chaos.social/@shiro/1048303601…
♲ @shiro@chaos.social:
No matter how unbearable #Assange has been in the last years, no matter how bad the “let daddy go back to his kids” support campaign is: Press freedom is under attack and we can’t watch away while some UK court is allowed to set a bad precedent because we just stopped caring.
I don't think #Assange qualifies as journalist. He did not publish investigative or analytical articles, he merely reposted cherry picked (!) raw documents received from others, carefully coordinating it with Russian special services, sometimes reposted their disinformation, however cynical it was (MH17, Syria). How is he different from say Alex Jones?
@kravietz @clacke @shiro Assange's later involvement in Russian election meddling, as well as his sexual misadventures in Sweden, have shown him to be nothing but a self-serving twat with a god complex (which wasn't really a surprise). That's not what the current hearing is about, though, and it shouldn't be allowed to influence the outcome. He deserves to rot in jail (at least for a while), but we must ensure he does so for the right reasons.
@kravietz @clacke @shiro The criminal charges against Assange all relate to the Manning papers. Although some of those documents needed to be seen, many others did not. For instance, publishing the names of agents and informants in Afghanistan and Iraq was reckless and completely unnecessary.