"but this guy crossed a line when he exposed people to danger. He also crossed a line when he took information from Russian spies, working for an autocratic leader, publishing it to interfere in another country's election. He has shown himself to be a puppet of autocratic leaders. He has no ethics or principles. "
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At Assange’s extradition hearing this September, journalists from all over the world testified to WikiLeaks’ “pioneering” use of encryption to protect sources and documents.
Julian Assange won awards for his journalism.
You have not provided the slightest evidence to support these accusations, which are made by the people whose criminal activities he exposed.
The information wikileaks published, that Hillary Clinton made grovelling speeches to bankers and sabotaged the campaign of Sanders, is information which is true and should have been made public. To keep such information secret would be interfering in the election.
The real reason Assange is being persecuted and tortured is because he exposed war crimes which you want to keep secret. You want to protect criminal governments and have courageous journalist whistle blowers persecuted and tortured.
This has had enormously chilling impact on journalists everywhere which is why any journalist or whistleblower in Australia can now expect to be raided by Federal police , have all there electronic devices seized and face secret trials and years in prison. Job well done you !
Some of the crimes which wikileaks exposed -
The US had knowledge of and approved the military coup that toppled Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. American officials discussed the possibility of a similar overthrow of the Pakistani government in 2009 with the country’s top general. In 2009, Washington privately supported the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and worked to cover up the repression which followed.
US intelligence assets helped to engineer Kevin Rudd’s replacement as Australian prime minister by Julia Gillard in 2010, to ensure a continued Australian presence in the criminal US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Rudd was also targeted for suggesting America make minor accommodations to China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The cables demonstrated that the US government was fully aware of the torture, random arrests, and extra-judicial killings carried out by its ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. They proved Washington’s detailed knowledge of state corruption in Tunisia and exposed the government’s collaboration in abrogating the rights of Tunisian citizens detained in Guantanamo Bay. Governments in Pakistan and Yemen were shown to have collaborated with US drone operations in their own countries, responsible for the repeated massacres of civilians.
American officials were aware of an explosion at a BP gas rig in the Caspian Sea in 2008 but took no action to investigate the safety of the company’s other sites. Two years later, an explosion at a rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven people and created the largest marine oil spill in history.
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During the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, the US successfully bribed and blackmailed poor countries over development aid to gain support for a watering down of climate commitments.
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US embassies and UN representatives to gather personal information, including credit card and frequent flyer account numbers, internet passwords, work schedules and even DNA samples, from UN and foreign government officials. The only realistic purpose being to facilitate similar blackmail operations.
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Yet more cables detailed the domination of the Nigerian state by Shell Oil.
Evidence heard at the hearing also established that it was Guardian journalist David Leigh who was responsible for allowing the release of tens of thousands of unredacted cables, which had been securely stored by WikiLeaks, in September 2011.
In a hatchet-job on WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, Leigh published the password to a secure online archive containing the cables, making them freely accessible.
Assange called the US State Department to warn them of an impending release but was ignored.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/28/dipl-n28.html
