The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange | Hacker News Reader

The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange

greenleft.org.au

91 pointscontingencies46 comments

It's funny how indifferent everyone is about this. If you read about atrocious events that happened in history you often wonder why nobody stepped up.

And here we are, things like this are happening in 2020 and almost nobody cares. Almost all of us choose comfort and a frictionfree life over morality when it comes down to it.

Honestly, what can we do? There were protests, but those barely ever have the desired effect. We can talk about it and make people aware, but the British people are also to blame for voting in a government willing to kneel to America. The EU might've been able to step in and provide Assange a safe haven, but a few citizens voting for Assange in a few countries ain't gonna do much.

What could we have done?

Every time this comes up on traditional media I scream at TV How on earth can you be guilty of TREASON of a country you are NOT A CITIZEN Of? Can anyone explain this twisted logic to me how an Australian can be prosecuted for treason of US?

Whooo whooo there buddy. Why are you using facts and logic?

That's not allowed anymore. He is either traitor or not. No other way. /s

Welcome to black and white world of 2020 where stuff like this is encouraged. Its deeply saddening how everyone is quoting scary stuff from 1984 and yet we are using it as a manual.

Thinking about it its really scary how close we are to that reality. Just mix in some Brave New World by Huxley and you get police state with docile drugged up society addicted to entertainment not caring for real world around them.

Instead of fighting the facts just accept them and consider what it means. He is a citizen of the world and he is being tried for treason.

Quick bit of recent background on the author, I don't think it's an ad hominem as it's at least peripherally relevant to the matter of what's being discussed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger#Russia

> On the Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 4 March 2018, Pilger said in an interview on RT (formerly Russia Today): "This is a carefully constructed drama as part of the propaganda campaign that has been building now for several years in order to justify the actions of NATO, Britain and the United States, towards Russia. That’s a fact"

> "Without a single piece of evidence, the US and its NATO allies and their media machines blamed ethnic Russian 'separatists' in Ukraine and implied that Moscow was ultimately responsible". He asserted that "the newspaper has made no serious attempt to examine who shot the aeroplane down and why".

That said, he's not wrong, but as with Assange the motivation and choices aren't what can be called honest journalism.

(minor clarification: not too wrong in the linked article, but definitely on the side of very wrong in those past statements)

People like him should be honored and if not considered heroes, at least be remembered as people who standed for freedom. Instead they go under trial and their life ruined. This is our world.

Always has been. I don't know how to remove this curse.

I think there's something wrong with humans, the institutions they build, the traps they fall into, something is up.

We somehow still manage to stumble our way through, we destroy just a vanishingly smidgen less then the vital amount that would collapse everything, usually - every now and then we don't even do that.

There must be something darwinian about it, just marginally competent enough to survive, but never competent enough to thrive.

Wikileaks had such a strong Western bias that it hurt democratic movements in third world countries. So no, it's not that black and white.

I have to admit I don't know a lot about the history of Wikileaks (I was still in school when they started going after Assange), but how did it hurt democratic movements in developing countries?

The Diplomatic Cables releases ended up on the internet unredacted, leading US officials to say it caused great damage to our worldwide democracy spreading commitment.

How much damage it caused is unclear, and it's hard to look at the releases and determine "spreading democracy" is actually a US ambition.

Yeah, but how credible is it when institution that commits and covers war crimes cries about not being able to spread democracy because someone showed soldiers shooting brown ppl for fun.

> How much damage it caused is unclear

Its unclear because there is no examples of it. Same as claim that leaks cause deaths, yet no names of fields of dead undercover agents, operatives, informers etc. So who do you trust?

They never seem to publish any serious leaks pertaining to other countries with imperialist ambitions. For example, what bothered me, is that there wasn't anything on Russia. For example, the leaked Surkov emails (which among other things exposed Russian plans for the separatists in Ukraine) had to go through 4chan and other ad hoc channels, but not through Wikileaks. Couple that with the fact that the person responsible for CIS-country leaks at the time at Wikileaks was a well known anti-semite and conspiracy theorist, who left USSR sometime in the 60s or 70s and you start to build a picture of conscious bias, at the very least.

This allowed to build a bleak narrative in the former Soviet space, that "look, the West is corrupt as well, so you shouldn't try to fight corruption as it is hopeless". Which, by the way, is a classical FUD passive measure tactic.

Why would anyone in Russia with access to classified information send it to Wikileaks, an organization with zero Russian speakers and extremely limited influence in Eastern Europe. They would have far better options available to them.

This criticism comes up often, but it assumes a conspiracy is necessary for the expected behavior. How many Russian language news stories does your local paper cover? Assange does not need Russian ties to be antisemitic either.

Since Russian is my native language, I read enough Russian papers. And I can tell when a western outlet overlaps with the official Russian party line a bit too much for comfort.

So, I guess you admit that WL has a western bias?

Also, they don’t really have any better options. Just FYI.

Wikileaks unquestionably has a bias towards English speaking nations. That is why their leaks primarily are about America.

If your criticism is that they didn't build a strong enough international team, remember that Assange spent most of their history unable to leave the Ecuadorian embassy. Those years treated as an enemy also likely led to him sympathizing with countries that aren't calling for his head. That isn't why they don't publish Russian leaks though.

WL tried to discredit the Panama Papers (which feature some prominent Russian officials). That doesn’t look like just a factor of not having an international team.

I fail to see how focusing on the americas "it hurt democratic movements in third world countries". Are you saying that it would have been better if they never published anything?

I would certainly like it if the published absolutely everything that they had (in fact, I would argue that not publishing them would be unethical unless if they use said information as an insurance in order to make sure that for example Assange gets free) but I would not go as far as to claim that they did any harm.

They just publish information they receive. They can't publish what they don't have. How are they biased?

They don't seem to publish ALL the information they receive (Surkov emails aren't featured on Wikileaks, for example), the screening and vetting process for leaks is intransparent and ad hoc. Given their position and renown, it's difficult to imagine that they haven't received any serious leaks from Russia or China, for example, yet there isn't anything on WL for those countries with any teeth on it.

Were they even in possession of the Surkov leaks? Seems like the hackers published it themselves, and never sent it to Wikileaks at all. It might be difficult for you to imagine they haven't received any 'serious' (I'm guessing you're not counting the Russian Spy Files or the Tibetan dissent videos as serious) leaks from Russia or China, but that doesn't prove much.

When I say “it is difficult to imagine”, what I mean by that is that it is highly unlikely, especially considering how Assange has a history of withholding leaks from publication for his own reasons. Conflict with Domscheit-Berg being pretty indicative of this behaviour.

The Spy Files are not really ground breaking for the Russian public. The Panama Papers were more damning, where a bunch of Russian officials got caught with their pants down. You know, the leak that the official WikiLeaks twitter account claimed to be a Soros-funded conspiracy...

IIRC the conflict with Domscheit-Berg was because Assange wanted to publish the war logs unredacted, no? It had nothing to do with Assange withholding leaks, quite the opposite. And wasn't it Domscheit-Berg who actually deleted unreleased documents from the Wikileaks servers?

Well, it was a bit more complicated, because there wasn’t any transparency in what leaks WL was in possession of (only Assange held such info) and because Assange published information that had little public relevance, but brought him fame.

Also, not really clear why WL would attack Panama papers...

I found this to be a very powerful statement, that exceeds the issue with Assange:

"Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism — those like Julian Assange."

67 points in 2 hours at the moment and the article is flagged...

For good reason. The article is written in horrible tone.

What exactly about the tone is "horrible"? That's a strong word and I did not perceive it that way.

Its absurd to question Stalinist trial label.

It is a show trial with so many glaring issues that UK citizens should be rioting. It makes UK look like a servile dog of US. They are staining whole nation law system for petty revenge of handful US politicians that will make it as their success. Disgusting.

It uses adjectives and descriptions that suffocate the reader.

Completely separate from the subject matter, that kind of writing style treats the reader as an idiot.

Unfair as his treatment may be, people hypocritically use it as an excuse to express petty political hatreds. Calling his trial Stalinist in a headline is an exaggeration that encourages that, and makes it hard to have a high quality discussion in the comments.

I don't know a lot about the Julian Assange case, but it's obvious that very powerful interests are at play here. This single point ought to be reason enough for journalists to put the issue front and center.

Meanwhile the cooperation in the opposite direction doesn't seem so smooth https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-09-10/us-demand...

The phrase "Stalinist trial" normally refers to either a staged trial [1] or to a trial-by-three without due process [2]. Which of these applies to Julian Assange?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Trials [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_troika

"the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt, and/or innocence, of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors"

The article has no such quote. And if it did, it would still have to back it up, didn't it? So far it looks like a bunch of overstatements without any real substance. E.g. "The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange." How can a mere extradition hearing be the final act?

This is a transcript of a public address. The time the speaker had was likely limited, and the target were people already aware of the details.

The trial might be unfair, but it's tone deaf to call it "Stalinist".

It's weird that a Russia Today talking head would find Stalinism a negative.

why?

Because Russia Today promotes official Russian policy, with Stalinism whitewashing being one its major component.

To be fair, pretty much every country aside from Germany is whitewashing their past with the help of the media. Some call it propaganda, some call it patriotism, some call it "promoting of state policy" but it's all the same thing.

To be fair, even in Germany there is a substantial amount of whitewashing the past. Be it the founding of the BND predecessor "Organization Gehlen" or the Nazi sympathizers that worked as judges and prosecutors in the federal Republic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization

That the denazification process in both the Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic was incomplete after the war is a pretty uncontroversial thing in Germany, I would say. Aside from the far-right fringe, I don't think there is a lot of "whitewashing" around it, although I might be wrong. The CDU certainly has incentive to not stress that part of their history too much, though.

Russian official line is that partitioning of Poland with Hitler was justified. What is the official German position? (but but both sides, sure yeah)

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