I’d rather the regime let Assange go, and pardoned Snowden. Allowing something most states already allow is weak sauce as far as populism is concerned.
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The gesture of the freeing these two brave whistleblowers is much more important than you think. Noam Chomsky calls this censorship flak of his five filters.
> If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.