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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

Your right about Assange, and the really frustrating thing is that if he was a US citizen and did the exact same thing but published in a traditional media outlet then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. US journalists have received all kinds of awful leaked information and not been subjected to this.

Although discussion on assassination? Wow, wasn't aware of that.

I'll grant that his organization might have stepped into a gray area (apparently the US witness has credibility issues) if they provided Manning with a bit of guidance on how to get more information (unsuccessfully I think) but I don't think that materially changes things all that much.

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If Assange did precisely the same thing and exposed Russian or Chinese war crimes the idea that he was justly imprisoned for espionage because of the methods by which he did it would be universally mocked and condemned in the west.

Conversely Roman Protasevich's airplane would be downed and he would already be in prison on charges of "fighting on the front line alongside neonazis" (evidence is that he did neonazi azov PR but probably did not fight), while the Russians condemned us for imprisoning a valiant journalist.

>Roman Protasevich's airplane

I don't know, Russia has a long tradition (with the USSR before it) to get creative with assassinations. Everything from poisoning tea with somewhat exotic isotopes to smearing the insides of underwear with neurotoxins, an icepick to the head, or simply gunning someone down in the street.

That’s actually a EU/US style when they forcibly downed the plane in Austria of a hesd of state Evo Morales of Bolivia. They then orchestrated a coup against Evo Morales, who had non-white indigenous support and over 50 percent, and replace him with a minority white supremacist regimes (5% vote).

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

While the grounding incident is shameful, your description of Morales' political situation bares no resemblance to reality whatsoever:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#2019_election_cont...

He was term limited out and nearly triggered a revolution by choosing to ignore the constitution. His argument was "term limits are a human rights violation according to the American Convention on Human Rights". If a president tried to do that here in the US, the streets would run with blood, and rightfully so.

The Bolivian supreme court shot down the term limits constitutional amendment from 2009 and he still won the election coz he was well, the most popular candidate.

That didn't fly with the Bolivian opposition who rioted. The US wasn't happy either. The real kicker was the military and police telling Morales to step down, though. Control over the police and military is the key determinant of who wins an attempted coup. He lost that.

The US treats its own constitution with a sort of theoretical reverence, but e.g. the 4th amendment which existed for about 240 years was trashed completely and it barely merited comment. If there were violence (e.g. like the capital riots) because of, say, the 60 year old 22nd amendment being repealed by the supreme court it would be less about the reverence to the constitution and more about flagrant partisanship.

Not sure i see your point.

I wasn't making a rebuttal to the GP, just noting that the Russian government doesn't always go through the trouble of a show trial before conviction.

That point shouldn't be taken as me ignoring similar tactics by other world powers, I'm aware of those too. The US planned & tried some creative assassinations against Castro. Realpolitik is messy and cynical and hypocritical.

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