7 ms·

How Julian Assange Is Destroying WikiLeaks

33 points by bennettfeely 11y ago

jack9 11y ago
> There is no such thing as a legitimate secret. > This is not only nonsense, it is dangerous radicalism The NY Times likes to promote their own form of propaganda. Other forms are illegitimate.
dil8 11y ago
I think one aspect that the article misses, is the fact that the public can't make an informed decision with their votes if the government has secrets.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Society can't function without some level of secrecy there are plenty of people who have social issues for being "too honest", secrets aren't that different to lies at the end and we need to balance them both to maintain any relationship. A country can still have secrets while maintaining transparency, the government like any other entity has confidential information that has to be kept secret, as no one can operate on any meaningful level if everything they do is public. Anything from actual national security information (e.g. from list of covert agents to nuclear launch codes) to day to day diplomatic and policy related information needs secrecy. You can't build a case when the criminals know you coming after them, you can't negotiate a treaty when every discussion is public, you can't always say what you spending money one because it can cause and arms race etc. The article doesn't misses that aspect the notion that a government can operate without any type of secrecy is just absurd.
  - harryf 11y ago
    Agreed but I think it's also OK to take a fundamental position that all secrecy is bad. If you want to shift the status quo, you need to take an extreme standpoint. Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing. Case in point would be Stallman - whether you agree or not with his ideals or the GPG you can't deny that his impact on software as a whole has been tremendous and positive. It's reasonable to argue that github would not exist were it not for RMS and his fundamental position that all software should be Open Source
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      >Agreed but I think it's also OK to take a fundamental position that all secrecy is bad. But the problem is it's not a position anyone can actually honestly take, I don't agree with RMS and I also think you over-estimate his impact on the software industry but at least he practices what he's preaching while WikiLeaks is a closed and secretive organization which about a step away from becoming a personality cult. >Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing. I don't believe this is necessarily true (for all cases, and all countries the US included), you need to understand that allot of the "secrets" that the government is keeping aren't actually intended to protect itself or even it's population but to protect other people and organizations in other countries. This is why whilst I can understand the release of say the after action reports from Iraq I think that anyone who was involved with the diplomatic cable's leak should end up in prison for good, that was a spit in the face of diplomacy and every western value that people claim to hold and probably have actually caused more damage (as far as human lives go) than all other leaks including the Snowden one combined.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - lazaroclapp 11y ago
    Keep in mind that, in effect, what wikileaks actually advocates is "forcing people to keep someone else's secret is bad". The leaks have to come from someone, arguably someone who a) knows the secret, and b) doesn't think it should be a secret. People and government need secrets, sure, but do they really need gag orders? (this is not rhetorical, I really don't know what the answer should be)
cyphar 11y ago
> If you believe it is illegitimate for a government to keep secrets, it’s a quick jump to assume that a government that holds secrets is illegitimate itself — and that a system that maintains this illegitimacy, namely democracy, isn’t half as good as most people think. In other words: Like any other system, democracy stinks. This is a very twisted way to paint Assange as a communist. "Governments should be transparent" doesn't logically lead to "democracy is inept". That's just bullshit.
- libeclipse 11y ago
  But democracy is inept. It's an illusion. We as citizens (at least in the UK) don't have any day in the running of our country or the decisions that are made by our government. Every four years, we're given a choice to elect the party that we think will do the least damage, while hoping and praying that they'll keep their promises (although it should be noted that they're under no obligation to do so). Even the petition system has no effect on anything. 10,000 signatures warrants a single reply, while 100,000 means it's considered for debate. We're all just sheep at the end of the day, and it's foolish to think we actually have any control.
  - darawk 11y ago
    Imperfection is not the same thing as complete impotence. Western democracies could be substantially better than they are, but they are still leagues beyond any other functioning system of government on the planet that i'm aware of. Again, that's not to say that it can't be much much better than it is, but you do have some power, and the people who wield the true power are beholden to you to some extent, which as a general rule, is not the case in most of the world.
    - retrogradeorbit 11y ago
      Sure. But the point is, this system of government, whatever it is, is not "democracy". Democracy is "rule by the demos". Demos being ancient greek for "the common people". There are no "common people" making any decisions anywhere here.
jacquesm 11y ago
If you feel that Assange and Wikileaks are limited then set up a better one, don't claim that the current one should be run by committee. Wikileaks is quite possibly flawed but whatever flaws it and Assange have should easily be fixed by creating a similar institution that is not somehow tied to a person. Wikileaks 'the brand' should not be required for that. But until someone somewhere decides to take on the establishment on a similar scale as what Wikileaks has dared to do we'll have to continue to rely on that particular flawed individual who spent the better part of the last decade in pretty tight spot. Not many people would be prepared to give up their comfy lives to spend the rest of it in the cross hairs of just about every intelligence service. My personal guess is that all these 'wikileaks should be run by us' people would fold at a very small percentage of the pressure that Assange has withstood to date and that is the primary reason why he's still running Wikileaks. If not for that we'd have long ago seen an alternative. If any group is set up to be that alternative it is Poitras/Greenwald and a couple of other brave souls, but none of them so far seem to think they can do a better job of it than Assange. As for Russia, Assange has set his sights on 'the five eyes' and the machinations of diplomacy at large. You can agree with that or not, that's fine. But if you want an organization that focuses on let's say Russia or China then by all means create one, don't bitch that Wikileaks is ignoring them or must be in bed with them.
- varjag 11y ago
  > But if you want an organization that focuses on let's say Russia or China then by all means create one, don't bitch that Wikileaks is ignoring them or must be in bed with them. Sorry, but bitching is my inalienable right. Assange did more harm than good for my home country by cooperating with its secret police. I'm not going to have any reservations about his character just because am not ripe for martyrdom myself.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > Assange did more harm than good for my home country by cooperating with its secret police. Citation needed.
    - 11y ago
mrtree 11y ago
This article is just pure <censored>
cpks 11y ago
Anyone who runs something like WikiLeaks will be vilified. We all have something in our past -- whether a jilted lover willing to make things up about you, or a conflict at work, or whatnot. We all have some slightly unpopular political views on some subject. At the time you get into a position where you have real enemies -- which the founder of WikiLeaks does -- those become publicized and twisted. It doesn't matter who ran WikiLeaks -- the outcome would be the same. Source: I've been in a couple of positions of minor fame, and through a divorce. In both cases, I had enemies maybe 2-3 tiers down from Julian. My past -- factually -- is squeaky clean. I know what happened to my reputation in both cases. Footnote: Jochen Bittner is a judgmental jerk.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Any whistleblower ever - or enabler thereof - has been vilified, thrown the book at, alienated, imprisoned, tortured or even murdered. It's a path that one does not choose lightly.
belorn 11y ago
It used to be that Wikileaks was used in headlines for articles which reported about a leak. I do not see patter anymore, and the articles focus instead on the content of the leaks rather than the platform which it was published on. I view this as a positive step, and I only hope that we can see the same progress with the "the dark web".
deciplex 11y ago
This is just a poorly thought-out hit piece, right? > Yet, even back then, observers and media partners felt that Mr. Assange had more in mind than transparency, that there was an ideology behind his idea. Over time, that ideology has become increasingly apparent, through his regular public statements and his stint as a host for a Russian state-controlled TV network. One element of Assange-think has been clear from early on: There is no such thing as a legitimate secret. The public is entitled to share any knowledge governments hold. Only complete transparency can stop and prevent conspiracy. Therefore, editing information by the government — redacting sensitive material, for example — equals manipulating it. So, the hidden ideology behind mere 'transparency', lurking beneath the surface and which colors all of Assange's work at Wikileaks is... well apparently it's just more transparency. Frankly, he's right. Any knowledge governments hold which is not germane to some contemporary disaster or military action, diplomacy, etc., should be available to the public. I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years, a decade being about the maximum for e.g. military secrets, etc. > And it’s particularly bad, in Mr. Assange’s view, if those people represent Western democracy: In his simplistic reading, the West is hypocritical because it stands for civil liberties, and all secrets are antithetical to liberty. No wonder he got a show on Russian television — his viewpoint puts him nicely in line with Mr. Putin’s ideological agenda. Eh, his position on secrecy is much more nuanced than that, and I'd bet that even my take on what should be top secret and what should not is more radical than Julian Assange's (and less thought-out, heh). His belief, in a nutshell, is that institutions which mean to control the population share a culture of mistrust, which in turn elevates secrecy to a virtue. Such organizations actually can't operate if they are constantly in danger of having their secrets exposed, even if the risk is low and the real impact even in case of a leak is small. That's why Wikileaks exists - not because Julian Assange thinks that everything James Clapper knows, we should also know.
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  > I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years. How about technical papers on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb? Or the name of cover agents who were active twenty years ago and either are still active, or at least alive and could be targeted in retaliation? Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a way for people to expose illegal or immoral actions of the organizations (government or not) they work for, while protecting them from retaliation. Wikileaks serves that function. But no secrets with a longer life than 20 years? ever? I don't think I really agree.
rorykoehler 11y ago
I have no problem separating the man from the organisation. An organisation that publishes in the manner that WIkileaks does is neutral by default. They don't publish opinion pieces, merely cables. Perhaps the author of the piece should reflect inwards if he cannot separate Assange from Wikileaks.
- estomagordo 11y ago
  > An organisation that publishes in the manner that WIkileaks does is neutral by default. They don't publish opinion pieces, merely cables. Wtf? It's not terribly hard to employ a skewed selection process on non-opinionated material.
  - rorykoehler 11y ago
    Wikileaks have a track record of releasing cables from a variety of countries throughout the world without selection biases (this is the manner I was referring to). Some of those countries would consider each other as enemies. When you release cables in the numbers that Wikileaks do (millions) it is very hard to skew the selection process. Wikileaks led a revolution in journalism that has yet to be rivalled and Assange paid a high personal price for it. Any criticism of the man or organisation pales in significance to what they have achieved. Journalism was dead as a non-propaganda means of obtaining quality information until Wikileaks came along.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
> At times Mr. Assange seems to let his anti-West ideology take over completely. On the night of the Paris attacks last year, which left 130 people dead, @wikileaks tweeted: “At least 39 dead tonight in Paris terror attacks. 250k dead in Syria & Iraq. Both a direct result of US, UK, France feeding Sunni extremists.” So, here is the thing, I fail to see any radical anti-West ideology in that tweet. I think it is a fairly popular point of view, based on a reasonable interpretation of historical fact, that the involvement of those three countries in the middle east over the last century or so has led to the rise of terrorism in the region. Additionally, recent interventions have definitely not helped. This is, in fact, the kind of point of view that you'd see in mainstream news in plenty of countries around the world. You could make the argument that the night of the attacks might be poor timing to tweet this if you read as "finally, this countries got what it deserved for so many more dead elsewhere!". But you can also read it as "our leaders have been pursuing bad policy that is hurting hundreds of thousands abroad and actually came back indirectly to hurt us today as well, this is sad and it's sad that it would have been avoidable". That's not any more anti-West than protesting the Vietnam war was un-American. It is also a reasonable thing to bring up when the gut reaction to an attack like this is to escalate violence, even when it is fairly well established that doing so leads to more recruits for terrorist groups. Also, I wonder how many people wouldn't be a little bit radical and a little bit anti-X-country if they had been persecuted by said country and forced to hole up in an embassy for 3+ years...
retrogradeorbit 11y ago
So many weasel words. > and that a system that maintains this illegitimacy, namely democracy, isn’t half as good as most people think. I don't know what this writer is talking about with his 'democracy'. There's no democracies involved here. > Filtering isn’t phoniness — it’s civilization. Lets just be clear. It's a civilization that rains death on innocent people with no trial or oversight from remote control death robots. A very uncivil 'civilization'.
Grue3 11y ago
Wikileaks is nothing but Russian government's propaganda at this point. It has discredited itself.
- diyorgasms 11y ago
  It is wildly irresponsible to wield accusations like that without offering some sort of support for that position. I would say that it is in the US government's interest to discredit wikileaks, as their leaks tend to air dirty American laundry. But a lack of similarly embarrassing leaks about Russia dies not Russian propaganda make. It could simply be that Russian whistleblowers are more likely to meet with a fatal exposure to polonium.
  - Grue3 11y ago
    Did US government force Assange (and Snowden) to collaborate with Russia Today? As far as I'm concerned everyone involved with that hive of scum and villainy has irreparably damaged their reputation. Also there is no lack of embarassing leaks about Russian (or Chinese) government. Just because one person was murdered with polonium doesn't mean we don't have any brave people here anymore. Too bad western media cares more about hacks like Assange and Snowden than what happens in Russia.
    - dang 11y ago
      > hive of scum and villainy Please don't conduct political ragewars here. They're tedious and not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity which is supposed to guide this site.
      - pvg 11y ago
        Perhaps it's simply a jovial Star Wars reference.
      - Grue3 11y ago
        Ah, but gems like "Russian whistleblowers are more likely to meet with a fatal exposure to polonium" are apparently just fine. What am I supposed to do when people openly insult my country?

33 points by bennettfeely 11y ago

jack9 11y ago

> There is no such thing as a legitimate secret. > This is not only nonsense, it is dangerous radicalism The NY Times likes to promote their own form of propaganda. Other forms are illegitimate.

dil8 11y ago

I think one aspect that the article misses, is the fact that the public can't make an informed decision with their votes if the government has secrets.

dogma1138 11y ago
Society can't function without some level of secrecy there are plenty of people who have social issues for being "too honest", secrets aren't that different to lies at the end and we need to balance them both to maintain any relationship. A country can still have secrets while maintaining transparency, the government like any other entity has confidential information that has to be kept secret, as no one can operate on any meaningful level if everything they do is public. Anything from actual national security information (e.g. from list of covert agents to nuclear launch codes) to day to day diplomatic and policy related information needs secrecy. You can't build a case when the criminals know you coming after them, you can't negotiate a treaty when every discussion is public, you can't always say what you spending money one because it can cause and arms race etc. The article doesn't misses that aspect the notion that a government can operate without any type of secrecy is just absurd.
- harryf 11y ago
  Agreed but I think it's also OK to take a fundamental position that all secrecy is bad. If you want to shift the status quo, you need to take an extreme standpoint. Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing. Case in point would be Stallman - whether you agree or not with his ideals or the GPG you can't deny that his impact on software as a whole has been tremendous and positive. It's reasonable to argue that github would not exist were it not for RMS and his fundamental position that all software should be Open Source
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    >Agreed but I think it's also OK to take a fundamental position that all secrecy is bad. But the problem is it's not a position anyone can actually honestly take, I don't agree with RMS and I also think you over-estimate his impact on the software industry but at least he practices what he's preaching while WikiLeaks is a closed and secretive organization which about a step away from becoming a personality cult. >Today's status quo in Western governments is a long long way from being the happy medium you're describing. I don't believe this is necessarily true (for all cases, and all countries the US included), you need to understand that allot of the "secrets" that the government is keeping aren't actually intended to protect itself or even it's population but to protect other people and organizations in other countries. This is why whilst I can understand the release of say the after action reports from Iraq I think that anyone who was involved with the diplomatic cable's leak should end up in prison for good, that was a spit in the face of diplomacy and every western value that people claim to hold and probably have actually caused more damage (as far as human lives go) than all other leaks including the Snowden one combined.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  Keep in mind that, in effect, what wikileaks actually advocates is "forcing people to keep someone else's secret is bad". The leaks have to come from someone, arguably someone who a) knows the secret, and b) doesn't think it should be a secret. People and government need secrets, sure, but do they really need gag orders? (this is not rhetorical, I really don't know what the answer should be)

cyphar 11y ago

> If you believe it is illegitimate for a government to keep secrets, it’s a quick jump to assume that a government that holds secrets is illegitimate itself — and that a system that maintains this illegitimacy, namely democracy, isn’t half as good as most people think. In other words: Like any other system, democracy stinks. This is a very twisted way to paint Assange as a communist. "Governments should be transparent" doesn't logically lead to "democracy is inept". That's just bullshit.

libeclipse 11y ago
But democracy is inept. It's an illusion. We as citizens (at least in the UK) don't have any day in the running of our country or the decisions that are made by our government. Every four years, we're given a choice to elect the party that we think will do the least damage, while hoping and praying that they'll keep their promises (although it should be noted that they're under no obligation to do so). Even the petition system has no effect on anything. 10,000 signatures warrants a single reply, while 100,000 means it's considered for debate. We're all just sheep at the end of the day, and it's foolish to think we actually have any control.
- darawk 11y ago
  Imperfection is not the same thing as complete impotence. Western democracies could be substantially better than they are, but they are still leagues beyond any other functioning system of government on the planet that i'm aware of. Again, that's not to say that it can't be much much better than it is, but you do have some power, and the people who wield the true power are beholden to you to some extent, which as a general rule, is not the case in most of the world.
  - retrogradeorbit 11y ago
    Sure. But the point is, this system of government, whatever it is, is not "democracy". Democracy is "rule by the demos". Demos being ancient greek for "the common people". There are no "common people" making any decisions anywhere here.

jacquesm 11y ago

If you feel that Assange and Wikileaks are limited then set up a better one, don't claim that the current one should be run by committee. Wikileaks is quite possibly flawed but whatever flaws it and Assange have should easily be fixed by creating a similar institution that is not somehow tied to a person. Wikileaks 'the brand' should not be required for that. But until someone somewhere decides to take on the establishment on a similar scale as what Wikileaks has dared to do we'll have to continue to rely on that particular flawed individual who spent the better part of the last decade in pretty tight spot. Not many people would be prepared to give up their comfy lives to spend the rest of it in the cross hairs of just about every intelligence service. My personal guess is that all these 'wikileaks should be run by us' people would fold at a very small percentage of the pressure that Assange has withstood to date and that is the primary reason why he's still running Wikileaks. If not for that we'd have long ago seen an alternative. If any group is set up to be that alternative it is Poitras/Greenwald and a couple of other brave souls, but none of them so far seem to think they can do a better job of it than Assange. As for Russia, Assange has set his sights on 'the five eyes' and the machinations of diplomacy at large. You can agree with that or not, that's fine. But if you want an organization that focuses on let's say Russia or China then by all means create one, don't bitch that Wikileaks is ignoring them or must be in bed with them.

varjag 11y ago
> But if you want an organization that focuses on let's say Russia or China then by all means create one, don't bitch that Wikileaks is ignoring them or must be in bed with them. Sorry, but bitching is my inalienable right. Assange did more harm than good for my home country by cooperating with its secret police. I'm not going to have any reservations about his character just because am not ripe for martyrdom myself.
- acqq 11y ago
  > Assange did more harm than good for my home country by cooperating with its secret police. Citation needed.
  - 11y ago

mrtree 11y ago

This article is just pure <censored>

cpks 11y ago

Anyone who runs something like WikiLeaks will be vilified. We all have something in our past -- whether a jilted lover willing to make things up about you, or a conflict at work, or whatnot. We all have some slightly unpopular political views on some subject. At the time you get into a position where you have real enemies -- which the founder of WikiLeaks does -- those become publicized and twisted. It doesn't matter who ran WikiLeaks -- the outcome would be the same. Source: I've been in a couple of positions of minor fame, and through a divorce. In both cases, I had enemies maybe 2-3 tiers down from Julian. My past -- factually -- is squeaky clean. I know what happened to my reputation in both cases. Footnote: Jochen Bittner is a judgmental jerk.

jacquesm 11y ago
Any whistleblower ever - or enabler thereof - has been vilified, thrown the book at, alienated, imprisoned, tortured or even murdered. It's a path that one does not choose lightly.

belorn 11y ago

It used to be that Wikileaks was used in headlines for articles which reported about a leak. I do not see patter anymore, and the articles focus instead on the content of the leaks rather than the platform which it was published on. I view this as a positive step, and I only hope that we can see the same progress with the "the dark web".

deciplex 11y ago

This is just a poorly thought-out hit piece, right? > Yet, even back then, observers and media partners felt that Mr. Assange had more in mind than transparency, that there was an ideology behind his idea. Over time, that ideology has become increasingly apparent, through his regular public statements and his stint as a host for a Russian state-controlled TV network. One element of Assange-think has been clear from early on: There is no such thing as a legitimate secret. The public is entitled to share any knowledge governments hold. Only complete transparency can stop and prevent conspiracy. Therefore, editing information by the government — redacting sensitive material, for example — equals manipulating it. So, the hidden ideology behind mere 'transparency', lurking beneath the surface and which colors all of Assange's work at Wikileaks is... well apparently it's just more transparency. Frankly, he's right. Any knowledge governments hold which is not germane to some contemporary disaster or military action, diplomacy, etc., should be available to the public. I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years, a decade being about the maximum for e.g. military secrets, etc. > And it’s particularly bad, in Mr. Assange’s view, if those people represent Western democracy: In his simplistic reading, the West is hypocritical because it stands for civil liberties, and all secrets are antithetical to liberty. No wonder he got a show on Russian television — his viewpoint puts him nicely in line with Mr. Putin’s ideological agenda. Eh, his position on secrecy is much more nuanced than that, and I'd bet that even my take on what should be top secret and what should not is more radical than Julian Assange's (and less thought-out, heh). His belief, in a nutshell, is that institutions which mean to control the population share a culture of mistrust, which in turn elevates secrecy to a virtue. Such organizations actually can't operate if they are constantly in danger of having their secrets exposed, even if the risk is low and the real impact even in case of a leak is small. That's why Wikileaks exists - not because Julian Assange thinks that everything James Clapper knows, we should also know.

lazaroclapp 11y ago
> I'm hard-pressed to think of any good excuse for keeping a thing secret for twenty years. How about technical papers on the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb? Or the name of cover agents who were active twenty years ago and either are still active, or at least alive and could be targeted in retaliation? Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a way for people to expose illegal or immoral actions of the organizations (government or not) they work for, while protecting them from retaliation. Wikileaks serves that function. But no secrets with a longer life than 20 years? ever? I don't think I really agree.

rorykoehler 11y ago

I have no problem separating the man from the organisation. An organisation that publishes in the manner that WIkileaks does is neutral by default. They don't publish opinion pieces, merely cables. Perhaps the author of the piece should reflect inwards if he cannot separate Assange from Wikileaks.

estomagordo 11y ago
> An organisation that publishes in the manner that WIkileaks does is neutral by default. They don't publish opinion pieces, merely cables. Wtf? It's not terribly hard to employ a skewed selection process on non-opinionated material.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  Wikileaks have a track record of releasing cables from a variety of countries throughout the world without selection biases (this is the manner I was referring to). Some of those countries would consider each other as enemies. When you release cables in the numbers that Wikileaks do (millions) it is very hard to skew the selection process. Wikileaks led a revolution in journalism that has yet to be rivalled and Assange paid a high personal price for it. Any criticism of the man or organisation pales in significance to what they have achieved. Journalism was dead as a non-propaganda means of obtaining quality information until Wikileaks came along.

lazaroclapp 11y ago

> At times Mr. Assange seems to let his anti-West ideology take over completely. On the night of the Paris attacks last year, which left 130 people dead, @wikileaks tweeted: “At least 39 dead tonight in Paris terror attacks. 250k dead in Syria & Iraq. Both a direct result of US, UK, France feeding Sunni extremists.” So, here is the thing, I fail to see any radical anti-West ideology in that tweet. I think it is a fairly popular point of view, based on a reasonable interpretation of historical fact, that the involvement of those three countries in the middle east over the last century or so has led to the rise of terrorism in the region. Additionally, recent interventions have definitely not helped. This is, in fact, the kind of point of view that you'd see in mainstream news in plenty of countries around the world. You could make the argument that the night of the attacks might be poor timing to tweet this if you read as "finally, this countries got what it deserved for so many more dead elsewhere!". But you can also read it as "our leaders have been pursuing bad policy that is hurting hundreds of thousands abroad and actually came back indirectly to hurt us today as well, this is sad and it's sad that it would have been avoidable". That's not any more anti-West than protesting the Vietnam war was un-American. It is also a reasonable thing to bring up when the gut reaction to an attack like this is to escalate violence, even when it is fairly well established that doing so leads to more recruits for terrorist groups. Also, I wonder how many people wouldn't be a little bit radical and a little bit anti-X-country if they had been persecuted by said country and forced to hole up in an embassy for 3+ years...

retrogradeorbit 11y ago

So many weasel words. > and that a system that maintains this illegitimacy, namely democracy, isn’t half as good as most people think. I don't know what this writer is talking about with his 'democracy'. There's no democracies involved here. > Filtering isn’t phoniness — it’s civilization. Lets just be clear. It's a civilization that rains death on innocent people with no trial or oversight from remote control death robots. A very uncivil 'civilization'.

Grue3 11y ago

Wikileaks is nothing but Russian government's propaganda at this point. It has discredited itself.

diyorgasms 11y ago
It is wildly irresponsible to wield accusations like that without offering some sort of support for that position. I would say that it is in the US government's interest to discredit wikileaks, as their leaks tend to air dirty American laundry. But a lack of similarly embarrassing leaks about Russia dies not Russian propaganda make. It could simply be that Russian whistleblowers are more likely to meet with a fatal exposure to polonium.
- Grue3 11y ago
  Did US government force Assange (and Snowden) to collaborate with Russia Today? As far as I'm concerned everyone involved with that hive of scum and villainy has irreparably damaged their reputation. Also there is no lack of embarassing leaks about Russian (or Chinese) government. Just because one person was murdered with polonium doesn't mean we don't have any brave people here anymore. Too bad western media cares more about hacks like Assange and Snowden than what happens in Russia.
  - dang 11y ago
    > hive of scum and villainy Please don't conduct political ragewars here. They're tedious and not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity which is supposed to guide this site.
    - pvg 11y ago
      Perhaps it's simply a jovial Star Wars reference.
    - Grue3 11y ago
      Ah, but gems like "Russian whistleblowers are more likely to meet with a fatal exposure to polonium" are apparently just fine. What am I supposed to do when people openly insult my country?