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I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo

I didn't know why he was so hell-bent against the movie then noticed this side link in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-world-593037 http://www.newsweek.com/documentary-inside-julian-assange-wo... Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also in mission. Saying such varied and complex issues are all just "leaking" does both their supporters and detractors a disservice. Details matter especially with so much at stake.

19eightyfour 9y ago
I don't know why people still support Assange so clearly. It was interesting to me that people on /r/The_Donald love Assange so much. Before this documentary, I posted there criticising Wikileaks and it was totally hated on. I find that weird because the idea that Assange is unreliable and fake, was the kind of somewhat-counter-main-narrative idea that I thought people of T_D would appreciate. They seem to see him as some sort of hero. I wanted to point out that he seems to me to have once been good, but then he squandered by trading whatever his mission originally was, with some bullshit idea of being a martyr to serve his ego. I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. I mean, I know his existence is useful to the IC and various interests, but I personally just find him disgusting. And I genuinely had some belief in what Wikileaks could have stood for. But I don't really see it as that now. To me, Wikileaks and Assange totally sold out. Sorry to offend anyone who feels very differently. This is just my opinion on it.
- mirimir 9y ago
  > I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think.
  - Veen 9y ago
    > It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think. That seems a perfectly rational decision to me.
  - moomin 9y ago
    Except that a) the US weren't interested (ironically, they may be now) and b) he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever. People were dropping out of Wikileaks 10 years ago because of Assange's behaviour. Seems like Poitras is just the latest in a long line of people who are attracted to the principles of Wikileaks, but turned off by the reality.
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever. Sources? Because this is the exact opposite of what I read: that Swedish investigators had repeatedly refused to interview him there. Edit: I googled and I'm still convinced I'm right: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+interview+assange+at+the+embassy https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+inte... Edit2: unless someone can show sources moomins answer I'll say it is wrong and dangerously wrong in that it spreads a lie. I still can't understand why no-one has bother to either downvote it or provide sources for it. I don't necessarily like Assange but lets not lie to create more trouble for him.
      - somebehemoth 9y ago
        He was interviewed in the embassy by Swedish prosecutors[1][2][3][4]. 1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-police-ecuadorean-embassy-interview-rape-charges-a7402056.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-poli... 2 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idUSKBN13910T http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idU... 3 http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren-arrives-to-interview-julian-assange-at-the-londons-ecuadorian-embassy-20161114-gsp7wn.html http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren... 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority#Decision_to_interview_Assange_in_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
- lingben 9y ago
  I've observed that Trump and his supporters live in a childishly simple world where anything and anyone who says "good" or supportive things is hailed and anyone who criticizes or questions Trump is derided and held in contempt, irrespective of any actual factual basis.
  - astronautjones 9y ago
    This is inarguably true.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - surrey-fringe 9y ago
    Very interesting observation. Thanks for sharing.
  - mowenz 9y ago
    Isn't this just politics? Here is an example: After the DNC scandal against Sanders with DWS resigning I posted an article by Greenwald on this in /r/politics. It was downvoted with such reasons as 'Greenwald is an un-patriotic [homophobic slur] who is afraid to enter the US because he doesn't want to face responsibility for his actions against the US.'
    - honestoHeminway 9y ago
      Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour. Meaning, at some point of heated debate, those with no feelings involved take a step back, and find a middleground solution, a compromise with which both sides can live. And usually that boring compromise is accepted by the majority of the people. The problem starts when the majority of the people are cut off from economic growth and participation. They can sense the world moving own, without needing them and rebell against that (for good reason- i presume that alot of HN readers would form similar rebelions, if the big Four would discard them all .
      - 9y ago
- belorn 9y ago
  It seem political when people criticize Assange political refuge to a embassy. There need to be some insight to show why it is not political. It also need to explain from a historical (ie scientifically) why the actions are not rational. I personally have collected enough reason to be very skeptical against such criticism. The first Swedish prosecutor dropped the case. When it was restarted by a second prosecutor, several uninvolved lawyers looked into the case on behalf on news agencies and conclude that the case had zero chance of going anywhere. When compared to rape cases in Sweden that get dropped, get not-guilty in court, and the small number that get a guilty verdict, you either need to have physical evidence of violence/drugs where a medical expert use their experience to claim rape, a video recording, witnesses that strongly (and seems more common than not to fail here) to show that the victim was incapacitated when going to sleep, or a confession. In contrast to most cases all the details for Assange case has been leaked and it has shown none of those critical components for a successful case. In addition we get some more warning clocks ringing when the European arrest warrant made a record for the lowest number of potential year in prison. A second record was achieved by the the amount of money spent in regard to the number of potential year in prison. It could be a unicorn, a one of the kind where all the stars align to a guilty verdict, but the case smells political. The rational behavior when the legal system turn political is to run and hide.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    It became a much bigger deal once he fled first Sweden, and then British jurisdiction. That set up it as a test of the powers of the legal systems of those countries. If you allow someone to escape prosecution simply by raising the costs/creating inconvenience, you all but guarantee others to try to do the same, and/or to lose faith in the equality of justice. Regarding the common conspiracy theories: always remember that he was arrested, then freed on bail, in both countries. If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      > If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago. Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- grandalf 9y ago
  Donald Trump is completely irrelevant to my support of Assange. Like many of his critics, you are making a lot of ad hominem attacks on Assange rather than focusing on his massive contributions to democracy and journalism.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    And you are excusing his reprehensible personal behavior because of those contributions. Contributions that could be made by Wikileaks staffers without his presence.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to... but whatever it is it is being used as a distraction from the issues revealed by WL. Chances are even without Assange involved there would be attempts by many governments to discredit those operating WL.
macspoofing 9y ago
>Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also in mission Is there actually?
bjornsing 9y ago
> Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Did you get all that from the short clip of Assange talking Russia and Clinton...? If I understand correctly the damning part (of Risk) is when he makes weird allegations against the women he is accused of rapeing...
grandalf 9y ago
What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we should all realize that Assange has shown us outrageous and deeply disturbing revelations about many governments, the US Government in particular. The scale, deceitfulness, and human toll revealed by this information is many orders of magnitude larger than any minor concerns about Assange's personality or personal conduct. That this isn't obvious to more people is deeply troubling to me. How did we become so compliant, so loyal to a government that would do this? How can we allow this to happen? Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? I think the unfortunate answer is that Americans do not care that brown-skinned people are being murdered all over the world due to US policies, and that hundreds of thousands of children go to bed every night hearing the buzz of drone aircraft, terrified that their home might be targeted. Assange has given American democracy the opportunity to have some teeth and to allow the basic decency of a free society to rise up and correct for some of the wrongs that were revealed, but instead we talk about Assange's personality quirks and use the hashtag resist in support of the most establishment politician since Dick Cheney.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd. The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fighting age citizens...
caycep 9y ago
the release of the Macron "documents" - complete w/ all the evidence of Russian manipulation and fakery, hanging MS Word edit tags in cyrillic, etc, in the official dump, says volumes. They didn't bother to even read through the stuff before dumping it on the public.
- qb45 9y ago
  Macron documents weren't released by WikiLeaks, or are we talking some other leak from him? https://www.wired.com/2017/05/macron-email-hack-french-election/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/macron-email-hack-french-elect...
  - caycep 9y ago
    You're right, I think what I recall was WikiLeaks promoting the pastebin dump, then there was some quote that was circulated by one of their PR people say they had no reason to believe the documents were falsified, when other people were pointing out the cyrillic edit tags prevalent throughout the dump
- rurban 9y ago
  You missed that part of the story where the French staffers got knowledge of the intruders and deliberately changed some documents, to come up with the counterpropaganda after the leak. It was not much, but stopped prosecutors and the public to go after Macron. Which is a shame, but we got used to cointel in the meantime, and media is not helping.

19eightyfour 9y ago

I don't know why people still support Assange so clearly. It was interesting to me that people on /r/The_Donald love Assange so much. Before this documentary, I posted there criticising Wikileaks and it was totally hated on. I find that weird because the idea that Assange is unreliable and fake, was the kind of somewhat-counter-main-narrative idea that I thought people of T_D would appreciate. They seem to see him as some sort of hero. I wanted to point out that he seems to me to have once been good, but then he squandered by trading whatever his mission originally was, with some bullshit idea of being a martyr to serve his ego. I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. I mean, I know his existence is useful to the IC and various interests, but I personally just find him disgusting. And I genuinely had some belief in what Wikileaks could have stood for. But I don't really see it as that now. To me, Wikileaks and Assange totally sold out. Sorry to offend anyone who feels very differently. This is just my opinion on it.

mirimir 9y ago
> I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think.
- Veen 9y ago
  > It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think. That seems a perfectly rational decision to me.
- moomin 9y ago
  Except that a) the US weren't interested (ironically, they may be now) and b) he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever. People were dropping out of Wikileaks 10 years ago because of Assange's behaviour. Seems like Poitras is just the latest in a long line of people who are attracted to the principles of Wikileaks, but turned off by the reality.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever. Sources? Because this is the exact opposite of what I read: that Swedish investigators had repeatedly refused to interview him there. Edit: I googled and I'm still convinced I'm right: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+interview+assange+at+the+embassy https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+inte... Edit2: unless someone can show sources moomins answer I'll say it is wrong and dangerously wrong in that it spreads a lie. I still can't understand why no-one has bother to either downvote it or provide sources for it. I don't necessarily like Assange but lets not lie to create more trouble for him.
    - somebehemoth 9y ago
      He was interviewed in the embassy by Swedish prosecutors[1][2][3][4]. 1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-police-ecuadorean-embassy-interview-rape-charges-a7402056.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-poli... 2 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idUSKBN13910T http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idU... 3 http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren-arrives-to-interview-julian-assange-at-the-londons-ecuadorian-embassy-20161114-gsp7wn.html http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren... 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority#Decision_to_interview_Assange_in_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
lingben 9y ago
I've observed that Trump and his supporters live in a childishly simple world where anything and anyone who says "good" or supportive things is hailed and anyone who criticizes or questions Trump is derided and held in contempt, irrespective of any actual factual basis.
- astronautjones 9y ago
  This is inarguably true.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- surrey-fringe 9y ago
  Very interesting observation. Thanks for sharing.
- mowenz 9y ago
  Isn't this just politics? Here is an example: After the DNC scandal against Sanders with DWS resigning I posted an article by Greenwald on this in /r/politics. It was downvoted with such reasons as 'Greenwald is an un-patriotic [homophobic slur] who is afraid to enter the US because he doesn't want to face responsibility for his actions against the US.'
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour. Meaning, at some point of heated debate, those with no feelings involved take a step back, and find a middleground solution, a compromise with which both sides can live. And usually that boring compromise is accepted by the majority of the people. The problem starts when the majority of the people are cut off from economic growth and participation. They can sense the world moving own, without needing them and rebell against that (for good reason- i presume that alot of HN readers would form similar rebelions, if the big Four would discard them all .
    - 9y ago
belorn 9y ago
It seem political when people criticize Assange political refuge to a embassy. There need to be some insight to show why it is not political. It also need to explain from a historical (ie scientifically) why the actions are not rational. I personally have collected enough reason to be very skeptical against such criticism. The first Swedish prosecutor dropped the case. When it was restarted by a second prosecutor, several uninvolved lawyers looked into the case on behalf on news agencies and conclude that the case had zero chance of going anywhere. When compared to rape cases in Sweden that get dropped, get not-guilty in court, and the small number that get a guilty verdict, you either need to have physical evidence of violence/drugs where a medical expert use their experience to claim rape, a video recording, witnesses that strongly (and seems more common than not to fail here) to show that the victim was incapacitated when going to sleep, or a confession. In contrast to most cases all the details for Assange case has been leaked and it has shown none of those critical components for a successful case. In addition we get some more warning clocks ringing when the European arrest warrant made a record for the lowest number of potential year in prison. A second record was achieved by the the amount of money spent in regard to the number of potential year in prison. It could be a unicorn, a one of the kind where all the stars align to a guilty verdict, but the case smells political. The rational behavior when the legal system turn political is to run and hide.
- matt4077 9y ago
  It became a much bigger deal once he fled first Sweden, and then British jurisdiction. That set up it as a test of the powers of the legal systems of those countries. If you allow someone to escape prosecution simply by raising the costs/creating inconvenience, you all but guarantee others to try to do the same, and/or to lose faith in the equality of justice. Regarding the common conspiracy theories: always remember that he was arrested, then freed on bail, in both countries. If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    > If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago. Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
grandalf 9y ago
Donald Trump is completely irrelevant to my support of Assange. Like many of his critics, you are making a lot of ad hominem attacks on Assange rather than focusing on his massive contributions to democracy and journalism.
- valuearb 9y ago
  And you are excusing his reprehensible personal behavior because of those contributions. Contributions that could be made by Wikileaks staffers without his presence.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to... but whatever it is it is being used as a distraction from the issues revealed by WL. Chances are even without Assange involved there would be attempts by many governments to discredit those operating WL.

macspoofing 9y ago

>Snowden and Assange often seem to get lumped together but there's a world of difference in personal character, and also in mission Is there actually?

bjornsing 9y ago

> Assange comes off as a real machiavellian style asshole with vanity and manipulation seeming to him at least as important as his cause. Did you get all that from the short clip of Assange talking Russia and Clinton...? If I understand correctly the damning part (of Risk) is when he makes weird allegations against the women he is accused of rapeing...

grandalf 9y ago

What difference does Assange's personality make? If someone revealed Donald Trump's taxes, would you care if that person was a disgruntled, mentally unstable former-employee who had served time in prison for a morally abhorrent offense? Probably not. But for some reason, when discussing Wikileaks, there is an elaborate and imaginative notion of Assange's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, etc. etc. I think we should all realize that Assange has shown us outrageous and deeply disturbing revelations about many governments, the US Government in particular. The scale, deceitfulness, and human toll revealed by this information is many orders of magnitude larger than any minor concerns about Assange's personality or personal conduct. That this isn't obvious to more people is deeply troubling to me. How did we become so compliant, so loyal to a government that would do this? How can we allow this to happen? Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? I think the unfortunate answer is that Americans do not care that brown-skinned people are being murdered all over the world due to US policies, and that hundreds of thousands of children go to bed every night hearing the buzz of drone aircraft, terrified that their home might be targeted. Assange has given American democracy the opportunity to have some teeth and to allow the basic decency of a free society to rise up and correct for some of the wrongs that were revealed, but instead we talk about Assange's personality quirks and use the hashtag resist in support of the most establishment politician since Dick Cheney.

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> Must we make the mistake of listening to our leaders as they tell us to vilify another Saddam, another Snowden, another Assange? Saddam was no saint. His atrocities happened years before we entered, and the intel that justified our entrance was bad, but he wasn't a good guy. That's not propaganda.
- grandalf 9y ago
  Since when is spending trillions to attack a nation justified by its leader being an asshole? Saddam was mild compared to many other regimes at the time and was a US ally for years prior. We basically annexed Iraq to support US regional interests and the idea that Saddam's personality had anything to do with it is absurd. The ugly sectarian conflict we supported was effectively a cleansing of many of the nation's fighting age citizens...

caycep 9y ago

the release of the Macron "documents" - complete w/ all the evidence of Russian manipulation and fakery, hanging MS Word edit tags in cyrillic, etc, in the official dump, says volumes. They didn't bother to even read through the stuff before dumping it on the public.

qb45 9y ago
Macron documents weren't released by WikiLeaks, or are we talking some other leak from him? https://www.wired.com/2017/05/macron-email-hack-french-election/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/macron-email-hack-french-elect...
- caycep 9y ago
  You're right, I think what I recall was WikiLeaks promoting the pastebin dump, then there was some quote that was circulated by one of their PR people say they had no reason to believe the documents were falsified, when other people were pointing out the cyrillic edit tags prevalent throughout the dump
rurban 9y ago
You missed that part of the story where the French staffers got knowledge of the intruders and deliberately changed some documents, to come up with the counterpropaganda after the leak. It was not much, but stopped prosecutors and the public to go after Macron. Which is a shame, but we got used to cointel in the meantime, and media is not helping.