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Julian Assange arrested in London

bbc.co.uk

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't in the UK.

He was before he ran to the embassy, skipping bail, on the pretext that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, Sweden would extradite him to the U.S. That's an invalid pretext.

Scotland Yard just confirmed the validity of that invalid pretext.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#422
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Resist this attempt by the Trump administration" Funny. Trump has said he loves WikiLeaks, and likely has no interest in Assange getting extradited to the US.

Problem is, Trump says a lot of things that he doesn't mean. Or he forgets, it's a little unclear. But the American intelligence community appears very interested in the guy and is known to have been working on extradition process in 2018. If the American intelligence community wants to extradite Assange, I don't doubt somebody high-ranking in the CIA will sit down with the president and by the end of the meeting, ha…

> Problem is, Trump says a lot of things that he doesn't mean. Or he forgets, it's a little unclear.

Unlikely, as it could play a big role in the whole ongoing public debate about the Trump-Russia connection.

> But the American intelligence community appears very interested in the guy and is known to have been working on extradition process in 2018.

Yep, but "Trump administration" seems to suggest that Trump is directing this, which seems comical to me.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#423

That's a rather sanitized picture that the British establishment mouthpiece (that's BBC News to you) has on its article. Doesn't BBC news have reporters on scene in London to give us the pretty picture to go with the articles?

The UK press didn't bother stationing reporters outside because they thought his imminent arrest was just something he was making up for attention. It looks like they've now replaced the stock image with a video from Ruptly, which is part of Russia Today.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#424
I love the idea of WikiLeaks exposing corruption, however I think Assange got mad with a power lust and released things that put innocent people in danger unnecesaarily, and then become overly-biased by releasing only anti-DNC/Hillary stuff while sitting on RNC/Trump dirt that they were also rumored to have.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#425

It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers. There's a few avenues: 1) Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time. 2) Conspiracy to commit espionage. Probably the most like…

There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released. He has been most certainly accused of breaking United States laws. Edit: To indict someone, the government has to show the grand jury that there is sufficient evidence. It is very easy to indict someone (hence the phrase “A ham sandwich can be indicted by the grand jury”) but one has to acknowledge the fact that the federal government h…

Grand Juries have a very high indict rate, especially federal ones, but there’s arguments about why that is.

One argument is obviously that grand juries are pushovers and indeed would literally indict a ham sandwich.

The other argument, hinted above, is that prosecutors only move to indict if they think they have a chance to win at trial. Since the evidentiary standards are much higher for conviction, that means they easily clear the requirements for the grand jury indictment the vast majority of the time.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#426
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. The sexual charges really don't look fabricated or to have had any political motive at all. The wikipedia article on the allegations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_... ) makes it clear that the charges were dropped after Assange was initially questioned by the police, then…

> From my reading anyway, Assange crossed a line, perhaps not realising that what he was doing To me, this points to the fact that there are likely many transgressions of all kinds that each person in the civilized world commits. Those are unlikely to lead to anything beyond an occasional minor fine, but the government prosecutors can use those as ammunition for future cases totally unrelated to original offense. Thi…

Agreed. Essentially, someone in Assange's situation should be extremely careful, to the point of paranoia, to not get into any sort of trouble with the law because even a minor transgression (though the sexual assault allegations were not minor) could become an opportunity for a much more severe treatment than usual.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#427

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that fr…

Give me a break. This guy was a useful idiot who if he didn’t start as a tool of the FSB, became one.

The idolization of this guy on web forums is like the college kids of the 90s wearing Che Guevara T-shirt’s.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know, there is no extradition case in place.

Reload the page

Thanks. Will be interesting to see what the request is for. The limited amount I have read on the subject makes me think it will have to be very carefully worded - Assange appears not to have stolen anything and is not a citizsn of the US.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was, WikiLeaks would have leaked the details by now.

I doubt anybody involved in targeting and suppressing Wikileaks post-2016 is leaking their plans to Wikileaks itself.

Why? Every organization has whistleblowers. By the same token that Chelsea Manning leaked the state department cables, one can imagine a middle-tier operative with differing political ideology dropping a hint.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#430

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that fr…

It’s very interesting how different parts of the web are reacting to this news. HN seems to overwhelmingly be on his side since he leaked some seriously damning stuff about the US government in the past. Reddit’s view overwhelmingly is that WL was a force for transparency and accountability that later devolved into a right wing propaganda machine. I guess a lot of people are pissed as Assange for WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 election.
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