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CNN: US prepares charges to seek arrest of Julian Assange

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I am not American not do I ever pledge allegiance to a flag.

I think Assange should have been sent to Sweden long ago, and if he has charges to answer in the USA, there too. For someone who believes in holding governments to account he is good at evading it himself and this deserves criricism as an arch hypocrite.

Well done on characterizing dissenting opinion to yours in a way that is easy to compartmentalize, wrongly.

I agree specifically about the bolded.

Also well done on completely lacking reading comprehension. The post of mine that you are quoting was about why so many people turned against SNOWDEN. It had nothing to do with Assange whatsoever
 
For someone who believes in holding governments to account he is good at evading it himself and this deserves criricism as an arch hypocrite.

All dissenters should submit to punishment by the government they're dissenting to?

That's a super duper ultra authoritarian view on things you know.
 

KingV

Member
Snowden's boss said he didn't have access to (nor understand of) domestic surveillance programs and he failed an open book exam in order to get access. Which indicates someone else got him the data. He was just the courier.

As for the DNC emails I was more referring to people and media jumping all over a story about leaks without wondering who leaked it and why.

As for reputable journalists, Greenwald seems like a nut to me.

Is it any surprise that Snowdens boss would take take any opportunity possible to publically trash the dude that leaked a bunch of stuff that was under his management? That dude had conflicts of interest a mile-wide.

Are you saying that there is ANOTHER leaker, possibly still working for the NSA, that collaborated with Snowden. They should provide proof of that and arrest that person. If not, I'd say that Snowdens boss was just CYA'ing himself.
 

KingV

Member
i think there's a pretty clear dividing line between the documents that wikileaks releases and the statements that they've made as an organization (i.e. tweets from @wikileaks).

the twitter feed has definitely had an agenda and has fed into deranged conspiracy theories like pizzagate, but as far as i know everything they've released on the site has been genuine. also accusing them of withholding leaks damaging to putin and russia seems questionable since we'd have no way of knowing whether they have access to any info along those lines in the first place. again, they do not obtain these leaked documents themselves but simply release what is given to them.

Not sure if they released the Podesta emails, but hey were confirmed to not be 100% genuine. They had fabrications mixed in with real info.
 

remist

Member
Not sure if they released the Podesta emails, but hey were confirmed to not be 100% genuine. They had fabrications mixed in with real info.
This isn't true. Donna Brazile and Tim Kaine tried to cast doubts on some of the emails but DKIM cryptography proved they were lying. Also a declassified CIA report came to the conclusion that they couldn't find any forgeries.
 
Not sure if that's really all that true. I remember US liberals in general being very pro-Snowden and Wikileaks in the beginning. Hell, even Anon had close to folk hero status for a brief while after the news broke just by the whole digital vigilante thing they had going. It didn't really start going downhill until Assange acted suspicious around the rape charges, because of how closely Snowden, Assange and Wikileaks had become tied in people's minds, but even then many people - including on GAF - still supported him and Wikileaks.

The real turnover, in my opinion, was the election. That's when a lot of liberals started viewing Assange as an outright enemy because of the Hilary leaks. It's made even worse by how a very large subset of people blame the leaks and Russia for the election going the way it did; the general attitude towards leaks seem to have been altered altogether. GAF's collective attitude towards Assange is basically a polar opposite today compared to four years ago and Snowden's reputation has suffered both by proxy, and by the renewed hostility towards Russia among liberals combining with the way Snowden is considered tied to the Russian government.

Tldr, it's a bit more complicated than just patriotism.

"My side" excessive political partisanship may play a role as well. There are a lot of Democrats on GAF (for good reason of course) but some of them follow the party line maybe a bit too closely. The leaks reflected badly on the Obama administration. When the Obama administration was against Snowden, they had to be as well. Had Snowden leaked the same stuff under W. Bush, some of these people would probably have a different opinion of him

The elephant in the room.

You don't think there is fair criticism of Snowden

Absolutely not.
 
Not sure if they released the Podesta emails, but hey were confirmed to not be 100% genuine. They had fabrications mixed in with real info.
Unless you know something I don't, this was just something Robby Mook, Donna Brazile, and Hillary Clinton kept saying to try and get ahead of the emails.

They came off of that talking point quickly in favor of "the Russians".

I particularly remember an interview where Mook made even Tucker Carlson look good and tried to say some of the emails were fabricated but Tucker called him out on it; as they weren't really disputing the authenticity, but focused on how Wikileaks obtained them.
 

Chumly

Member
Not sure if they released the Podesta emails, but hey were confirmed to not be 100% genuine. They had fabrications mixed in with real info.
It wasn't the Podesta emails but their were other emails that they released that were fake.
 

aeolist

Banned
Assange is a actually frequent guest on the Alex Jones show though.

that doesn't change the fact that for the last decade democrats have been sneering about idiotic republican conspiracy theories and presenting themselves as the rational adults in american politics, only to find themselves grasping at insane straws once they lost power
 
Yes, because the NSA and the House Intelligence Committee have no agenda here.

I mean, the article you linked stated that either Snowden or his former boss was lying. You're jumping to all sorts of conclusions here.

And Greenwald did a fantastic job covering the leak. He's a great journalist.

Right so NSA and House Inteligence might have an agenda but Snowden couldn't possibly have one. Snowden's story doesn't add up.

Is it any surprise that Snowdens boss would take take any opportunity possible to publically trash the dude that leaked a bunch of stuff that was under his management? That dude had conflicts of interest a mile-wide.

Are you saying that there is ANOTHER leaker, possibly still working for the NSA, that collaborated with Snowden. They should provide proof of that and arrest that person. If not, I'd say that Snowdens boss was just CYA'ing himself.

How is he CYA'ing himself? He casts doubt on Snowden's motives.

And yes they are basically saying there is another mole(s) in the NSA.

So if that's true none of this makes NSA look any better, it's simply stating he couldn't possibly have done this by himself.

But all I've read states that Snowden was a (smart) but low-level contractor who didn't have access nor knowledge to the domestic spying programs nor how they were used. And for a supposed whistleblower he made little attempt to do this internally contrary to his claims.

I also believe I saw a letter from the Ecuadorian ambassador floating around making arrangements to meet Snowden with Russian Intelligence from Cuba dated days before he supposedly made his decision to flee.

And finally regardless how he ended up in Russia it's BS for him to be staying there without him benefitting Putin in some way. Him telling people to vote third party during election set my BS alarm off.
 
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