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Assange is only free because he was not extradited to the USA, and effectively served ~10 years imprisonment anyway. Manning got a presidential pardon. I wouldn

Assange is only free because he was not extradited to the USA, and effectively served ~10 years imprisonment anyway. Manning got a presidential pardon. I wouldn't hold either of these up as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists.

lern_too_spel 12d ago
[flagged]
- marcus_holmes 12d ago
  Why is the focus always on what these people did, and not on the crimes that they exposed? Why are you saying "if they had done it differently they would be treated better" instead of "I am ashamed of the evil and illegal acts that my country has done and want to change the system to make this impossible"? Why do you care what either of them did more than you care about what the government did?
  - varjag 12d ago
    Which crimes had Manning exposed? There has to be a list somewhere.
    - jll29 12d ago
      Two of my former colleagues (both Reuters journalists) were murdered by U.S. soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=zYTxuW2vmzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=zYTxuW2vmzk Then all the civilians that took care of their bodies were also killed, including children. Then the Department of Defense then denied existing video coverage of the event (personal comm., Tom Glocer, J.D., former CEO and attorney, Reuters). -> So homicide, mult. war crimes and lying. I'll be eternally grateful to Manning and Assange for letting the truth come to light, and to all whistleblowers driven by their conscience and idealism. But the most disturbing thing about this all is the dirty laughter of that helicopter crew. Seeing that video makes one ashamed to belong to the human species.
      - varjag 12d ago
        That was not a part of the cables released by Manning.
        linkregister 11d ago
        The "Collateral Murder" video of the unlawful killing of journalists was part of the archive that Wikileaks published that's been attributed to Chelsea Manning. All available evidence supports this was part of the material. Chelsea's leak was the contents of the shared drive, not just diplomatic cables. The release of the diplomatic cables themselves gravely harmed U.S. interests and is alleged to have led to the deaths of CIA collaborators.
  - lern_too_spel 12d ago
    Again, Snowden leaked a single extant program that was potentially illegal. All he had to do was blow the whistle on that program and the other possibly program that had already been shut down, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead, he told China what systems the US had compromised and additionally claimed the US was doing a bunch of illegal things that his documents did not support, causing hysteria and helping Trumpism. The thing that makes illegal programs almost impossible to hide are the reforms after the Church Committee, including SSCI oversight and whistleblower procedures and protections.
- akk0 12d ago
  Your transphobia hardly makes you look unbiased, shill
  - lern_too_spel 12d ago
    It was an honest mistake, and I apologize for it to Chelsea if she is reading this. In my mind, I remembered her gender at the time she leaked the documents, which had nothing to do with whether she should be considered a whistleblower. She herself has said she should not be considered one. I will admit to shilling for literacy and common sense. You got me there.
slg 12d ago
No one was holding them up "as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists." I was holding them up as history. History will judge Snowden differently because he chose exile and didn't give himself the opportunity for pardons or plea deals like Manning and Assange.
- marcus_holmes 12d ago
  My point was that "both of these people are currently free" isn't the flex it appears to be. And again, why are we so focused on judging Snowden and not focused on judging the crimes he exposed? I would think that history will judge him very favourably considering that he was completely correct to expose those crimes.
  - slg 12d ago
    Once again, there was no flex. We aren't judging the morality or ethics of the situation in any direction. We are simply looking back on historical events with hindsight. We also don't have to flatten these historical events into one good side and one bad side. Reality tends to be more complicated than that. It's ok to recognize that Snowden maybe made some mistakes. That is neither an endorsement of the US government's spying or an accusation of ill intent against Snowden.
    - marsmaps 12d ago
      we also don't have to flatten these historical events (snowden maybe making some mistakes vs the US government's spying) so we can pretend that they're of equal valence, scale and severity. they are actually extremely dissimilar and one is very transparently worse and more serious than the other
      - slg 11d ago
        >we also don't have to flatten these historical events (snowden maybe making some mistakes vs the US government's spying) so we can pretend that they're of equal valence, scale and severity In what way do you think this was done? Nothing I said here was condoning the government's behavior.
CalRobert 12d ago
Reality Winner got five years for showing Russian interference in elections, which seems like doing the right thing
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
Arodex 12d ago
Is Snowden... free, in Russia? Is he, really? Between his constant KGB handlers and the Ukrainian bombings?
dhx 12d ago
In the case of Assange, Australian politicians did a lot of work to get him released in the end[1], including: * Sending a delegation representing all major political parties to the US to argue for the release of Assange. Imagine picking the Republican and Democrat politician LEAST likely to want to cooperate on anything, and those two would have been Australia's equivalent representatives in this delegation. Reports afterwards of the meeting at DOJ HQ indicated it wasn't the type of meeting where the Australians would have brought Tim Tams to share around the room.[2] * The Australian parliament voted publicly 2:1 on a motion for Assange's release. * Repeated petitioning through ambassadors in the UK and US, official visits of Australian politicians, etc. Not in private either, as is typically the case for diplomatic affairs. * Australian politicians attending UK extradition hearings. * After getting agreement to a plea deal, flying Australian ambassadors for the UK and US to the court of a one-pub-town in the middle of the Pacific Ocean no one has heard of (Northern Mariana Islands) in support of Assange, then all of them flying back to the Australian prime minister's aircraft terminal for a welcome home bevvy. This was all at a time too where "Free Assange" posters and graffiti was _widely_ distributed across Australian cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Plea_bargain_and_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Plea_bargain_an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/inside-the-us-australian-delegation-us-to-free-wikileaks-assange/104024172 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/inside-the-us-austral...

lern_too_spel 12d ago

[flagged]

marcus_holmes 12d ago
Why is the focus always on what these people did, and not on the crimes that they exposed? Why are you saying "if they had done it differently they would be treated better" instead of "I am ashamed of the evil and illegal acts that my country has done and want to change the system to make this impossible"? Why do you care what either of them did more than you care about what the government did?
- varjag 12d ago
  Which crimes had Manning exposed? There has to be a list somewhere.
  - jll29 12d ago
    Two of my former colleagues (both Reuters journalists) were murdered by U.S. soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=zYTxuW2vmzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=zYTxuW2vmzk Then all the civilians that took care of their bodies were also killed, including children. Then the Department of Defense then denied existing video coverage of the event (personal comm., Tom Glocer, J.D., former CEO and attorney, Reuters). -> So homicide, mult. war crimes and lying. I'll be eternally grateful to Manning and Assange for letting the truth come to light, and to all whistleblowers driven by their conscience and idealism. But the most disturbing thing about this all is the dirty laughter of that helicopter crew. Seeing that video makes one ashamed to belong to the human species.
    - varjag 12d ago
      That was not a part of the cables released by Manning.
      - linkregister 11d ago
        The "Collateral Murder" video of the unlawful killing of journalists was part of the archive that Wikileaks published that's been attributed to Chelsea Manning. All available evidence supports this was part of the material. Chelsea's leak was the contents of the shared drive, not just diplomatic cables. The release of the diplomatic cables themselves gravely harmed U.S. interests and is alleged to have led to the deaths of CIA collaborators.
- lern_too_spel 12d ago
  Again, Snowden leaked a single extant program that was potentially illegal. All he had to do was blow the whistle on that program and the other possibly program that had already been shut down, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead, he told China what systems the US had compromised and additionally claimed the US was doing a bunch of illegal things that his documents did not support, causing hysteria and helping Trumpism. The thing that makes illegal programs almost impossible to hide are the reforms after the Church Committee, including SSCI oversight and whistleblower procedures and protections.
akk0 12d ago
Your transphobia hardly makes you look unbiased, shill
- lern_too_spel 12d ago
  It was an honest mistake, and I apologize for it to Chelsea if she is reading this. In my mind, I remembered her gender at the time she leaked the documents, which had nothing to do with whether she should be considered a whistleblower. She herself has said she should not be considered one. I will admit to shilling for literacy and common sense. You got me there.

slg 12d ago

No one was holding them up "as a shining example of how the USA treats whistleblowers and journalists." I was holding them up as history. History will judge Snowden differently because he chose exile and didn't give himself the opportunity for pardons or plea deals like Manning and Assange.

marcus_holmes 12d ago
My point was that "both of these people are currently free" isn't the flex it appears to be. And again, why are we so focused on judging Snowden and not focused on judging the crimes he exposed? I would think that history will judge him very favourably considering that he was completely correct to expose those crimes.
- slg 12d ago
  Once again, there was no flex. We aren't judging the morality or ethics of the situation in any direction. We are simply looking back on historical events with hindsight. We also don't have to flatten these historical events into one good side and one bad side. Reality tends to be more complicated than that. It's ok to recognize that Snowden maybe made some mistakes. That is neither an endorsement of the US government's spying or an accusation of ill intent against Snowden.
  - marsmaps 12d ago
    we also don't have to flatten these historical events (snowden maybe making some mistakes vs the US government's spying) so we can pretend that they're of equal valence, scale and severity. they are actually extremely dissimilar and one is very transparently worse and more serious than the other
    - slg 11d ago
      >we also don't have to flatten these historical events (snowden maybe making some mistakes vs the US government's spying) so we can pretend that they're of equal valence, scale and severity In what way do you think this was done? Nothing I said here was condoning the government's behavior.

CalRobert 12d ago

Reality Winner got five years for showing Russian interference in elections, which seems like doing the right thing

deleted 11d ago
[deleted]

Arodex 12d ago

Is Snowden... free, in Russia? Is he, really? Between his constant KGB handlers and the Ukrainian bombings?

dhx 12d ago

In the case of Assange, Australian politicians did a lot of work to get him released in the end[1], including: * Sending a delegation representing all major political parties to the US to argue for the release of Assange. Imagine picking the Republican and Democrat politician LEAST likely to want to cooperate on anything, and those two would have been Australia's equivalent representatives in this delegation. Reports afterwards of the meeting at DOJ HQ indicated it wasn't the type of meeting where the Australians would have brought Tim Tams to share around the room.[2] * The Australian parliament voted publicly 2:1 on a motion for Assange's release. * Repeated petitioning through ambassadors in the UK and US, official visits of Australian politicians, etc. Not in private either, as is typically the case for diplomatic affairs. * Australian politicians attending UK extradition hearings. * After getting agreement to a plea deal, flying Australian ambassadors for the UK and US to the court of a one-pub-town in the middle of the Pacific Ocean no one has heard of (Northern Mariana Islands) in support of Assange, then all of them flying back to the Australian prime minister's aircraft terminal for a welcome home bevvy. This was all at a time too where "Free Assange" posters and graffiti was _widely_ distributed across Australian cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Plea_bargain_and_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Plea_bargain_an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/inside-the-us-australian-delegation-us-to-free-wikileaks-assange/104024172 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/inside-the-us-austral...