[grandalf]

> I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda

This is the position of some of the people/groups he's embarrassed. As if to say "Yes, I've been caught, but the person who helped catch me has it out for me, let's just ignore this".

Also, as the US Army intelligence service underscored a few years ago, Wikileaks is ripe for propaganda use, since information can be provided to WL to suit political goals, and with some information removed to create a specific impression.

The US Army Intelligence analysis also suggested that an effective strategy to harm WL would be to leak materials that would reflect poorly on it and and cause people to question Assange's motives. No doubt all powerful entities (governments, people) realize this. WL has many enemies and so likely many are using both of these strategies as situations permit.

Have you read the details of the rape accusations? Sweden has a particular definition of rape that is far more encompassing of conduct that in most jurisdictions constitutes fully consensual activity. Since the claims against Assange would be considered claims of consensual sex in the US, it's hard for me to take them entirely seriously, yet the label of "Rapist" persists. This phenomenon is truly bizarre.

The question to ask is, what qualities do we most hope something like Wikileaks has, so that it can aid the process of truth, transparency, and careful investigative journalism. I'd suggest the following:

- Strong willingness to work with mainstream news outlets to create high production quality investigative journalism (Assange has done all he possibly could).

- Resilience to meddling by the many enemies one makes (Assange has done well with this).

- Reinforcing the strength and bias-free nature of the institution (Assange has made clear that he finds Trump and Hillary both despicable, yet this comment is ignored by many such as yourself).

[somenomadicguy]

The first 1/2 of your argument: CIA. Let me be clear, I don't support Clinton, Trump, or anybody else, I feel you have to be an evil sociopath to even want to be a world leader.

I think he is just playing sides. Trump doesn't give a crap, but Hillary knows he's after her. Putin has shown an eager willingness to give asylum to Snowden, him, and anybody else. I just think he's a sociopathic narcissist who watched too many thrillers and wants to wield power against governments.

   - Strong willingness to work with mainstream news outlets to create high production quality investigative journalism (Assange has done all he possibly could).

In the beginning, sure, I'll admit you were right on this. The past year or two, however, wikileaks has failed to produce anything of substance. It's "leaks" (of Turkish dessert recipes) have been sloppy at best, irresponsible and dangerous at worst. Not even Fox would be as careless as he was with the personal data of millions of women in an islamist country. Sean Hannity isn't exactly Woodward and Bernstein.

  - Resilience to meddling by the many enemies one makes (Assange has done well with this).

Has he? He seems to be attempting to wield his power against his enemies. Is that resilience, or vendetta?

   - Reinforcing the strength and bias-free nature of the institution (Assange has made clear that he finds Trump and Hillary both despicable, yet this comment is ignored by many such as yourself).

His actions state otherwise. I'm not sure who posts more anti-clinton rhetoric, Trump or Assange. Lately Wikileaks' feed has have been emotional responses to criticisms and perceived sleights, and heavily biased character attacks on his perceived enemies. There hasn't actually been any journalism that I can see.

Assange has a problem with women. His character assaults against Clinton and journalist Zeynep Tukfeci are pretty good indicators of this.

[grandalf]

> The past year or two, however, wikileaks has failed to produce anything of substance.

Is this due to Assange? Or due to the war on whistleblowers? Given the resource constraints of WL, Assange must choose between publishing unredacted information and not publishing at all.

If Assange had not reached out to the worldwide mainstream press, I'd fault him for releasing unredacted material. But the press (and shamefully, the NY Times in particular) has rebuffed Assange and been unwilling to produce investigative stories handed to them on a platter by Assange (via leaked info).

To understand this we must turn to the basic power relationship and realize that major news outlets are largely state propaganda outlets, or at least prefer to act in this role most of the time. Assange did not likely expect this. I certainly didn't, as it seems too cynical a view... of course the NY Times would want to publish details revealing corruption or lies committed by our most trusted officials...

It's easy to vilify Assange and to assume an emotional motive for everything he publishes. Assange's goal is the legitimization of Wikileaks and its maturation into a respected news institution. He cannot get there (especially given his resource constraints) by playing politics. While he does occasionally make a divisive comment, he generally lets the leaked documents speak (unredacted) for themselves.

> His character assaults against Clinton

Are you arguing that the information revealed by the DNC emails is not a reflection of very significant character flaws in Clinton?

[somenomadicguy]

> Is this due to Assange? Or due to the war on whistleblowers? Given the resource constraints of WL, Assange must choose between publishing unredacted information and not publishing at all.

Again, your argument is yet another conspiracy theory. You can't argue against this, because no matter what, it's the Cigarette Smoking Man in the background. And the resource-constraint argument is an excuse for sloppy, irresponsible journalism.

The argument that wikileaks is not at all affected by Assange's emotional and mental state seems to be an attempt to make him out to be an altruistic, infallible god, not a human .

Major news caters more towards the people that give them money, and they base their content choices on their sponsors.

It seems that every time Assange has a bowel movement, all of the major news sources write about it as front-page news, and immediately every comment is about how no major news outlet is reporting on wikileaks.

> Are you arguing that the information revealed by the DNC emails is not a reflection of very significant character flaws in Clinton?

I haven't read them all, so can you clue me into what they exposed about her directly in contrast to what they exposed about the DNC organization?

And were you aware of my other point, his attacks on Zeynep from the New York times? She pointed out the danger the leaks put women in. Instead of saying, "hey, that leak wasn't our fault, but mea culpa anyways, we're sorry". Then when she pointed out that if he'd had some Turks read the emails they'd have laughed and said "don't bother", he again went into a campaign of character assaults against her?

[grandalf]

> your argument is yet another conspiracy theory

Not at all, neither of us knows what information was submitted to WL, so perhaps the issue is that nothing as significant as the war logs was submitted. We know for a fact that the US has significantly tightened up its infosec policies since Chelsea Manning's revelations. These are facts and no conspiracy theorizing is involved whatsoever. My friends who work for the Federal government would never even read this HN thread while at work, so there has been a legitimately chilling effect on the culture as well.

> sloppy, irresponsible journalism

Holding WL to some imaginary journalistic standard is absurd. It would be one thing if the NY Times got the story and overshadowed WL by publishing a carefully redacted, professional piece. But the major news outlets do not for the most part have systems in place for anonymous drop off of data, and simply do not report on much of what WL gets access to. If you ask me, that is the major journalistic failure. Can Assange, with a tiny team, copy edit and responsibly redact everything? Of course not, but we know from his previous releases that he strongly prefers to and that he is operating WL in survival mode at the moment due to harassment from some of the parties he's leaked information about.

> It seems that every time Assange has a bowel movement, all of the major news sources write about it as front-page news, and immediately every comment is about how no major news outlet is reporting on wikileaks.

This statement does not make sense. Assange is not Wikileaks, and Assange's personal failings are not Wikileaks. The stories which don't see much reporting are the actual factual content about corruption and misdeeds by government officials! The problem is that we get stories about Assange's personal details but not any real substance.

I'd rather not sidetrack this discussion into the content of the DNC emails, but would be happy to do so in a different thread.

[varjag]

> Sweden has a particular definition of rape that is far more encompassing of conduct that in most jurisdictions constitutes fully consensual activity. Since the claims against Assange would be considered claims of consensual sex in the US, it's hard for me to take them entirely seriously, yet the label of "Rapist" persists. This phenomenon is truly bizarre.

What's truly bizarre is the crowd who's first to invoke "innocent until proven guilty" is so opposed to the proving part.

You don't really believe that Swedish inquiry is a part of due process, do you? I really doubt if the charges were incriminating whatever constitutes U.S. edition of rape, your position would be any different.

What it come downs to, you guys really really are attached to this fella, simply because he was saying all the right things and going by all the points you read in Cypherpunk Manifesto. You are willing to excuse him things that you'd find inexcusable to anyone from the "establishment".

[grandalf]

> You are willing to excuse him things that you'd find inexcusable to anyone from the "establishment".

Not at all. Please recall that Assange has a legitimate concern about extradition and has had to seek political asylum. In spite of this he has offered to face the charges if some assurance could be made that he would not be taken into custody and extradited.

Since Assange is a political refugee, I take his concerns seriously. He has shown no sign of being unwilling to face the charges, and the new prosecutor has requested them to be dropped.

What I find most upsetting is that there appears to be some sort of strategy going on where the governments are trying to ensnare Assange and get him extradited (and imprisoned for espionage).

While it is possible that Assange did commit espionage, the bigger problem is that the US Government has not faced any accountability for the revelations in the Iraq or Afganistan war logs. We're talking about pretty serious illegal behavior if not war crimes that were revealed, and there have been zero consequences. Bush got re-elected and Obama continued and escalated Bush's policies!

Wikileaks is a tiny "institution" that has focused scrutiny on some very large and powerful institutions. As an American citizen who values transparency and the proper functioning of the checks and balances (and democratic process) as well as the appropriate and desirable adversarial relationship between the press and government, I am profoundly disappointed at the lack of consequences or accountability both for the war logs and for the Snowden revelations.

In terms of the total harm caused by these situations, allowing the US Government to survive these sorts of revelations unscathed and unaccountable is terrifying, and goes strongly against the core principles on which our nation was founded.

In general, Assange is a very minor player who happens to have (boldly, foolishly, selfishly, or whatever) helped to reveal some information that we simply must act on. The messenger is simply not important, nor are his personal failings.

So to correct your misapprehension, the story never should have been about Assange at all, at any point. The story should always have been about the misdeeds and corruption revealed by Wikileaks.

[varjag]

> He has shown no sign of being unwilling to face the charges, and the new prosecutor has requested them to be dropped.

He broke the bail and went on the run. If that doesn't constitute "unwillingness to face charges", am not sure what does.

I would agree with you though that Assange persona isn't particularly important in the grand scheme of things.

[grandalf]

> He broke the bail and went on the run. If that doesn't constitute "unwillingness to face charges", am not sure what does.

He's been confined in an embassy building for quite some time, which is roughly equivalent to a minimum security prison! He'd likely not have faced this level of punishment for the alleged sex crimes even if he'd been found guilty of them. It's important to recall that he's been forced to seek political asylum. Being labeled a rapist and unable to vindicate himself (for fear of extradition) is also likely quite upsetting to him if he's innocent.

[varjag]

Being unwilling to face justice isn't exactly helping his case. But we are making full circle to my initial point: you are unwilling to contemplate that Swedish prosecution is acting in good faith and in due process. And the reason for that is you like the guy.

[grandalf]

> you are unwilling to contemplate that Swedish prosecution is acting in good faith and in due process

Not at all. The unknown is why the Swedish government won't offer Assange assurance that he wouldn't be extradited. It's probably because he would be, hence, his position is rational. Both the prosecutor and Assange may be acting rationally, as may the Swedish government -- after all, why would it decide to irritate the US by not extraditing Assange?

I would prefer if Assange's guilt or innocence in the rape accusations were determined, because the accusations generally get in the way of the mission of Wikileaks, which I generally support. I don't have a soft spot in my heart for Assange, and if he does turn out to be guilty it will not impact my view on the important issues (the war logs, etc.) whatsoever.

Who cares if Assange himself is a hero or villain, I'm not the sort of simpleton who needs to pretend that everyone whose actions I support is a faultless model citizen. The important issue is that he (hero or villain) helped reveal some very important information about the US Government which should lead to consequences and accountability.