It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange stinks.
HAHAHA
“He actually smells like fresh, mountain breezes wafting gently over a bucket of hot, buttered popcorn.”
To be fair, if I was cooped up in that embassy for years and years I would go insane too.
I still have a Wikileaks jumper in my closet. They were such a boon for the world when they leaked the Afghanistan and Iraq war documents, it’s been nothing but downhill from there.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange or Wikileaks is, or has ever been alleged by the U.S. government to be Russian, Russian owned, a Russian subsidiary, contracted by Russia, Russian staffed, based in Russia, “in league” with Russia, an “arm of Russia” or a “Russian cutout” [see https://defend.wikileaks.org/].
Say what Julian?
It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.
He’s been slandered! Libeled! Heard words he never heard in the Bible!
The CIA thinks Wikileaks is bad news? I’m shocked.
I know! But apparently this is news to Wikileaks. Which is bizarre.
Sorry I misread the ‘alleged by the U.S.’ in the original quote, that is funny!
No worries!
No discussion of the Assange extradition? The guy is a huge POS, but this is a pretty troubling development.
Trump admin is beginning their full court press on freedom of the press.
Nothing he’s being prosecuted for has anything to do with freedom of the press.
That was my thought too.
I strongly disagree. I think it has everything to do with freedom of the press. The extradition request is on a technicality. It’s attempting to circumvent any protections awarded to the press. It’s an absolute disgrace.
This is what Wikileaks exposed in 2010:
IF a reporter commits a crime in the commission of their job, they don’t get excused from the crime just because they’re a reporter. That’s not a freedom of the press issue in that case.
The “crime” in this case is a real stretch. It amounts to a single line of dialog:
“passed it onto our im guy”.
The “crime” is just an excuse in order to extradite. I expect more charges will be brought at that point.
Note my emphasis on IF. IANAL nor do I play one on tv. But if there’s a crime, there’s a crime.
Actually it was more like:
Providing technical assistance for cracking passwords goes beyond a journalist’s proper role. If Manning didn’t have access to a rainbow table he might not have been able to get into the system. Even if Assange had only directed Manning to external resources for password cracking, he’s arguably guilty of the charged crime. If Manning was trying to get into a lockbox and Assange had sent him lockpicks, would you be OK with that?
No, it doesn’t, in that the charges presented literally do not have anything to do with journalism.
If some other charge comes up, then we can judge that on its merits.
But the charges he’s CURRENTLY facing, have absolutely nothing to do with journalism, or publishing information. He was conspiring to commit a crime.
In my opinion the current charges are purely a technicality. An excuse to further persecute a publisher/whistleblower. When you begin to lock up journalists for exposing state crimes then you know you’re in trouble.
Quite frankly if a technicality is required to take down a fascist enabler who has worked with Trump, Farage and Putin I’m ok with that. He’s done far more harm than good. Odds are Trump is gonna pardon him anyway.