Why is Biden Prosecuting Assange for Telling the Truth about Afghanistan?
www.newsweek.com
Julian Assange warned the public that the goal in Afghanistan "is to have an endless war, not a successful war."

Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”

  • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
    155·
    1 year ago

    It isn’t an act of speech when you directly hack government computers. It is not an act of protected speech to direct people in how to perpetrate crimes.

    The notion that he is being charged for speech rather than taking an active role in the crimes is false. You can see it in the charges themselves.

    He is being prosecuted for alleged acts he has allegedly taken not for sharing the information obtained from those hacks.

      • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
        61·
        1 year ago

        Or you really bad at thinking. That’s the third and almost certain option as Im neither of those things.

        The charges are public. You can see what he has been accused of. It is not a secret.

    • davi@lemm.eeEnglish
      411·
      1 year ago

      you’re misinformed and making a silly argument based on your misinformation.

      • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        "On 11 April 2019, the day of Assange’s arrest in London, the indictment against him was unsealed.[60] He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion (i.e. hacking into a government computer), a crime that carries a maximum 5-year sentence.[61][62]

        The charges allege that Assange sought to help Chelsea Manning crack a password hash so that Manning could use a different username to download classified documents. This “would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information”.[63][64][65][66] This allegation had been known since 2011 and is a less serious charge than those levelled against Manning, and carries a maximum sentence of five years.[67][68] The US pointed to chat logs and filed an affidavit that said they were able to identify Assange as the person chatting with Manning using hints he made during the chats and that Manning identified him as Assange to Adrian Lamo.[64][69]"

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange#:~:text=He was charged with conspiracy,a maximum 5-year sentence.

        No Im right on the money here

          • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Tax evasion as they could prove that. There is evidence that Assange was directly involved in the hacks. He is being charged with that.

        • flint5436@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23·
          1 year ago

          That the US law forbids such acts is a no brainer. But it’s still “Telling the truth”. imho this qualifies him for the nobel peace price rather than incarceration.

          • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            No it isn’t telling the truth. He isn’t being pursued for sharing the info but rather in directly committing crimes to get the info. The NYT could publish the Pentagon Papers because they did not steal them.

            Assange is accused of being involved in the theft. He’s also now a Russian stooge so probably deserves nothing other than what the US prison system will give him.

            • flint5436@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              He isn’t being pursued for sharing the info but rather in directly committing crimes to get the info.

              Debatable. But even if he did, that means he helped uncover the human rights abuses of the US and it’s allies and their unbelievable collateral damage(~60% of deaths in Irak where civilians). Again maybe legally wrong, but ethically it was the right thing to do.

              He’s also now a Russian stooge so probably

              I don’t know where you get that info from, but if I had messed with the largest military industrial complex on the planet, I’d be looking for friends in other contries aswell. Snowden understadably did the same.

              probably deserves nothing other than what the US prison system will give him.

              I wouldn’t even want my worst enemy to experience US prisons. They are inhumane and they torture prisoners (extended solitary confinement) on a daily basis as a form of coercion. How could you wish this on anyone?

              • gowan@reddthat.comEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                It isn’t debatable as that is what he is charged with. The fact that his crimes might have produced benefits for someone is immaterial to the fact he broke the law.

                Given that he is without question in the employ if the Kremlin at this point, and possibly always was, he’s not someone I would hold up as being heroic or ethical.

                His crimes are crimes. He isn’t protected by 1A if he broke the law to get the info he shared.

      • rdeets@lemmy.worldEnglish
        35·
        1 year ago

        Assange is a rapist (alleged) narcissistic psychopath. He uses everyone and throws them away. Chelsea. The women he raped (cough ‘allegedly raped’), his own Wikileaks team. You name it, he’s pumped it and dumped it.

        Assange is a Putin puppet piece of shit who deserves to rot in a cell for the rest of his miserable life.

        Assange gave us Trump. Trump gave us COVID disinformation. COVID disinformation gave us over one million American deaths.

        So fuck Assange and fuck everyone and everything associated with him.