On Jeremy Hammond, and Being Julian Assange

Like most things in life, the situation is complex and nuanced, I wrote in "Being Julian Assange"

Hi everyone,

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has reached out to me about Being Julian Assange.

I want to apologise that I haven't yet begun the promised serialising of the article on Steemit. Working out how best to break it into pieces, annotate them and convert them to markdown isn't a small undertaking and I have been juggling IRL people, obligations and circumstances that had been largely neglected by me having my head stuck inside my computer for the last four months. I will however begin the posting some time this week.

I deeply appreciate all of the feedback I have received about the article. I have received an uncountable number of extremely positive comments, some of which left me floored with their generosity. I have also received some negative feedback.

I want to take a moment to speak to a couple of issues that have arisen, and offer redress.

Retraction

In "Being Julian Assange", the sole reference to hacktivist and Courage beneficiary Jeremy Hammond was the following 10 words: "Hammond, taught to hate on Snowden, because Snowden got more press".

After concerns were raised with me about this, I agreed to remove the word 'taught' which I agree is problematic, and to contextualise my argument. However, upon further reflection I have decided to retract the line from the original article. The wording I used to describe my intended point was sub-par and insufficient to explain my argument. I will make a note of the retraction in the article and will link to this post for further context.

The words were part of a much larger commentary about narratives that have been bandied about repeatedly in the public arena in recent years, which are divisive to whistleblowers/targets of the state.

A number of misinterpretations occurred as a result of the above line, for which I would like to offer explanation.

The MintPress Article

My article linked the words "because Snowden got more press" to a MintPress News article titled "Why The Media Ignores Jeremy Hammond While Praising Edward Snowden"

I did not link it to the words "Hammond, taught to hate on Snowden."

Despite this, some people interpreted the link to mean that I was attributing the anti-Snowden narratives to specific individuals named halfway down the Mintpress article, and to their organisation.

I have no idea where the words quoted in the above tweet "pit prisoners against each other" came from. They did not come from my article.

Nor did my article name the individuals or their organisation, or assign them any responsibility whatsoever.

Everything I wrote was in good faith and without malicious intent. However, I apologise for any offence these people took as a result of their interpretation of what I wrote.

Public record

The small mention in my article was not meant to claim that it was an opinion held by Jeremy Hammond, nor did I directly attribute it to him. My intent was to show that in some quarters, there has been an attempt to promote Hammond by critiquing Snowden.

There are numerous references to that having occurred, in the public record.

Several people have privately acknowledged being fully aware of this (many people in related areas of activism have heard it long before I mentioned it in my article). Additionally, multiple comments by supporters in their Twitter discussions with me, alluded to further, I believe unfairly, critical views of Snowden and his work. I am not going into those here out of respect. But even though the larger context of the argument is easily defensible, I agree that my reference was badly worded, hence my retraction.

The FreeJeremy Tweet

Some time after I had already agreed with the original complainants that I would reword my phrasing and post a clarification, Jeremy Hammond's official support network tweeted this:

Unfortunately, the misquote of my article in the tweet is a classic example of how information shifts as it passes from person to person. The word "on" in the line from my article was omitted (I assume accidentally), and the assertion attributed directly to Hammond, morphing it into "Hammond "hates Snowden"".

This was then retweeted by a number of high profile accounts within the activism community, and resulted in further criticism directed at me.

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(I'm not sure how the situation then got extrapolated to Chelsea Manning, as my article had made no reference at all between Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond.)

Meanwhile, Kitty Hundal put two and two together and weighed in.

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Full props to Free Jeremy Net for their very gracious response to the above. It is deeply appreciated.

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Redress

It is extremely unfortunate that Jeremy Hammond was even bothered with this in the first place or ever had to think about it. I feel terrible about that. I have supported his work relentlessly, did everything I could to advance investigations into TrapWire and associated #GIFiles issues while both he and Barrett Brown were being jailed, and as a target of Sabu myself, am really disturbed to think that I could have inadvertently caused Jeremy any upset whatsoever. Living in exile, I can't do a lot about it, but I can offer a retraction and apology, and I have decided to donate the small proceeds of Being Julian Assange to Jeremy Hammond's support fund. It only amounts to USD$52, and I have gone ahead and donated that sum to his Fundrazr account this morning. I will also convert the proceeds from this Steemit post into Bitcoin and deposit that to Jeremy's Bitcoin account once it clears the 7 day processing period. Hopefully this will aid Jeremy in some small way. I also intend to write to him in the future, and really appreciate that the Free Jeremy Network has generously given me guidance and support for doing so.

To help to support Jeremy Hammond, a very deserving whistleblower and hacktivist who released information that exposed the private surveillance/intelligence industry that targets activists, journalists and everyday citizens around the world, please click here and give generously.

Other Issues

There are some other unrelated concerns, and I will address those separately. There is also extremely problematic behaviour being exhibited by someone pulling strings behind the scenes, to try to make life as difficult for me as possible, right now, and unsurprisingly, some outright falsehoods about me being propagated. That abusive behaviour will be dealt with in due course.

To everyone else, thanks for reading, and for all your support.

Love,
Suzie

By Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

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