[travmatt]

I’m never going to understand the praise for Julian Assange. He may have started out with good intentions, but his turns towards Putin and subsequent actions are pretty unforgivable in my estimation. I can’t see how a moral person could stand by his decisions, honestly. I think Pussy Riot summer him up best:

"But Julian Assange, he openly works with [Russia]," Nadya Tolokno told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday. "It's not a secret. He's connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he's proud of it.

"I generally support the work that WikiLeaks is doing, but I'm not that thrilled about his decisions that are unethical, in my view, concerning his connections to the Russian government."

Tolokno said she visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London two years ago, saying their meeting convinced her WikiLeaks has ties to the Kremlin.

"He couldn't deny it," said Tolokno, whose full name is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. "He often works with the Russian propaganda machine, and he doesn't try to hide it.

"Julian Assange doesn't try to hide that fact because he hosts at the Ecuadorian Embassy the editor-in-chief of the Russian propaganda team, Russia Today, and he has projects with them," she added.

Tolokno added she confronted Assange about advancing Russian interests ahead of America's.

"I understood his position: He's in a state of war with the American government," she said. "He's smart and charismatic and will use any means to destroy the American government.

"And we had a conversation if it was really the ethical thing to do that with the hands of another government [Russia] which is, in fact, much worse and a real authoritarian government."

[https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-...]

[jumelles]

Unfortunately I agree completely. Assange and WikiLeaks might have been on the 'right side' of things years ago, but things have changed since then. Siding with Putin is absolutely unforgivable.

[meatbags]

Why the assumption that Assange sided with Putin? Those of us watching the story closely know that no evidence has been presented of this. Co-aligned interests is not collusion. The source of the DNC leaks remains unknown. It's not even clear whether it was an external actor or a DNC insider.

I feel like the blinding hate for Trump has eroded people's ability to think critically. The Russiagate hysteria is evidence of that.

Edit: I'll soak up the downvotes. Keep em coming.

[jokermatt999]

Did you miss the indictment of the DNC hackers that also detailed the DC Leaks being registered by GRU? You should catch up on that if so.

[meatbags]

I'm aware of the well-timed indictment, despite the fact that the public's mind was made up well before then. An indictment is not a conviction, and its evidence comes from sources (intelligence agencies) that have been proven numerously to lie, fabricate, and falsify evidence for political ends. For context, Mueller was FBI director under Bush and during the Iraq war. Pretend that someone other than Trump won, and now tell me honestly -- do you trust US intelligence agencies and do you find the indictment's technical evidence compelling?

(edit) To bring the point of this post back to my earlier one -- where is the evidence that Assange "sided with Putin"? Siding with someone implies collusion, and mutual interest is not collusion. It implies Assange knew the source was a Russian state actor prior to publishing (whether it was is still speculation).

I apologise if this post seems long-winded and antagonistic, but I feel this is an important distinction that has been glossed over. I see Russiaphobia seeping into close friends who I consider to be rational and it worries me.

[supergirl]

the only fact here is that he works with RT. rest is just random opinions of random people.

[boomboomsubban]

That's not a fact. He independently produced a show that RT bought and ran.

[fit2rule]

> I can’t see how a moral person could stand by his decisions, honestly.

I feel this way about anyone who attempts to deflect the USA from scrutiny, with regards to the war crimes it has flagrantly committed in the time that Wikileaks has become relevant. It seems that the USA can do no harm when it comes to war-fighting, and the American public remain, as ever, wilfully ignorant of the crimes being committed in their name - and for which therefore, they bear responsibility.

Without people such as Assange willing to stand up and decry these heinous acts of inhumanity being committed by a government hell-bent on maintaining the social fallacy that it is a "wholesale rights defender", when nothing could be further from the truth, there would be a whole lot more offences against innocent people occurring.

The USA and its allies have been wilfully destroying civilisation around the world, for decades. We need more people like Assange who are willing to stand up and point this out, and most important of all, the world needs Americans to take their heads out of the sand and realise that their nation is in fact a wholesale exporter of death and destruction, and you are paying for it.

Incidentally: The fact that Putin is right about Americas crimes, doesn't mean that wanting to do something about America's crimes immediately aligns oneself with Putin. That is just smear tactics and vitriol.

What's important is the statistics: one bomb dropped every 18 minutes, mostly on innocent people, murdering them - for the last 3 decades.

[jumelles]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

No one is saying the US doesn't have its own problems. None of that changes Russia's current behavior.

[benchaney]

Ironic comment given that this thread is about a scandal about the US's poor behavior, and you are focusing on wrongdoings of the Russian government to divert attention from that.

[fit2rule]

This cynical automatic "but .. whataboutism!" is really just as much about deflection as anything else.

Assange and Wikileaks came onto the scene because the nature of the protection of the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex through State Secrecy meant that real crimes were being committed in the name of the American people, yet they were being wilfully kept ignorant of this fact - and are, yet even still today. Wikileaks was a real, grass-roots, honest attempt to bring the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex to justice for its real, honest-to-god crimes.

This has nothing to do with Russia - although Russia may also have its interests served by having Americas' crimes revealed to the greater public at large, it is irrelevant: The innocents having bombs dropped on them by America and its Coalition are also served by having the non-warfighting-addicted public enlightened as to their plight - does this automatically make them 'the enemy' and thus justify their wanton murder - in the same way that hatred-of-Russia is justified because "they clearly don't want whats best for America, which is war, more war, and endless more war"?

Lets not play the "whataboutism" card.

Lets just look at why this whole Wikileaks thing is embarrassing to the USA and its partners: it can no longer get away with committing real war crimes at international scale with impunity and safe cover, in the name of the American people, when those people are finally waking up to just how heinous the situation really is: an inhuman and deathly situation the warmongers have given the American public, to pay off financially as well as morally, for decades into the future.

The fact of the matter is, it is a good thing for the secrets to be revealed: because the corruption of government always begins with its secrets. The American people - as well the world at large - must never be complacent about the betrayal potential of state secrecy.

We must always demand the truth be revealed, especially when it involves Trillions of dollars of death, mayhem and destruction being enacted on the world.

And for all his faults, this is why Assange - and others just like him - will always be held high in my mind. Higher than any serving member of the military, anyway.

[ljm]

What about whataboutism?

This mindset isn't productive - these actions don't exist in a vacuum and to treat it as such pretty much absolves the other party of all guilt while the focus is on somebody else.

Hypocrisy isn't whataboutism.

[resters]

So what does it mean for Assange to do something that favors one nation's interest over America's? Wikileaks is not meant to benefit "US interests" in the sense of pleasing US leaders.

The entire point of a transparency organization is to reveal information that helps the people of the country understand what their leaders are up to.

If it was revealed, for example, that Trump was a pedophile, the case could be made that US national interest was served by keeping it confidential and letting him carry out his presidential term without suffering (and forcing our nation to suffer) the indignity of having it revealed.

However I think it would be in the best interest of the American people for such information to be leaked so that we could decide how to handle it via the democratic process.

Secrecy has been granted to governments based on trust, and that trust has been widely violated. Assange shows us where our leaders have violated our trust. He's shown the people of other nations how their leaders have violated trust. He's not taking sides for or against any state, he's taking sides for the people of every state against corrupt leaders.

[resters]

The parent is a logical argument yet nobody tries to refute it, only downvote it for political reasons.

[nirv]

You quote a political actionist, a member of a punk band, as if she were some kind of expert, investigative journalist or insider. She's not informed on the merits of the matter at all.