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    Re: It's three rabbits; from a distance they look like hares....nm Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on March 6, 2020, 11:01 am, in reply to "It's three rabbits; from a distance they look like hares....nm"

    This guy nails it:

    @ChristineJameis
    ·
    Feb 28
    Replying to
    @arusbridger

    "interesting", is your way of trying to agree with the disgraceful way #Assange is being treated and denied a fair hearing without upsetting those who pay you?

    A search of Rusbridger's twitter account for 'assange' turns up a surprising number of messages in his defence:

    https://twitter.com/search?q=assange%20(from%3Aarusbridger)&src=typed_query

    However if you look at his published articles they all follow a pattern of 'Assange is an insane bastard but don't forget about free speech' which as others have pointed out legitimises 99% of the establishment campaign against him before handing it over to the assassins to handle the last 1%. Here are a few of them:

    https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/04/30/assange/content.html

    'WikiLeaks has published significant global exclusives, but working with founder Julian Assange was never easy as he swung from strategic focus to volcanic rage.

    His arrest and the start of extradition proceedings has been greeted with glee by many, but there is a danger the charge against him criminalises the process of news gathering.

    Battles for liberty and free speech have often been won by unsavoury characters – the digital age will throw up others we may not like, but may have to defend.

    [...]

    Mercurial, dislikeable, erratic, narcissistic: Assange is all those things. But free speech is a principle, not a person'

    https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/12/opinions/julian-assange-bond-villain-or-cyber-messiah-rusbridger-gbr-intl/index.html

    'Julian Assange: Bond villain or cyber-messiah? It's complicated

    [...]

    To my mind, Assange is partly a journalist. Part of what he does has involved the selection, editing, verifying and contextualizing of news material -- just as any journalist would do. But Assange is also a publisher, a political activist, a hacker, an information anarchist, a player. Yes, he believes -- sometimes -- in editing. But he also believes in dumping vast oceans of documents, unedited and unredacted, careless to the consequences.

    One is journalism, the other isn't.

    [...]

    His case is not a simple one. But disliking Assange shouldn't be the same as disowning him.'

    A re-tweet:

    'Despite my personal disgust for Assange, whom I view as a narcissistic egomaniac with a grudge against the intelligence apparatuses of the West, the First Amendment and its protections of a free press are more important than punishing Assange.' - https://twitter.com/arusbridger/status/1116357964384878594 linking to this article by Bradley P. Moss: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/prosecuting-julian-assange-puts-free-press-risk/576166/

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/12/partnering-with-assange-was-unpleasant-work-like-his-is-crucial/

    'Partnering with Assange was unpleasant. But work like his is crucial.

    The laws protecting free speech should not depend on the likability, mental health or personal hygiene of those in the firing line. And Assange is now very much a target.

    [...]

    He is an information anarchist — dumping vast oceans of material into cyberspace with barely a thought for the consequences. He’s often portrayed as a useful idiot to Russian President Vladimir Putin and an enabler to President Trump. He jumped bail in Britain, costing his too-trusting supporters a small fortune in surrendered sureties. He is rude, aggressive, pompous, self-regarding, unreasonable and even — as multiple sources say — smelly.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/26/prosecuting-julian-assange-for-espionage-poses-danger-freedom-of-press

    'I found the WikiLeaks co-founder a troubling figure when I worked with him, but America’s case would criminalise journalistic inquiry

    [...]

    The stories were, indeed, significant – but the relationship with Assange was fraught. We fell out, as most people eventually do with Assange. I found him mercurial, untrustworthy and dislikable: he wasn’t keen on me, either.'

    He also routinely mentions the 'never-settled claims of sexual coercion' and refers to Assange 'spewing out unredacted classified material across the Internet' without mentioning the debacle of Luke Harding publishing the password to (these? other?) unredacted docs. Also given credit are the smears about helping to elect Trump on Russia's behest: 'Does it matter that WikiLeaks seems to have acted as a conduit for material hacked by Russian military intelligence?' and the claim that 'Assange wanted to release the majority, if not all, the documents' and didn't care about the consequences of not redacting them. Nothing about the front page fake news story about Manafort supposedly meeting Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy of course, nor the capitulation to the police in smashing up their servers, or the wider role of the graun in smearing his character, leading to the perilous situation he's in today.

    Something particularly foul about someone trading off the back of the 'fraught relationship' they had with Assange, making all sorts of lurid claims - all unsubstantiated, all one-sided - and then claiming moral high ground because they held their nose and gave him (qualified) support because of their own superior values. And topped off with the added chutzpah of lecturing about what it means to be a Real Journalist!

    jeers,
    I

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