Media Organizations Ask US To Drop Charges Against Assange
from the they're-right dept
While it seems difficult for some to balance these things, it remains entirely possible to think that Julian Assange is, generally speaking, a horrible human being, who was likely easily played like a fiddle by foreign nation states looking to play influence games in other nations… and that the US’s charges against him remain absolute bullshit and a threat to freedom of the press. That’s basically the position we’ve held since day one.
Recently a bunch of giant news organizations appeared to feel similarly and sent a letter to the US government saying that the DOJ should drop its case against Assange. From the letter:
This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.
The Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DoJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during world war one), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.
This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
The letter was signed by the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pais.
That’s the crux of the concern there. Most of the actions described in the indictment would apply equally to many investigative reporters and their employers. And they are core journalism techniques that deserve protection. Criminalizing basic investigative journalism, including the publishing of leaked documents in the public interest would have tremendously dangerous consequences at a time when we need more investigative reporting than ever before.
Filed Under: doj, journalism, julian assange, leaks, reporting
Companies: ny times, the guardian, wikileaks
Comments on “Media Organizations Ask US To Drop Charges Against Assange”
Douche
Mr. Assange did some good for the global community by making information as free as it needed to be. That he did so at the behest/urging/support of blackhat players is unfortunate/wrong/stupid. Whether or not it was stupid etc. doesn’t change that it was LEGAL, it was JOURNALISM, and our nazi-loving Trump administration decided that was worth bringing espionage charges against him.
That’s just as fair as seizing a foreign national’s assets, raiding his house, incarcerating him, all for a non-crime he never committed on US soil. Kim Schmitz (aka Dotcom) is still fighting that one… at his own expense… while the US sits on all his money. Think what you will of the guy, but he’ll end up like Manuel Noriega, another man who never set foot inside this country and yet was brought to it to be tried like a dog in a court that had no jurisdiction over Panama, and to rot in prison.
Media organizations, Big Content, and the US Government are all big pieces of shit in a conspiracy. I know… I know… it’s not RICO. It doesn’t have to have everyone coordinating their crap for it to be a conspiracy, because that’s HOW THEY STRUCTURED THE LAW so they could do this with impunity.
Re:
Ironically, Trump himself could be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act for his recent confidential documents problem. It is, after all, a violation of exactly the same law that was behind both Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal and Edward Snowden’s espionage charge.
Re: Re:
We can only hope Trump will defect to Russia, where he belongs.
Re: Re: Re:
Trump’s plan for the U.S. is more like that of the Donetsk oblast, where some semblance of a minority leader gets the country declared to be part of the Russian Federation in order to assert power that they have been unable to attain by actual democratic means.
Of course, even “actual democratic means” fall short when you first murder or deport inconvenient citizens (Crimea Tatars anybody?) before holding more or less democratic elections. Basically gerrymandering not by rearranging district lines but replacing (or outright killing) citizens.
A variant of manipulating democracy is of course voter suppression where the motto is to “only have legal votes count” rather than “only have legal citizens vote” and then try to meddle with voting rules and procedures such that some citizens end up quite more likely than others to be able to cast a “legal vote”.
Re:
Your key problem is your conflation of conspiracy and RICO. Don’t call it RICO. Its not RICO because what you discuss isn’t a “criminal organization” (the CO in RICO). Most conspiracies, even criminal conspiracies, are not RICO.
If such coordination occurred to constitute a conspiracy, it doesn’t sound like RICO. Stop treating RICO as meaning conspiracy, and you won’t have to be upset that people keep telling you it isn’t RICO.
Re: Re: RICO
I wrote:
You wrote:
I. Will. Use. Small. Words. So. You. Get. It.
I said: It. Is. Not RICO.
It is amazing that of everything I posted you took the one thing I made crystal clear, and inverted it 180°. The older I get the more I see morons showing creativity on a whole new level. Oh, sorry, mentally challenged idiots.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Except that’s NOT the case though, is it Mike?
Literally the basis of the indictment is that those ‘core journalism techniques’ were done AFTER he’s played an active role in obtaining those files through illegal methods.
I just had a quick look back through the archive and I see no support from you for The News Of The World, when they were caught phone-hacking years ago. That’s the exact same thing. The guardian opposed it then too. The difference here is that Assange has a great PR team that constantly lies about things.
Who remembers that whole thing about him fleeing to the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid US extradition from Sweden? Great, only problem is that HIS OWN LAWYER said IN COURT UNDER OATH that such a thing was impossible, and the claim was absurd. ASsange even said it, which was why he applied for residency there himself. Hell, the ‘obsolete’ Espionage act was even used against someone in Sweden, back in 1992, specifically the ONLY CIA officer to ever defect to the USSR, and Sweden said ‘no, this is not extraditable under our laws’ and let him go.
And then there’s the ‘war crimes’ he exposed. Except as every expert who’s done an independent evaluation has said, there were no warcrimes in the unedited video. they were not ‘non-combatants’ (having an RPG means you are very much a combatant) and they were approaching an active firefight with offensive weapons, and that the video was deliberately edited (by Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the one-time potential Icelandic PM, I believe) to create the impression of a warcrime because the unedited video doesn’t show that (they learnt that trick from how well it worked for James O’Keefe and ACORN)
At least on the up-side you didn’t repeat the ludicrous statement that seems to be common, that he’s “facing 175 years”, when the reality is he’s facing 10 maximum, less time served (18 USC § 3584 states that it’s concurrent, and there’s no basis to make it consecutive)
But without the ‘active participant in obtaining’ charge being convicted (proving the conspiracy) then the rest would be discharged under existing precedent. It’s only with that part that the rest hold up.
Re:
Hi, bjones. I see that your account is reporting an “anonymous assholes flagging” problem. The solution is over there on the far right, and its called a “flag.”
Techdirt is well aware that this glitch is actually a feature of this comment system, whereby organized groups of politically motivated anti–democracy forces censor speech like your by proxy.
Will you join us in using the flag button and flag commenters here who are flagging you? Thanks–you are not alone!
—————————->
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
“all for a non-crime he never committed on US soil. Kim Schmitz (aka Dotcom) is still fighting that one… ”
Except that’s a lie, as Kim well knows. There were literally assets in the federal district – the servers that physically committed the acts charged were there. Thus the actions were committed on US soil at Carpathia (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/08/25/qts-wants-to-wipe-kim-dotcoms-megaupload-servers-stored-by-carpathia), and it’s the little thing that if you ask Kim Dotcom abotu, he goes into an incoherent frothy rage as it undermines his one claim in defense.
Re:
this should have been as a reply to Ehud Gavron above
Re: Where your servers be at n' stuff
I have servers all over the world. These exist because the vendors I use (Goog, AWS, not Azure and not Oracle) have geodiverse datacenters all over the world.
As said, those are Carpathia Hosting’s servers, not Schmitz’s servers. That he made use of them is how things are done but it doesn’t expose little Suzy to China’s laws because Suzie’s dad put Suzies pictures on an FB server that was in TW.
If you want to argue the law, which it seems this suggest you do:
No, just because you say it is doesn’t make it so. It’s not a lie. Schmitz has no assets in the US. A 3rd party VPS isn’t an asset.
Happy to know you’re on a first-name basis with him. That MUST be how YOU know what HE “well knows.”
I know it’s difficult to read but here’s an article and the “assets” are not in the US.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/feds-ask-supreme-court-to-uphold-seizure-of-kim-dotcoms-millions/
Happy Monday.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
Oh dear.
quite hillarious.
First, do yourself a quick favour, and go check which news org has done more coverage of the dotcom ‘saga’ than any other, then check their list of writers. See if you spot something, like a familiar name….
Second, You think that if you have data on an AWS server located in India, because it’s an AWS server you’re not going to be subject to Indian law? Oooh, That’s going to be a major benchslapping for you. Want an example? Ask the EU about it. They’ve got a whole bunch of examples.
third, your attempt to distract with the AWS stuff is hillarious, because… Dotcom wasn’t using AWS which happened to use Carpathia. The servers at Carpathia (all 1,103 of them) were contracted directly to MegaUpload, not through a 3rd party cloud aggregation system. Directly. There were lots of court filings on that, about the costs Carpathia and QTS had to bear for storing all the Megaupload servers for their customer MegaUpload, and how their customer, Megaupload wasn’t paying it. That storage, by the way, was in Virginia, near the datacenter they were located at, in the federal district of the judge looking into it. That’s WHY they have jurisdiction.
That’s after Leaseweb (another host in the Netherlands that MegaUpload was a DIRECT customer of, instead of through an Cloud service provider) wiped 630 other servers because MegaUpload wasn’t paying them, and MegaUpload was unhappy (to the point of threatening to sue LeaseWeb, and not, as you would in your example, AWS, because he had a direct relationship with leaseweb).
Look at that… It’s almost as if I’ve been involved in covering this case extensively for a decade, and not just read an occasional article assumed I knew it all…. I wonder if that’s why I have a few dozen direct emails to and from KDC, discussing the aspects of the case, but maybe not.
Nah… that’d be silly, because that would mean you’re doing the tech equivalent of teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, and you wouldn’t do that, would you?
Oh, and Finally, the assets you’re trying to claim are the only ones, and not US so US be damned, are just the finances. However, in almost all legal systems, MLATs (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties) exist to handle cases spanning multiple countries. Since the company had servers in its direct control, rented by it specifically in Virginia, and that was where infringment took place, that gives it an operating nexus in Virginia (seriously, if you did a traceroute to megaupload in 2011, it’d go to Virginia, that was its main networked point of presence). Since it established an operating point there, then the company MegaUpload had an operating point in the US, and thus was subject to US law. And so any assets relating to the company, and its directors (after piercing the corporate veil) are indeed subject to international legal operations via the MLATs, originating from the Virginia court.
I’ll Explain it like you’re 5, since you need it. MegaUpload was a website, with its principle datacenter in Virginia, and a secondary one in the Netherlands, both directly contracted by Megaupload. Because of that it was considered to be operating in the US and the Netherlands, and subject to their laws. Under the US law, it was investigated, and other aspects of the company, including assets held in other countries, are thus subject to orders from the virginia court. Otherwise it’d make actions by any corporation impossible to deal with because you’d just act in one country and keep your assets in another, and they’d be untouchable – thats not how it works.
Now, I’m sure you can read, but I guess until now you’d been too busy reading KDC’s pity-parties to bother to learn the facts. Well, now you have no excuse.
Re: Re: Re:
Just because you may have written about something doesn’t make you the sole authority or even an expert. Biased journalists write lies every moment of every day all around the world, after all.
Re: Re: Re: I don't teach grandma anything. She's dead. Thanks for ensuring relevancy.
I have no intention to debate this given that neither of us are in a court nor represent either side. MLATs don’t change anything. He has no assets in the US.
As to “Well it wasn’t AWS and how dare you bring up AWS, let’s summarize. You said:
“It was considered” is a cheap excuse. WHO “considered” something to be operating on two separate continents, exactly? Oh, governments wanting to charge him. Gog it. Gong. Buzzer.
No, websites aren’t entities and can’t get sued. You know about MLATs (good job Mike for explaining that to morons everywhere) but you think a website can be sued, and “is considered” to be an entity in multiple continents.
I’ve made my point.
You’ve attempted to reply. Good on you for saying you get private mail from Mr Schmitz. When I want your resume, I’ll be sure to look back here. All the positions are filled.
Re: Re: Re:2
He literally did. What do you think 1103 servers in the US State of Virginia were? They were Assets of the company, residing in US Federal Jurisdiction.
The company he was an officer of was renting computers (‘doing business’ and ‘operating’) in the US. And had you actually had AWS contracts (which it’s clear you don’t) you’d know that such contracts also contain jurisdictional clauses, and Carpathia’s would say ‘activities on these servers bring you under the jurisdiction of courts in this location’ which would be Virginia. It’s a pretty standard clause, specifically so no-one can play the stupid game you’re trying to play.
Also, I take it you’ve never seen the Megaupload balance sheets? You probably should, as they specifically list ‘assets in the US’ meaning the servers.
Well, the contracts Megaupload signed with Carpathia and Leaseweb state as much, as well as US law, Dutch law, EU law, Chinese law [Hong Kong SAR specifically] and others where assets were located. Do you know how we know? because courts in each of those jurisdictions agreed with it.
So either a lot of judges in a lot of countries are wrong, or some guy posting here who doesn’t even understand the concept of assets is wrong…. hmm, such a hard decision.
Let me guess, you’re also not driving, you’re just ‘travelling’, and not engaging in commerce too? Maybe he should just file a “Notice of International Commercial Claim Within The Admiralty ab initio Administrative
Remedy” – is that your suggestion?
You’ve managed to get just about every single fact about this case wrong. Quit while you’re, well not ahead, not so irredeemably behind. (or in Simpsons terms ‘dig up!’)
Re: Re: Re:3 So much insight so much bullshit
Lawyer are paid for work by the hour. Writers are being paid by the word. I decline to suggest your work product qualifies for payment under either standard.
You can asset what you like about Mr. Schmidt’s contracts with e.g. Carpathia, AWS, etc., but none of them subject him to jurisdiction in the US. I know this confuses you so focus on “him” being KDC and whether KDC is subject to US law because a CORPORATION he was an OFFICER of used a THIRD PARTY to secure SERVERS in a JURISDICTION.
I’ve used capital letters so you can stop the bs and focus on the facts. Jeff Bezos is not Amazon. Elon Musk is not Tesla. Donald Trump … got nothing there for ya. To be personally brought forth in personal jurisdiction (and I’ll spare you the Latin so you can go copy and paste elsewhere) requires much more contact than a corporation officer having his company using the services of a party that provides such services in that jurisdiction.
Here’s where we pause, and agree to disagree. Spout off all you like, but you’re wrong as a matter of law, and that’s why even his extradition (99% unrelated) hasn’t worked in a decade, and should he be extradited (he will, because the governments are corrupt, and that is the point of this thread) there will still be that fault.
The USG had no jurisdiction to put Noriega in a US prison.
Same for El Chapo.
Same for Assange.
Same for KDC.
It’s getting to sleeptime here, so I’ll just end with:
– I am not a fan of any of the above. I have respect for some of the things Assange and KDC did.
– I am not fan of how the USG can utterly destroy a life (finance+liberty) of an individual that has never been in the US, conducted business her, etc. (Save my your tears that he owned shares in a corporation that used a vendor that used servers in the US. The nexus just isn’t there no matter how you slice it.)
– It’s not about ME or what I’m a fan of. It’s about JUSTICE and the LAW and its FAIR APPLICATION. I don’t think those people go that FAIR APPLICATION. Perhaps we could agree on that. Eigy Pokr Off.
Re: Re: Re:4 Piercing The Corporate Veil
No defense to the above poster but the law does have a concept that a person and a business are so intertwined as to be the same thing.
So its at least possible to equate the actions of a business to its officers. KDC obviously got railroaded given his own country said so in the attempts to move him to the US. So the US has treated him and the business as the same.
Of course the correct way to handle all of this craziness would have been to go after Mega, not its officers, then show that KDC was so financially integrated as to be one and the same. Nothing in this case was done correctly and it shows.
Re: Re: Re:5 The Law
This started as a discussion about Mr. Assange. I brought in other people to show how the US Government demonizes INDIVIDUALS rather than the ENTITIES, usually unlawfully as per US law, and usually with nobody saying “Wait, that’s not how any of this works.”
My concluding paragraph summarizes my thoughts to that topic – Assange, Wikileaks, USG overreach, etc. To the extent we diverge, I only disagree with the pretense that a person and a business (not a legal term) are the same. Read on if you like. PaulT-I’ve made it a point to say this is all US law. If you’d like to chime in and share a different perspective I invite/welcome that.
Yes, the law does say that exactly, Shaggy. That’s why you and Scooby can have marijuana snacks until you’re high as a kite and then go drive the Mystery Machine (aka van) and nobody thinks that DWI/DUI/drug-running across borders.
In the real world, however, there’s no such thing. At least not in the United States. This was not a difficult Google search but the responses are clear:
https://www.google.com/search?q=person+and+business+intertwined&oq=person+and+business+intertwined
So — quick summary for the mentally challenged or whatever your mom calls you before she shuts off the computer: Business [not a US legal term] and people are NOT intertwined. “The Law” in the US says no such thing; there is no precedent for such a thing; there is no requirement that either owning some percentage of a corporation’s stock or being employed to run it (e.g. as CEO, President, Board Director, etc.) places requirements upon a person to be LIABLE for what the CORPORATION (or other entity) does.
Starting a sentence with “So” would build upon the false conclusion of the mistake of the previous assertion. Premise rejection. Not “So”.
It’s possible to do lots of things, but equating businesses with officers isn’t lawful in the US. The railroading part is correct, and the US violating the law to get there is also correct. All of this is imho unjust but the USG didn’t contact me to get the signoff before starting yet another power-move to exact vengeance on anything that hurts their political contributions. “Big Tech” is not a thing. “Big Content” IS a thing and they pay politicians, and now they’re getting the work product they paid for. What’s shameful is the USG, not KDC.
Paragraph 1: BS
Paragraph 2: “SO, [based on BS made up in para 1]”, more BS
Paragraph 3: “Of course [conclusion made to summarize all that BS]” with no reason, standing, substance, or legal justification.
No, not “Of course”.
I’m not sure when you were appointed Correctness Czar nor your psychological degrees to remotely assess “craziness”, Goldwater Doctrine aside, but I’ll meet you halfway. The LEGALLY CORRECT way to address this issue could be…
US Law allows “to go after” (you mean “file charges”, right?) both.
Again the US law doesn’t show this concept of “financially integrated.”
Summary: Outside of Scooby Doo, there is no “the law.” In this case choice of venue, jurisdiction, and law would be borne by circumstance and I’m honestly not sure where between DE and NZ that is, but I’m pretty certain it’s not US. If “personal jurisdiction” really meant what various little sheriffs in Texas think, then EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD would be subject to it because they COULD access data. That includes people on the ISS, China’s space station, etc. Nonsense by legal standards and precedence in the US.
An entity (you used the term company, but that is NOT an entity in US law) has its own real authority and can be a subject of legal charges, damages, etc. Apple and Google and Microsoft and Adobe and many other CORPORATIONS have been charged, found liable, and paid. This case isn’t strikingly different in that aspect IMHO, except that these companies DO BUSINESS IN and HAVE EMPLOYEES IN and HAVE OFFICES IN the countries whose laws they apparently violated. Neither Assange (original topic) nor KDC (your guy) nor Noriega nor others listed here DO BUSINESS in the US, have EMPLOYEES in the US, or OFFICES. But then we could also say “Al Jazeera” and does the USG get to put their (Qatari) owners in prison?
The Entity’s operators, be they CEO, President, etc. can also be charged, but that (under US law) is more difficult because in their ROLE of their JOB there are things they do that even though would be against US law are palatable. Example for the lazy unable-to-Google: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-116hhrg43010/html/CHRG-116hhrg43010.htm
As a member of the board of directors of various entities, when I perform my duties in furtherance of that entity’s goals — which for public corporations focusing on “growth” is the rise in stock value to shareholders… I am not liable to be sued under US law, and if an overzealous piece of shit authoritarian MoFo government idiot like the US sues me, the entity will defend me at their expense.
Finally, shareholders are never responsible. I own shares of stock in several of the companies mentioned in this response, and I have ZERO responsibility to their actions.
Really the US Government, acting at the behest of BIG MEDIA F’d this up royally and still can’t make it stick. I’m back to talking about the topic, that being Julian Assange, not Kim Schmitz. The similarities between the two and the other men I’ve mentioned is uncanny. It’s a big stupid bully butting his fat stupid ass in a place he wasn’t invited to to lord around his lack of authority as if he had any, and recounting his resume for anyone who will listen. “Back in ’31 there was this guy, but we changed the law, and got him good, and the world never heard of Al Capone again because TAX CHARGES.”
Have a great day.
E
Re: Re: Re:5
Might as well give it up.
He’s got a google search understanding of the law, and a SovCit wish to make everyone think he’s right.
the veil was pierced, it’s literally in the court documents of the case, but he doesn’t care, because he’s never read them. He read some of KDC’s inane claims, assumed he was right, and then googled bits of law to bolster his argument.
It’s amazing that being such a good and skillful lawyer as he believes himself to be, that he hasn’t, if not taken over as lead counsel, at least joined as co-counsel, because he sure seems to think he has all the answers and the legal arguments down pat.
Never mind that his statements have Rudi Guiliani and Herschel Walker scratching their heads and going “dude is nuts, absolutely clueless’
Re: Re: Re:6
These TL;DR posts above make me long for the days of DBA Phillip Cross–the TL;DR folks couldn’t figure out if Phil was a Chinese, a Russian, IranianISISISIL, or a “enemy of ‘Mericun freedumb” unspecified.
Turns out that amongst the Assange hating crowd, the US has been trolling itself all these years:
https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/09/22/declassified-australia-exposes-and-analyses-a-massive-secret-propaganda-operation-being-run-out-of-the-us-that-has-been-buried-by-western-media/
There are far better hills to die on in the realm of journalism than a Russian puppet whose claim to fame was editing footage to tell a lie for clout, and then using that clout to get someone to breach classified databases for him.
Re:
I don’t think it’s so much dying on Assange’s hill, but making sure the hill on which Assange is dying isn’t used as a precedent against the New York Times or the Washington Post, among other news outlets.
Re: Re:
Assange convinced people to breach classified databases for him via the clout that he & WikiLeaks gained by using edited footage that lied about events. I don’t think that journalists asking people to hack computers for them like what happened with Chelsea Manning is something that falls in line with “core journalism techniques”.
Re: Re: Re:
Most non-Murdoch news corps don’t do that, that is true.
And you know sonething’s seriously fucked up when even Snowden himself thinks Assanfe be… risky.
Re: Re: Re:2 Here's the thing, though…
Rupert Murdoch and his Fox empire is not only not facing legal problems, but it looks like he will be getting (even more) special privileges from the US government with the JSPA.
Using Rupert Murdoch as an example for why Assange be jailed shows inconsistency, at the very least.
Re: Re: Re:3
Nah, I’m saying Murdoch breaks the damn rules and gets away with it.
Nevermind the fact that in the UK, he got fucking punished for hacking into answering machines to get scoops. Though it didn’t seem to harm him one bit.
I’m also saying Assange’s exhortations are fucked up to the point Snowden’s called Assange out on it.
Re: Re: Re:4
Yeah! Wut U said!
If only he would be a good journalist, and report whatever the FBI-et agency trickle feeds him like one of those people-pods fed by aliens in a bad sci-fi.
Maybe Julian could have report on some uber-important stuff, like some “rapes” where some heifer from the herd reports on a bad man looking at her in a a hotel room–tat she went to all by her grown up self, 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, agency assholes and Big Tech spooks hack democracy, and you could care less–wut a hero!
Re:
Proof of editing or GTFO you NWO spookshill. Collateral murder is as collateral murder does in illegal wars–killing journalists and children is right up your alley-crack.
I would like for those of you who are insisting that the “war crimes video” was edited to provide proof of that. Because as it stands now I think you’re full of shit.
Re:
What, you think the ‘collateral murder’ video came from the US military with handy little labels and stuff all over it?
How about this then. On the April 12 2010 Episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviews Assange and the exchange goes
Colbert: “You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called ‘Collateral Murder’. That’s not leaking, that’s a pure editorial.”
Assange: “The promise we make to our sources is that not only will we defend them through every means that we have available – technologically, legally and politically – but we will try and get the maximum possible political impact for the material that they give to us.”
Colbert: “So ‘Collateral Murder’ is to get political impact?”
Assange: Yes, absolutely… Our promise to the public is that we will release the full source material. So if people have a different opinion, the full material is there for them to analyse and assess.
He admits it’s edited. He then had to follow through with the unedited video which came out a few days later.
The 17 minute edited version came out April 5th, and the unedited 39 minute version came out april 15th.
So it seems the only one that is unaware that it was edited, is you. And Manning, who didn’t know it’d been edited to try and increase its impact, according to testimony from their court martial, where Birgitta jonsdottir was named as the person that edited it
Re: Re:
Phew, it was edited. Thank goodness.
So all those people are still alive, it was just movie magic! That changes everything!
Re: Re: Re:
You know that that’s not what was meant by it being edited. The team at WikiLeaks edited footage of a combat operation to make it look like a war crime was being committed.
Re: Re: Re:2
Yet the video, both full and edited, show very, very, poor choices that day.
One can have been in uniform and understand heat of battle and fog of war, and still recognise identification of target. Or lack of identification
What happened that day was a tragedy and a travesty.
Re: Re: Re:3
None of that happened.
Re:
Its a niggling point that #fedposters like to make–ALL journalism is EDITED.
DONT FEED THE FEDOSTERS!
the US government is always going to want to punish Julian Assange. Whether or not he actually broke any laws, he did commit the one unforgivable sin. He embarrassed those in a position of power.
Cat Shit One on the page?
Recently Musk/TWITTER® and the National Green Party spent a few tweets agreeing with the letter, that should “spoil the broth”.
Julian Assange is now grouped with a gaggle of horrible human beings: into the circular file.
Poppycock–have you heard of it?
Spittle laden gnashings spewed by white middle class females and their ardent supporters and upholders of their privilege, to whit:
” it remains entirely possible to think that Julian Assange is, generally speaking, a horrible human being, who was likely easily played like a fiddle by foreign nation states looking to play influence games in other nations”
Proof or GTFO–and the ravings of a couple of CIA tramps and floozies from Sweden–or that skank Emptywheel don’t count. And we KNOW that Russia had nothing to do with it.
Twitter files anyone? Ooops–I am in the wrong theater, shouting fire, again.
Re:
Thank you for the additional evidence that Assange defenders are mentally ill.
Re: Re:
Thanks for virtue signalling your alliance with corruption, and collateral murder-proof you are a piece of shit.
Did someone mention “The Twitter Files,” where we see the FBI’s “inside man” JIm Baker just happens to be in all the right places at all the corrupt times?
Here he is one day stacking FISA court applications, here he is the next “the Russian’s are coming!!”–and shortly thereafter conveniently situated as Twitter’s consel omn the Hunter Biden laptop–
–ah, Democracy feels so free!–hacks like Baker hacking away at “the machinery”from inside Twitter–gotta love folks who think that FBI infiltration of our political system is “patriotic,” or in any way related to a liberal democracy.
FBI bag-man Jim Baker:
https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-fires-twitter-deputy-232515341.html
fled the country twice
So, this Assange fellow hacked some government computers, did some heinous sex crimes, fled the country twice, spent some quality time in ecuador’s embassy, was jailed by the police who asks millions for their surveillance costs and now these press folks thinks they shouldn’t send him to usa to answer for the original charges?
What’s wrong with the system?
Re:
He did NOT hack anything. He accepted information of a public interest and published it.
Keep in mind it is well documented that trump had interest in pardoning him. Ultimately choosing his political future over doing the right thing.
It was not the trump administration that chose to charge, it was alphabet soup that long worked out of his control.