Have We Abandoned Julian Assange?
The most influential journalist ever, his reputation smeared and possibly being slowly murdered.
It's what John Milton wrote about in Paradise Lost: To serve in Heaven or to rule in Hell. Milton backed the republicans during the English revolution, and saw his beloved revolution be usurped by the Cornwall dictatorship, and ultimately the restoration of the British monarchy. He had to flee for his life and was effectively banned from all public life. Whereas he used to serve in prestiges jobs, at the end of his life he was marginalised, broke and blind. Survivorship-bias gives a wrong impressions of rebels, most end on the outskirts of society. Milton dictated the verses of Paradise Lost to a scribe, as he put it, to justify the ways of God to Men. Substitute an all-powerful God for an all-powerful government, and it get a hole new meaning. IMHO it's still one of the best poems in the English language. There is a wise lesson here, I don't like it, but I can't say it's not true.
The answer to the question is unfortunately yes. What I dreamt in 2010 is coming true, just in a much different way.
I actually dreamed that Assange was executed by lethal injection. It's still happening all be it much slower.
I think Wikileaks were a novel concept, but they needed to remain ideologically pure to remain viable. Unless all the evidence of conspiracy is manufactured, the organization become political.
It certainly does seem that he had a lot of fair-weather friends who only liked him when he was pissing on one side of politics, but not the other.
> The most influential journalist ever, his reputation smeared and possibly being slowly murdered.
Journalists don't edit source material to fit their narrative. I long ago lost faith in Assange when he released edited footage of journalists being shot by a US military helicoptor with an edited audio track. The video with the original audio was damning enough, editing the video prior to release was the beginning of the end for Assange in my eyes. Since then rather than releasing any and all information Julian started to "curate" what was released. It's one of the many reasons many of the original members of wikileaks left the organization.
I think perhaps it's a stretch to say he's the most influential journalist ever here.
He's a divisive character and seems to have been a divisive character amongst those that knew and interacted with him, as well as the general public.
What's happened to him was all too predictable. The US was offended by him, so one way or another they were going to get their hands on him. They tried all the usual tricks - deny it, get their allies to do their dirty work while also denying it. And now they have him. I expect him to turn up dead or otherwise just disappear.
That's an extremely generous description. For one, he's not really a journalist. All he does is publish leaked information. In that regard, he's not unique at all nor has he published more quantity or quality than MSM sources. James Risen on the NY Times broke the mass surveillance story. Sy Hersh of the New Yorker broker My Lai and Abu Ghraib. Glenn Greenwald published the Snowden leaks. Assange is best known for Cablegate where he actually mishandled that info. He's also best known for the DNC email leaks which we now have evidence on the record showing that he coordinated this leak with Roger Stone at the behest of the Trump campaign and probably received the info from professional Russian hackers. He has absolutely debased himself. And he's been far less influential than he believes himself to be.
Three types of people in the world: those who expose the truth, those who cover up the truth, and those who remain blissfully ignorant of the truth. It's been a blow to our freedom that Julian Assange was betrayed, as Wikileaks could've let us know exactly what we needed to know for 2020, but... refer to #2 of the three types of people in the world, and #3 for those who vote based on knowing only what they want to know.
My personal theory is that Assange is just a too big a rebel. He is too radical, so radical, that we cannot understand him, he is out of Overton window. Perhaps to the point of being a hypocrite, by necessity.
Compare him with Edward Snowden. Snowden has moderate opinions compared to Assange. With that, he is much more readable than Assange by general public, and so he is better shielded.
Dude he's not a good guy. If he was being fair, he would expose China and Russia too. But he was just leaking US secrets. They never expose China or Russia because they know what will happen in very short notice. The US is the only one of the 3 that has a true due process.
The amount of grey comments in this post (most of which are in support of Assange) is pretty impressive. Good job Crazyhorses!
Pre-2016 Assange, or after 2016 Assange?
Julian Assange has offered humanity a lot more than what humanity can offer him at anytime. I wonder why the hell would someone get jailed for revealing the truth.
It seems like it, but how much power do we have to help?
he s dangerous to the world and needs to be locked up because reasons until trump is out of office. That's what people are supposed to think.
We mostly don't care about either people or justice in this world. There's so much prosaic callousness and awfulness that people simply don't even bother to notice. It really shouldn't come as some kind of surprise that people are mostly "fair weather friends" and you can assume they won't have your back when the chips are down.