7 ms·

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed

by drojas 2y ago

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more and more of itself to evil and greedy powers that be. Assange did a great thing by exposing corrupt and criminal behavior at the highest levels and got such a inhumane treatment from the most powerful organizations on earth. He should not have been punished, he should have been protected and praised and his case should be a matter of study on every school on earth.

jfax 2y ago
This is beautifully articulated. I myself thought for a long time that if the day ever came that Assange walks free, I'd cry, but instead I feel a strange emptiness inside. The world isn't the one I'd imagined for this day.
- resters 2y ago
  Indeed. Though it is still inspiring that there are people like Assange who are willing to face personal hardship in the name of democratic values such as press freedom and government accountability / transparency. None of the US leaders whose crimes were exposed by Assange have faced any consequences whatsoever, and many of them remain influential, lauded figures in American society.
  - qsdf38100 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - 9dev 2y ago
      Well, might it be that Assange did never receive something comparable to the US cables? You do remember he used to run a platform to publish whistleblower files, right?
    - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      I think we have vastly enough material to criticize Russia, we don't need more. Our societies are already convinced those are dictatorships. But it took Snowden and Assange to show us how deeply messed up our societies are. It's very possible they are both Russian assets, but what they reported have been verified, and we needed to know it. The way you are reacting is close to a religious interpretation of the world. It's not us VS them. It's not a football match. We have a society to build, and it's been taken from us, one piece at a time. If we don't want to end up like Russia, we need all info we can get. And given the huge price they paid for it, yes, I consider them heroes. And I think history will remember them as such.
- gosub100 2y ago
  I still remember the day they arrested him and how awful it felt. He is an incredibly strong person to withstand that level of isolation and see the light of day.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  Very understandable. There is an emptiness because it should have never come to this. The last line of Chapter 31 Tao Te Ching sayings it right. "Fine weapons are instruments of misfortune; all creatures fear them. In peace we favor creation; at war we favor destruction. Weapons are tools of misfortune, not the tools of the wise. The sage uses them only as the very last, with calm restraint. Victory is no cause for rejoicing; victory comes from killing. If you enjoy killing, you can never be fulfilled. When victorious, celebrate as if at a funeral."
meroes 2y ago
[flagged]
- user3939382 2y ago
  > he is fine getting informants and others killed The US testified in court that his disclosures didn't get anyone killed, this is misinformation stemming from early propaganda against him by the political establishment that was humiliated by WikiLeaks' publications
  - meroes 2y ago
    “Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." The US’s testimony makes it barely better given the quote (I’ll take your word for the testimony) and leaves me equally puzzled regarding his admiration.
    - realce 2y ago
      Is a non-US citizen culpable for publishing US secrets? In sincere good-faith: is there even a US law about publishing the names of undercover informants? Isn't that what Dick Chaney and the New York Times did?
    - hartator 2y ago
      > “Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." Did he say that? It's a secondary witness from someone who hate him. You need to double check sources.
    - oska 2y ago
      I had never seen this purported quote before. And I found it extremely dubious that he said such a thing. Seeing as you didn't provide a source I went looking for one. I found first a recent NYT piece [1] with the purported quote. Here's the first paragraph of that piece : > Fourteen years ago, at a human rights conference in Oslo, I met Julian Assange. From the moment I encountered the wraithlike WikiLeaks founder, I sensed that he might be a morally dubious character. My suspicions were confirmed upon witnessing his speech at the conference, in which he listed Israel alongside Iran and China as part of a “rogue’s gallery of states” and compared the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to a Nazi concentration camp I think it's pretty obvious from that opening that it's a hit piece on Assange. Anyway, that piece links to an earlier Guardian piece [2] for the source of the quote. That Guardian column is another, and even more obvious, hit piece on Assange. Here's its first paragraph : > You did not have to listen for too long to Julian Assange's half-educated condemnations of the American "military-industrial complex" to know that he was aching to betray better and braver people than he could ever be. Vomit. But finally in the Guardian piece we find the source of the purported quote. It's from David Leigh and Luke Harding's "history" of WikiLeaks. I think most people who have closely followed the Wikleaks story will understand how unreliable and compromised both David Leigh and Luke Harding are to serve as 'witnesses' or sources for any reporting on Wikileaks and Assange. But they've served their masters very well as yellow journalists engaged in a state backed smear campaign against Assange. [1] https://archive.md/FV0N0 https://archive.md/FV0N0 [2] https://archive.md/5kSgB https://archive.md/5kSgB
tootie 2y ago
Read some Steven Pinker. Your observations about our present state are not wrong, but seriously consider every other point in human history and realize we are not worse off in any measurable way. In fact, much better.
- 123sereusername 2y ago
  [dead]
- resters 2y ago
  In that argument, Pinker is playing the role of court academic.
- mythrwy 2y ago
  I have no doubt Steven Pinker is very well off indeed.
- shafyy 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    Probably he is indeed a moron, or perhaps the shrewd academic. The peasant who used to get one square meal in 3 days now gets one square meal a day. So objectively we are better off. ( And the HN idiot will gloss over the stats to point out how fortunate we are to have software jobs)
  - wussboy 2y ago
    In "Better Angels" he chooses "healthy, wealthy and wise" as his three benchmarks. We live longer (and suffer less violence). We have more wealth. We are smarter. That's what "better off" means. You can argue that's not what "better off" means, but you'd be arguing that we should strive for shorter lives, more poverty, and increased stupidity.
    - keiferski 2y ago
jorblumesea 2y ago
The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised. Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing or doctoring videos. The list goes on, they are not the BBC or Al-Jazeera. The DNC hack/wikileaks release timeline is absolutely disgusting and shows the true nature of the organization. Just such a bizarre take completely divorced of reality.
- runlaszlorun 2y ago
  This fact isn’t stated often enough. Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in the audio. And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s themselves, would be pointing what obviously looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight- not to mention bringing women and in children with him in the minivan. If this highly edited footage was the worst that could be found in such a large dump of documents- I’m highly underwhelmed. Evidence of war crimes? Hardly. A chance to see how ugly these conflicts are and another reason why Americsn troops perhaps should never have been there in the first place? Yep, absolutely. But my hunch is that the entire event is a Rohrschack test where most people will take away from it the same perceptions that they walked in with.
  - ktallett 2y ago
    It wasn't the worst that was found but it did show a war crime. It wasn't the only one by any stretch. It showed a cover up of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan which had been caused by American Troops. It showed significant horrific human rights violations against innocent and untried inmates at Guantanamo Bay. (As if just the existance of that wasn't enough.) It showed illegal spying by the NSA on governments around the world. Plenty of good done by wikileaks.
    - 2y ago
sneak 2y ago
> we have lost control of our leadership In what locale and at which time did humans have control of their leadership?
wand3r 2y ago
I share the general disappointment but to steelman a positive outlook: People in power have always done horrible things and orgs like wikileaks and some from the media counterbalance this. While this was a tragedy, if not for such a strong light being shined on Assange, he surely would've disappeared. At least he is getting freedom now, at least he exposed many important things with his organization and at least he inspired many people to do similar things. It's true I've never really felt worse about the future. Maybe because I was blissfully ignorant, or maybe because things are actually worse. I try (and struggle) to stay positive because it is so easy to be cynical and detractive and I think that ultimately makes things worse for the world AND my own mental health.

by drojas 2y ago

jfax 2y ago

This is beautifully articulated. I myself thought for a long time that if the day ever came that Assange walks free, I'd cry, but instead I feel a strange emptiness inside. The world isn't the one I'd imagined for this day.

resters 2y ago
Indeed. Though it is still inspiring that there are people like Assange who are willing to face personal hardship in the name of democratic values such as press freedom and government accountability / transparency. None of the US leaders whose crimes were exposed by Assange have faced any consequences whatsoever, and many of them remain influential, lauded figures in American society.
- qsdf38100 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 9dev 2y ago
    Well, might it be that Assange did never receive something comparable to the US cables? You do remember he used to run a platform to publish whistleblower files, right?
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    I think we have vastly enough material to criticize Russia, we don't need more. Our societies are already convinced those are dictatorships. But it took Snowden and Assange to show us how deeply messed up our societies are. It's very possible they are both Russian assets, but what they reported have been verified, and we needed to know it. The way you are reacting is close to a religious interpretation of the world. It's not us VS them. It's not a football match. We have a society to build, and it's been taken from us, one piece at a time. If we don't want to end up like Russia, we need all info we can get. And given the huge price they paid for it, yes, I consider them heroes. And I think history will remember them as such.
gosub100 2y ago
I still remember the day they arrested him and how awful it felt. He is an incredibly strong person to withstand that level of isolation and see the light of day.
DaoVeles 2y ago
Very understandable. There is an emptiness because it should have never come to this. The last line of Chapter 31 Tao Te Ching sayings it right. "Fine weapons are instruments of misfortune; all creatures fear them. In peace we favor creation; at war we favor destruction. Weapons are tools of misfortune, not the tools of the wise. The sage uses them only as the very last, with calm restraint. Victory is no cause for rejoicing; victory comes from killing. If you enjoy killing, you can never be fulfilled. When victorious, celebrate as if at a funeral."

meroes 2y ago

[flagged]

user3939382 2y ago
> he is fine getting informants and others killed The US testified in court that his disclosures didn't get anyone killed, this is misinformation stemming from early propaganda against him by the political establishment that was humiliated by WikiLeaks' publications
- meroes 2y ago
  “Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." The US’s testimony makes it barely better given the quote (I’ll take your word for the testimony) and leaves me equally puzzled regarding his admiration.
  - realce 2y ago
    Is a non-US citizen culpable for publishing US secrets? In sincere good-faith: is there even a US law about publishing the names of undercover informants? Isn't that what Dick Chaney and the New York Times did?
  - hartator 2y ago
    > “Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." Did he say that? It's a secondary witness from someone who hate him. You need to double check sources.
  - oska 2y ago
    I had never seen this purported quote before. And I found it extremely dubious that he said such a thing. Seeing as you didn't provide a source I went looking for one. I found first a recent NYT piece [1] with the purported quote. Here's the first paragraph of that piece : > Fourteen years ago, at a human rights conference in Oslo, I met Julian Assange. From the moment I encountered the wraithlike WikiLeaks founder, I sensed that he might be a morally dubious character. My suspicions were confirmed upon witnessing his speech at the conference, in which he listed Israel alongside Iran and China as part of a “rogue’s gallery of states” and compared the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to a Nazi concentration camp I think it's pretty obvious from that opening that it's a hit piece on Assange. Anyway, that piece links to an earlier Guardian piece [2] for the source of the quote. That Guardian column is another, and even more obvious, hit piece on Assange. Here's its first paragraph : > You did not have to listen for too long to Julian Assange's half-educated condemnations of the American "military-industrial complex" to know that he was aching to betray better and braver people than he could ever be. Vomit. But finally in the Guardian piece we find the source of the purported quote. It's from David Leigh and Luke Harding's "history" of WikiLeaks. I think most people who have closely followed the Wikleaks story will understand how unreliable and compromised both David Leigh and Luke Harding are to serve as 'witnesses' or sources for any reporting on Wikileaks and Assange. But they've served their masters very well as yellow journalists engaged in a state backed smear campaign against Assange. [1] https://archive.md/FV0N0 https://archive.md/FV0N0 [2] https://archive.md/5kSgB https://archive.md/5kSgB

tootie 2y ago

Read some Steven Pinker. Your observations about our present state are not wrong, but seriously consider every other point in human history and realize we are not worse off in any measurable way. In fact, much better.

123sereusername 2y ago
[dead]
resters 2y ago
In that argument, Pinker is playing the role of court academic.
mythrwy 2y ago
I have no doubt Steven Pinker is very well off indeed.
shafyy 2y ago
[flagged]
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  Probably he is indeed a moron, or perhaps the shrewd academic. The peasant who used to get one square meal in 3 days now gets one square meal a day. So objectively we are better off. ( And the HN idiot will gloss over the stats to point out how fortunate we are to have software jobs)
- wussboy 2y ago
  In "Better Angels" he chooses "healthy, wealthy and wise" as his three benchmarks. We live longer (and suffer less violence). We have more wealth. We are smarter. That's what "better off" means. You can argue that's not what "better off" means, but you'd be arguing that we should strive for shorter lives, more poverty, and increased stupidity.
  - keiferski 2y ago

jorblumesea 2y ago

The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised. Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing or doctoring videos. The list goes on, they are not the BBC or Al-Jazeera. The DNC hack/wikileaks release timeline is absolutely disgusting and shows the true nature of the organization. Just such a bizarre take completely divorced of reality.

runlaszlorun 2y ago
This fact isn’t stated often enough. Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in the audio. And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s themselves, would be pointing what obviously looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight- not to mention bringing women and in children with him in the minivan. If this highly edited footage was the worst that could be found in such a large dump of documents- I’m highly underwhelmed. Evidence of war crimes? Hardly. A chance to see how ugly these conflicts are and another reason why Americsn troops perhaps should never have been there in the first place? Yep, absolutely. But my hunch is that the entire event is a Rohrschack test where most people will take away from it the same perceptions that they walked in with.
- ktallett 2y ago
  It wasn't the worst that was found but it did show a war crime. It wasn't the only one by any stretch. It showed a cover up of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan which had been caused by American Troops. It showed significant horrific human rights violations against innocent and untried inmates at Guantanamo Bay. (As if just the existance of that wasn't enough.) It showed illegal spying by the NSA on governments around the world. Plenty of good done by wikileaks.
  - 2y ago

sneak 2y ago

> we have lost control of our leadership In what locale and at which time did humans have control of their leadership?

wand3r 2y ago

I share the general disappointment but to steelman a positive outlook: People in power have always done horrible things and orgs like wikileaks and some from the media counterbalance this. While this was a tragedy, if not for such a strong light being shined on Assange, he surely would've disappeared. At least he is getting freedom now, at least he exposed many important things with his organization and at least he inspired many people to do similar things. It's true I've never really felt worse about the future. Maybe because I was blissfully ignorant, or maybe because things are actually worse. I try (and struggle) to stay positive because it is so easy to be cynical and detractive and I think that ultimately makes things worse for the world AND my own mental health.