Assange was a non-U.S. citizen working outside the U.S. - I don't get what gives the U.S. jurisdiction to try him in the first place. If China tried to extradite a U.S. citizen acting within the U.S. who published leaked information allegedly in violation of Chinese law, we'd laugh them out of the courtroom, and rightly so.
Adding insult to injury, publishing leaked military secrets is not even illegal in the U.S. due to the first amendment right to a free press. When the New York Times publishes leaked classified information, there's no trial or extradition. In the U.S., those who will have legitimate access to classified information first sign legally binding agreements not to disseminate it, and those who violate that agreement can be prosecuted.
And in this case, that already happened: Manning served 7 years in jail for leaking the very information that Assange is being extradited over. With the leaker found and prosecuted, convicted, and sentence served, the U.S. Department of Justice should congratulate itself on a job well-done and move on to other things. It's absurd that they continue to pursue the publisher of the information almost a decade later.
The US has "bigger guns diplomacy" here -- they can kind of do whatever they want to unless the country really wants to put up a fight. There's a lot of non-empty threats the US will make.
France for instance will protect her own citizens at all costs. It's why Roman Polanski, a convicted rapist, still walks around a free man there. [0]
It's more that the UK and US have an extradition treaty and as long as the request meets the terms of the treaty then the extradition will proceed, barring some sort of domestic political issue. It's not like the US is threatening to attack the UK if Assange is not handed over.
On what do you base this. I just skimmed the treaty [0], and it seems completly symmetrical. It even has a clause allowing a nation to not extradite when the death penelty is involved, which I believe was included as an anti-us provision.
The only special consideration I found for the us was defining "Competent Authority", which is left undefined for the other signatories.
I guess I would consider that an opinion --though of course rationally it makes sense-- without evidence that the UK officials who agreed to the treaty were intimidated into signing it due to a fear of violence (actual or financial or...) towards the UK from the US. My opinion is that the sort of people who signed the 2003 treaty were not particularly concerned about preserving civil rights for British citizens, and the 2003 treaty did normalize evidentiary standards between the two countries that had been lopsided in the UK's favor since 1870.
> Assange was a non-U.S. citizen working outside the U.S. - I don't get what gives the U.S. jurisdiction to try him in the first place.
There are tons of examples of this. Examples:
- If a US citizen conspires to insider trading with another US citizen on US soil regarding an Australian company, the Australian government will claim jurisdiction through the Corporations Act because it is an Australian security;
- There is a "sex tourism" problem in several South-East Asian countries that involves children. These pedophiles have historically been rarely if ever prosecuted in those countries for various reasons. The Australian government passed a law saying that if you are an Australian citizen and engage in this sort of activity you can be criminally charged in Australia.
> Adding insult to injury, publishing leaked military secrets is not even illegal in the U.S. due to the first amendment right to a free press
It's not as simple as that. Let me give you some escalating hypotheticals:
1. A journalist receives some classified material in the mail and publishes it after vetting it (eg journalists typically won't publish details that will risk the lives of those currently in the field);
2. A journalist meets with a source that has access to classified material and asks for anything concerning, say, Benghazi. These materials have already been obtained;
3. A journalist looks for and finds such a source;
4. A journalist tells a source what to look for and these materials have not yet been obtained;
5. The journalist provides direction on what to find and leak and provides material aid in that effort. This could include providing hacking tools, contacts, security protocols, etc.
(1) is a journalist. (5) has committed a crime. The line between criminal and journalist is somewhere in between that we debate.
My point is that the first amendment isn't a universal shield. Assange is much closer to (6) than (1) here.
> There is a "sex tourism" problem in several South-East Asian countries that involves children. These pedophiles have historically been rarely if ever prosecuted in those countries for various reasons. The Australian government passed a law saying that if you are an Australian citizen and engage in this sort of activity you can be criminally charged in Australia.
That example is irrelevant to the Assange case, because that is an application of the nationality principle, which is a principle of international law which gives sovereign states criminal jurisdiction over their citizens for acts done anywhere in the world. So legally Australia can pass a law saying "X is a crime when an Australian citizen does it anywhere in the world", which is exactly what Australia has done in the example you cite; and the US has done the exact same thing (PROTECT Act of 2003). But Assange is not a US citizen, so examples of nationality principle jurisdiction are irrelevant to any US prosecution of Assange, they would only be relevant if Australia tried to prosecute him under some law based on the nationality principle.
1) there is no point (6)
2) Although the US is trying to accuse Assange of doing so, he did not offer material aid of any sort to Chelsea. She could handle the access issue herself.
Unless you would consider setting up a secure drop box under your imaginary (6).
Sure except for attempting to brute force the LM hashes and offer to get Manning a burner phone Assange provided no material aid to Manning at all. [0]
You don't get to vacillate between James Bond and Bob Woodward as it suits you. Assange has no reasonable claims of protection that an actual journalist might.
These are such weak claims. You'd say the same thing if Assange got Manning an Uber or a coffee. Assange is an individual journalist that prodded an endlessly powerful and secret intelligence apparatus and revealed their evil doings. Don't pick the wrong side, especially due to supposed technicalities.
>Don't pick the wrong side, especially due to supposed technicalities.
Not GP, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean about "picking a side."
Facts:
Assange published stolen documents;
Chelsea Manning illegally (whether that was moral/right depends on your belief system. Personally, I'm glad she did) appropriated classified government documents. That's a crime;
The US government alleges (note the term 'alleges') that Assange conspired with Manning and assisted her in illegally obtaining the aforementioned documents;
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) sought and received an indictment for the stuff they allege (there's that word again) Assange did.
// End list of facts.
From a personal perspective, I'm glad that much (not all) of this stuff was revealed.
What's more, publishing information that's newsworthy and/or in the public interest is pretty much what journalism is all about.
That said, the circus surrounding all this is mostly of Assange's making.
Even more, unless I'm called to sit on the jury at Assange's trial, I don't really have much else to say about it.
If (and that's a big 'if') the DoJ can prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that Assange violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, then it's likely he'll be sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison.
The other charges (based on the Espionage Act of 1917) against him aren't credible and no journalist has ever been convicted of such charges in the US. As such, it's unlikely in the extreme that Assange will be.
So. Which "side" am I on, in your estimation?
I'd say I'm on the only side that matters -- the side of facts, evidence and the rule of law.
No journalist has been convicted under the espionage act _because_ no journalist has seen a courtroom under the espionage act. We're already in unprecedented territory with this action. Claiming that it's fine because the end goal has never been achieved when we've never gone this far in the first place seems specious.
The DoJ obviously believes these charges will stick, otherwise it'd be in the administration's best interest to not actually see trial and keep the threat viable.
>The DoJ obviously believes these charges will stick, otherwise it'd be in the administration's best interest to not actually see trial and keep the threat viable.
Prosecutorial overcharging[0] is pretty much de rigueur and happens all the time.
Prosecutors are very aware of when they're on the grey side of the law, and when it's clear they're up against a defense that has a chance of clear precedent against them, prosecutors start acting much more conservatively.
>I'd say I'm on the only side that matters -- the side of facts, evidence and the rule of law.
>What say you?
I would say that same side had some points a few years ago how all that mattered were the Swedish accusations and it was absurd to think they were just sham accusations to get Assange extradited. I would say that that side's naiveness and wishful thinking is actually harmful to justice as a higher concept.
>I would say that same side had some points a few years ago how all that mattered were the Swedish accusations and it was absurd to think they were just sham accusations to get Assange extradited. I would say that that side's naiveness and wishful thinking is actually harmful to justice as a higher concept.
And what do the facts, evidence and rule of law say about those accusations?
>Ever heard of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Pentagon papers?
Yes. And the Washington Post and the New York Times also published stolen documents (in that case, as you stated, the Pentagon Papers).
Assange published stolen documents. So did WaPo and NYT. So what?
I don't see a difference there. Publishing stuff that's newsworthy or in the public interest is journalism.
Clearly I'm missing your point. Do you think that by stating that particular fact, I was taking a swipe at Assange? Or do you not believe that those documents were stolen? Or are you trying to make some other, still opaque to me, point?
If you knowingly participate in or act in furtherance of a crime, that's also a crime. No journalist has been convicted under the Espionage Act. The reason isn't because actual real journalists don't expose things that embarrass the US government. It's because they don't participate in the exfiltration of controlled documents or direct sources to gather specific information.
The case on Manning is not the only time [0] that Assange played spymaster while hiding behind claims of being a journalist.
Assange says he passed it onto his "LM guy". Do we know who that was?
It would be interesting to see him identify his "LM guy" while under oath. Is the act of passing the hash over to a LM cracking expert a criminal act unbecoming of a journalist?
That's a time-stamped conversation. I wonder if the US captured any other comms to/from Assange around that time so they could already guess who the "LM guy" is. Very concerning.
"- If a US citizen conspires to insider trading with another US citizen on US soil regarding an Australian company, the Australian government will claim jurisdiction through the Corporations Act because it is an Australian security;"
This is so wrong in so many ways:
1 - Corporations Act, neither in Australia nor it's UK equivalent, do not deal with securities fraud or insider trading - it's a separate body of law.
2 - Think about implications of your claim, when you buy shares of American, Chinese, British and Russian companies on Robinhood / Trading212, etc. you do not become bound by security exchange laws of four different countries. This would be legally absurd as the laws differ and conflict significantly
3 - it's not a cut-and-dry 'Australian security' - if the security is issued listed on a stock exchange, say NASDAQ, and it's issuance is governed by the laws of the country where stock exchange is located. But a general investor never even deals with a stock exchange.
4 - When some brokerage is offering financial instruments in UK, the contract is between yourself and their UK branch, and regulated by UK Financial Conduct Authority. There is no foreign jurisdiction involved.
5 - as a general rule, an average citizen is not expected to know laws of other countries they have never travelled to and generally cannot be tried by other countries for their actions in their home country. They may be tried by their home country for their actions abroad, but not the other way round. Almost every exception to this has been related to hacking, and where they did happen these cases are highly controversial even among legal scholars.
That’s interesting, I didn’t know number 5 was actually a crime (other than the “hacking tools”). So maybe the US potentially does have an actual case.. I just assumed that we were having a witch hunt since people in power got mad at Assange
There is no evidence of hacking tools used by Assange, or offered by Assange to Chelsea.
Unless you consider secure drop hacking.
But then many other journalists are hacking too.
And that's the point - to have a chilling effect on the press.
The actually contents of this article is just Assange's own lawyer complaining that it is difficult to meet with a client who is on remand in a high security prison. As far as I can see the phrase "denied access" is not even used. The only actual quote is "obstructed".
This is not what "UK has denied Assange access to a lawyer" means. You are deliberately using the language of more serious issues in order to confuse people.
I am sure you know full well the meaning of "denied access to a lawyer", it is something that people around the world actually experience regularly. This does not apply to someone who has met regularly with his world class defence team.
Of course, they did not prevent access with merely regulating access in a high security prison. They prevented access to his lawyer by physically restraining and locking up the suspect IN A COURTROOM. And when they did find a VERY inconvenient way to have basic communication, the state immediately dragged the suspect out, without even the judge's permission.
We are NOT talking here about regulating access to a lawyer because of security issues. That is NOT it. They prevented him from seeing a lawyer at all before the case starts, and before he faced the courtroom. This is explicitly forbidden.
And look the question is very simple. The law, both in the UK and the US, so pick whichever one you like, CLEARLY states that
IF anyone in the government physicially prevents contact between a suspect and a lawyer before trial (which means any individual courtroom hearing), the state LOSES the case AND the suspect goes free for whatever crime he was accused.
And let's not pretend this is the only issue. The state denied medical care to a prisoner. The state locked him up in solitary more than is legally allowed. The state denied medical care again, as a punishment. EACH OF THESE will get the suspect to go free, whatever the crime. And the list goes on.
At this point it's painfully obvious: it does not matter, at all, what Assange has done for the prosecution. And because of what the state did to him, it no longer matters for the defense either. This is no longer what is being discussed.
The case is mostly about whether the state gets to do whatever they want, including things defined in the law as torture (e.g. refusing medical care, refusing medical care as a punishment) in order to get a conviction?
The law's answer to this question is VERY clear: NO THEY DON'T, in fact they (the state) should be punished for trying it in the first place. Frankly the laws state the state should be punished for getting into a situation where they're even suspected of doing so. First by being forced to let the suspect go, and there's punishments on top of that (such as getting the individuals involved barred from government service). The judge refuses to acknowledge this, despite accepting that the state did indeed torture him.
Obviously at this point, the position of anyone is clear: we should be cheering for the defense. Unless you want allpowerfull police just beating up people, locking them up for years, for whatever reason they see fit. And your position on what Assange did, does not really matter.
Long, aggressive, and vague comments like this are very difficult to respond to because it's hard to understand what you are actually saying.
> "They prevented him from seeing a lawyer at all before the case starts, and before he faced the courtroom"
What do you mean by this? Are you saying that before his first hearing regarding the US extradition, he had not met with his lawyers at all?
Regarding the rest of your comment, it appears that you think there is some kind of IFTTT list of things that somehow "get the suspect to go free, whatever the crime". That's not how it works. You can have a prosecution stayed as an "abuse of process", but there's no single law covering this, just a patchwork of precedent. The definitive legal textbook on this (Abuse of Process in Criminal Proceedings) was actually co-written by one of Assange's lawyers. If this avenue was open to him they surely would have taken it.
(I) This is a case where it's possible the act by the non-citizen is criminal in the US as well; plus the stock exchanges of the world are interlinked in various way, so it has some not-very-indirect negative impact on US companies and citizens. Also, do such things ever happen?
(II) You're establishing GP's point, which is that a special law was needed for extradition in this case.
----------
About your Journalist vs Criminal dichotomy:
* You only mentioned 5 scenarios but refer to a sixth... let's assume you mean just 5.
* GP can't be construed as having discussed option (5), but rather options (1) - (3).
* Something may be defined as a crime by law but be unconstitutional; and the law may yet be struck down by the courts. Law strike-downs happen occasionally in the US, after all.
* Can you provide reference to the claim that (5) is squarely a (federal) crime in the US? That is, that established journalists have been found guilty of doing this?
* Would you claim that scenario (6) is also a crime in the US, where in this scenario the journalist does not tell the source what to look for, and only provides guidance on how to use computing systems and networks discreetly and securely?
> (II) You're establishing GP's point, which is that a special law was needed for extradition in this case.
I beg to differ. A law was needed to establish jurisdiction and a crime just like a law is required for every such case. If you commit a similar crime on Australian soil, it's only illegal because a law exists to make it so (rightly).
> Can you provide reference to the claim that (5) is squarely a (federal) crime in the US?
My point is that every "right" in the US constitution is not absolute or without exceptions. Every single one. The above is a thought experiment to prove that. Put another way: the First Amendment is not a blanket defense. In procuring a story that you publish, you will reach a limit on your actions beyond which you've committed a crime and the First Amendment won't shield you from that.
Like... that's just obvious.
So what particular circumstances lead to a journalist committing a crime is irrelevant. The point is that there is a line, not what the particular line is.
I'm sorry to be short in reply to such a well written post but - the first amendment doesn't matter, he's not an American, it's not his right to be protected or prosecuted over.
> How is he subject to US law but not the US constitution?
The Constitutional rights of foreign foreign nationals is complicated [1]. Long story short, the Constitution may not protect them as fully as it does U.S. persons (Americans and foreigners on American soil).
Thanks for posting the article, it's pretty well summarized by:
> ... it is not surprising that many members of the general public presume that noncitizens do not deserve the
same rights as citizens. But the presumption is wrong in many more respects than it is right. While some distinctions between foreign nationals and citizens are normatively justified and consistent with constitutional and international law, most are not.
Non-citizens don't have a fundamental right to vote, or to enter the country. Non-citizens cannot hold federal office. Non-citizens accused of crimes may be held in jail pending their trial in situations where citizens would be free pending trial. But that's a pretty short list. In fact nearly all fundamental freedoms of the Bill of Rights (speech/press/religion/assembly) and rights to a fair trial apply to citizens and non-citizens alike.
Because if a state goes against this principle then the US might just kick it off the inter-back clearance system (SWIFT), or invade it, or engineer a coup against its government, or a combination of the above.
People somehow lose their ability to utilize Aristotelian logic when it comes to Assange. The unparalleled wave of propaganda unified against Assange makes people unable to question the narrative.
The First Amendment is part of an American document describing American precepts of law for the American government. Specifically, it prevents the American legislative body known as Congress (who represents, exclusively, the American electorate) from passing laws abridging the freedom of speech. It's implied that the First Amendment only applies to Americans, for the same reason that, say, the laws of the EU or Russia don't apply to Americans. Governments only have sovereign authority over their citizens.
Mind you, the First Amendment and freedom of speech are related, but not the same, and one can easily argue that freedom of speech is universal, but not the American Constitution.
That's not the interpretation the courts have taken. Essentially you can't take the constitution as a whole and say it applies to Americans or not. There are rights specifically conveyed to citizens (like voting). Those are clearly American only. Then in contrast to that there are rights conveyed to people generally, and rights formed as blanket restrictions on government. Those are interpreted as equally applying to non Americans.
> Those are interpreted as equally applying to non Americans.
But, oddly, as not applying fully to acts of the American government taken outside of the borders of the United States, which is why Gitmo is used for sketchy War on Terror detentions, and not any place on sovereign US territory rather than territory notionally leased by the US from a foreign sovereign.
I think that's in the realm of grey legal theory that hasn't been tested in court. But yes, that's a great point, and I coincidentally just said something similar in another comment.
> I think that's in the realm of grey legal theory that hasn't been tested in court.
Johnson v Eisentrager (1950) is the landmark case, but its been fleshed out subsequently (and most of those decisions have narrowed the apparent gap in the Constitution it opened up), largely in response to the decision to use Gitmo as a get out of law free card. But the existence of that decision is why Gitmo got used.
And given the split on those decisions limiting Eisentrager, I wouldn't want to see what the current court would do with cases in that area...
> It's implied that the First Amendment only applies to Americans, for the same reason that, say, the laws of the EU or Russia don't apply to Americans.
The laws of the EU or Russia certainly do apply to Americans in EU or Russia. In fact they apply to anyone within the respective jurisdictions.
The 1st Amendment is a moot point as Assange is not being sought for "speech" he has made but for criminal conspiracy and providing material support in furtherance of a crime.
The US Constitution does apply to anyone the US Federal Government interacts in my opinion, as it is a definition and limitation of the powers of the US Federal Government. I know it hasn't been applied in practice many times and there are Americans who disagree with this stance but they're wrong just like some people were wrong about slavery.
I believe it's an open legal question. That's one reason why the prison at gitmo is where it is, so that the prisoners there were never brought on to US soil where the court system has the potential to grant them more rights.
> those leaders essentially committed mass-murder from a distance
are you condoning drone strikes? (serious question). i believe people (including elected bourgeois leaders) should be held accountable. the US govt. are accusing Snowden and Assange of being "high-tech terrorists" (Biden [1]), so why cannot i refer to these people as murderers?
> US propertied class
this is merely a fact. the people in power are predominantly those who own property or intellectual property. a lot of people do not own their homes and have to rent, neither do they own IP so they have to work for their money (receive a wage). i am referring to these power structures based on my own beliefs ("be ruthless to systems, be kind to people").
> US propertied class' illegitimate 'war on terror'
at this point i'm pretty sure not many are claiming it is was a legitimate war... are you?
was the flagging because of something else? if yes, please share.
it just feels dishonest to censor stuff you don't personally agree with, especially since it received a bunch of upvotes. a 'don't make it political' stance seems naive to me because of course no system is (or ever can be) neutral, since there always many voices at the table.
i don't think it's fun to write this, i just want to call you out on what i perceive are a few double standards you have. i appreciate the moderation and the space to discuss the role of tech in society, and it just surprises me when things get censored or the host party decides to interfere (especially a comment that isn't downvoted to hell or actively harmful to someone (or misogynistic, racist, homophobic or transphobic)). until we have a more distributed web a la ActivityPub, SSB, DAT, IPFS, holochain etc., we all have to make the most of this centralized tech.
Mods didn't flag it or even see it until now. Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I'd say the comment was a direct step further into flamewar, so the flags were justified.
A comment that begins "wow so you're essentially [doing completely indefensible $thing]" and ends "serious question: how do you justify this in your mind?" is not the kind of discussion we want on HN. It at least broke these guidelines:
"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
It also crosses into personal attack.
I'm sure you can make your substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, so could you please do that instead? I don't have any problem with your views (I don't know what they are actually), but we need users to abide by the site guidelines. It's not as if every other commenter in the thread was doing a great job of it either but, as I said already, your comment was a noticeable step further into flamewar hell.
> If China tried to extradite a U.S. citizen acting within the U.S. who published leaked information allegedly in violation of Chinese law, we'd laugh them out of the courtroom, and rightly so.
Right, because China isn’t an ally. If a US citizen leaked confidential secrets from Japan or the UK it would be a very different story.
For instance, if this has happened in China there’s no chance they are extradited.
> And in this case, that already happened: Manning served 7 years in jail for leaking the very information that Assange is being extradited over. With the leaker found and prosecuted, convicted, and sentence served, the U.S. Department of Justice should congratulate itself on a job well-done and move on to other things. It's absurd that they continue to pursue the publisher of the information almost a decade later.
That's not really how the justice system works, or should work. If two people commit a crime together, one of them is caught right away and punished for the crime, and the second is caught ten years later, would you expect the second person to go free because the first person was already caught? Of course not.
I don't think Assange should be extradited by the way, but this is a very bad argument, in addition to some of the criticism of various sibling comments.
Two people didn’t commit a crime together. Parent’s argument is that Assange didn’t commit any crime, because publishing secrets isn’t illegal, only when you’ve agreed to keep it secret (security clearance) can you be prosecuted.
> I don't get what gives the U.S. jurisdiction to try him in the first place.
Complex foreign policy. The U.S. has jurisdiction because the country who has him says that they do. They could just as easily tell the U.S. to jump in a lake.
> publishing leaked military secrets is not even illegal in the U.S.
Then he will win. He is also charged with hacking though.
> Then he will win. He is also charged with hacking though.
That charge is laughable. The US government is very much going for the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach, backed by humongous amounts of soft power.
I don't see how anyone looking at the facts of the affair (the false rape charge, the grievous violations of international law, the amazing procedural irregularities of the first extradition hearing) can see this as anything but a thinly-veiled attempt to make an example out of a political opponent.
The idea that there could be anything resembling a fair trial is simply laughable. The US has been trying to kill Assange for more than a decade, he will be basically dead as soon as they get their filthy hands on him.
> publishing leaked military secrets is not even illegal in the U.S. due to the first amendment right to a free press
How does him not being a citizen affect this? Granted, I won't be too surprised if the double speak is that he's not protected by law, but simultaneously subject to our laws.
There's very little mention of this in the news. This is the most important fight for Press Freedom in our time. If we allow this precedent to be set, then nobody will be able to report on the security state at all. We cannot allow the so-called "espionage laws" erode democracy.
> This is the most important fight for Press Freedom in our time.
I beg to differ. Journalists are assassinated regularly for their work. More often than not this happens as the result of investigations into corruption. I wouldn't put Assange's work over what those people are doing.
Assassination is already illegal, there is no legal precedent to fight on that front. On the other hand, letting Julian Assange be judged as guilty here sets further legal precedent that it is illegal to published leaked classified information.
> There's very little mention of this in the news.
Associated Press, NPR, CBS, Yahoo News, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, Reuters UK, France24, Sydney Morning Herald and SKY News all covered this.
When you can even find an article about Assange from these mainstream rags, buried under pages of coivd/climate/race-baiting "news", it is invariably in support of his continued incarceration and punishment.
It was pretty easy for me to go to most of those websites that the user linked to, and find the Assange headline with very little scrolling, often only the fifth or sixth article down - not "buried under pages", but still a part of equally important news from around the world. Where I couldn't find it a couple of times on the front pages, it was at or towards the top of the "Tech" section, and then only superceded by FB's Meta announcement.
Please provide links and direct quotes for evidence that the news organizations I linked to published news with a bias "in support of his continued incarceration and punishment."
I just checked CBS News, Yahoo News, Washington Post and the Guardian.
None of them have this mentioned on their front pages. So, maybe they had a 20-second bit about it at some point, to claim that they covered it, but - they're suppressing this story.
What do you even mean with "if we allow this precedent to be set"? The precedent has long been set. This man's life is completely ruined, and so is his health. They hunted and imprisoned him for a decade, based on complete bogus claims and fabrications. The rape case that is now dropped. The espionage case with a crooked lying key witness. The ship has already sailed, the evil won this time, no matter what the court decides. They will make up bogus charges until he shuffles off this mortal coil.
I assume the reason for this is that many journalists out there don't consider Assange as a journalist and therefore the whole thing no fight for "Press Freedom".
It is so plainly obvious that this "prosecution" of Assange is so political that he should not be extradited. Yet, it's the fact that US prisons are so inhumane that is keeping Assange out of the US. What a national embarrassment.
That’s not what that means. See [1] - “States will define as political crimes any behaviour perceived as a threat, real or imagined, to the state's survival, including both violent and non-violent oppositional crimes”
As in it’s political not because of party politics, but because it’s threatened the power of politically powerful people and agencies in the US establishment.
Wow, when I first heard the US's "assurances" I thought they were bullshit as they could just put him in some other terrible prison with some other kind of special measures. Apparently I gave the US far too much credit, the actual assurances given don't even need crafty loopholes to be avoided. They can just stick him in ADX with SAMs for new transgressions.
I think this is really the most interesting part of the story. It is an impressive excoriation against the US Bureau of Prisons and its policies.
The US loosing an extradition case from its very closest ally because the US prison system cannot be trusted to keep even white collar "criminals" (loosely) alive would globally confirm that the US is a human rights violator.
> No timeline was given for a decision, but we expect it to take weeks if not months.
It's strange to think that after all this time, Assange could walk away a free man by the end of the year, although it's not hard to imagine that some government will come up with another reason to arrest him (or worse) if that happens.
At any point from around 2011 the US could stop persecuting the man and it seems quite likely that all his legal problems would just disappear in about that timeframe. All of this has been a cynical and persistent campaign from the States showing off how far beyond the strict legal jurisdiction they can reach when someone embarrasses the government.
The argument that he's a flight risk is quite strong, supported by his historic behaviour.
No, I don't think they should be holding him at all, given that extradition has already been refused, but this is about punishment and vengeance and politics, not about right, wrong or justice.
I don't see any content in that PDF that relates to what you claim to be using it as a citation for. Linking to a 130 page document legal document and providing no quote or source section seems like a bad faith use of citations to bolster your argument without actually providing any facts.
The fact is that Assange kept in conditions that were not only deemed solitary isolation by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, but also qualify as solitary isolation under British , EU and UN law. [0]
The article you've linked seems to be claiming that being in the healthcare unit is the "solitary confinement". This is why I asked you which nine months you are saying you think he was in "solitary confinement", as you said that they predated his time in the healthcare unit but this is impossible as he moved to the healthcare unit in May 2019.
The relevant quote from my link is; "Dr. Blackwood confirmed that Mr. Assange was placed on an ACCT on arrival at the prison; on 18 May 2019 he was admitted to the healthcare unit; and, on 21 December 2019, he was returned to ordinary location.".
It is absolute nonsense to describe being in the healthcare unit as solitary confinement and it absolutely does NOT qualify as solitary isolation under British law, or EU law or UN law.
Assange's supporters have an absurd habit of exaggerating his suffering. They even claimed being in the embassy was "solitary confinement"!! [0]. While in the healthcare unit he still had all his usual prison visits etc (there are plenty of blogs out there of people who visited him during this time, several a month), and of course regular contact with healthcare professionals. He did have less contact with other inmates (but not none) which apparently had a negative impact on his mental health.
He was moved to the healthcare unit for good reason (they found a razor hidden in his cell and assessed him as a suicide risk). There is absolutely nothing to suggest HMPPS have anything other than his interests in mind. All of this is covered in the judgment if you could be bothered to read it rather than accusing me incorrectly of not knowing the facts.
> It is absolute nonsense to describe being in the healthcare unit as solitary confinement and it absolutely does NOT qualify as solitary isolation under British law, or EU law or UN law.
The article I linked makes a very strong argument that the location and/or reason for solitary confinement does not change its nature. Indeed when the British prison system uses "segregation" to curtail contact with other prisoners there is an official approval and review process that is designed to asses impacts on the prisoner's mental health. The "healthcare" isolation didn't involve any such process.
The article also lays out exactly how Assange's isolation for 22 hours a day qualifies as "solitary confinement" under both UN and EU laws. Are you disputing the facts of Assanges isolation or the interpretation of these laws?
> There is absolutely nothing to suggest HMPPS have anything other than his interests in mind.
I think it is pretty damning that a nonviolent prisoner was placed in a maximum security prison for a parole violation and then placed in isolation in a manner that bypassed the standard processes that would have protected Assange's mental health during that isolation.
If the HMPPS had really had Assange's interests in mind, he would have been placed at a medium or low security psychiatric facility.
> All of this is covered in the judgment if you could be bothered to read it rather than accusing me incorrectly of not knowing the facts.
Please indicate where this is all covered in that judgement as I can't address the entire document in a hope that I cover the sections you are referencing.
It's difficult to engage constructively with you because it is obvious you have come to your conclusions based on reading extremely biased sources and you refuse to read primary sources. You also Gish gallop around which is enervating to deal with.
You haven't addressed my question so I am going to assume that you now realise you were wrong in what you said, but don't want to admit it.
Your argument has now evolved from a factual one that can be disproved (9 months in solitary confinement), to a conspiracy theory; Assange was put in the healthcare unit against his interests, as a political punishment. This has no factual basis. It is for you to prove this claim.
>No charges in the UK, and the extradition was denied. He should not have been detained between the extradition being denied and this appeal trial.
I'm not familiar with UK law, nor am I well informed about the penalties for jumping bail there. Was Assange held on charges related to that?
It's also not entirely clear to me what responsibilities the UK government has with respect to its extradition treaty with the US. Is the UK treaty-bound to hold Assange based on the US indictment?
Since you seem better informed about this than I am, perhaps you could provide some detail about that?
Assuming that your assertion is correct, the UK government has some explaining to do.
> I'm not familiar with UK law, nor am I well informed about the penalties for jumping bail there. Was Assange held on charges related to that?
Yes, he was tried and convicted, and has now served the 50 week jail sentence (he was convicted 1 May 2019 after 6 years 10 months on the run).
> It's also not entirely clear to me what responsibilities the UK government has with respect to its extradition treaty with the US. Is the UK treaty-bound to hold Assange based on the US indictment?
Yes. They could be released on bail, but if you are a convicted criminal whos crime was jumping bail the last time you were released on bail, you are going to have a tough time convincing a judge that 'its different this time'.
Bail in extradition cases is covered by the Bail Act 1976. Where the requested person is wanted to face an accusation, the starting point is that there is a ‘presumption in favour’ of bail.
> Assuming that your assertion is correct, the UK government has some explaining to do.
> In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs.
Sounds like a good reason to be a threat, albeit a not so smart one.
It’s scary how little coverage this has in traditional news media. Breaking Points covered this yesterday, although YouTube flagged this video with an age inappropriate warning and demonetized it. I get two different pop up modal warnings when I try to view this:
https://youtu.be/dcSMcSwI7K0
From the perspective of freedom of the press in the United States, the best way for Assange's case to help journalism and journalists exposing state secrets would be for him to be successfully extradited and to be acquitted at trial for his purported crimes.
The extradition circus is really just that. The problem is not extradition or venue, it is that under the US Constitution and the First Amendment he should be entirely shielded from any of this, and we need a court to declare that, otherwise the government can continue to use the cudgel of pretrial detention and heavy-handed plea bargaining to continue to punish individuals who expose government acts.
- Assange flees to embassy and stays there for 7 years
- They'll never turn him over the police
- Assange is turned over to the police
- They'll never extradite him
- If they'll extradite him and he'll be acquitted...
Sure.
Really, if Assange is extradited to the United States he will be convicted and while he is in jail there will be many new reasons found to keep him in jail, in as uncomfortable a way as possible. The US is pretty vengeful, especially against those who make their wrong-doings plain as day. Fortunately at least in a US jail he'll be safe from suicide. Oh, wait.
Don't get me wrong, if I were Assange I would fight this extradition to the bitter end. Pretrial detention alone is an incredibly harsh punishment (and why he won the first extradition case).
Despite the US's vengefulness, Chelsea Manning is now free, if not entirely left to her devices, and she's the one who actually leaked the information that Assange is being indicted in reference to. Reality Winner is in a halfway house now. Things are not so bleak as you picture here. Both of them had plea deals, and although Manning was put on trial, it was not in front of a jury. We desperately need a reckoning to decide if we're a country that will imprison people for speech.
Isn’t part of the accusation that he directly assisted in the actual extraction of the data by providing guidance? If so, I wouldn’t assume he’ll be acquitted.
There is also precedent for closed trials and sealed/only presented in chambers evidence in states secrets cases which allow a lot of shenanigans to go on.
It’s entirely possible they could railroad him.
It’s also possible they couldn’t. Either way if it was me, not sure I’d go willingly back into that lions den after the amount of BS and effort already thrown my way.
>Isn’t part of the accusation that he directly assisted in the actual extraction of the data by providing guidance?
No. The accusation is that he offered to try to crack a password to allow an alternative extraction method that would have possibly kept Manning's identity secret.
Whether he actually tried to crack the password is unclear, but it's known that Manning did not use the method for any of the documents she extracted.
They could still try and railroad him for agreeing to try and crack the password, but Assange did not assist in the actual extraction.
Seems like something they could easily use to try to get him on conspiracy for, even if never used, since having the discussion and providing techniques even if never used is a concrete action in furtherance of. If they wanted to try to throw the book at him.
>From the perspective of freedom of the press in the United States, the best way for Assange's case to help journalism and journalists exposing state secrets would be for him to be successfully extradited and to be acquitted at trial for his purported crimes.
IIUC, the charges[0] against Assange are for violations of the Espionage Act of 1917[1] and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)[2].
No journalist has ever been convicted under the Espionage Act. As such, it's unlikely in the extreme that Assange would be.
The charges under the CFAA are, as I understand it, based on providing advice to Chelsea Manning. Which seems pretty weak sauce for a conviction. What's more, even if Assange were convicted for those charges, he'd face a maximum sentence of five years (with 54 days per year sentence reduction for good behavior).
I would expect that any plea deal would include only the CFAA charges and that Assange would be sentenced to time served and immediately deported.
I say that because bringing all this up is more of an embarrassment to the US government than it is to Assange.
My take is that had Assange not jumped bail and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, he'd have served his time (if he was convicted at all) and would have been a free man for quite some time by now, albeit persona non grata in the US.
Your NB should have been "I am not considering the fact that the US has been conspiring to kill and otherwise harm him, and has already engaged in illegal acts for that purpose."
had Assange not jumped bail and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, he'd have served his time (if he was convicted at all) and would have been a free man for quite some time by now, albeit persona non grata in the US.
"To highlight just how justified Assange’s fears have been, Fitzgerald also reminded the court of the recent Yahoo News revelations...that the CIA under the Trump Administration made serious plans to kidnap and even assassinate Julian Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London."
That seems like it would undermine the rough basis of the US appeal, that they can offer assurances about humane treatment.
maybe the argument will be that since the CIA is not authorized to operate on U.S soil the only way to keep Assange from being assassinated by the CIA is to place him in a U.S prison.
A key witness against Assange is a convicted pedophile and sociopath who was being paid by the US government and offered immunity in exchange for his testimony. He has since admitted that his testimony was false.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/06/27/assange-prosecution-...
Say what you will about what he has done in his life and feel free to have your own opinion about the way he has handled himself during all of this... What should concern people is the publicly visible example of a human being having their inalienable human rights ignored.
It is debatable if what he did should be considered Journalism. Lots of legal questions about how U.S. laws should apply to people not citizens of the U.S. Tons of questions about his associations and about the 2016 election specifically...
Still, none of this is a reason to isolate someone for years without a trial or access to legal counsel. If the U.S. is going to apply its laws to Julian Assange, it needs to apply the basic rights that come along with it. He deserves a right to counsel, a speedy and fair public trial by a jury, the right to not have his liberty or property taken from him without due process happening FIRST.
These are all fundamental things we should all agree on regardless of the crime you have supposedly committed.
This strange fusion of the entertainment, legal and prison systems will not stop at Julian Assange. It was done to Chelsea Manning. If it can happen to them, it could happen to you one day.
TLDR; People have deserved a speedy and fair trial in western legal systems going back to when the Magna Carta was written. Whatever is happening here isn't justice.
> It is debatable if what he did should be considered Journalism.
How so? How is what he did any different than the New York Times publishing whistleblower documents? It's only "debatable" because the media he's in competition with says it is.
Let's be serious. He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever, absolutely zero chance of that happening. Yes if things were as they should be he shouldn't have fled and he would have had a fair trial with the guarantees it implies etc etc. But that wasn't going to happen.
> Let's be serious. He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever, absolutely zero chance of that happening.
We'll never know that and there is no way to know. What we do know is that instead of surrendering to the justice process of several countries, he sought asylum. Any claim that his justice process wasn't speedy has to factor that in.
His fear was not reaching the Swedish courts. Sweden has a habit of colluding with the CIA to illegally kidnap residents off of the street at night, and flying them to foreign prisons that have a more lassiez faire approach to torture.
Britain in contrast makes it's former colony follow it's actual extradition process as a matter of honor. The closest the CIA has gotten to extraordinary rendition in British territory is occasionally allowing a CIA rendition flight to refuel in a far off territory, but even that was a huge scandal.
>He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever
You state your very arguable opinion as some kind of fact. It's not. It's your opinion. The US is a country with rule of law, and this would have been a very public trial with tons of people coming to his legal aid. Even Manning got a fair trial, for a crime that Assange coaxed and encouraged him to commit by the way.
For criminal contempt of court, in a very scrutinized and controversial decision that is freely debated and will be settled case law when it's through the process.
>USA has refused to extradite Warren Martin Anderson
Citing lack of evidence.
>You chance of going to jail is inversely proportional to how wealthy you are:
You ability to hire good lawyers is proportional to how wealthy you are.
It's unclear what these tidbits are supposed to illustrate. Failing to effectively remedy inequality with pro bono legal aid means your country's judicial system is flawed, and judges make arguable and controversial decisions. This does not mean the country is not governed by law.
How about the case of Posada Carriles, a terrorist and CIA operative that blew up 73 people on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, was there also lack of evidence?
Do you believe that USA is fair and impartial when it comes to international affairs? If USA blatantly violates international law it claims to uphold, do we have rule of law?
"your country's judicial system is flawed... This does not mean the country is not governed by law."
Thats exactly what it means, at some point the system is so flawed you are not governed by law.
We could debate how flawed it is, but it seems to be getting worse.
"For the first time, the United States fell out of the top 20 countries for adherence to the rule of law in an index compiled by the World Justice Project."
Remind me, when were the people who shot at a van that was trying to carry wounded from the collateral murder video tried, again? And how much priority it had over some leaker?
A context-free video purposefully edited to remove, for example, the presence of weapons[0]. Guess what? Mistakes happen in war all the time. There are sometimes clear cases of criminal behaviour, such as in Abu Ghraib, but most of the time the ultimate responsibility lies with whoever orders the troops into the combat zone where they will inevitably mistakenly kill civilians, not with the troops themselves.
It's Baghdad, everyone has AKs. It's not highlighted because it's completely orthogonal to the topic at hand. The mere presence of AKs has never been carte blanche for use of force in Iraq.
>Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, said of the airstrike:
>It is precisely the presence of weapons, including RPGs, that goes a long distance toward explaining why cameramen for Reuters—pointing television cameras around corners in a battle zone—were readily mistaken by our gunships for insurgents. The video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniforms—a violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. Responsibility for civilian deaths in such encounters rests with those who violate the rules of war. The Wikileaks videos also do not reveal the hundreds upon hundreds of cases in which American forces refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm's way.
> It is precisely the presence of weapons, including RPGs, that goes a long distance toward explaining why cameramen for Reuters—pointing television cameras around corners in a battle zone—were readily mistaken by our gunships for insurgents.
There weren't RPGs, and even if there were, the presence of RPGs have never been a valid cause for use of force under any Iraq ROE. It's not just international law that was broken, but internal US military regulations on the matter as well.
> The video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniforms—a violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. Responsibility for civilian deaths in such encounters rests with those who violate the rules of war.
The other side committing war crimes is not carte blanche for you to do so as well.
> The Wikileaks videos also do not reveal the hundreds upon hundreds of cases in which American forces refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm's way.
'We should get a pass on war crimes because of all those other times we didn't commit war crimes (or didn't get caught).' I don't think they even tried that specious of an argument during Nuremberg.
Just because something is morally/ethically sound doesn't mean it's legal. The part of 'choosing the break the law to expose things for the public good' that makes it heroic is 'choosing the face the consequences of breaking the law'.
So by your logic the guy that exposed 2TB of videos of rapes and tortures in Russian jail recently should have stayed in Russia so that he can face the music and get some first-hand experience? After all he broke laws in Russia and exposed 'secret government data'?
I mean, maybe, if that guy wanted to stay around to try and improve his country. Maybe not if he valued his life.
But that doesn't change the fact that it was a crime, does it? Remember, the comment I replied to was saying that Chelsea Manning did not commit a crime when they leaked secret American military information while a serving member of the US armed forces.
You might - and I would - argue that Manning did something that is a good thing for the world, but that doesn't mean saying that it was a crime is 'post fact'. 'Post fact' is redefining the idea of 'illegal' to be 'only things I don't personally agree with', which is not a definition that survives contact with the real world.
Three Requirements for defence of necessity: (1) Urgent situation of imminent peril or danger (2) No reasonable legal alternative (3) Proportionality between harm inflicted and harm avoided
What if the bread my family needed was millions of dollars in cash from a bank... It was (1) urgent, (2) hard to do get any other way, (3) its not like anybody got hurt anyway.
The thing has been so deeply politicized that assuming things will end up as they should, Assange should fear for his life as a free man anyway; I'm sure he couldn't even think of visiting the US then fly away alive. After all that propaganda depicting him as enemy of the US, chances are that some thugs, whether because batshit crazy, or following orders, could attempt to kill him anyway. Possibly also at home in Australia.
The same applies to Edward Snowden: should he get the pardon one day, he'd still be a target for someone.
No matter how it ends, these guys have been already punished enough, and by forcing them to live in fear, some of that punishment will last forever.
I’m not so sure about that. There’s always the danger of making someone a martyr: I’d argue that both Snowden and Assange have passed their “impact peak” for want of a better term. They aren’t going to be able to repeat previous acts because they’re simply too well known now. If they were freed they would probably make public statements that antagonise folks but not much more. On the other hand, if they were killed they’d become a rallying cry. I’m not exactly tuned into batshit crazy circles but I can’t imagine there being all that much focus on Assange these days.
You’re not wrong about the general danger of this hyper-politicised era, though. To my mind the biggest danger is if a Supreme Court justice gets targeted. Feels entirely plausible, I have to assume (hope?) there are extensive security precautions taken behind the scenes.
Someone once explained to me the strategy of the US (and other govs).
They want to discourage future dissidents by making an example of people who oppose the status quo. They want the prospect of being a whistleblower to be as unpleasant as possible, without creating a martyr for people to rally around.
So they typically don't just kill the person. They might use poison to maim an adversary (Yushchenko, Litvinenko, ..). Make the person disappear. Discredit them. Shape the public opinion. Paint them as traitors. Countries have their own flavor, but it's basically the same playbook.
Making life hard for Snowden and Assange has a chilling effect for all people thinking about turning against their governments.
The Abu Garib whistleblower was not punished, he was protected.
Some of the actions of Manning and Assage fell way outside the prospect of 'Whiste blowing'.
Assange is being put to trial because preliminary evidence indicates that he was active participant in helping Manning in his activities and not just an agent of the press.
(You'll notice that the 'New York Times' Editors are not going to trial for things that they published).
The trial will result in either his acquittal or not.
That's it.
The US doesn't poison people for 'leaking revenge'.
even if you subscribe to the belief that the us doesn't poison people for 'leaking revenge,' there is still something to say about the legal intimidation tactics used to discourage dissidence.
just a while back, Rebekah Jones, the Floridian data scientist who leaked private COVID information to Florida emergency personnel, had her home raided. there's no real argument to be had whether the search was legal or not, since they attained a warrant and supposedly alerted her before their arrival, but the violent nature of the visit was definitely done to send a message. marching up to her house, kids and husband inside, with a troop of armed officers is definitely not necessary if all they wanted was her computer and to search her home. i have trauma just interacting with officers on routine traffic stops, can't imagine being a child and having a gun pointed at me, even worse, i can't imagine being a parent and feeling guilt for having put my family in that position. i'm not trying to make this political, but i don't want to be naive and say that these are the actions of a well-meaning group of people.
Assange could go back to running WikiLeaks and would probably run it better now. What you need to run WikiLeaks is the trust of sources, and all of the attention that has been given to Assange can only help.
Snowden would also be able to repeat his acts, because you can pass clearance if you have no criminal record, and he's never been tried.
>because you can pass clearance if you have no criminal record, and he's never been tried.
>(The second one is a joke, the first is not.)
Stranger things have happened although this would be pretty comical. Maybe the pendulum swings so much that we get a super progressive Millenial president and she makes Snowden head of NSA to clean up the agency. :)
Nonsense, FDR was only able to implement his transformative policies because the populace were on the verge of going after the elite in the country. They had to throw them some crumbs in the form of Social Security Act. This paved the way for Medicare and Medicaid. The country shifted to far leftist until the pendulum started to swing back to the right with the Civil Rights Act being the catalyst.
We are in similar circumstances in this decade where the nearly unrestricted capitalism of the Reagan era has clearly failed. What will be the breaking point that forces the pendulum back? I don't know. Maybe it will end up being the long tail of destruction in the post-COVID or era maybe something we haven't seen yet.
We will see a far leftist paradigm in this country in our lifetimes but it may end up being a time where many young people here will already be reaching older age. Oldest Millennials are 40+ now so many of them will never recover from the damage done already. Gen-Z may still have a chance. Hopefully Gen Alpha will not have to bear too much of the brunt of the current collapsing right wing paradigm and they can benefit from a Left leaning paradigm when they come of age in 20 years.
Why would any rational actor trust Assange now? He's shown himself to be a grand standing sociopath. It's also been made plain he's had and has an axe to grind against Western governments. He's a fellow traveller with Russian intelligence if not an unwitting asset (to be charitable).
Who would believe anything he has to say? Based on WikiLeaks' history under his direction no one could look at a WikiLeaks story and think they were getting any unvarnished truth. They could be sure they'd get posts disparaging or attacking Western governments...and that's about it.
Assange specifically has not just "passed his impact peak", he's kind of fallen off the edge. The biggest enemy to Assange's cause seems to be Assange. The reason there's relatively little attention to him is because a lot of people have seen his cookieness, ranging from some rather ... curious ... opinions, to support for authoritarian regimes, to the the sexual assault, to the whole mess in the Ecuadorian embassy.
If he were taken out thought none of that would matter any more, and public opinion would very much be in favour of Assange. The backlash against the US would be huge, and rightfully so.
The cases eventually just expired, and with all hubhub I think the Swedish prosecution also just realized it was becoming a bit pointless. There are some people who claim it was all fabricated by secret U.S. agents or whatever, but that's little more than a conspiracy theory – the allegations were pretty credible, although obviously never proven in court. As with many things, it's not just the allegations that are damning, but also Assange's response to them, which was less than graceful, to put it mildly.
I’m not sure why this is being downvoted, Assange certainly has burnt through a lot of good will with the kind of people that would have been his allies.
World leaders have some level of police protection. Which also has a second order effect - if you're serious about an attack, you need to do some planning. And that planning often comes to the attention of the police.
Sadly, if Assange does end up free the safest place for him will be somewhere like Russia, which will only further intensify the propaganda against him.
The difference there is that Snowden ended up in Russia unintentionally. There's a decent change he'd also be in custody now if he had made it to Ecuador though.
Though I think you're also unfairly blaming Assange for the Democrat's own failures, Assange's "personal beef" was not wanting someone who suggested he be drone striked to become president. I would also favor the person who hasn't called for my death.
Things like the collaboration is "self evident" or "speak for itself" are typical of propaganda. They basically say "we can't actually provide hard evidence of these claims, but we can point out enough odd things to make you assume our claim is correct."
In The Netherlands we have had our own "enemy of the state" Volkert van der Graaf. He killed upcoming right-of-center politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, some feared he might pull it off to become our prime minister.
Plenty of death threats were written as comments to news articles and on forums. "We'll eventually get him", "If he ever gets out of prison I am out to get him". Etc.
Nothing has come of it so far ( he is out of prison for some years ).
"Fortuyn's beliefs began to shift to the right in the 1990s, especially related to the immigration policies of the Netherlands. Fortuyn criticised multiculturalism, immigration and Islam in the Netherlands. He called Islam "a backward culture", and was quoted as saying that if it were legally possible, he would close the borders for Muslim immigrants."
He was also openly gay and used women's rights as a big talking point. In the sense that the far right is a taint, he was tainted; in the sense that it's an entire set of political beliefs, he didn't fit neatly into that box.
This kind of black-and-white thinking also applies to Assange and WikiLeaks, and has had the unfortunate effect of removing his support from both the left (because of the Guccifer leaks) and the right (because of the Collateral Murder leaks).
> In the sense that the far right is a taint, he was tainted; in the sense that it's an entire set of political beliefs, he didn't fit neatly into that box.
> He was also openly gay
you can be gay and be far-right. those are not somehow mutually exclusive. another example off the top of my head: Milo Yiannopoulos and Dave Rubin are both openly gay and far-right.
> This kind of black-and-white thinking
no. the issue here is doublespeak and misdefining commonly used words. like on that wikipedia page i linked to his far-right views are laid out in detail, yet it also notes that he asserted that these far-right ideas are not far-right.
i mean, unless you're arguing that islamophobia and anti-immigration aren't right-wing?
I'm arguing that "right" and "left" are a linear one-dimensional approximation of complex multi-dimensional beliefs.
I don't associate the far right with drug legalisation, women's and LGBT rights, the right to die, or direct democracy. Pim Fortuyn supported all of these. He was also rabidly bigoted against Muslims, in a way that intersected with his support for other minority groups. Political positions are complicated and sometimes you need more than two words to describe them.
i doesn’t really matter if he supported those things individually. look at Reagan proclaiming he is fighting for everyone (including the black community), yet then behind closed doors he refers to black people as “monkeys” (that famous call with Nixon) [1]. so it doesn’t matter if Pim held those beliefs, it matters what policies the party overall pursues, with whom they ally themselves, and what actions come after their stated political aims/programs. when we take a look at similar political parties that came before it does not look good.
my point is: pursuing certain xenophobic ideas and pushing for far-right change nearly always ultimately means you end up forfeiting these ‘smaller’ standpoints when push comes to shove.
e.g. from Pim’s wikipedia page (under 'Political career') it is well-described how he had already journeyed from being a marxist to becoming a free-market neo-liberal. if he hadn’t been killed i’m sure he would’ve further completed this arc and becoming a far-right neo-conservative populist politician like the Trumps, Baudets and Wilders of today.
> I'm arguing that "right" and "left" are a linear one-dimensional approximation of complex multi-dimensional beliefs.
did you mean “aren’t” instead of “are”? i’ll assume so, because it seems to make the most sense to me from your other arguments (if not then i am not following you at all)
you are trying to redefine the right to left political spectrum to a ‘both sides’ centrist view. this is a dangerous right-wing strategy that aims to reframe a debate on it's own terms; a deflection and distraction away from important systemic critiques (which ultimately leads to a continuation of a systemically violent status quo).
So if you are far-right, but only to brown people, you aren't far-right? This seems so obviously racist I can't believe you can argue for that position in good faith.
> So if you are far-right, but only to brown people
You can't be "far-right" to someone. It isn't a verb. And if someone only takes far right positions on the topic of brown people they aren't far right - they are something complicated that needs more description.
> You can't be "far-right" to someone. It isn't a verb.
i think you're willfully misinterpreting here to try to somehow discredit them or 'get' them, without actually offering any meaningful counterarguments. it's easy to understand what that person means.
> if someone only takes far right positions on the topic of brown people they aren't far right - they are something complicated that needs more description.
please would you elaborate? i haven't seen that before.
To figure out what political philosophy we'd need to know about their other, non-far-right-wing, views.
By definition and context, their other views are either mild right wing, neutral or left wing. We'd need to have specific information to classify them. It is impossible with only one, context specific and relatively common, view.
> i think you're willfully misinterpreting here to try...
Given I'm literally correct, a safer assumption is that I'm the sort of person who cares about being literally correct? Far-right isn't a verb. And racism against brown people is an extremely common thing across the political spectrum; it isn't enough to characterise someone as far right.
>"the murder was silently condoned by a large fraction on the left"
Is that known for a fact?
Implying that someone 'silently condoned' something is very convenient because it's basically impossible to prove or disprove, it's like accusing someone of thoughcrime.
A certain fraction of Twitter regularly celebrates the death of American politicians they personally dislike, and the Netherlands is populated by the same species as America. The only truly debatable word in that claim is "large."
"The only truly debatable word in that claim is "large.""
The difference between 'this has popular support' and 'there are a few nutjobs' is kinda key, don't you think? Otherwise you might as well write 'a large section of leftists cut off their own penises"
> also, the murder was silently condoned by a large fraction on the left.
That is not my impression at all. If there's any sort of "silent condoning" going on then it's very very silent indeed, as I've never encountered it in spite of spending plenty of time in leftist circles. No doubt you can find a few crazy extremists, but they do not get to define "a large fraction on the left".
If that was your goal then you utterly failed and this comment makes it worse. If you want to write something neutral it helps to first understand your own biases.
>Never underestimate the US crackpot population, we have cornered the market on nuts.
For the most part, it's hard to underestimate individual crackpots. Take them as a whole, and it's a different story however.
That said, Peter Medawar had it right[0]:
"The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the world put together."
Do you think it would be private citizens or the government that would kill him in the US?
Honestly I think it’s too obvious for the government to kill him while he’s in the US and they’d be much more likely to do it overseas. Plus some rando crackpot probably couldn’t even recognize him on the street.
He could live a rich person’s life in Manhattan for years and barely be noticed once the initial media frenzy died down.
Would we extradite other journalists if the United States said to do so. Why is Joe Biden following through on such things, it makes me personally extremely suspicious.
When he actively coached and encouraged Manning to steal top secret data from US government databases, and then released it wholesale without regard for its newsworthiness, he ceased being any definition of a journalist. Not sure what he is now, but the word choice I'd use for him is going to be heavily influenced by his later collaboration with Russian intelligence.
The guy that released evidence of torture in Russian jails to western media is fighting back against tyranny, but when the shoe is on the other foot the language changes
The 'patriotically' minded folks in Russia and US are surprisingly alike, and patriotic ideology is invariably full of hypocrisy.
I think if they were to run a country, it would look very much like Russia of today.
"She provided WikiLeaks with the video Collateral Murder, which showed the US army killing a dozen unarmed civilians, including two Reuters employees."
Steal documentation that showed in no uncertain terms that the security apparatus of the US government had abandoned any remaining respect they had for civil rights and the law.
Assange literally contacted the state department warning them that an ex employee who was angry was going to release the files without redacting names and the state department ignored that warning. This phone call was released last year but didn't get reported by the corporate media.
Your Russian intelligence allegations has absolutely zero proof behind it and simply a political Twitter talking point.
>The key witness against Assange is a convicted pedophile and sociopath who was being paid by the US government.
That's not all that unusual. In many cases, folks are brought to trial and convicted on the testimony of unsavory characters.
An excellent example of this is the conviction of John Gotti[0], who was convicted of (among other things) the murder of Paul Castellano[1].
The evidence against Gotti was largely based on information provided by Sammy "The Bull" Gravano[2].
All three of those guys are/were thoroughly disreputable people and stone killers. Gravano, despite his long and violent criminal career, was given a very short prison sentence and was then placed into the US' Witness Protection Program[3], giving him protection and financial support from the US Government.
Despite this, Gravano continued to be the gangster he always was and was convicted of additional crimes and sentenced to prison again (20 years in New York and 19 years on Arizona, served concurrently).
Just because someone is a scumbag, doesn't mean they can't play a part in prosecutions.
There are many other examples of this sort of thing as well.
>He has since admitted that his testimony was false.
Assuming that can be verified, it's a great point in Assange's defense. Which, I'm sure, won't be lost on his lawyers.
Of course not. They are always just innocent tourists, passing by on their way to marvel at cathedral spires. The mere suggestion otherwise is known as Russophobia.
The only safe place today for a whistleblower is China or Russia.
They can kidnap you like they did to the Venezuelan diplomat (violating the Vienna Convention) who was tasked to help secure food and medicine around the US embargo and sanctions. They can force the landing of your plane on friendly territory of a countries head of state like they did to Bolivia's Presidents Evo Morales plane over Austria (violating numerous UN and diplomatic treaties). They can try to kill you as the CIA planned for Assange as they do regularly (look up the Orwellian Disposition Matrix).
We live in a different era of empire where the corporate media and the corporate journalists are the ones calling for censorship.
The media used to "actively" report on matters like the Pentagon Papers, Church Commission, My Lai Massacre.
Decorated CIA officers like John Stockwell who exposed genocides and massacres in non-white countries were not muzzled (although denied an income from their whistleblowing). Daniel Ellsberg was free to roam.
It seems that the journalists who actively cover the machinations of the national surveillance state are primarily entrepreneurs (substack etc.) and not part of the corporate media apparatus.
> The only safe place today for a whistleblower is China or Russia.
Only if you are not blowing the whistle against those regimes. If you're a whistleblower in China or Russia the safest place for you is probably over here.
Yes. It was really different.
The government had some restraint in the past about spying on their own citizens. McCarthy and McCarthyism ended up universally condemned, the press felt it was their duty to bring things like watergate to light. Anti war activists could trust the press and courts of law.
Things changed a lot
>Anti war activists could trust the press and courts of law.
Maybe they could trust these, but the government really didn't have much restraint on spying in that period, like COINTELPRO program. When documents were stolen from Media FBI office in 1971, they found documents saying FBI was aiming to "get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox" to activists.
I don't like the us foreign policies at all, nor the military forces and all the politicians everywhere collecting dust with their knees when the us is manhandling instead of using diplomatic channels.
However, I don't like wannabe anarchists like him never, ever taking responsibility.
He ran away from the Sweden case, whatever that was about.
And I don't like this "he was just propagating the messages that are sent to him". He was taking money(called donations) and the operation was large, WikiLeaks is not some one person garage operation.
This was internal government document leaking as a service, period.
Many Californian companies are generously using NDAs for much less critical info and leakers or thieves pay hefty consequences. Why wouldn't Assange?
In many places this would be classified as straight up espionage.
He provocated the us government and military, of course they were to go after him.
It's not right, it might not be legal, but it was bound to happen.
Anarchists don't believe in rulers ,rulers don't believe in anarchy and the rulers have the bigger guns, plain and simple.
Adding insult to injury, publishing leaked military secrets is not even illegal in the U.S. due to the first amendment right to a free press. When the New York Times publishes leaked classified information, there's no trial or extradition. In the U.S., those who will have legitimate access to classified information first sign legally binding agreements not to disseminate it, and those who violate that agreement can be prosecuted.
And in this case, that already happened: Manning served 7 years in jail for leaking the very information that Assange is being extradited over. With the leaker found and prosecuted, convicted, and sentence served, the U.S. Department of Justice should congratulate itself on a job well-done and move on to other things. It's absurd that they continue to pursue the publisher of the information almost a decade later.