this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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Julian Assange is free.

After living in a cell for more than 5 years, he can soon go home and meet his family again.

I'm wondering if it was worth the sacrifice. The governments and tech companies are spying more than ever on everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 119 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (38 children)

He is a dick, who used to be important for wikileaks but has kept tergeting specific angles for his leaks, which seems to indicate pushing a political agenda, which reduces trust in him and his platform.

The work he started is too important to leave in his care.

Example: During the DNC email leak, Wikileaks was clearly in a rush to publish the documents without removing credit card information and social security numbers, this is just sloppy.

Assange also worked to draw out the release of documents to increase Wikileaks publicity, this went on far enough that he publicly made announcements of releases that never came.

Wikileaks also published evidence that the DNC was behind the killing of Seth Rich, a DC staffer that Assange alluded to have given him the emails, this evidence came from a PI who has freely admitted not having seen any emails between Wikileaks and Seth not having seen the laptop containing the emails, or even having spoken with someone who had. The PI in question is a known FOX contributer.

Assange also seems to have weirdly close ties to Russia, he only had his morning talkshow broadcast on RT, supposedly they were the only ones to take up his show for syndication.

When he was first exiled, he requested that the Russian security service FSB should handle his security detail.

Today, the largest sponsor of Wikileaks is the Russian Government.

All of this speaks to Wikileaks not being the supreme beacon of free speach, but rather part of the Russian propaganda machine.

I don't think it started this way, Assange and Wikileaks probably started with the best of intentions, but the reality of our society came into play and Assange/Wikileaks sold thier credibillity for money from the Russian government.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (7 children)

I fail to see how that's relevant here. The guy isn't a US national and wasn't in the US when he committed his alleged "crime".

He has absolutely no duty towards the US and is 100% free to associate with whoever he wants, and yes, even Russia.

US has no standing whatsoever in this situation, and it's a travesty of international law that Sweden and the UK even entertained the idea of extraditing him. The response should've been "go sue the American who actually committed that crime on American soil. Oh wait, you've already convicted her, and she's already out after serving her sentence? WTF are you going on about then?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The point is that he had/has an interest in keeping Russia happy, that means that everything WL has published since taking Russia's money is probably only to the detriment of the west.

That doesn't mean that WL publishes false/fake information, however true propaganda is still propaganda and serves a political agenda.

By allying themselves with Russia, WL has made it clear that they are only really focusing on the west's transgressions, and will mostly ignore Russia's.

They are no longer impartial activists, they have taken sides, but still claim to be impartial.

That is the issue

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