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The author is clearly against the extradition of Julian Assange, and the piece comes across as very much written in that context. To be clear: I'm not offering

The author is clearly against the extradition of Julian Assange, and the piece comes across as very much written in that context. To be clear: I'm not offering an opinion either way on the rights and wrongs of that, but the piece itself comes down very much on one side of the fence.

colordrops 4y ago
What's the implication? That the author is hiding the fact that this is an opinion piece? Or that it's odd to be against the extradition? It's called The Dissenter and they explicitly mention that they support whistleblowers in their about page.
- tomalpha 4y ago
  I don't think it's going out of its way to hide the fact that it's an opinion piece. I wanted to highlight to someone unfamiliar with the case and issues (however few that may be around these parts), that it is an opinion piece. It makes assertions through a lens of a bias to one side of the case. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Using the word "bias" isn't intended by me here as a slight - we're all biased to a greater or lesser degree about everything. But a casual reader should be aware of it without having to e.g. navigate to a separate "about" page :)
  - cryptonector 4y ago
    Perhaps your highlighting an obvious fact is itself evidence that you do in fact have an opinion and did share it while saying otherwise, possibly unconsciously.
stephen_g 4y ago
The Assange case seems relevant and topical. And regardless, what side of the fence would you expect somebody writing an article about press freedom and censorship to be on? To support extraditing to the US somebody who has never lived or worked there, after it was revealed US officials literally planned to kidnap and/or assassinate him? [1]. And only for the charge of revealing war crimes (apart from some trumped up “hacking” charges that the key witness now admitted lying about? [2]). I really do think somebody would have to be either hopelessly, desperately naive or deliberately lying to themselves to believe Assange could receive a fair trial in the US, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to assert that the US has any kind of jurisdiction over him. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696436/cia-kidnap-julian-assange-assassination-pompeo-trump https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696436/cia-kidnap-julia... 2. https://stundin.is/grein/13627/ https://stundin.is/grein/13627/
- vkou 4y ago
  > And only for the charge of revealing war crimes (apart from some trumped up “hacking” charges that the key witness now admitted lying about? [2]). I've read the allegations. If the allegations are true, he's guilty of hacking. It does not seem to be a case of the law being perverted past its intent. I'm sure the extradition and prosecution is politically motivated, but the problem with doing something that's squarely, dead-to-rights illegal that also happens to piss off the government is that they are within their rights to put you away for doing it. It'd be one thing if his supporters accepted the dead-to-rights-guilty part, and were making the claim that it was something akin to civil disobedience - illegal, but in service to a higher cause. Unfortunately, most of them are instead bending over backwards to argue that he can't actually guilty of anything. It's not very convincing. Probably because the most noteworthy accomplishment of that higher cause seems to be 'spending the next decade being a shill for the Kremlin' and 'helping Trump win 2016'. Sorry, but not sorry - I can't say I have an iota of sympathy for the architects of either.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > It'd be one thing if his supporters accepted the dead-to-rights-guilty part, and were making the claim that it was something akin to civil disobedience - illegal, but in service to a higher cause. Unfortunately, most of them are instead bending over backwards to argue that he can't actually guilty of anything. It's not very convincing. Who, precisely, are you referring to here?
    - vkou 4y ago
      People like the sibling posters. Plenty of them on every thread that mentions Assange.
      - mistermann 4y ago
        So, a tautological, non-quantitative categorization: only the subset, of unknown size, that are like this?
  - 4y ago

colordrops 4y ago

What's the implication? That the author is hiding the fact that this is an opinion piece? Or that it's odd to be against the extradition? It's called The Dissenter and they explicitly mention that they support whistleblowers in their about page.

tomalpha 4y ago
I don't think it's going out of its way to hide the fact that it's an opinion piece. I wanted to highlight to someone unfamiliar with the case and issues (however few that may be around these parts), that it is an opinion piece. It makes assertions through a lens of a bias to one side of the case. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Using the word "bias" isn't intended by me here as a slight - we're all biased to a greater or lesser degree about everything. But a casual reader should be aware of it without having to e.g. navigate to a separate "about" page :)
- cryptonector 4y ago
  Perhaps your highlighting an obvious fact is itself evidence that you do in fact have an opinion and did share it while saying otherwise, possibly unconsciously.

stephen_g 4y ago

The Assange case seems relevant and topical. And regardless, what side of the fence would you expect somebody writing an article about press freedom and censorship to be on? To support extraditing to the US somebody who has never lived or worked there, after it was revealed US officials literally planned to kidnap and/or assassinate him? [1]. And only for the charge of revealing war crimes (apart from some trumped up “hacking” charges that the key witness now admitted lying about? [2]). I really do think somebody would have to be either hopelessly, desperately naive or deliberately lying to themselves to believe Assange could receive a fair trial in the US, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to assert that the US has any kind of jurisdiction over him. 1. https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696436/cia-kidnap-julian-assange-assassination-pompeo-trump https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696436/cia-kidnap-julia... 2. https://stundin.is/grein/13627/ https://stundin.is/grein/13627/

vkou 4y ago
> And only for the charge of revealing war crimes (apart from some trumped up “hacking” charges that the key witness now admitted lying about? [2]). I've read the allegations. If the allegations are true, he's guilty of hacking. It does not seem to be a case of the law being perverted past its intent. I'm sure the extradition and prosecution is politically motivated, but the problem with doing something that's squarely, dead-to-rights illegal that also happens to piss off the government is that they are within their rights to put you away for doing it. It'd be one thing if his supporters accepted the dead-to-rights-guilty part, and were making the claim that it was something akin to civil disobedience - illegal, but in service to a higher cause. Unfortunately, most of them are instead bending over backwards to argue that he can't actually guilty of anything. It's not very convincing. Probably because the most noteworthy accomplishment of that higher cause seems to be 'spending the next decade being a shill for the Kremlin' and 'helping Trump win 2016'. Sorry, but not sorry - I can't say I have an iota of sympathy for the architects of either.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > It'd be one thing if his supporters accepted the dead-to-rights-guilty part, and were making the claim that it was something akin to civil disobedience - illegal, but in service to a higher cause. Unfortunately, most of them are instead bending over backwards to argue that he can't actually guilty of anything. It's not very convincing. Who, precisely, are you referring to here?
  - vkou 4y ago
    People like the sibling posters. Plenty of them on every thread that mentions Assange.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      So, a tautological, non-quantitative categorization: only the subset, of unknown size, that are like this?
- 4y ago