Thank you, GazetaBitcoin. This is a classic Gazeta post: I will need some hours to peruse all your links!
Meanwhile, I will remark on the first thing I noticed: As usual, the mainstream media is up to the dirty tricks of
smear accusations, and cherry-picking the worst images they can find as of some they dislike.
Excepting that in an old self-quote, all images in this post are from
Wikimedia Commons. Although I am not always a fan of Wikimedia, they are a stable source—and they will not be cherry-picking bad-looking images of Assange. I have linked each image to its page on Wikimedia Commons. I encourage others to use presentable images of Assange when discussing him: The Assange who built a powerful fight for freedom, not snapshots grabbed in bad moments after he was been virtually imprisoned for so long.
Although I myself do not agree with Assange about everything, I highly respect for his
stand on principle. It is why he is so hated by the U.S. government:
He cannot be bought, he cannot be terrorized, he cannot be persuaded. Not unless they can get him bodily under their control.
Speaking of which, the American so-called “prosecution” of Assange raises an issue of world-historical import that I have not seen many others discuss:
By what right does the United States presume jurisdiction over Assange? He is a not an American citizen, and is thus not generally subject to the personal jurisdiction of American laws. He is not alleged to have committed any acts within American territorial jurisdiction. It is only yet another instance of America enforcing international reach for its
diktat, on the basis of:
“We have the most guns, we have nukes—and most of all, we have the global poison power of the dollar.”As for US-USSR being distinct without difference—why yes, I think you’re right. They’re evil twins.
Quoting from
one of the links in OP:
The WikiLeaks Manifesto, a document less known, unfortunately, contains other words of wisdom from Julian: "
Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on".
Hmmm...
Thank you, GazetaBitcoin, for your continuing coverage of cypherpunks and the relation thereof to Bitcoin. To that, I will add
a quite decent treatment of that history (with a hyperlink thoughtfully added by me):The mailing list became the favorite watering hole for hundreds of talented computer programmers and hackers from all over the world, many of whom would use the list to learn about crypto before setting out to pursue May’s vision in their own way. One of them was a programmer named “Proff,” who joined the cypherpunk mailing list in late 1993 or early 1994. He immediately got sucked into the raucous and aggressive exchanges that characterized the cypherpunks: insulting newcomers, ruthlessly criticizing perceived shortcomings in others’ technical knowledge, and plotting the downfall of governments....
“Proff,” it transpired, was a gifted young Australian programmer called Julian Assange. Although Assange was a libertarian, he did not share May’s unashamed elitism: In the
Cyphernomicon May spoke disparagingly of “nonproductive” citizens, “inner-city breeders,” and, most notoriously, the “
clueless 95 percent.” In one of his last posts on the list, Assange wrote (likely in rebuttal to May) that “the 95 percent of the population which compromise the flock have never been my target and neither should they be yours. It’s the 2.5 percent at either end of the normal that I have in my sights.” (When I asked May if he thought Assange was a “true” cypherpunk, he replied, “Yes, absolutely. I count him as one of us. He did things, he set things up, and he built things.”)
Quarter of a million people is quite a number, but the 
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