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Comment by pie420 | Hacker News Reader

If I murder 2 people and reveal that john murdered 22 people and Bob murdered 36 people, does that mean I get to skip trial because I revealed bigger crimes? Sometimes, if I can get a plea deal, but this was not the case, so what is the problem here?

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Really bad example when the war crimes revealed were actual murders etc. of many, many civilians, and Assange’s crime was telling the secret (by the rules of a country that he was not a citizen of, and of a country where he wasn’t located) that these war crimes happened and that nobody faced any consequences for them.

Revealing information about many murders is very different from doing murder.

The problem here is that Assange didn't kill any people, while Uncle Sam has killed hundreds of thousands for oil, revenge, and preserving the hegemony.

Assange is alleged to have released unredacted info that exposed informants in warzones. This while running a service - not an infrastructure, a service - for exposing information.

Arguing that he hasn't personally killed anyone is not a strong rebuke against such allegations.

Compromising informants working for a foreign government invading another foreign land is not a crime, nor much of a moral dilemma.

The risk inherent to collaborationism is also not one anyone but the informant must account for. Just as mercenaries operate in that same high-risk-reward / low-solidarity space, and accordingly join the cast of characters in war zones along with spies and informants without international sympathy.

Assange did not release unredacted information. The person he entrusted to clean it, did.

Getting a plea deal is contingent on the state caring about the larger crimes in the first place. See the problem?

One does not have to believe that the state is entirely corrupt to believe that Assange's treatment by the USG in the past decades has been highly inappropriate.

The upcoming 2024 elections in the US find both parties trying to court subsets of the population who mistrust the government, so surely freeing Assange was done for realpolitik reasons.

It is not too late for Mike Pompeo to end up serving time. Let's hope that he is brought to justice ASAP.

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