Yes. I share some of your reservations about Assange as a person but the ability of journalists to hold power to account must be defended. The silence of most supposedly liberal journalists about the Assange case is shameful, in my view.Indeed. I don’t like Assange at all, but he has a legitimate journalistic defence for the majority of this. Conceptually I don’t see it as that much different to say the Torygraph leaking the PMs expenses trough-feeding. The truth needed to come out about Iraq and the behaviour of our nation states. My issue with Assange came later when it became so obvious he was a highly self-interested and partisan game player. I fully support whistle-blowing and journalistic freedom to speak truth to power, and really that is his defence here.
Indeed.Yes. I share some of your reservations about Assange as a person but the ability of journalists to hold power to account must be defended. The silence of most supposedly liberal journalists about the Assange case is shameful, in my view.
I'm still awaiting news of the trials of the mass murderers in that helicopter.
No chance of that happening as the investigation was closed 10 years ago.
It's obvious that the editing of the "Collateral Murder" video was done to make the US forces look as bad as possible (and they are certainly not helped by the commentary from the aircrew) however it was part of a wider situation where the US forces had been fired upon in that area, and given you can clearly see weapons in the group on the ground that were fired upon (including an RPG) then their rules of engagement won't have been breached. The video leaves out all the surrounding context, including the US forces evacuating the injured children immediately afterwards. The reporters were clearly with the armed folks on the grounds so must have known they were taking a crazy risk. There is a lot of material available about the wider situation however I can understand that anyone who's only source was the Wikileaks video might think a war crime had been committed. That's one of the issues I have with Assange in fact (other than him being a generally odious individual of course, which I doubt anyone disputes), is that it's clear they're pursuing an agenda that is a long way from just reporting the facts.
It's very difficult to avoid spin about this stuff - for example that article at the start of this thread doesn't help itself by its own obvious bias - when just reporting the facts would be better.
Have you done some wider research as SteveG suggested?I have no doubt that a serious war crime was committed.
some of the comments from the helicopter crew are sickening, of course.
The Assange extradition is on Al Jazeera today, with footage and interviews. I've seen nothing on the Tory BBC.
...some of the comments from the helicopter crew are sickening, of course.
Cool. You must be a decent one. Name?Indeed.
First they came for the journalists, and I said nothing. Oops, that was a mistake, what with me being a journalist too...