If he's not a journalist what is he?
He's a guy who runs an information clearing house, and does so very irresponsibly.
This is a man who has risked everything publishing information that the US does not want to be seen revealing war crimes such as the famous collateral damage video where a US gunship in Iraq massacred Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists in cold blood.
Yes, Wikileaks has done a great job of exposing government crimes, and I give them full credit for that. But 'risked everything'? I hardly think so.
Everything he and Wikileaks have published has shown to be true. How many other publishers have that record? They have not had to make a single retraction.
Firstly, it's not difficult to hold a track record for accuracy when all you're doing is publishing government documents. I could start a blog that publishes copies of Hansard, or the annual budget papers, and I'd have a perfect track record for accuracy too.
Secondly, Assange is not doing any
investigative journalism, which is the hardest and most useful journalism of all. Investigative journalists actually have to conduct genuine research, whereas all Assange does is slap stuff on the internet when he receives it.
Thirdly, while Wikileaks' publishing record is sound (for the reasons already explained) they have an absolutely atrocious history of peddling conspiracy theories and fake news. For example...
Wikileaks publicly endorsed a 'Deep State' conspiracy theory about the nature of QANON:
Another example of Wikileaks fuelling conspiracy theories by posting half truths on Twitter. This is from 2018:
Oooh, sounds dodgy! Mueller must be a crook, right?
Nope. Firstly, this incident happened 11 years ago. Secondly, it was all entirely legal. Thirdly, it was covered by the media at the time.
Sources described to The Atlantic how a 49-year-old mechanic, Oleg Khintsagov, a Russian citizen, went to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi attempting to sell approximately 100g of weapon-grade HEU, carried in a plastic bag. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for him, Khintsagov’s buyer was an undercover Georgian agent. Although there were some near-misses, Khintsagov was ultimately arrested, tried, and sentenced.
After Khintsagov was arrested, the Georgian government allowed the seized material to be analyzed by the United States. After this occurred, the Georgians then allowed the United States to give a small sample to the Russians for further analysis, which is what the Wikileaks cable depicted.
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Source).
In a nutshell, Mueller had to personally transport a small, 10-gram sample—about the weight of 10 paper clips—of stolen, highly enriched uranium presumed to come from the old Soviet Georgia to a lab in Russia for further study and the nuclear forensics' version of DNA fingerprint analysis.
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Source).
Great article here, exposing the lies and propaganda of Wikileaks:
'Julian Assange’s Hatred of Hillary Clinton Was No Secret. His Advice to Donald Trump Was.'
THE REVELATION THAT WikiLeaks secretly offered help to Donald Trump’s campaign, in a series of private Twitter messages sent to the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr., gave ammunition to the group’s many detractors and also sparked anger from some longtime supporters of the organization and its founder, Julian Assange.
One of the most high-profile dissenters was journalist Barrett Brown, whose
crowdsourced investigations of hacked corporate documents later posted on WikiLeaks
led to a prison sentence.
Brown had
a visceral reaction to the news,
first reported by The Atlantic, that WikiLeaks had been advising the Trump campaign. In a series of tweets and Facebook videos, Brown accused Assange of having compromised “the movement” to expose corporate and government wrongdoing by acting as a covert political operative.
Brown
explained that he had defended WikiLeaks for releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, “because it was an appropriate thing for a transparency org to do.”
But, he added, “working with an authoritarian would-be leader to deceive the public is indefensible and disgusting.”
...James Ball, a former WikiLeaks volunteer who has
described the difficulty of working for someone who lies so much, was also appalled by
one post-election message to Trump Jr., in which WikiLeaks suggested that, as a form of payback, it would be “helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to DC.”
If I'd gone to prison for defending Wikileaks, and later discovered that they'd lied about colluding with the Trump campaign while deliberately spreading disinformation, I'd be pretty furious about it too.
The article reveals other lies from Assange and Wikileaks:
* spreading the false story that Clinton had said she wanted to drone Assange
* referring to Fox news pundit Bob Beckel as 'a Hillary Clinton strategist' (Beckel has never worked for Clinton in any capacity)
* shared an image claiming to show Ángel Gonzalo (head of Spanish military police) kissing the Spanish flag at a unionist demonstration (
it was not Ángel Gonzalo)
* shared an image of Spanish police grappling with Catalan protesters holding a Catalan independence flag (
the flag had been photoshopped into the image)
* promoted anti-Clinton conspiracy theories, including comprehensively debunked nonsense about the death of Vince Foster, allegations of 'Satanic rituals' among Clinton insiders, and Pizzagate
Remember Seth Rich? Assange openly fuelled the conspiracy theory that Rich was his source for the DNC hack, even after he knew it was false:
Julian Assange not only knew that a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer wasn’t his source for thousands of hacked party emails, he was in active contact with his real sources in Russia’s GRU months after Seth Rich’s death.
At the same time he was publicly working to shift blame onto the slain staffer “to obscure the source of the materials he was releasing,” Special Counsel Robert Mueller asserts in his final report on Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.
“After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking,” the report reads. “According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”
As laid out by Mueller, Assange’s involvement in Russia’s election interference began with a June 14, 2016 direct message to WikiLeaks’ Twitter account from “DC Leaks,” one of the false fronts created by the Russians to launder their hacked material.
“You announced your organization was preparing to publish more Hillary's emails,” the message read, according to Mueller’s report. “We are ready to support you. We have some sensitive information too, in particular, her financial documents. Let's do it together. What do you think about publishing our info at the same moment? Thank you.”
A week later, WikiLeaks reached out to a second GRU persona, Guccifer 2.0, and pitched WikiLeaks as the best outlet for the hacked material. On July 14, 2016, GRU officers used a Guccifer 2.0 email address to send WikiLeaks an encrypted one-gigabyte file named “wk dnc link I .txt.gpg.” Assange confirmed receipt, and on July 22 he published 20,000 DNC emails stolen during the GRU’s breach.
By then, it was no secret where the documents came from. The computer security firm CrowdStrike had already published its technical report on the DNC breach, which laid out a trail leading directly to Moscow and the GRU. Analysts at ThreatConnect independently presented evidence that Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks were fictional creations of that agency.
But rather than refuse to comment on his sources, as he’s done in other cases, Assange used his platform to deny that he got the material from Russians, and make statements at an alternative theory. On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed announced a $20,000 reward for “information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.”
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Source).
The leak was no 'inside job', and Seth Rich was not the source. Assange knew this from the start, but continued to lie about it.
The myth of Wikileaks being a neutral source that's 'never been wrong' needs to die.
He's not being persecuted? Well, I think I'll defer to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (made up of a panel of impartial senior international judges) who have ruled in his favour twice saying his being forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy was arbitrary detention by the UK.
But he wasn't forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. He entered it on his own free will, and refused to emerge (again, on his own free will). If he'd attended court instead of skipping bail, the whole thing would have been over in a matter of weeks.
Oh, and how about the UN Special Rapportuer for Torture who said that exactly:
Firstly, one man's 'persecution' is another man's 'legitimate criticism.' Secondly, Assange has enjoyed overwhelming public support for years, and that support easily eclipses the scale of any pushback he's received in that time. Thirdly, if you irritate governments by publishing their secrets, you can't pretend to be horrified when they come after you.
Melzer was accompanied during his prison visit on 9 May by two medical experts specialised in examining potential victims of torture and other ill-treatment. The team were able to speak with Assange in confidence and to conduct a thorough medical assessment.
...and then this narrative completely fell apart when Russia published a video showing Assange in perfect health, laughing and mixing freely with fellow inmates. Oops!
What is he experiencing justice for? Do tell.
Skipping bail to avoid the Swedish rape accusations. That's why he's in prison, remember?
