Techrights

People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 26, 2024,

updated Mar 26, 2024

Good morning!

A week ago we said that there tends to be a harmful and baseless tendency to assume people who speak about suicides are themselves suicidal or contemplate death.

It's a fallacy. Correlations do not imply causality. Corruption can be exposed, including corruption pertaining to deaths (like the EPO), without having some morbid obsession with death.

I'm reluctantly reminded of an old story because of tweets made by Julian Assange when I still habitually spoke to him; years before he got kidnapped inside the embassy (shame on you, Ecuador! Except Rafael Correa, who had also befriended Richard Stallman) he tweeted information about his health and sought to assure people that aside from dental issues (impending and hard to treat without leaving the embassy) he had some problem with his knees (maybe prolonged sitting contributed to it) but mentally he was in "high spirits", according to people who knew him well and wrote about it publicly.

Assange wasn't arrested as a healthy person (they confiscated his shaving kit months earlier, so he wasn't shaved either), but he was surviving and even thriving online. Wikileaks was still publishing new material. Assange gave talks. He had children with his (later-to-become) wife.

Now? Not so much...

News from Wikileaks

They've sadly outsourced all their important communications to third parties like Twitter (now X). I kept cautioning them not to rely on censorious platforms (see this classic cartoon; archives here). But who am I to tell them?

Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him. Nowadays they slowly kill him behind bars (no matter the facility or country), having already mentally tortured him online for years.

"A holiday Friday is coming up," an associate has just reminded me, so "the JA [Assange] decision might be announced then"... (to lessen public outcry)

Consider this page published by Assange et al just weeks before Clinton lost the 2016 election (and weeks after "DNCLeaks"). No update since 2016* (that we can find in this very outdated "News" page in Wikileaks).

Today WikiLeaks releases confidential medical and psychological reports concerning our editor Julian Assange's situation. This part one publication consists of three documents: a twenty-seven page psycho-social and medical assessment from 10 November 2015, a report from Mr. Assange's physician from 8 December 2015 and a dentist's report from 31 July 2015. The in-depth assessment of the psychological and physical effects that the severely restrictive conditions of confinement within the small premises of the Embassy have had on Mr. Assange is by far the most detailed insight into the circumstances of his life inside the Embassy --including the multi-million dollar covert operation the United Kingdom admits to subjecting him to. He has been deprived of his liberty since 7 December 2010. He has not been charged with an offence.

The deterioration of Mr. Assange's physical health has arisen as a result of the extremely restrictive conditions of his confinement. The United Kingdom has formally refused safe access to even the most basic hospital diagnostics.

On February 5th this year the United Nations found that Mr. Assange's effective detention in the Embassy of Ecuador by the United Kingdom and Sweden is arbitrary and unlawful and that he must be freed and compensated. One of the factual elements that informed the conclusions of its 16-month investigation was Mr. Assange's deteriorating health and the inability to safely access basic healthcare.

Since then Assange has suffered a mild stroke (inside prison, according to his wife) and he was unable to attend his own hearing a few weeks ago. His legal team cited health reasons.

Shadowproof is no more (it covered Assange affairs), but Kevin Gosztola is still active over here. Two days ago he published:

Last week, a report from the Wall Street Journal once again raised the possibility of a plea deal that would bring the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to an end. But there are several reasons to question this news story.

The article, reported by Aruna Viswanatha and Max Colchester, claims that “people familiar with the matter” said “preliminary discussions” between the United States Justice Department (DOJ) and Assange’s legal team in “recent months” have occurred. Prosecutors and Assange’s attorneys discussed “what a plea deal could look like.”

It suggests that Assange could plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “mishandling classified documents.” If he accepted a deal, he would be sentenced to time served and released from Belmarsh prison in London.

But there is a factual problem with the report from the Journal—one that the newspaper may have paid attention if their correspondents were not so focused on cramming in much of the past slander against Assange.

In January 2018, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law that changed the provision used to punish people for mishandling classified information from a misdemeanor to a felony. He increased the penalty for violating the law because he believed former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted for mishandling classified information on her private email server.

Remember that the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch (we mentioned this days ago), who loathes Assange. This report, which was echoed throughout the world in many languages, served to portray Assange as willing to throw investigative journalism under the bus out of selfishness (his freedom).

Assange's health is permanently damaged and it seems unlikely he will ever bring Wikileaks back to its past glory. The site lost many pages.

Speaking for myself (not comparing myself to Assange or anything like that), I've no medical conditions and happiness can be ranked (by me) at about 9 out of 10. So I don't expect any problems, either physical or mental. My wife is also happy and we have a happy relationship.

So don't expect to hear anything bad.

Oh! And good morning! █

____

• Back when the US government plotted to torture and/or assassinate Assange, but - as the story goes in hindsight - the local council or the UK government didn't fancy a state-planned murder at the heart of London, a safe haven for corrupt oligarchs and despots from all over the world.