And haven't they broken his brain anyway with all the solitary confinement...
Ah, Western Democracy and the rule of law and humane treatment of prisoners, how we love thee. That sounds like I'm pro-Russia or China, but no, I don't like them either.
The kind of imprisonment that Assange was subjected to is unambiguously torture, and was unambiguously administered for the purpose of revenge.
There is no natural "need" for the conditions he was subjected to (e.g. the cost of a larger cell is negligible), and no natural purpose other than to punish.
I am deliberately ignoring the question of guilt here, because I don't believe that we should torture _anyone_, regardless of the crime. The fact that we do this is a giant ugly stain on civilisation.
I don't know why you are getting downvoted, your comment is spot on. The way this man has been treated should be an embarrassment to all the leaders of the so-called free world.
Assange wasn't really a threat on his own. He was merely an outlet for others (Chelsea Manning, Russian propagandists). The question was whether he encouraged others.
Snowden showed that leakers didn't need Wikileaks for Chelsea Manning-like releases and the Russians have just switched to directly releasing on Twitter.
>the Russians have just switched to directly releasing on Twitter.
Or more frequently just making shit up. Enough people will believe it anyway if they're politically inclined to do so, plausible details are not a required element.
No, governments have just realized leaks don't matter. The age of conspiracies is over; the public no longer distinguishes fact from BS so it doesn't matter what is and isn't out there on TikTok.
Part of that statement is public knowledge. Wikileaks was a trusted entity who you could release documents to that would publish and keep you private. That reputation and threat has disappeared making wikileaks a tainted brand. Assange is also tainted and has lost power. The deal he signed also restricts him.
I'm not even sure it's a conspiracy anymore as each legal procedure by nation states played out in public.
The conspiracy in principle is always a layer deeper than public view.
What's the conspiracy? He was a known whistleblower and the U.S. was upset that he assisted in the acquisition of certain documents. All of the motivations have been quite open.
It's not really accurate to call him a whistleblower. He was acting as a conduit of information for whistleblowers, though he exercised his own discretion to decide which whistleblowers to release for.
The reason he was charged by the US is because rather than just being a recipient of leaked documents he took an active part in helping an insider obtain them by breaking internal security controls. That's crossing a line and is something journalists are careful to never do.
A google search defines "whistleblower" as a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity. I fail to see the material difference. He was also a journalist.
There's more to this than just googling for a basic definition.
When he provided tools and direct guidance to Chelsea Manning to access classified information and when he and others breached the Congressional Research Service to leak documents from there he went far beyond what any professional journalist would do and lost the associated protections.
Please don't patronize me just because you were wrong about the definition of whistleblower.
> went far beyond what any professional journalist would do
A useless statement without contextualization, but you can spare the contextualization because it's a moot point; Assange, running his own outfit, is free to decide for himself what kind of journalist he wishes to be. He doesn't have to follow CNN's playbook because he doesn't work for CNN.
I'm not defending the lack of censorship which may have put lives at immediate risk, but that's also not the basis on which the US government has sought his extradition. The basis of their argument had to do with the act of allegedly providing Manning the means of acquiring the data.
> lost the associated protections
You're downplaying the significance of the Cablegate leaks. The US went to great lengths to prosecute and get revenge on everyone involved, including Manning.
I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make here, as you're shifting goalposts.
> Please don't patronize me just because you were wrong about the definition of whistleblower.
1) You're coming off as pretty darn patronizing yourself, too, so stones and glass houses.
2) Dunno about "the" definition of whistleblower; in your GP you said you got it off Google. They're (so far) not King of the English Language, AFAIK. No that I am, either, but the connotations I've picked up wherever I've heard or read the term usually include that "a whistleblower" is someone on the inside dishing the dirt on their own organisation. Which isn't what Assange did.
(So by the general consensus usage, the only WikiLeaks whistleblower would be that German guy who wrote the book that showed what a general asshole Assange is.)
Just because you call yourself a journalist it doesn’t mean you’re free to do whatever you want and still claim journalism protections.
It doesn’t matter where you are, journalism does not include hacking into or otherwise intentionally and actively stealing information. Doing that rightfully opens you up to criminal charges.
The problem with the initial response and why it was basically bad faith is that the definition of the word "whistleblower" can be broad, and it also is fairly unrelated to the central point.
So when the other person brought that up, as well as when you are arguing about it, what you are doing is being both wrong on the point and pendant in a way that is irrelevant to the central thesis.
Instead of trying to claim that someone was wrong about 1 single word, the good faith way of approaching the argument would be to talk about the thesis, which was that it wasn't really a "conspiracy" when the US government absolutely had strong motivation to go after him.
The word "whistleblower" which has multiple meaning is basically irrelevant.
And his original justification, of using a Google search definition, is absolutely valid.
Or, it is at least valid enough that I don't think you are justified in being upset about a perfectly normal way of using a word.
Especially when the use of the word, that is supported by Google, is irrelevant to the thesis statement.
