Julian Assange is free!

I hope its ok to post this here but with our community in the forum I think this topic deserves an exception.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/25/world/julian-assange-plea-deal-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html

WHAT A LOVELY DAY :))) Makes me VERY happy!

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They made him sign a guilty note before freeing him. :person_facepalming: Bro did nothing wrong.

Anyone know where he’s gonna be at? We should send one of us to teach him about Qubes :ice_cube: :ice_cube:

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yeah well after 5y in this belmarsh torture prison he would have said yes if they had asked him if he’s a wizard. No educated person would ever believe that this has any relevance.

Anyone know where he’s gonna be at?

From what I’ve heared he’s flying to australia rn.

We should send one of us to teach him about Qubes :ice_cube: :ice_cube:

I think he will chill for a while and re-learn how to be a human again. Pretty sure that prison took a big bite out of his sanity. Poor guy :frowning: He has a lovely wife, she will help him get back on track I hope.

I think we should skip the invitation to this years qubes summit but maybe the next one or the one after that.

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It’s great that he finally got out of the hell hole. Great news. He should recuperate and get back in the game – looking forward to his first interviews.

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That’s the rub isn’t it? From what I understand actively soliciting the documents was unlawful. But that doesn’t mean it was immoral. The government needed a sentence because he played a role in exposing the horrors that support the feeling of within the population.

Speaking as a US citizen, I frequently hear the refrain “we are a nation of laws”. For the longest time I found this distasteful because I interpreted it as “we are a nation of bureaucracy”. I have since learned that they are actually trying to contrast us with governments that rule by personality; for example, a system where a monarch’s word is law and “when the ruler does it, that means it’s not illegal, by definition”. And it’s good to distance ourselves from that.

But at this point we consider the political system itself to be the monarch. No one person has that power, but any action taken that is against the interest of the political system is forbidden. It’s fine to compete in elections where you try to determine exactly how much abuse and exploitation of foreign people is “appropriate” in order to prop up US lifestyles, and how many levels of indirection are needed to avoid feelings of guilt among the population. The Constitution says “All people are created equal”, but those who thrive in our sacrosanct political system will at best act as though it says “All US citizens are created equal”. Anyone who exposes this hypocrisy must be punished.

But, for better or for worse, we are in fact a bureaucratic nation. Activists can evade unjustifiable retaliatory action if they make sure to stay within the arbitrary, and sometimes counter-productive, rules that our system has produced. Assange did not. I hope that his sacrifice was worth it.

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these are correct. USA, or the “muh-modern democracies of the west” are ruled by a system, not a single, strong man. But in these cases, the system itself is all the autocratic, tyrannical, and most importantly, since the system is mostly dispersed around many different bureacratic centers, the system is not accountable.

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You hope it was worth it…? So you agree it was a rightful punishment? :skull:

Nah that’s not the solution. Capitulation is never the solution. You’ll never win a game as long as you let your enemy set the rules. Modern activists need to grow some balls, learn some opsec, and get to doing some REAL activism (from the root word ‘active’) other than complaining from the clearnet like some sitting ducks then getting caught and serving as captured examples to demoralize the rest of us.

Let Assange be the last of such examples. This must never happen again, and thanks to modern technology, it doesn’t have to.

Free, but not innocent! Extremely dangerous precedent was made yesterday.

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In my humble opinion the precedent has been set years ago.

Assange has my full understanding regarding this plea deal and I was very happy to hear that he has been released. When it comes to the legal matters, and I’m no expert in those, but it is complicated. The espionage accusations are nonsense and the sexual assault accusations were nonsense (the Swedish repeatedly dropped and reopened the case). The US prosecutors were claiming that Assange
a) published names and put those people in danger and
b) instigated Manning to steal password hashes and tried to brute force those without success

Journalists are not supposed to do that.

However, a) is inaccurate. The names were in an encrypted file (Assange called this file his life-insurance) and a Guardian journalist spilled the password. And b) sounds to me like 6 month on probation, but what do I know.

The following is a case of deliberately putting lifes in danger:

Nobody has gone to jail for putting this life in danger.

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Btw, lot’s of media reported:

Chief US District Judge Ramona V. Manglona noted that the US prosecutor was not able to identify any US personal who have been harmed due to the leak of names.

This clearly has been a case of outrageous vindictiveness.

If you need to convince US citizen in a discussion I recommend that you mention that their hard earned tax money has been wasted to seriously harm Manning and Assange. As a tax payer and eligible voters US citizen deserve to know the truth. Manning and Assange delivered. Washington D.C. has not and does not.

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Moderation note: Please folks be mindful that this thread is off-topic in the General Discussion category. (It is not about Qubes OS.)

If it wasn’t for @robertford who doesn’t have acces to it, I would move the thread to the All around Qubes caregory.

I’ll keep it open and see how it evolves, I’m asking for everyone’s collaboration here to keep the conversation civil and respectful.

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The only hope for the First Amendment to survive on this specific point, although already endangered with other laws and ((il)legal) actions, is the president to pardon him.

Moderation note: Now that the news effect is past, and since this topic is ckearly iff-tooic, I’ll close it. Thanks everyone for keeping things civil :slightly_smiling_face:

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