and a willing tool of Vladimir Putin"
Why exactly is meeting with the bumbling though reprehensible idiot Nigel Farage clear evidence that Assange is a tool of designated state enemy #1?
To call Farage 'reprehensible' is fair comment though not a view I share. However calling him a 'bumbling idiot' is simply ludicrous.
After giving up a successful lucrative career in the city of London, Farage has after innumerable campaigns across the country, fulfilled what he sees as Margaret Thatcher's dream of separating Britain from Europe. Few would demur from the view that Brexit would never have happened but for Farage who meantime has been merely an MEP in the European Parliament not an MP in the UK.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 37.8 ms ] thread> "Assange, by contrast [to Snowden], appears to have no interest in anyone’s privacy but his own and his sources’. Private communications, personal information, intimate conversations are all fair game to him. He calls this nihilism “freedom,” and in so doing elevates it to a principle that gives him license to act without regard to consequences."
Yes: the reason they bring it up is that the issue provides a powerful moralistic cudgel against Assange, a threat to their business model.
As far as I know, there are no documented cases of deaths due to the Wikileaks leaks at issue in the unsubstantiated quote: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...
Oh this is just beyond ridiculous.
They bring it up because people's lives were put at risk. I won't go so far as to claim people actually died, but that absolutely was a risk and Assange very consciously chose to take that risk.
Who cares if the "old media" also happens to see WikiLeaks as a "threat to their business model"? That's literally 100% beside the core point, here, though it's a mighty fine deflection on your part.
He is literally the definition of a basement dwelling keyboard troll... he isn't getting to socialise properly and is locked into a digital world that is quite separate from reality while simultaneously being put on a pedestal, idolised and demonised by power impressive people...
Even the best of us would develop weird quirks and poor thought processes in that scenario.
This is where censorship begins. No matter what one thinks of Julian Assange personally, or of WikiLeaks’s reckless publication practices, like it or not, they have become the litmus test of our commitment to free speech. If the government successfully prosecutes WikiLeaks for publishing classified information, why not, then, “the failed New York Times,” as the president likes to call it, or any news organization or journalist? It’s a slippery slope leading to a sheer cliff. That is the real risk being presented here, though Poitras doesn’t directly address it.
We are all Julian Assange.
That's a point among many.
This is a documentary about Assange himself. By definition that means a study of the man, not strictly a study of the issues. So "kvetching about Assange's personality and motivations" is exactly the flipping point.
Now, pivoting to the issues for a moment: the situation with WikiLeaks is complicated. To distill it down to a simple slippery slope fallacy without acknowledging that complexity is, at best, pretty shallow thinking.
It would be dishonest to claim that the kind of radical transparency WikiLeaks espouses has no downsides. Again, the potential threat to Afghani informants is a pretty damn good example.
Is that cost worth the 100% censorship free society that WikiLeaks seems to want? Personally, I don't know... because, again, it's actually pretty damn complicated.
Why exactly is meeting with the bumbling though reprehensible idiot Nigel Farage clear evidence that Assange is a tool of designated state enemy #1?
After giving up a successful lucrative career in the city of London, Farage has after innumerable campaigns across the country, fulfilled what he sees as Margaret Thatcher's dream of separating Britain from Europe. Few would demur from the view that Brexit would never have happened but for Farage who meantime has been merely an MEP in the European Parliament not an MP in the UK.