| Wikileaks has a faultless record. They’ve never had to retract a publication. Assange, like him not not, was a reporter, who reported uncomfortable facts about the military and our ruling class. He is being punished, tortured really for this “crime”. He has been endlessly and baselessly slandered. All that alleged bad behaviour while he was imprisoned in the embassy ... funny how there’s been no footage of it, despite the fact that he was under 24/7 surveillance! And these rape charges, clearly also designed to tarnish his name, now finally exposed as a fiasco. Many newspapers had huge scoops thanks to Wikileaks, but have now turned on them. A particularly striking example is the supposedly liberal Guardian. Journalists everywhere should be afraid as this sets a dangerous precedent for all of them. |
Though O'Hagan is sympathetic in many ways he doesn't sugarcoat anything, and I came away with the impression that Assange is the author of a great deal of his own woes. (Among other things, much of the account involves Assange lying pretty incessantly, even to his closest allies about petty dramas, so I now find it hard to take anything he's said at face value.)
[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost...
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Edit to add: there's a quoted exchange in the account, which now springs to mind every time I hear about Assange.
> There are few subjects on which Julian would be reluctant to take what you might call a paternalistic position, but over Snowden, whom he’s never met but has chatted with and feels largely responsible for, he expressed a kind of irritable admiration. "Just how good is he?" I asked.
> "He’s number nine," he said.
> "In the world? Among computer hackers? And where are you?"
> "I’m number three."