The Marriage of Julian Assange
chrishedges.substack.com
chrishedges.substack.com
For anyone who's not read this already, I've found the following to be the most eye-opening analysis of how Assange came to be framed as a more divisive figure than he actually is:
> «A murderous system is being created before our very eyes» A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum security prison, psychological torture – and soon extradition to the U.S., where he could face up to 175 years in prison for exposing war crimes. For the first time, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
The US should be very careful when calling for war crimes prosecutions against Russia as it may eventually shine a light back at then reminding the rest of the world that the US is not part of the ICC and even has a law to pull any American facing prosecution out by force if necessary.
The US has not called for international war crimes prosecutions against Russians, which, even within the ICC system, are a backstop against failure of the criminals own country and those where the offense happened and any others which might have direct jurisdiction to have the ability and will to take action.
It hasn't even called for war crimes prosecutions of any kind.
It has described it's conclusion that Russia has committed war crimes, which is not the same as either of the above things, in the context of promoting the urgency of stopping the campaign in which they have done so so as to deny them the opportunity to commit more.
1) I've not seen credible evidence that he retained internal documents from the Republicans, only releasing material from the Democrats. Do you have any citations for this?
2) Regardless of the above, that's still a fairly parochial perspective. The rest of the world doesn't revolve around internal US politics.
The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
IN LEAKED CHATS, WIKILEAKS DISCUSSES PREFERENCE FOR GOP OVER CLINTON, RUSSIA, TROLLING, AND FEMINISTS THEY DON’T LIKE https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
The Wikileaks Twitter account asked Trump Jr. to leak some material to them, at a time when Assange's Internet had been cut. That isn't interesting, searching for information to release is what journalists do.
> WIKILEAKS DISCUSSES PREFERENCE FOR GOP OVER CLINTON
The same Clinton that said "why don't we just drone [Assange]?" That isn't very surprising.
> WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign
This refers to documents submitted to Wikileaks right at the time they were dealing with one of the biggest releases in their history. The organisation was stretched but deemed the leaks of little relevance, anyway. (I believe a large part of these documents was already published).
Whoever submitted this material to Wikileaks then immediately got in touch with media orgs who simultaneously released articles about how Wikileaks rejected Russian leaks. Did these articles specify the nature of the rejected leaks, or perhaps even organise to publish themselves (even in part)? Ha.
I believe the leaks were published somewhere later and nobody cared because they were not interesting.
Also, the Wikileaks Twitter account contacted Trump Jr. directly to ask them to leak Trump's tax returns, and this fact was later used to attack Wikileaks. Why would they have taken this risk if they already had information on Trump?
Is that actually true? I didn't think Assange was charged with treason. Is the author just using the term figuratively, or have I misunderstood the charges?