Choosing sides

[supergee]

I’ve been a First Amendment Nut as long as I can remember. Back in the day when the battles were over sexual verbiage and descriptions, that meant defending the likes of Henry Miller & D.H. Lawrence on principle and because those who wanted to suppress them were worse.

Now it’s Julian Assange, a shit disturber who gets his kicks spilling secrets, whether it’s American war crimes or the names of closeted gay people in countries where outing could mean death. Again, the principle and the opponents. In traditional diplomatic parlance, he’s a son of a bitch but he’s our son a bitch.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Meanwhile, I'm torn. He hung Chelsea Manning out to dry and he's going to get people killed if he hasn't already. I am honestly uncertain about being a Free Speech absolutist in the face of gleefully destroying lives, but I also don't know where to draw the line any more than the mythical dwarves who wanted Loki's head but were forbidden to cut his neck.

[redbird]

I am not convinced he's our son of a bitch, for any value of "our" that includes me; in fact, gleefully using his freedom of speech to hurt innocent people is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect from someone who wanted to make freedom of speech look bad.

I'm not a first amendment absolutist, but even if I was, there's a difference betweem having have a right to do something, and having any reason to do that thing other than to say "nyah nyah you can't stop me."

[dewline]

I think making freedom of speech look like a sin is indeed that man's goal now. My next question: at whose insistence? His own?

[legionseagle]

Given the pattern of the emails he leaked and those he didn't, I think the answer to that is tolerably clear. The man's a Putin asset whether he knows it or not.

That said, I'd defend him (well, not me personally, don't have the skillset, not my area of law, also I make a point of avoiding acting for people who leave a string of unpaid lawyers behind, all of whom they badmouth) against the extradition to the US on the basis that the assumed facts (on considering an indictment request, one always takes the position that one assumes that the prosecuting state can make out the case on the facts they rely on) only just about scramble over the bar for a corresponding offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and it's an inchoate one at that. On the other hand if the Swedish prosecutors come back into the ring, I'd be backing them up to the hilt.

[dewline]

Understood.

[weofodthignen]

He should stand trial for the rape accusation and then we'll see whether that ends up making a start on punishing him.