Check out Chomsky's support for Assange [0]. Sadly there's too much going on to bring enough attention to this case.
The sad irony is that none of this thread's discussion or anything else would make any difference. This article is written in "London Review of Books", not even a single news agency is interested in this currently.
> After long research, his team of 120 counterintelligence officers hadn’t been able to find a single person, among the thousands of American agents and secret sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures.
Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands on.
If I put someone's life in danger and then that person doesn't die it's still a crime.
We are in an historical moment when transmitting the COVID-19 to someone else could cost you lifetime jail, I don't think they will go easy on revealing the secret identities of operatives.
You talking past my point. Besides, the US government doesn't tolerate any kind of hindrance to its operations or operatives. They will cry foul like no one else and hunt you down without any regard to any foreign or international laws. Story telling is the easiest part.
If they are keen to sentence people to lifetime jail for spreading the covid, imagine what they will do to someone who reveals the identity of their operatives and their location
That's because the CIA and the Department of Defense worked around the clock to prevent that from happening. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in his book, "Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence"
> After Manning's arrest, Assange seemed intent on dumping as many classified documents onto the internet as he could, as quickly as he could. In my last few months as USD(I) and my first few months as the fourth DNI in five years, my time and attention were also taken up by the efforts at DOD and CIA to deal with these document dumps. Teams were on standby in both places to sort quickly through whatever was exposed in an effort to find names and identifying details for people in Iraq and Afghanistan who were helping the US war effort, and then try to rescue them before the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents could find and kill them.
More important to know than which Americans were 'saved' by the NSA's efforts, is: what are the names of the innocent people murdered by American forces, and why are we being prevented from knowing more about them?
> Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands on.
This can’t be true - there are plenty of sources citing foiled plots and we see similar publications from other governments (EU and beyond) citing similar justifications. A quick google yields:
A panel member claimed the phone metadata collection program hadn’t saved any lives/foiled any attacks - not that the NSA itself hasn’t.
Additionally they present this as being at odds with the Obama administrations documentation, not a refutation (they didn’t find them to be false claims).
Did you read your own articles? They specifically are claims that the NSA metadata collection program known as PRISM foiled terrorist attacks. They claim that evidence will not be presented publicly but will be presented to lawmakers. These exact lawmakers claim to never have received such evidence. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/13/senators-chall...
Lol the article you list was published before the documentation cited was presented (and before my articles were even published) - additionally you are moving the goalposts - the op claim is that the nsa hasn’t foiled any terror plots - not about metadata collection
"Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands on."
This is kind of a misrepresentation of the situation.
Manning leaked mostly diplomatic cables, the contents of which he was unaware of, thereby harming his whistleblower credentials.
The contents were not what we would regard as 'intelligence information' - more aptly described as 'the e-mails of the US diplomatic foreign corps', some of which contained sensitive information'.
That gigabyte of private information was released and there wasn't a single scandal of it shows how tight the operation was, moreover any reading of the cables demonstrates how well the US diplomatic corps were actually doing their jobs.
Far from releasing damning information about Americans, the cables released inside information about Arab leaders and their systematic corruption.
To unearth that amount of private information, to have it combed over by thousands of journalists trying to find a juicy bit, and to come up with very little ... is frankly something Americans can be proud of.
It's ridiculously ironic that Manning, in his attempt to discredit America, ended up doing what US diplomats were unable to do within the constraints of their jobs, which is to speak truth to power about the corruption in the Middle East - which ignited the Arab Spring.
The real world is sausage making and grinding, any skeptical, decontextualized look under any rocks will always yield something to talk about - so in the end, it's really the details and context that really do matter.
The cables did truly pose a serious threat to the security and integrity of individuals in various ways, and obviously it compromised many programs. That there doesn't seem to be any deadly outcomes is wonderful, but it doesn't abnegate Manning from the inappropriate actions he took particularly on the cable leak.
What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him. I wonder what caused them to turn. Obviously, his close ties to Russia are problematic, but it's hard to see exactly what it is. It's possible that he's just not contemporarily a social advocate in their view: we're now full-on into intersectional issues, matters of state etc. are 'old news' it would seem.
>What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him. I wonder what caused them to turn.
He published Clinton's emails. After that he was no longer on the same "team" as American journalists.
> That gigabyte of private information was released and there wasn't a single scandal of it shows how tight the operation was, moreover any reading of the cables demonstrates how well the US diplomatic corps were actually doing their jobs.
No, it just shows how subservient to U.S. foreign policy the American press is (they did not undertake any widespread publishing of embarrassing details from the cables), and how uninterested and easily misled the American public is about our government's actions overseas.
> What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him.
The American press was never that in love with Assange -- the smear jobs and carping about his character started very soon after the Manning leaks, as Cockburn points out. The nail in the coffin was publishing the DNC emails, which despite containing a great deal of newsworthy details and indications of corruption, became a convenient scapegoat for Clinton's loss in the 2016 election and are now viewed almost exclusively in that light. (I think some legitimate criticisms can be lodged against Assange for electioneering in his timing of the leaks, but Clinton did joke about assassinating him and did all she could to put him in prison, so ....)
> You're literally saying the press is acting against their own best interest and purpose which is upside down.
Are you suggesting that them acting a certain way shows that acting that way is in their best interest (because they wouldn't act that way otherwise)? Are you sure they know what cause of action is in their best interest? Are you sure they consider "their best interest" to be the same you consider it to be?
Is the 24/7 news cycle hype in the best interest of "the media"? Was the war-drumming with barely any skepticism about the Iraq war(s) in their best interest?
> Second - we don't need the press to find wrongdoing. It's all there for you to see. Where is the scandal?
What? The public at large gets their information from the press. If the press does not report, it does not happen for large parts of the public. That's why taking control of the press is usually the first thing during any coup and for any authoritarian state.
I don't see that as being a solid point because it is pretty challenging to point to an instance of a rare event not happening due to your actions.
The more pressing issue is that the NSA is a group of people. Nobody knows exactly what they are doing, or why, and the only information that comes out is "trust us, we're the good guys". They have a huge budget. Odds are they are massively corrupt and doing stupid things that either do nothing or make America less safe (like mass wire-tapping).
> because it is pretty challenging to point to an instance of a rare event not happening due to your actions.
How is it hard? "Based on our data collection we found that these people were planning X and arrested them" doesn't sound hard... Unless it never happened.
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day.
Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks.
It should also be noted a big difference in the cases is that Ellsberg leaked documents he already had legal access to, and was therefore a whistleblower. Assange leaked documents that he had to illegally acquire first (either with help or without, but either way he was in possession of stolen goods). You can't get whistleblower protection for leaking information you didn't have legal access to.
I totally understand why Assange is fighting extradition -- it's highly unlikely he would be treated fairly or get a fair trial. But I doubt he'll ever be broadly considered a hero until he defends himself in court.
I don't think that's quite correct, unless it can be proved that they somehow participated in the actual hacking of some target, they do have legal access to the docs, because receiving such is not illegal.
Otherwise, the entire press to whom such things are leaked should be in jail with them.
This is exactly right. The government's case against Assange hinges in large part on alleging that he actively assisted Manning in obtaining the documents that were published.
That is why they are torturing Manning. The problem for her is that the part of America supposed to help her is so tied into the Russian fiasco. No allies really.
> Assange leaked documents that he had to illegally acquire first (either with help or without, but either way he was in possession of stolen goods). You can't get whistleblower protection for leaking information you didn't have legal access to.
Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well?
This seems like making a distinction to draw a line between the two, but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import.
> Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well?
We don't need to, we know who their source was (Snowden). If Assange wants to claim he's a journalist, that's fine, but then he either needs to accept the consequences of protecting his sources, or out his sources.
> but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import.
It's a question of responsibility. When a journalist protects their sources, they accept responsibility for the consequences, and they they chose to reveal their source, they pass on the consequences to their source, but (usually) take a hit to their reputation as a journalist. Assange appears to not want to accept any consequences for his actions, nor pass them on be revealing his sources.
Your interpretation of the legal outcome for journalists who publish leaks does not line up with any kind of real jurisprudence, at least not in the U.S. The government is not even making this kind of argument in Assange's own case.
My understanding is that shield laws are different in every state, but the US doesn't have any federal shield laws. Since Assange wasn't in a state when he made the leaks, he wouldn't be protected by state laws.
I also understand that no journalist has ever been successfully prosecuted, but no case has ever gone to the Supreme Court about it either.
My understanding about the Assange case in particular is that they are pursuing other crimes because they are more likely to stick and more likely to result in extradition. But that doesn't mean he's not guilty of other crimes.
I'm not a lawyer though, so if there is other information I'm missing, I'd definitely like to learn about it.
I think this seems to be a large crux of the entire phenomenon: How to classify Wikileaks, and similar platforms. It's not focused on enough IMO, but part of the defence of Wikileaks I typically hear is that as a result of their persecution and prosecution, there are serious journalistic freedoms under threat.
It seems that Wikileaks and the like do not neatly fit under previous classifications we may have. They certainly don't fit the legal ones, as those seem to mostly cut populations into free speech for citizens and foreign spies.
On a related note, off the top of my head I do recall that at least a few of the lawyers and journalists who were involved with Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, were apparently advised to go into political exile. I think at least some of them did return last I heard.
> We don't need to, we know who their source was (Snowden). If Assange wants to claim he's a journalist, that's fine, but then he either needs to accept the consequences of protecting his sources, or out his sources.
Journalists are legally required to put their sources or they are on the hook?
I suggest you revisit the case history on this subject.
The Wikipedia article for "reporter's privilege" [0] has an overview of the various laws (statutory and case laws) regarding it. At the national level, the Supreme Court has only ruled on it once, in Branzburg v Hayes [1] which ruled that journalists can be compelled to testify to a grand jury.
Journalism source protection under EU does not look kind to forcing journalist to out sources. The European Court of Human Rights have already ruled against the United Kingdom High Court on a case where UK tried to demand journalist to out sources. It is in a very bad style and not very civilized to go after journalists and demand that they out their sources.
Broadly? I thinks that's a very American centric perspective. About the last system of justice I'd like to find myself at the mercy of outside those in totalitarian countries is the American one.
It has earned itself an awful reputation, in Europe, at least. It's such a shame that countries like the UK appear to be behaving like client states of America.
It has earned itself an awful reputation in America too amongst the people who understand it. Unfortunately, most Americans are too stupid to understand it or too hateful to even try.
I think this is a ridiculous perspective, especially when virtually every European countries is on the inquisitorial system. (See The Trial.)
It is my opinion that the US is probably one of the best countries when it comes to the rights of a defendant ― well, before a guilty verdict.
I ask that you actually take a look at some of the kinds of people who run the federal courts in the United States. See something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXv7anhiIBY. These are serious legitimate people who are working in and trying to improve a highly developed yet highly imperfect legal system (and country).
Last I checked the only protection on classified information was for people that had a clearance at some point. Which is why journalists can generally publish classified information.
Information was copied, not stolen. This is about as correct as arguments around piracy equating downloading a film to stealing a car. The other party still has the information, it's not stolen.
In the case of a movie it was illegally copied, this is illegal under copyright law but is NOT stealing.
Copying classified information you have been granted access to by the military because of your security clearance is illegal and punishable by court marshall but it's NOT stealing.
A journalist disclosing classified information IS legal and always has been. If it wasn't then all of the journalists that published the cables in NYTimes and friends would be guilty of the same charges as Assange, i.e copying classified information from some source on the Internet and then disclosing it to their readers/viewers.
However there is potentially SOME argument that Assange may be running afoul of the Espionage act because he is ACCUSED of aiding and abetting a member of the US military in exfiltrating classified information. This is illegal but it's definition is so broad that it would most likely need to be heard by the Supreme Court to clarify.
i.e he isn't being charged with stealing because he didn't steal shit. He isn't being charged with disclosing secrets because that is legal. He is being charged with helping someone do something illegal and that is entirely different.
Anyone know why we’re treating Julian Assange like the worst criminal that ever existed?
“ Those two shootings were a thousand times repeated, though the reports were rare in admitting that the victims were civilians. More usually, the dead were automatically identified as ‘terrorists’ caught in the act, regardless of evidence to the contrary. ”
Here’s an argument against Leetcode. There are real patterns in our work. That quote is a real pattern in law enforcement. Test for the patterns, not how slick someone is in a contrived scenario.
We seem to be stuck in deja vu world. The same problems over and over, everywhere, with an unwillingness to fix or acknowledge it.
Not many body cams existed for those deaths, huh?
Sad, I’ll erase it from my mind and move on for this evening, as usual.
Don’t stick the guy that showed it to us in jail. Don’t be the emperor that killed the messenger.
Because he revealed evidence of one of the worst crimes committed by humanity in the last 100 years?
4 million innocent people murdered in illegal wars is a lot of blood on the hands of the American people. And, we all know how much they hate to be embarrassed by such things ..
Was WikiLeaks part of exposing Prism as well? Or was that mostly The Guardian?
I remember after 9/11 I grabbed a bunch of books about the Taliban from the library, and my dad said ‘look, the government is going to put you on a list now’, and I naively said ‘No dad, this is America’ (he was an immigrant).
It was really Greenwald and Poitras, and the Guardian just happened to be Greenwald's main outlet at the time. However WikiLeaks did help Snowden with his legal defense and flight to asylum in Russia.
Sadly Snowden is in a position where Putin can use him for a trade. One possible scenario I thought is Trump getting desperate and asking Putin for Snowden to be extradited so Trump can rah rah about being the man that got "the traitor". Meanwhile Putin would get whatever it is Putin wants from this trade, because as we know Trump is an unparalleled genius in deals...
Snowden is a patriot in my mind, and I'm no Trump supporter. Just because you associate Snowden with Trump, as per standard agitprop victim procedure, doesn't mean that you should ignore the very real criminal behaviour that Snowden revealed to the world. You should probably pay more attention to the fact of illegal behaviour, more than playing cult doll games ..
Every time I say something that can vaguely be construed as not correctly hating Trump or his supporters on this forum I get responses like this, using insulting emotional phrases like “cult doll games.” I was merely pointing out what I see as a misconception in his likely motivations. I still think the scenario GP presented is extremely unlikely and alarmist, why would you call my post agitprop and not that one?
Just so its clear, I'm not aligned with the collective view that Trump is a Putin agent - I think this is an excuse used to ignore America's true, real crimes, against humanity which occurred way before Trump came to power, and is a deflection from the real issue - which is that America has been getting away with the murder of innocent people for decades in its illegal wars. From my point of view, it'd actually be GREAT if America could get along with Russia. This would require a great deal of humility and a vacation of vast amounts of hubris on both sides, however.
"Trump is a Russian agent" is a meme designed to protect fragile American ego's from the truth, which is that America, through its unhindered asymmetric, illegal wars, is the #1 cause of violent, murderous upheaval in the world today - and therefore actually kind of deserves the orange buffoon tearing things to pieces. When war criminals are allowed to roam free, eventually the society they choose to rule becomes their target.
That said, I don't love/hate Trump as an idol, either way. He is the least of America's problems.
You're right though, we will trigger a great deal of animosity from the Trump-hating(,-loving) collective when we point this out. Agitprop is designed to push the collective mind in a desired direction - all the hating of Trump right now is doing, is preventing Americans from inspecting the real, legitimate war crimes and crimes against humanity that their nation has been committing - Trump-hatred is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like distraction mechanism. "The Party" (Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR) still gets away with murder, whoever is the figurehead...
Well, I mostly agree with you, not sure how much I can add to this without getting way into the weeds besides saying that I hope that the sacrifices of people like Snowden were not in vain and the USA does eventually get their intelligence agencies under control.
That is most decidedly not true. If it was, his base would be clamoring for restrictions on the NSA’s spying. The truth is: no one in the public cares.
What's your source for your claim that Trump's base does not care about warrantless spying? You can see an example of priorities in coverage and reaction to the recent defeat/delay of the FISA re-authorization in the House.
The only reason Trump's base cares one whit about FISA is because it was used (yes, quite illegitimately in my opinion) to spy on Trump and his campaign & staff in the runup to his inauguration. If they actually care about mass surveillance and such, why doesn't Trump put forward some proposals and measures to reign it in? Instead he is seeking to expand it with his AG trying to ban E2E encrypted messaging.
Simple solution: the US give Snowden his passport and guaranties that they won't go after him while he fly to a any other country that is willing to offer him asylum.
The Evo Morales grounding incident showed what happens if Snowden tries to leave russia. The US pressured France, Spain, and Italy to forced the airplane of the Bolivia government on the mere suspicion that Snowden may had been onboard. Afterward all three countries basically said "ops, sorrrrry, we was ordered by the US to do this".
Julian Assange later claimed that it was he who told the US about the flight in order to distract the US agents, which resulted in the Bolivian ambassador to Russia demanding that Assange apologize for putting their president's life at risk. Illustrates nicely how the game of politics works.
He knows what he’s doing. If he’s quiet about Russia’s crimes against freedom of expression, it’s because he’ll be in serious danger if he says anything about them - and Snowden going under for saying something true doesn’t do him or anyone else any favours, considering if he did drag Russia through the mud we probably wouldn’t learn anything new.
Never forget that he unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history. The fact is, for all Russia’s brutality towards journalists, the scale of Snowden’s findings of US crimes against free expression and privacy dwarf anything Putin has ever done - he wishes he could have a domestic spy agency as effective and popular as the NSA.
We could argue about this, or we could agree to disagree and just acknowledge that the US' domestic and international spying programmes are some of the most far-reaching and intrusive in history.
The problem with this definitions is not that they are wrong, they aren't, the problem is consequences.
DDR was much smaller than US and his program was more limited than any actual one, given the advancements in technology of the past decades.
And yet, STASI was much more effective and disruptive than many other similar projects before and after.
At its peak STASI employed around 2% of the entire East Germany population.
With the information gathered and the prevention of external influences, they could literally convince people that they were living in the best World possible using just a tiny wall and propaganda.
Those who denied it, doubted about it, had contacts with western entities or were suspected of conspiring against the SED, were incapacitated, it doesn't imply they were killed on the spot, but they were made harmless, arrested, hospitalized, institutionalized in psychiatric wards or "disappeared" in concentration camps.
It's not ironic, but rather straightforwardly pragmatic. A free press is an ideal to strive towards because it's something that local thugs generally attempt to shut down. Distance helps prevent coercion, and the adversary of your adversary is an ally. Analogously, the US is ideally hosting as many Russian-community-focused independent speakers as possible. The question you should be focused on is why did this whistleblower have to flee to Russia to begin with?
'Isn't it ironic to post about police brutality from a city where the police beat protestors?'
Unless Snowden is proclaiming the virtues of being in Russia, then where he is has little bearing on the validity of what he's saying.
Either making it to Iceland or Switzerland is logistically challenging (see: Bolivia), or the downsides of being in Russia aren't particularly bad when you're not speaking out against Russian interests.
Would it be ironic to move to a city where police is brutal, knowing very well it is, by accepting an invite from the major of the city and then tweeting about police brutality in other parts of the World?
Yes it would.
I live 30kms away from Switzerland, it's really not that challenging to go there.
Maybe being in Geneva to secretly investigate the Swiss bank system working for CIA, writing that Switzerland is like "living in an opposite World" just because your own country is living a financial crisis (2008) while Swiss were shielded by their government from it and refusing to testify against NSA while Switzerland offered asylum in exchange for cooperation, didn't work too well for him
When it became clear that there was no ground to make it a political case, they dropped the offer
Switzerland provides political asylum, not criminal asylum
(Whether Snowden is a criminal or not is not relevant)
>4 million innocent people murdered in illegal wars
This phrase has always bugged me. How do you carry out a 100% legal war? War is by its very nature an uprooting of the normal system where we resolve conflicts in a peaceful and organized fashion.
This implies that there are political motives that justify killing thousands to millions of soldiers and civilians. Can you or anyone here provide a non-exhaustive list of these justifiable motives?
There’s plenty of money involved in making and buying rockets to throw at a country (defense industry), then rebuilding said country (defense contracting), then securing that country’s resources (oil industry), all while winning re-election (Politics).
In Medieval (Antiquity too? Goes pretty far back) terms, this is often called Plundering. There’s a real market for it.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the war on terror has been a calamitous waste of money. One reason for the precipitous decline in war over the last seventy year is precisely that it no longer pays:
(i) it does not pay to wage war because it has become highly resource-intensive and technologically sophisticated, and often involves protracted low-intensity campaigns against asymmetric guerrillas.
(ii) it does not pay to win wars because we now realise that land is not the principal variable of national economic growth, but the place of an economy in the global value-added supply chain.
I think the first motive was moral and political (along the lines of neoconservatism), and the second reason was a geopolitical vision of a reconstructed Middle East pliable to American demands, open to democratic reforms, and aligned with the interests of Israel.
Those are really old-fashioned justifications. In the first place, "land" hasn't been the motivating resource for over a century. USA has plenty of land. Now that we also have plenty of petroleum, it's easier to see what the real motivation for war has been for at least 70 years: transferring resources to armaments manufacturers, and thence to their puppets in politics and news media. All of our public discourse about security etc. is a manufactured farce, subordinate to the basic goal of churning blood into money.
Stopping genocide. More generally the Responsibility to Protect[1]. For a while this seemed likely to have legs but after Libya went from a functioning state that was more or less peaceful to a never ending civil war with open slave markets due to Obama, Clinton and Power Russia and China are likely to veto any similar US actions. Note the US isn’t solely to blame. In Libya and Syria there was a lot of support in Europe for the US to spend its money, power and political capital doing things the French and others wanted someone else to do but were incapable of doing themselves, by which I mean, unwilling to pay for.
Cool. I look forward to America using its responsibilities to stop the genocide in Yemen that it has been so far supporting for the last few years in its alliance with KSA.
"But the other kids do it too" is never going to work in the ICC. Which explains why the refrain is so common, and why the USA is terrified of the ICC.
I posted a long boring reply about this that you can read above, but it strikes me that your comment lives or dies on the meaning it assigns to the word "justify." If you're referencing _moral_ justification, then yeah of course you are right. War is horrible. But if you mean _legal_ justification, then here's a non-exhaustive list:
- Self-defense
There can be non "political" motives, like self-defense from outside aggressors, but I can't think of much besides that (and even that doesn't really cover civilian deaths)
I am sympathetic to the point that you are making and hate to go all legal-positivist, but an illegal war is a war that isn't legal under international law. Defending your country from an invasion is like the gold standard of legality. It sits in contradistinction to, e.g., wars of aggression, which are what they sound like. To be a legal war where you're not defending against an invasion, it's necessary to have either a UNSC resolution supporting the war or a compelling self-defense/preemptive justification.
For the 2003 invasion of Iraq, people argue that it was illegal because there was no UNSC resolution. The U.S. and U.K. argued that it was authorized under the UNSC resolution that blessed the first U.s. invasion of Iraq. I think that sounds like nonsense, and particularly when you factor in that the actual pretenses for the 2003 invasion were false and probably fabricated by the aggressing parties—it seems like not a stretch to call it an illegal war.
Obviously the 2003 Iraq Invasion doesn't itself get you to OP's 4 million body count, but I hope this is a helpful start.
100%. Not that this means anything but I'm a JD and my JD girlfriend specializes in international law and we agree it's basically a joke. But hell yeah it was illegal.
Outside of international law and ethics, technically it's not legal for the US to go to war without approval from Congress. So legally speaking, either the war was not a war, or an illegal one. You can look into all the undeclared wars (or police actions) by the US on Wikipedia.
> one of the worst crimes committed by humanity in the last 100 years?
As much as I oppose to US military politics, I think that in the past 100 years there have been much worse crimes than US wars in the middle east.
If I think of the worst criminal of the modern era (post WW2) the first name that comes to mind is Vladimir Putin.
For once: he wiped a tenth of the entire Chechen population, it's like if someone ordered the killing of 34 millions of US citizens.
Lucky us the red army is not the red army anymore.
He founded and promoted terrorism in Ukraine, shot down civilian airplanes, bombed refugees camps, used chemical warfare, prohibited by international treaties, on civilians
He also ordered the assassination of a number of journalists
But Snowden is his guest, so he must be a good man...
The Human Rights ideology is a con. No one is willing to make it real, i.e. to wage war to force other nations to conform to it. Absent that it will continue to be internationally irrelevant, window dressing that occasionally effects marginal decisions and never impacts anyone powerful.
Or US own creations: Videla, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, which perspective make US one of the major threat to World's safety.
or Franco and the regime of the colonels in Greece, because dictatorship is not a communist's only trait, as US like to think.
But I think Putin is different
He s not crushing only his own people, like those dictators did, he acts like the leader of an international terrorist organization with full power over an entire nation resources (from energy to army, from media to industry) and when he's not directly in charge, he puts one of his puppets there, changing the constitution or bending the law if he needs it, and that's why I think he's more dangerous.
Years of articles from major outlets all over the world and researchers that wrote about it
Even Wikipedia acknowledges it
> Russia has supported both the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen on several occasions and established close relations with them.
Or in a recent study published on February 2020
> This chapter explores the antecedents for Russia’s solitary abstention vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2216 in April 2015, by analyzing the Russia-Yemen bilateral relationship under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Russia’s handling of the 2011 Yemeni revolution that heralded Abdurabbo Mansour Hadi’s presidency. It then examines Russia’s reaction to the outbreak of war and shifting positions on conflict resolution within the context of Moscow’s strategic interests in Yemen and regional power projection ambitions.
"From the relation between the current number given by IBC and the one given for the end of June 2006 (43,394), it concludes that the number of Iraqis killed up to September 2011 is at around 1.46 million"
...
"This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely."
--
And then .. there is the situation in Yemen. Americans are very, very quiet about that. And there is an evil reason for that. 2 million people have starved to death as a result of American-supported genocide by the KSA.
4 million innocent people murdered in illegal wars is a lot of blood on the hands of the American people
That's very simplistic, and ignorant. Those deaths were the result of the dissolution of a regime forcefully (ie. using terror) to hold together an unstable populace. Sure, it was triggered by US actions, but that's really not the same thing...
Not really, no. This is a common justification that Americans use to excuse themselves for any responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed in their name, but anyone outside the American bubble knows that those refugees and war orphans weren't happening before some kids in Arizona went to work in a strip mall to cowardly drop bombs from robot planes half-way around the world ..
The feds don't like him because he leaks their secrets. The Republicans don't like him because he makes our military look bad. The Democrats don't like him because he leaked Clinton's emails. There's no longer anyone in America willing to stop his incarceration so he can pester their political rivals.
He’s not the worst criminal that ever existed. He’s also not the best whistleblower that ever existed. He’s a guy who helped expose things that were important to know about, who’s also a narcissist and very probably a rapist. He doesn’t deserve to be punished inappropriately for exposing what he exposed, he doesn’t deserve to be exonerated for the actual crimes he committed, and he doesn’t deserve to be treated as a hero for accepting a role as an agent of weaponized information for a global fascist movement. He’s a guy who did one good thing with questionable motives, did at least one bad thing, and is otherwise just a guy.
He was never charged with rape, and neither of the women who were involved in those cases ever accused him of rape. I encourage you to read their own words.
You are welcome to disagree with me about what constitutes consent. But what I don't accept is randos on the internet defining consent on "were charges filed". You likely know as well as I do that the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported, and that most which are reported either go uninvestigated or are retraumatizing for the victim.
I stand by my position that having sex with someone in a way they explicitly did not give consent to, even if they consented to other terms, is rape.
> You likely know as well as I do that the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported
But this case was reported and talked about around the world, so it's not in the same situation.
> I stand by my position that having sex with someone in a way they explicitly did not give consent to, even if they consented to other terms, is rape.
That's fine, but the alleged victims in this case don't agree.
Dear HN: I don’t care about the downvotes, but it’s showing some really ugly biases that are going to have real harm to other victims. Someone on here asked questions and it was a lot more productive than just dismissing victims in anonymous downvotes. You can learn from this.
In case you're not aware, having sex with someone outside the terms they consented to (use of an intact condom, awake and present) is rape. Even if the person who experienced it doesn't explicitly say so.
> In case you're not aware, having sex with someone outside the terms they consented to (use of an intact condom, awake and present) is rape
Not true at least in California. Even then though, would you consider someone who has sex with his girlfriend under the terms that he will not cheat on her a rapist if he ends up cheating on her?
I think that you undermining the meaning of rape if you use it for something like that.
> Even then though, would you consider someone who has sex with his girlfriend under the terms that he will not cheat on her a rapist if he ends up cheating on her?
No, and I can't tell if you're trolling or if you don't understand the words I wrote.
And? It is still a break of the terms of the concent, is it not?
How about an alternative, "you can have sex with me but only if you are single", and someone who is not single lies about it. During sex said person is not going to be single and thus is breaking the terms of concent while sex is happening.
> And? It is still a break of the terms of the concent, is it not?
Assuming I understood your original hypothetical correctly, the sex had already occurred and the violation of the terms of consent did not occur until afterward. The sex at the time was consensual (at least within those facts), the violation of trust occurred later.
> How about an alternative, "you can have sex with me but only if you are single", and someone who is not single lies about it. During sex said person is not going to be single and thus is breaking the terms of concent while sex is happening.
Yes, that is a clear violation of consent. One partner stated their acceptable boundaries to have sex, and consented only based on a lie by the other. Lying to obtain consent is fundamentally not obtaining consent. In other contracts, it would be considered fraud. Using fraud to trick someone into having sex with you is rape.
Edit: this is not just academic. People make judgments not just about whether to have sex but about what kinds of safety considerations are necessary based on this kind of information. If someone is lying to you about having other sexual partners, you are not equipped to evaluate the risk of your own sexual encounter. They are putting your life at risk and eliminating your ability to choose whether that risk is acceptable.
Thank you for elaborating. I do not personally agree with it (as it feels like that you are re-defining the meaning of the word[note1] with one that is undermining what victims of rape went through by mixing it with less serious accusations) but I have to admit that it is consistent[note2].
[note1] Last time that I asked a similar question in HN I was told that even promising not to cheat and then cheating after the act would be considered as rape, meanwhile the people (outside of HN) that I asked and were unfamiliar with the Assange case seemed to think that neither were considered rape. When I checked at the laws of different countries it seemed that the few that considered it a crime classified it under other terms. (rape seems to imply violence or coercement)
[note2] If we ignore the edit that is. Not saying that the edit is not consistent but I will need your elaboration in order to be able to deduce it.
> Edit: this is not just academic. People make judgments not just about whether to have sex but about what kinds of safety considerations are necessary based on this kind of information. If someone is lying to you about having other sexual partners, you are not equipped to evaluate the risk of your own sexual encounter. They are putting your life at risk and eliminating your ability to choose whether that risk is acceptable.
Are you saying that it is fine as long as you are not put in risk? Because the previous example that I posted ("you can have sex with me but only if you are single") does not have any safety implications (someone can be single yet they could also had sex with someone else the previous day).
> it feels like that you are re-defining the meaning of the word
> [...]
> rape seems to imply violence or coercement
I think you're redefining the term, whether you intend to or not. Rape is sex without consent. Sex without consent is inherently coercive, but it doesn't have to imply a struggle or resistance, quite a lot of rape isn't physically forced sex. Consent obtained by fraud is not consent, and sex under those conditions is inherently nonconsensual.
> with one that is undermining what victims of rape went through by mixing it with less serious accusations
You may have missed this in another subthread, but I'm a victim of sexual assault. The majority of women in my personal life who I've spoken with about the subject are as well, and several of the men and nonbinary folks as well. Again, whether you intend to or not, I think it's you who is undermining what victims have gone through. Finding out that you've had sex in violation of the terms you agreed to can be extremely traumatizing.
> Are you saying that it is fine as long as you are not put in risk? Because the previous example that I posted ("you can have sex with me but only if you are single") does not have any safety implications (someone can be single yet they could also had sex with someone else the previous day).
No, that is not what I was saying. My edit was to clarify that the answer I gave to your hypothetical wasn't just "is it rape or is it not" in some abstract sense, and to provide an explanation of the kind of harm that can be done by your hypothetical, to hopefully help you understand the severity of violating that consent. The example you posted does have those safety implications, which was what I was trying to explain. I encourage you to go back and re-read it with that in mind.
He was not charged with rape, and the women he consensually had sex with, did not make that claim either. They wanted the police to require him to have an HIV test - this was then transformed into a rape charge. Neither of the women involved have made that claim - it was invented by the investigator in order to kowtow to political pressure from the CIA in Sweden.
I personally no longer accept the classification of narcissism. Something so general that it’s based on Greek mythology (embarrassing ultimately, that a pseudo scientific field seeking legitimacy resorts to a fictional parallel - yep, that’s the way to do it, just read the wikis on Narcissistic supply, and you wonder if the hacks haven’t taken control of the wheel and done a full blown imitation of Freud. The modern version of the Oedipus Complex, and the professional and layman throw it around, like it’s real. We’ve become embarrassing. If you majored in Psych, please, take yourself to the nearest bootcamp and learn web development so we never have to hear your nonsense.). By definition we can characterize a mass of people under the term for taking selfies (and a whole lot of selfies).
Self absorption shouldn’t be a damning trait, it’s pervasive in humanity.
So you’re self absorbed, so be it, what are the actual things you’ve done? Now we enter the meat.
> Anyone know why we’re treating Julian Assange like the worst criminal that ever existed?
Because the CIA had an explicit goal of destroying his reputation in the media, and getting the most damaging headlines possible run about him in an effort to destroy any meaningful support he may have garnered by exposing war crimes.
For example: he was never once charged with any sexcrime in any country, but you'd never know that from the headlines which almost universally referred to "charges" when there were none.
It's a real shame what the US military intelligence community will do when threatened. Snowden himself explicitly specified, at least twice, that they would have summarily executed Barton Gellman if they thought that he was the single point of failure for the release of the Snowden documents, for example. They operate entirely beyond the reach of oversight or the law.
None of this is an accident. They couldn't lay hands on him for a while, so plan B was a character assassination in the media.
Article doesn't even cover recent findings of extensive spying during his stay in the embassy, it's close to a white washing.
Meanwhile HN intelligencia will bury this off the front page and vote brigading will allow critical voices to raise u
To the top and flag those critical. Discussion here is impossible.
Article doesn't even cover recent findings of extensive spying during his stay in the embassy, it's close to a white washing.
Meanwhile HN intelligencia will bury this off the front page and vote brigading will allow critical voices to raise u
To the top and flag those critical. Discussion here is impossible.
Autodead comments, like I said, impossible to have a fair open discussion here.
its amazing the audacity you have and the constant lying that is done by the moderation team.
'autodead' comments is clearly a way to stifle voices that don't tow the acceptable narrative.
I've had and seen accounts banned that never violated any guidelines -- once an account was deleted that posted 'generic' comments -- what does that even mean? again lies.
Some commenters get special privileges, are allowed to post 20, 30, 40 times, are allowed to control who is seen and not seen.
but go ahead and pat yourself on the back that this comment above gets to stick around for a few hours, nearly invisible, and pat yourself again that this thread stayed on the front page for a few hours.
Meanwhile, HN purposely removed snowden threads, assange threads, and allowed clearly government astro turfers to control discussions. While voices of reason are auto dead or removed, or flagged into non existence. HN has no clear guidelines, and is run by favoritism and allows token dissent, but not serious real, honest and open discussion.
You are a complusive liar who uses your position of power to stifle dissent. Congratulations on supporting the empire's propaganda.
> Congratulations on supporting the empire's propaganda.
Mate, I think I agree with a lot of the sentiment that you mention here... but you can be more productive in your narrative. This is not reddit nor slashdot; just put some effort.
Seems common here that many interesting discussions are also controversial and therefore result in a lot of downvotes. It’s a pain to read downvoted comments because of the low contrast despite them sometimes being insightful yet unpopular. I also catch myself automatically taking a harsher stance towards grayed out messages before even reading them. I wouldn’t be surprised if many downvotes come in after the initial graying out of a comment, a sort of dogpile based more on herd effects than the content itself. In all, the current voting system doesn’t work well when it comes to controversy. Maybe that’s somewhat appropriate for this community since most tech news isn’t all that controversial. But it’s unfortunate that it’s so damn hard to read unpopular comments on this site. And impossible to reply to them. Are the mods open to changing the grayed-out punishment for downvoted comments to something else?
If you click on a grayed-out comment's timestamp, it should take you to the comment's own page and the text there should be readable.
There's no approach here that doesn't suck. The fading of downvoted comments has downsides, but I think not doing it would have more downsides. It's really important for there to be visual signals of when the community doesn't support something, because in the absence of such signals, people will routinely jump to the conclusion "Hacker News agrees with this". That's not only a non sequitur, it's a category error, but that makes no difference.
That's easy to do on a desktop, but can be cumbersome on mobile. I guess the problem is biggest on mobile, because of this and issues with glare etectera from sunlight, or low screen intensity at night.
It should be no surprise that these people might retire from military and join local state police and enjoy killing similarly less fortunate American citizens
> helicopter pilots exchange banter about the slaughter in the street below: ‘Ha, ha, I hit them,’ one says. ‘Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,’ the other says. They have mistaken the camera held by one of the journalists for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, unlikely though it was that armed insurgents would stand in the open in Baghdad with a US helicopter hovering overhead. They shoot again at the wounded as one of them, probably the Reuters assistant Saeed Chmagh, crawls towards a van that has stopped to rescue them. When the pilots are told over the radio that they have killed a number of Iraqi civilians and wounded two children, one of them says: ‘Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into the battle.’
And these are the scumbags we're supposed to honor, thank, and in the future remember fondly? Memorial and veterans' days should only apply to soldiers who fought in wars against their will (drafted) or had a basis in reality. Last one was WWII. The scumbags who fought in later wars should question their life decisions. Some of them regret it already. Good.
Wasn't there a draft for the Vietnam war? And probably also Korea? One of the issues I can remember there is that less-well-off people couldn't buy themselves out of the draft. This affected minorities especially.
Yes, but not everyone that went was drafted. Obviously, I make an exception for draftees. Poor people got fucked over the most. Still don't deserve a holiday though, let alone two, especially when dodging was an option.
While I don't really like JA, tend not to trust him, and disagree with a lot of his choices, it is unquestionable that he suffered a lot of injustice; while the public turned on him and continues to fall for simplified coverage of all matters involving him. The latest example, I believe, was the report on his life at the embassy and how he received the email archive in 2016.
[1] is the popular CNN version, while a week earlier El Pais reported [2] very differently on the very same material. And that still doesn't address CNN's suspicious depiction and emphasis of the evil hackers (German CCC members) who visited JA.
That reminds me, since the ECHR or CJEU—I don't remember which one—ruled that you can't sentence a person to prison forever, wouldn't it be inhumane to extradite someone when the potential degree of penalty is over 150 years?
I 'turned on him' because as I learned more about him I trusted his motives less.
If I thought his motives were pure, I would give him more slack but I think he has nefarious motives based on his indiscriminate releases. 150 years sounds right for a spy at his stature without a state sponsor, good thing we aren't at war or there may be an argument to kill him.
> the ECHR or CJEU—I don't remember which one—ruled that you can't sentence a person to prison forever
I believe you are referring to rulings by the ECtHR[1]. In fact it was determined that the situation in the UK was compliant with the Convention because prisoners have the possibility of applying to the Home Secretary for compassionate release. (This mitigates the concern that, for example, someone could end up in prison for 100 years while society changed around them such that the original sentence became seen to be unjust, but the prisoner felt they had no prospect of having their situation changed).
As for how this affects Assange's extradition, it is already the case that the US must promise not to execute him before the UK will hand him over, so they could perhaps also promise to review his sentence after 25 years if he is imprisoned for that long. (For reference, he turns 50 next year).
> After long research, his team of 120 counterintelligence officers hadn’t been able to find a single person, among the thousands of American agents and secret sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures.
When the Taliban killed someone for doing something that offends them, such as providing education for girls, did they generally leave a message explaining how that particular person came to their attention?
If you don't know why Taliban killed someone, then you can't prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the defendant's actions caused that death and can't convict anyone for that. If there's no evidence for participating in a crime, you can't charge people for that crime.
If Americans allow assange to be hounded without end, it’s extremely dangerous for journalists everywhere in the future. This is a matter of the state being allowed to commit crimes in secret and whether journalists are allowed to report on it without fear of lifelong torture
Edit: Manning was tortured by being denied sleep for years, and trump openly advocates for it. Right now he’s in solitary confinement which is also a form of torture
If Americans allow assange to be hounded without end, it’s extremely dangerous for journalists everywhere in the future.
I'll take that one further: it's extremely dangerous for anyone in the future.
This whole saga has been another example of what happens when the people in power don't get their way: they will abuse existing systems until they do. Or at the very least, until they've made enough of an example of somebody so the next person won't be tempted to do the same.
Julian took an action that has consequences. The US is (in)famous for its 'soft power'. While the US wont outright kill him they will leverage their soft power to neutralize his ability to harm future operations.
He played the espionage game without an explicit state sponsor, jail time was the best outcome he could hope for. Sadly because he doesn't have a state sponsor the likelihood of an exchange is.... low.
I have a hard time understanding how playing the "espionage game" in a country were you don't even live can even be procecuted.
US law is not supposed to apply abroad.
But yeah that's where that "Soft Power" card comes into play I guess.
That's what the "Imperialism" monkier that a lot of "enemies of the USA" coin means. The Megaupload guy, a guy from Australia, Hew Raymond Griffiths (copyright infrignment... really?) and Gary McKinnon (admin/admin Windows machines).
On this day an age, the majority of countries will bow to the USA and give anything the country asks for. Few countries are really independent and would dare to stand up even for their own citizens. It is sad, but countries like Russia and China doing "what is right" to balance that sort of power is a scary situation where we have arrived.
Please don't just carelessly comment about WAR as something minor and justifiable.
With all the power, wealth, and facilities, it took us only a few months of pandemic pressure, a few weeks with fear of tear gas, and violence on streets. So many hearts broke, so many men cried, system often failed to control, many felt hopeless, and so many got depressed because of uncertainty.
And yet we carelessly talk about WAR as if everything about it is small and normal that nobody should be held accountable and we should do all of it and non of it is our problem. We do all that talking without really knowing anything about it. Media just made it so easy for people to do that and that's how we don't put any effort to stop wars.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadThe sad irony is that none of this thread's discussion or anything else would make any difference. This article is written in "London Review of Books", not even a single news agency is interested in this currently.
[0] https://youtu.be/gxLa6jtF01g
Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands on.
Or of assisting a hacker?
If he's not accused of doing the first, then this is hardly relevant to his case.
We are in an historical moment when transmitting the COVID-19 to someone else could cost you lifetime jail, I don't think they will go easy on revealing the secret identities of operatives.
As for covid, that's simply a false equivalence.
What? This hasn't happened.
It has some bearing on the sentencing.
> After Manning's arrest, Assange seemed intent on dumping as many classified documents onto the internet as he could, as quickly as he could. In my last few months as USD(I) and my first few months as the fourth DNI in five years, my time and attention were also taken up by the efforts at DOD and CIA to deal with these document dumps. Teams were on standby in both places to sort quickly through whatever was exposed in an effort to find names and identifying details for people in Iraq and Afghanistan who were helping the US war effort, and then try to rescue them before the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents could find and kill them.
More important to know than which Americans were 'saved' by the NSA's efforts, is: what are the names of the innocent people murdered by American forces, and why are we being prevented from knowing more about them?
This can’t be true - there are plenty of sources citing foiled plots and we see similar publications from other governments (EU and beyond) citing similar justifications. A quick google yields:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nsa-director-50-potential-te...
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/nsa-leak-keith-alexan...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/gchq-foiled-terr...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nsa-program-stopped-no-te...
A panel member claimed the phone metadata collection program hadn’t saved any lives/foiled any attacks - not that the NSA itself hasn’t.
Additionally they present this as being at odds with the Obama administrations documentation, not a refutation (they didn’t find them to be false claims).
Lol the article you list was published before the documentation cited was presented (and before my articles were even published) - additionally you are moving the goalposts - the op claim is that the nsa hasn’t foiled any terror plots - not about metadata collection
This is kind of a misrepresentation of the situation.
Manning leaked mostly diplomatic cables, the contents of which he was unaware of, thereby harming his whistleblower credentials.
The contents were not what we would regard as 'intelligence information' - more aptly described as 'the e-mails of the US diplomatic foreign corps', some of which contained sensitive information'.
That gigabyte of private information was released and there wasn't a single scandal of it shows how tight the operation was, moreover any reading of the cables demonstrates how well the US diplomatic corps were actually doing their jobs.
Far from releasing damning information about Americans, the cables released inside information about Arab leaders and their systematic corruption.
To unearth that amount of private information, to have it combed over by thousands of journalists trying to find a juicy bit, and to come up with very little ... is frankly something Americans can be proud of.
It's ridiculously ironic that Manning, in his attempt to discredit America, ended up doing what US diplomats were unable to do within the constraints of their jobs, which is to speak truth to power about the corruption in the Middle East - which ignited the Arab Spring.
The real world is sausage making and grinding, any skeptical, decontextualized look under any rocks will always yield something to talk about - so in the end, it's really the details and context that really do matter.
The cables did truly pose a serious threat to the security and integrity of individuals in various ways, and obviously it compromised many programs. That there doesn't seem to be any deadly outcomes is wonderful, but it doesn't abnegate Manning from the inappropriate actions he took particularly on the cable leak.
What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him. I wonder what caused them to turn. Obviously, his close ties to Russia are problematic, but it's hard to see exactly what it is. It's possible that he's just not contemporarily a social advocate in their view: we're now full-on into intersectional issues, matters of state etc. are 'old news' it would seem.
He published Clinton's emails. After that he was no longer on the same "team" as American journalists.
No, it just shows how subservient to U.S. foreign policy the American press is (they did not undertake any widespread publishing of embarrassing details from the cables), and how uninterested and easily misled the American public is about our government's actions overseas.
> What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him.
The American press was never that in love with Assange -- the smear jobs and carping about his character started very soon after the Manning leaks, as Cockburn points out. The nail in the coffin was publishing the DNC emails, which despite containing a great deal of newsworthy details and indications of corruption, became a convenient scapegoat for Clinton's loss in the 2016 election and are now viewed almost exclusively in that light. (I think some legitimate criticisms can be lodged against Assange for electioneering in his timing of the leaks, but Clinton did joke about assassinating him and did all she could to put him in prison, so ....)
This is demonstrably false.
Forst - the press loves a scandal, it's what they live on. They were happy to talk about Snowden, Assange etc. for quite a long time.
You're literally saying the press is acting against their own best interest and purpose which is upside down.
Second - we don't need the press to find wrongdoing. It's all there for you to see. Where is the scandal?
The cable releases prove that the American diplomatic corpos is doing a good job by any measure.
Are you suggesting that them acting a certain way shows that acting that way is in their best interest (because they wouldn't act that way otherwise)? Are you sure they know what cause of action is in their best interest? Are you sure they consider "their best interest" to be the same you consider it to be?
Is the 24/7 news cycle hype in the best interest of "the media"? Was the war-drumming with barely any skepticism about the Iraq war(s) in their best interest?
> Second - we don't need the press to find wrongdoing. It's all there for you to see. Where is the scandal?
What? The public at large gets their information from the press. If the press does not report, it does not happen for large parts of the public. That's why taking control of the press is usually the first thing during any coup and for any authoritarian state.
He wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.
The more pressing issue is that the NSA is a group of people. Nobody knows exactly what they are doing, or why, and the only information that comes out is "trust us, we're the good guys". They have a huge budget. Odds are they are massively corrupt and doing stupid things that either do nothing or make America less safe (like mass wire-tapping).
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/nsa-chi...
How is it hard? "Based on our data collection we found that these people were planning X and arrested them" doesn't sound hard... Unless it never happened.
Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks.
It should also be noted a big difference in the cases is that Ellsberg leaked documents he already had legal access to, and was therefore a whistleblower. Assange leaked documents that he had to illegally acquire first (either with help or without, but either way he was in possession of stolen goods). You can't get whistleblower protection for leaking information you didn't have legal access to.
I totally understand why Assange is fighting extradition -- it's highly unlikely he would be treated fairly or get a fair trial. But I doubt he'll ever be broadly considered a hero until he defends himself in court.
Otherwise, the entire press to whom such things are leaked should be in jail with them.
Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well?
This seems like making a distinction to draw a line between the two, but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import.
We don't need to, we know who their source was (Snowden). If Assange wants to claim he's a journalist, that's fine, but then he either needs to accept the consequences of protecting his sources, or out his sources.
> but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import.
It's a question of responsibility. When a journalist protects their sources, they accept responsibility for the consequences, and they they chose to reveal their source, they pass on the consequences to their source, but (usually) take a hit to their reputation as a journalist. Assange appears to not want to accept any consequences for his actions, nor pass them on be revealing his sources.
I also understand that no journalist has ever been successfully prosecuted, but no case has ever gone to the Supreme Court about it either.
My understanding about the Assange case in particular is that they are pursuing other crimes because they are more likely to stick and more likely to result in extradition. But that doesn't mean he's not guilty of other crimes.
I'm not a lawyer though, so if there is other information I'm missing, I'd definitely like to learn about it.
It seems that Wikileaks and the like do not neatly fit under previous classifications we may have. They certainly don't fit the legal ones, as those seem to mostly cut populations into free speech for citizens and foreign spies.
On a related note, off the top of my head I do recall that at least a few of the lawyers and journalists who were involved with Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, were apparently advised to go into political exile. I think at least some of them did return last I heard.
Journalists are legally required to put their sources or they are on the hook?
I suggest you revisit the case history on this subject.
Can you point me at some links? I'm not a lawyer but my understanding is that shield laws are state by state, and there are no federal protections.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporter%27s_privilege
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branzburg_v._Hayes
It is my opinion that the US is probably one of the best countries when it comes to the rights of a defendant ― well, before a guilty verdict.
I ask that you actually take a look at some of the kinds of people who run the federal courts in the United States. See something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXv7anhiIBY. These are serious legitimate people who are working in and trying to improve a highly developed yet highly imperfect legal system (and country).
Perhaps in the ~5% of the cases that actually go to trial.
Last I checked the only protection on classified information was for people that had a clearance at some point. Which is why journalists can generally publish classified information.
In the case of a movie it was illegally copied, this is illegal under copyright law but is NOT stealing.
Copying classified information you have been granted access to by the military because of your security clearance is illegal and punishable by court marshall but it's NOT stealing.
A journalist disclosing classified information IS legal and always has been. If it wasn't then all of the journalists that published the cables in NYTimes and friends would be guilty of the same charges as Assange, i.e copying classified information from some source on the Internet and then disclosing it to their readers/viewers.
However there is potentially SOME argument that Assange may be running afoul of the Espionage act because he is ACCUSED of aiding and abetting a member of the US military in exfiltrating classified information. This is illegal but it's definition is so broad that it would most likely need to be heard by the Supreme Court to clarify.
i.e he isn't being charged with stealing because he didn't steal shit. He isn't being charged with disclosing secrets because that is legal. He is being charged with helping someone do something illegal and that is entirely different.
Anyone know why we’re treating Julian Assange like the worst criminal that ever existed?
“ Those two shootings were a thousand times repeated, though the reports were rare in admitting that the victims were civilians. More usually, the dead were automatically identified as ‘terrorists’ caught in the act, regardless of evidence to the contrary. ”
Here’s an argument against Leetcode. There are real patterns in our work. That quote is a real pattern in law enforcement. Test for the patterns, not how slick someone is in a contrived scenario.
We seem to be stuck in deja vu world. The same problems over and over, everywhere, with an unwillingness to fix or acknowledge it.
Not many body cams existed for those deaths, huh?
Sad, I’ll erase it from my mind and move on for this evening, as usual.
Don’t stick the guy that showed it to us in jail. Don’t be the emperor that killed the messenger.
Goals, I guess.
4 million innocent people murdered in illegal wars is a lot of blood on the hands of the American people. And, we all know how much they hate to be embarrassed by such things ..
I remember after 9/11 I grabbed a bunch of books about the Taliban from the library, and my dad said ‘look, the government is going to put you on a list now’, and I naively said ‘No dad, this is America’ (he was an immigrant).
Sad stuff, they did put people on a list.
Ironically Snowden tweets about freedom of information from Russia, where Putin literally kills journalists
"Trump is a Russian agent" is a meme designed to protect fragile American ego's from the truth, which is that America, through its unhindered asymmetric, illegal wars, is the #1 cause of violent, murderous upheaval in the world today - and therefore actually kind of deserves the orange buffoon tearing things to pieces. When war criminals are allowed to roam free, eventually the society they choose to rule becomes their target.
That said, I don't love/hate Trump as an idol, either way. He is the least of America's problems.
You're right though, we will trigger a great deal of animosity from the Trump-hating(,-loving) collective when we point this out. Agitprop is designed to push the collective mind in a desired direction - all the hating of Trump right now is doing, is preventing Americans from inspecting the real, legitimate war crimes and crimes against humanity that their nation has been committing - Trump-hatred is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like distraction mechanism. "The Party" (Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR) still gets away with murder, whoever is the figurehead...
Here's a recent article from a right-wing outlet, PJ Media, which I feel is at least somewhat representative of Trump's base: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/28/...
If this wouldn't draw readers, why would they write the article?
Here's a counterpoint article from the left-wing outlet Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/28/pelosi-pulls-fisa-b...
To get a flavor of what his base thinks, you can look through replies to some of his tweets on the matter: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12660175121620377...
Not sure how you came to your conclusions, please elucidate me.
The Evo Morales grounding incident showed what happens if Snowden tries to leave russia. The US pressured France, Spain, and Italy to forced the airplane of the Bolivia government on the mere suspicion that Snowden may had been onboard. Afterward all three countries basically said "ops, sorrrrry, we was ordered by the US to do this".
Julian Assange later claimed that it was he who told the US about the flight in order to distract the US agents, which resulted in the Bolivian ambassador to Russia demanding that Assange apologize for putting their president's life at risk. Illustrates nicely how the game of politics works.
Never forget that he unveiled a domestic and international surveillance and spying program which is unparalleled in all of history. The fact is, for all Russia’s brutality towards journalists, the scale of Snowden’s findings of US crimes against free expression and privacy dwarf anything Putin has ever done - he wishes he could have a domestic spy agency as effective and popular as the NSA.
China
DDR was much smaller than US and his program was more limited than any actual one, given the advancements in technology of the past decades.
And yet, STASI was much more effective and disruptive than many other similar projects before and after.
At its peak STASI employed around 2% of the entire East Germany population.
With the information gathered and the prevention of external influences, they could literally convince people that they were living in the best World possible using just a tiny wall and propaganda.
Those who denied it, doubted about it, had contacts with western entities or were suspected of conspiring against the SED, were incapacitated, it doesn't imply they were killed on the spot, but they were made harmless, arrested, hospitalized, institutionalized in psychiatric wards or "disappeared" in concentration camps.
Iceland and Switzerland are free countries as well and refuse extradition to US
Unless Snowden is proclaiming the virtues of being in Russia, then where he is has little bearing on the validity of what he's saying.
Either making it to Iceland or Switzerland is logistically challenging (see: Bolivia), or the downsides of being in Russia aren't particularly bad when you're not speaking out against Russian interests.
He chose to go there
Would it be ironic to move to a city where police is brutal, knowing very well it is, by accepting an invite from the major of the city and then tweeting about police brutality in other parts of the World?
Yes it would.
I live 30kms away from Switzerland, it's really not that challenging to go there.
Maybe being in Geneva to secretly investigate the Swiss bank system working for CIA, writing that Switzerland is like "living in an opposite World" just because your own country is living a financial crisis (2008) while Swiss were shielded by their government from it and refusing to testify against NSA while Switzerland offered asylum in exchange for cooperation, didn't work too well for him
When it became clear that there was no ground to make it a political case, they dropped the offer
Switzerland provides political asylum, not criminal asylum
(Whether Snowden is a criminal or not is not relevant)
This phrase has always bugged me. How do you carry out a 100% legal war? War is by its very nature an uprooting of the normal system where we resolve conflicts in a peaceful and organized fashion.
As for what happens in war, we can take a look at what Geneva convention tried, but that’s not the debate.
Grab some books on the Iraq war.
There’s plenty of money involved in making and buying rockets to throw at a country (defense industry), then rebuilding said country (defense contracting), then securing that country’s resources (oil industry), all while winning re-election (Politics).
In Medieval (Antiquity too? Goes pretty far back) terms, this is often called Plundering. There’s a real market for it.
(i) it does not pay to wage war because it has become highly resource-intensive and technologically sophisticated, and often involves protracted low-intensity campaigns against asymmetric guerrillas.
(ii) it does not pay to win wars because we now realise that land is not the principal variable of national economic growth, but the place of an economy in the global value-added supply chain.
I think the first motive was moral and political (along the lines of neoconservatism), and the second reason was a geopolitical vision of a reconstructed Middle East pliable to American demands, open to democratic reforms, and aligned with the interests of Israel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect
"But the other kids do it too" is never going to work in the ICC. Which explains why the refrain is so common, and why the USA is terrified of the ICC.
For the 2003 invasion of Iraq, people argue that it was illegal because there was no UNSC resolution. The U.S. and U.K. argued that it was authorized under the UNSC resolution that blessed the first U.s. invasion of Iraq. I think that sounds like nonsense, and particularly when you factor in that the actual pretenses for the 2003 invasion were false and probably fabricated by the aggressing parties—it seems like not a stretch to call it an illegal war.
Obviously the 2003 Iraq Invasion doesn't itself get you to OP's 4 million body count, but I hope this is a helpful start.
https://youtu.be/1Z3f_p_7OeE
It was very illegal to put it quite frankly.
As much as I oppose to US military politics, I think that in the past 100 years there have been much worse crimes than US wars in the middle east.
If I think of the worst criminal of the modern era (post WW2) the first name that comes to mind is Vladimir Putin.
For once: he wiped a tenth of the entire Chechen population, it's like if someone ordered the killing of 34 millions of US citizens.
Lucky us the red army is not the red army anymore.
He founded and promoted terrorism in Ukraine, shot down civilian airplanes, bombed refugees camps, used chemical warfare, prohibited by international treaties, on civilians
He also ordered the assassination of a number of journalists
But Snowden is his guest, so he must be a good man...
Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin
Putin's regime carried out these crimes in the Caucasus in the 21st century (and earlier), and they are continuing even as you read this comment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_government_censorship_...
Chechnya has been essentially cut off - considering its recent history, any guesses why??
I'll say it plainly: Russia has no place in the Caucasus. Get the hell out, and mind your own damn country.
And if this was a general rule, we'd have a lot less conflict in the world.
or Franco and the regime of the colonels in Greece, because dictatorship is not a communist's only trait, as US like to think.
But I think Putin is different
He s not crushing only his own people, like those dictators did, he acts like the leader of an international terrorist organization with full power over an entire nation resources (from energy to army, from media to industry) and when he's not directly in charge, he puts one of his puppets there, changing the constitution or bending the law if he needs it, and that's why I think he's more dangerous.
Putin is a Trump who made it.
(Hint: it isn't Putin.)
He's not actively involved in the war, he's sitting on it
Even Wikipedia acknowledges it
> Russia has supported both the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen on several occasions and established close relations with them.
Or in a recent study published on February 2020
> This chapter explores the antecedents for Russia’s solitary abstention vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2216 in April 2015, by analyzing the Russia-Yemen bilateral relationship under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Russia’s handling of the 2011 Yemeni revolution that heralded Abdurabbo Mansour Hadi’s presidency. It then examines Russia’s reaction to the outbreak of war and shifting positions on conflict resolution within the context of Moscow’s strategic interests in Yemen and regional power projection ambitions.
Counter evidence?
The first Chechen war did not happen under Putin.
> down civilian airplanes
I doubt that he gave his personal command to do that.
You've mentioned this number a few times, but I can't find a source for it. Can you point me in the right direction?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
If we include Afghanistan, we could be in the million range.
https://www.psr.org/blog/resource/body-count/
Focusing on Iraq alone:
--
"From the relation between the current number given by IBC and the one given for the end of June 2006 (43,394), it concludes that the number of Iraqis killed up to September 2011 is at around 1.46 million"
...
"This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely."
--
And then .. there is the situation in Yemen. Americans are very, very quiet about that. And there is an evil reason for that. 2 million people have starved to death as a result of American-supported genocide by the KSA.
That's very simplistic, and ignorant. Those deaths were the result of the dissolution of a regime forcefully (ie. using terror) to hold together an unstable populace. Sure, it was triggered by US actions, but that's really not the same thing...
I stand by my position that having sex with someone in a way they explicitly did not give consent to, even if they consented to other terms, is rape.
But this case was reported and talked about around the world, so it's not in the same situation.
> I stand by my position that having sex with someone in a way they explicitly did not give consent to, even if they consented to other terms, is rape.
That's fine, but the alleged victims in this case don't agree.
Not true at least in California. Even then though, would you consider someone who has sex with his girlfriend under the terms that he will not cheat on her a rapist if he ends up cheating on her?
I think that you undermining the meaning of rape if you use it for something like that.
No, and I can't tell if you're trolling or if you don't understand the words I wrote.
Have you considered the possibility that both of these cases are false?
What makes you think that cheating in this case is not a break of the terms of the concent?
How about an alternative, "you can have sex with me but only if you are single", and someone who is not single lies about it. During sex said person is not going to be single and thus is breaking the terms of concent while sex is happening.
Assuming I understood your original hypothetical correctly, the sex had already occurred and the violation of the terms of consent did not occur until afterward. The sex at the time was consensual (at least within those facts), the violation of trust occurred later.
> How about an alternative, "you can have sex with me but only if you are single", and someone who is not single lies about it. During sex said person is not going to be single and thus is breaking the terms of concent while sex is happening.
Yes, that is a clear violation of consent. One partner stated their acceptable boundaries to have sex, and consented only based on a lie by the other. Lying to obtain consent is fundamentally not obtaining consent. In other contracts, it would be considered fraud. Using fraud to trick someone into having sex with you is rape.
Edit: this is not just academic. People make judgments not just about whether to have sex but about what kinds of safety considerations are necessary based on this kind of information. If someone is lying to you about having other sexual partners, you are not equipped to evaluate the risk of your own sexual encounter. They are putting your life at risk and eliminating your ability to choose whether that risk is acceptable.
[note1] Last time that I asked a similar question in HN I was told that even promising not to cheat and then cheating after the act would be considered as rape, meanwhile the people (outside of HN) that I asked and were unfamiliar with the Assange case seemed to think that neither were considered rape. When I checked at the laws of different countries it seemed that the few that considered it a crime classified it under other terms. (rape seems to imply violence or coercement)
[note2] If we ignore the edit that is. Not saying that the edit is not consistent but I will need your elaboration in order to be able to deduce it.
> Edit: this is not just academic. People make judgments not just about whether to have sex but about what kinds of safety considerations are necessary based on this kind of information. If someone is lying to you about having other sexual partners, you are not equipped to evaluate the risk of your own sexual encounter. They are putting your life at risk and eliminating your ability to choose whether that risk is acceptable.
Are you saying that it is fine as long as you are not put in risk? Because the previous example that I posted ("you can have sex with me but only if you are single") does not have any safety implications (someone can be single yet they could also had sex with someone else the previous day).
I think you're redefining the term, whether you intend to or not. Rape is sex without consent. Sex without consent is inherently coercive, but it doesn't have to imply a struggle or resistance, quite a lot of rape isn't physically forced sex. Consent obtained by fraud is not consent, and sex under those conditions is inherently nonconsensual.
> with one that is undermining what victims of rape went through by mixing it with less serious accusations
You may have missed this in another subthread, but I'm a victim of sexual assault. The majority of women in my personal life who I've spoken with about the subject are as well, and several of the men and nonbinary folks as well. Again, whether you intend to or not, I think it's you who is undermining what victims have gone through. Finding out that you've had sex in violation of the terms you agreed to can be extremely traumatizing.
> Are you saying that it is fine as long as you are not put in risk? Because the previous example that I posted ("you can have sex with me but only if you are single") does not have any safety implications (someone can be single yet they could also had sex with someone else the previous day).
No, that is not what I was saying. My edit was to clarify that the answer I gave to your hypothetical wasn't just "is it rape or is it not" in some abstract sense, and to provide an explanation of the kind of harm that can be done by your hypothetical, to hopefully help you understand the severity of violating that consent. The example you posted does have those safety implications, which was what I was trying to explain. I encourage you to go back and re-read it with that in mind.
What makes you think that? Even if he is though, so what?
> he doesn’t deserve to be exonerated for the actual crimes he committed
Certainly, although I think that the 8 years that he spent in the embassy are more than enough of a punishment for the condom crime.
> and he doesn’t deserve to be treated as a hero for accepting a role as an agent of weaponized information for a global fascist movement
Please explain what you think by this. Are you implying that he should not have leaked the Clinton emails?
> who did one good thing
He leaked more than one "thing".
> did at least one bad thing
Again, are you referring to the Clinton emails?
> questionable motives
Why should his motives matter?
> and is otherwise just a guy
Just like everyone else, including heroes.
Self absorption shouldn’t be a damning trait, it’s pervasive in humanity.
So you’re self absorbed, so be it, what are the actual things you’ve done? Now we enter the meat.
Narcisism is a personality disorder, it's not just a trait of humans, it's not just self absorbtion
Narcisism is a mental health issue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder#Cluster_B...
Because the CIA had an explicit goal of destroying his reputation in the media, and getting the most damaging headlines possible run about him in an effort to destroy any meaningful support he may have garnered by exposing war crimes.
For example: he was never once charged with any sexcrime in any country, but you'd never know that from the headlines which almost universally referred to "charges" when there were none.
It's a real shame what the US military intelligence community will do when threatened. Snowden himself explicitly specified, at least twice, that they would have summarily executed Barton Gellman if they thought that he was the single point of failure for the release of the Snowden documents, for example. They operate entirely beyond the reach of oversight or the law.
None of this is an accident. They couldn't lay hands on him for a while, so plan B was a character assassination in the media.
Meanwhile HN intelligencia will bury this off the front page and vote brigading will allow critical voices to raise u To the top and flag those critical. Discussion here is impossible.
Meanwhile HN intelligencia will bury this off the front page and vote brigading will allow critical voices to raise u To the top and flag those critical. Discussion here is impossible.
Autodead comments, like I said, impossible to have a fair open discussion here.
Note that this thread is on the front page.
Tell that to Ian Murdock.
'autodead' comments is clearly a way to stifle voices that don't tow the acceptable narrative.
I've had and seen accounts banned that never violated any guidelines -- once an account was deleted that posted 'generic' comments -- what does that even mean? again lies.
Some commenters get special privileges, are allowed to post 20, 30, 40 times, are allowed to control who is seen and not seen.
but go ahead and pat yourself on the back that this comment above gets to stick around for a few hours, nearly invisible, and pat yourself again that this thread stayed on the front page for a few hours.
Meanwhile, HN purposely removed snowden threads, assange threads, and allowed clearly government astro turfers to control discussions. While voices of reason are auto dead or removed, or flagged into non existence. HN has no clear guidelines, and is run by favoritism and allows token dissent, but not serious real, honest and open discussion.
You are a complusive liar who uses your position of power to stifle dissent. Congratulations on supporting the empire's propaganda.
Mate, I think I agree with a lot of the sentiment that you mention here... but you can be more productive in your narrative. This is not reddit nor slashdot; just put some effort.
There's no approach here that doesn't suck. The fading of downvoted comments has downsides, but I think not doing it would have more downsides. It's really important for there to be visual signals of when the community doesn't support something, because in the absence of such signals, people will routinely jump to the conclusion "Hacker News agrees with this". That's not only a non sequitur, it's a category error, but that makes no difference.
Squinting your eyes, highlighting the text or going to a separate page really breaks the flow of reading.
> helicopter pilots exchange banter about the slaughter in the street below: ‘Ha, ha, I hit them,’ one says. ‘Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,’ the other says. They have mistaken the camera held by one of the journalists for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, unlikely though it was that armed insurgents would stand in the open in Baghdad with a US helicopter hovering overhead. They shoot again at the wounded as one of them, probably the Reuters assistant Saeed Chmagh, crawls towards a van that has stopped to rescue them. When the pilots are told over the radio that they have killed a number of Iraqi civilians and wounded two children, one of them says: ‘Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into the battle.’
[1] is the popular CNN version, while a week earlier El Pais reported [2] very differently on the very same material. And that still doesn't address CNN's suspicious depiction and emphasis of the evil hackers (German CCC members) who visited JA.
That reminds me, since the ECHR or CJEU—I don't remember which one—ruled that you can't sentence a person to prison forever, wouldn't it be inhumane to extradite someone when the potential degree of penalty is over 150 years?
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/assange-embassy-...
[2]: https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/07/09/inenglish/15626...
[3]: https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/07/15/on-cnns-wikileaks-excl...
[4]: https://shadowproof.com/2019/07/15/cnn-twists-ecuador-embass...
If I thought his motives were pure, I would give him more slack but I think he has nefarious motives based on his indiscriminate releases. 150 years sounds right for a spy at his stature without a state sponsor, good thing we aren't at war or there may be an argument to kill him.
I believe you are referring to rulings by the ECtHR[1]. In fact it was determined that the situation in the UK was compliant with the Convention because prisoners have the possibility of applying to the Home Secretary for compassionate release. (This mitigates the concern that, for example, someone could end up in prison for 100 years while society changed around them such that the original sentence became seen to be unjust, but the prisoner felt they had no prospect of having their situation changed).
As for how this affects Assange's extradition, it is already the case that the US must promise not to execute him before the UK will hand him over, so they could perhaps also promise to review his sentence after 25 years if he is imprisoned for that long. (For reference, he turns 50 next year).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_a...
When the Taliban killed someone for doing something that offends them, such as providing education for girls, did they generally leave a message explaining how that particular person came to their attention?
Edit: Manning was tortured by being denied sleep for years, and trump openly advocates for it. Right now he’s in solitary confinement which is also a form of torture
I'll take that one further: it's extremely dangerous for anyone in the future.
This whole saga has been another example of what happens when the people in power don't get their way: they will abuse existing systems until they do. Or at the very least, until they've made enough of an example of somebody so the next person won't be tempted to do the same.
He played the espionage game without an explicit state sponsor, jail time was the best outcome he could hope for. Sadly because he doesn't have a state sponsor the likelihood of an exchange is.... low.
That's what the "Imperialism" monkier that a lot of "enemies of the USA" coin means. The Megaupload guy, a guy from Australia, Hew Raymond Griffiths (copyright infrignment... really?) and Gary McKinnon (admin/admin Windows machines).
On this day an age, the majority of countries will bow to the USA and give anything the country asks for. Few countries are really independent and would dare to stand up even for their own citizens. It is sad, but countries like Russia and China doing "what is right" to balance that sort of power is a scary situation where we have arrived.
And yet we carelessly talk about WAR as if everything about it is small and normal that nobody should be held accountable and we should do all of it and non of it is our problem. We do all that talking without really knowing anything about it. Media just made it so easy for people to do that and that's how we don't put any effort to stop wars.