Assange was leaking selectively for years for different reasons. You can hardly find any leaks on China or Russia. This is why the Surkov leaks went through just random forums and later Suddeutsche. Finding a humanized agenda there is a bit more difficult.
The duty to report on Russian or Chinese crimes against humanity and war crimes, falls on the shoulders of Russian or Chinese citizens.
Assange is a citizen of the criminal 5-eyes superstate, and in that context has every right to select materials designed to reign in the crimes of that criminal, 5-eyes superstate - especially since it has, as an entity, been responsible for the utter destruction of countless sovereign nations and the mass murder of their innocent civilians - at scales far, far exceeding that of Russia or China.
The moral authority that you claim should have been exercised over Russia and China, simply doesn't exist. 5-eyes states are not 'better' at these things than Russia or China.
By statistics of "murder of innocent people", and "destruction of civilian infrastructure designed to make the target state fail, utterly", the worst criminal state in the world is the USA and its minion lapdogs - by a wide, wide margin.
It is, therefore, entirely appropriate for 5-eyes citizens to focus on the crimes of their own states, and utterly inappropriate for members of war-crime committing, crimes-against-humanity committing states, to be calling for the destruction of any other sovereign nation - while their own war criminals roam free to do whatever continued evil they desire.
> It is, therefore, entirely appropriate for 5-eyes citizens to focus on the crimes of their own states, and utterly inappropriate for members of war-crime committing, crimes-against-humanity committing states, to be calling for the destruction of any other sovereign nation - while their own war criminals roam free to do whatever continued evil they desire.
This is not a logical statement. A person can, of course, absolutely call out the crimes of Russia and China, while also calling out the crimes of people in their own country. You are fabricating a moral restriction without basis.
Given that the ones calling out Russia are also the ones committing and justifying the commission of continued war crimes and crimes against humanity, I do not agree with your assessment one bit.
Until the USA prosecutes its war criminals it should not be allowed to start any futher wars, fund terror groups, or further involve its intelligence apparatus in the destruction of any additional sovereign states. The fires started by American war criminals are far, far more destructive to the peace of the free world than anything Russia or China are up to. The imperative is to put out the greater fire: American war crimes.
If you think that you can catch criminals by setting criminals, then you're not going to have a good time in life.
If you truly think that Americans should have the moral authority to call out Russians for their war crimes, to the point that the nation is being prepared for war conditions against Russia in the immediate future, then Americans should not be committing war crimes every twenty minutes. They should be better than the Russians on this subject.
The trouble is, they are really not better. They are worse. America kills more innocent people, on a more regular basis - for the last twenty years - on the basis of lies and falsehoods, than Russia and China combined.
Americans, and indeed the willing Western coalition which supports the war crime-committing aparatus at the core of the US' economy, simply don't have the moral authority to challenge any other nation on this issue. It is the height of hypocricy, and will simply never work.
Want to do something effective about Russia or China? Set your own example. At the moment, the world is following America's lead in starting aggressive wars, it isn't following America's lead on peaceful activities.
You set the precedent by allowing the illegal invasion and subsequent murder of 5% of Iraq's population. Russia isn't doing in Ukraine anything that the USA and its criminal allies haven't already done in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc...
Clean that up and you might have a valid point about Russia and China. Ignore it all, and the world simply sees you as the pathetic nation of cowardly hypocrites that you are.
Americans certainly do not have the moral authority to call any other nations crimes out while they continue to allow their state to murder innocent people with impunity, on average every twenty minutes.
Neither do Ukrainians. Nor Russians, or indeed, Chinese.
"Superstate" is not a thing unless the five participants in the "5-eye" intelligence sharing program actually agree to form a state. So to stick with your logic, Assange should be responsible for leaking Australian things only. To be fair, a pretty strange logic tho, since you only allow the perpetrator of the crime to confess as means of accountability.
Your statistics is a function of how you count it. You could, for example, include "use of rape as a military tactic"[1] or "deliberate genocide"[2, 3] - which might have a bearing on the whole thing.
Not to mention the blatant, veiled whataboutism. Just because "USA bad" doesn't mean that countries such as Russia and China can do anything they want and we shouldn't hold them accountable.
To claim any kind of moral authority "calculation" here is perverse.
Did the citizens of the 5-eyes superstate vote to invade Iraq? (No: the war legislation in each state was abrogated utterly by the USA's criminal cabal, which decided to invade and destroy Iraq, illegally, on the basis of utter lies.). Were their democracies utterly corrupted in order to refactor the world order according to fundamentally racist, bigoted views, demolish countless other sovereign states, and leave their people in utter ruins? (Yes, and this injustice still goes on.)
Have you moved on from those crimes to focus on other 'whataboutist' situations in order to deflect, demur from oversight and degrade any attempt at addressing our own war crimes? (Yes, because Americans/5-eyes'ers are incapable of finding the courage to jail our own war criminals and would rather run to stir up the mob at the next house fire.) Is Russia/Ukraine more important to you now than the suffering of the Iraqi people? The Yemeni people? The Somalian, Libyan and Afghani people?
Why is that, exactly?
Yes, it is a criminal superstate, inasmuch as it doesn't have legitimacy and has been committing crimes against humanity with impunity. The member states of the 5-/9-eyes superstate are no longer sovereign, as their civilians' rights have been utterly abrogated by the construct. You are correct in pointing out it isn't really a "superstate" - it is factually a criminal cabal.
Such a cabal has no moral authority over any other state in the world. Period. The 5-eyes states violate the human rights of far, far more human beings on the planet than any other, including Russia and China combined.
>"we shouldn't hold them accountable."
You can't expect a mass murdering, baby-raping, house-fire starting criminal to have the moral authority to do anything about other murderers in the neighborhood, except maybe steal their spoils and reduce their competition over further criminal enterprises.
This is an utterly fallacious leap to make and speaks more to your own personal complete lack of understanding of ethics than anything else, which I agree is perverse to an extreme.
The USA and its 5-eyes minions do not have the Right nor the Moral Authority to do anything other than jail our own war criminals, and only then will the rest of the innocent world accept our oversight of Russian and Chinese crimes.
Unless of course you consider the USA and the 5-eyes superstate to be somehow morally more superior to any other state?
>"USA Bad"
The superiority you claim that belongs only to the USA and its 5-eyes minion 'allies' belies your heavy investment in the fallacy that the USA isn't the worlds worst actor when it comes to crimes against humanity and war crimes - perhaps on the basis of blind nationalism?
34 million refugees from our wars would like a word. The souls of the missing 5% of Iraqs' population, murdered by "our side", are also standing in line. The Syrian people would like their nations' wealth back. Yemen wants to return the American-made bombs that have been used to genocide their children. Libya would like to close the slave markets and send the CIA a bill for the infrastructure rebuild.
You might find it easy to ignore these 5-eyes crimes, but the rest of the world is not so cowardly.
Because you are a coward and lazy? Here's a summary:
Fix the heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by your own state, and only then will you have the moral authority to do anything, effective, about the crimes of other states.
No, because your position is indefensible. You argue that only the biggest perpetrator of terrible crimes should be held accountable, and everybody else could be left out. Which is a double standard and you know it, which is why all that you have left is emotional diatribes and ad hominem.
In fact, that's an extremely evil thing to push, because - who holds USA accountable? Surely not Russia or China. So nobody is held accountable. Well done!
And being Ukrainian I have enough moral authority to call out Russia at least.
I'm arguing that the largest criminal is not qualified to police the next-largest criminal.
The US has no moral authority when it comes to illegal invasions and murdering innocent people. Period.
If you want to do something effective about criminal, illegal wars - jail your own war criminals. Ukraine has plenty of them, even prior to Febuary 23rd. You did nothing effective about them, and thus the mess you are in.
Anything less is hypocricy and moral grandstanding.
> If you want to do something effective about criminal, illegal wars - jail your own war criminals. Ukraine has plenty of them, even prior to Febuary 23rd. You did nothing effective about them, and thus the mess you are in.
You are blaming Russias invasion of Ukraine, on Ukrainians?.
Ukraine certainly played its part in extending the hostilities that resulted in 14,000 murdered Russian-speaking citizens in its border regions prior to Feb 23.
If you are unaware of this, and just swallowing the agitprop designed to sell more weapons into the region, then I'm sure you have nothing more productive to add to the conversation.
> Ukraine certainly played its part in extending the hostilities that resulted in 14,000 murdered Russian-speaking citizens in its border regions prior to Feb 23.
Do you have a credible source for this?, id be interested to see one if you do.
