8 ms·

Manning and Snowden, sure. Assange has quite obviously become a stooge for Putin, hardly a people's champion against government overreach.

• boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Really? I see nothing obvious about it. Hell, the main people that seem to be making that claim is the CIA, an organization known to lie in the past and benefit from discrediting Wikileaks.
  • dogecoinbase 9y ago
    No... no, it's super obvious. Other people making that claim include, say, everyone reputable in the infosec community.
    • rendall 9y ago
      [citation needed]
    • ionised 9y ago
      Examples? And how are you defining 'reputable'?
  • sanswork 9y ago
    >Really? I see nothing obvious about it Check out wikileaks twitter account some time.
    • boomboomsubban 9y ago
      I went back through the past couple weeks. Absolutely not obvious.
• nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  No good deed goes unpunished
• odiroot 9y ago
  Way to push your agenda on HN. I personally see Assange as the most important of these three. He started a revolution and enabled all the Snowdens and Mannings to reach the masses.
  • hueving 9y ago
    Snowden reached the masses through regular journalists. Also, you are just as equally pushing an agenda.
    • grandalf 9y ago
      > through regular journalists Regular journalists who had to flee the country and eventually start their own publication in order to continue to be able to publish the investigative stories spawned by the information. Greenwald did not return to the US for quite some time out of legitimate fear that he'd be arrested and jailed immediately upon entry.
      • hueving 9y ago
        Sure, still had nothing to do with Wikileaks though.
• chriswarbo 9y ago
  I've been keeping tabs on Assange's position over the years; from skipping bail, to entering the embassy, to the sporadic statements from Sweden, Britain, Ecuador and Assange. From descriptions of Sweden's strict laws around rape (misunderstanding of which caused the whole "rape capital of Europe" idiocy), to the statute of limitations running out on some of the allegations, and so on. At no point have I ever seen any mention of Russia in general, or Putin in particular, in anything related to Assange. The closest would probably Assange's assistance to Snowden in Hong Kong, who eventually went on to seek asylum in Russia. I felt the need to comment, since your "obvious" assertion took me so completely by surprise. I honestly have no idea how someone could come to such a conclusion. I'm in the UK (same as Assange!); maybe where you are (the US?) the media is insert its own narrative?
  • crdoconnor 9y ago
    It's the US military and intelligence communities. They hate Russia a passion. This manifests in all sorts of odd ways, the most ridiculous of which was this: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-...
    • accountyaccount 9y ago
      The Russian government has been loosely tied with killing journalists and other opponents while Putin may also be amassing the largest fortune on the planet, so I don't think it's entirely unfounded.
      • grandalf 9y ago
        > The Russian government has been loosely tied Keep in mind that there is a massive propaganda campaign being done by the US to make Americans think Putin is evil. Chances are, Putin is no more evil than any US president. Keep in mind that even the most ostensibly intelligent, reasonable, and articulate president in memory, Barack Obama, happily accelerated the campaign to convict journalists under the espionage act and ramped up drone executions abroad. My point is that the US may legitimately consider Russia an adversary based on geopolitical realities (scarce resources, etc.) but none of this means Putin is more evil than a US president. In the US there is some degree of public consent required for military action and foreign policy, and the best way to make this happen is to create a moral argument. So of course the leaders of all nations the US considers adversaries are framed as evil. But this is just meant to help achieve democratic consent, no serious policy thinkers actually believe it.
• ionised 9y ago
  > Manning and Snowden, sure. Assange has quite obviously become a stooge for Putin How is it obvious? Where is the evidence? All I see is the axe he has to grind with the US, which is not entirely unreasonable.
• 1001101 9y ago
  Assange and Putin have little in common philosophically, other than a desire to challenge unchecked US power in the world. Putin challenges the unipolarity of the post Cold War world - see address to Munich Security Council 10 years go - and controls the media to bolster oligarchy. The man has a billion dollar house on his modest civil servant salary. Julian is for free markets and open information. The only places their worldviews intersect is dislike for American neocon foreign policy, and so they are both demonized in the NYT, WaPo etc. If Bernie was elected, I could easily see Julian turn on Vlad.
• appleflaxen 9y ago
  even if a huge amount of information about the US came from russia, the nature of leaks is that you can only leak what you have. would it be better if more light was shed on russia? absolutely. is the problem assange? probably not; it's almost certainly the lack of leaking by the US or other governments about russia. the biggest responsibility assange has is making sure the leaks are true. that's impossible to do 100%, but by all accounts the accuracy is incredibly high given the size of their operation.
• grandalf 9y ago
  > Assange has quite obviously become a stooge for Putin Think about the nature of Wikileaks. Assange is a "stooge" for the opponent of any government embarrassed by leaked information. In the same way, you might argue that if the NYT publishes an article about corruption in the US military it too is a stooge for some US enemy? It's so strange how partisan loyalty can make people believe some pretty farfetched and illogical things.