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Julian Assange arrested in London

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#441

Post by lolc »

fixermark wrote: post #340
dao- wrote: 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…

I'm not clear why the U.S. president should be in the loop here anyway. Who makes the decision to prosecute in such cases?

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#442

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #100
cm2187 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t really such thing as international law. Only treaties between states that are sovereign, and as such can tear them up if they do not wish to abide to them anymore.

"International rules and customs" would be a better term. International Law is real but it is not "law" in remotely the same way that domestic laws are and using the same word for them is confusing.

Rules, customs and precedent. Which is pretty much the basis for law anywhere.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#444

Post by ptero »

philwelch wrote: post #411
ptero wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Promising to use a condom and then not using a condom is not a "minor transgression"; it's a form of sexual assault.

Minor vs major is not my point. The problem is that prosecutors did not care about this for a LONG time but suddenly went into overdrive when someone could not convict a person of interest for an unrelated offense.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#445

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

fsloth wrote: post #298
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but rather inviting an atmosphere where many voices can be heard. yes? please do tell that to those sitting in US secret prisons around the world. Or those that have been released innocent from gitmo after many years into banana republics like Kazakhstan without apology and are there under constant surveillance. of course the US isn't a dictatorship provided that your views are in-line with their propaganda. Assang…

The discussion was not about benevolence, or honesty, but of free press. The existence of free press does not eliminate pathological government behaviour, but it offers a channel for them to be aired to the public. You make it sound like you would like the world to fall into a black and white good guys/bad guys hollywood formula. "US isn't a dictatorship provided that your views are in-line with their propaganda." Di…

> The discussion was not about benevolence, or honesty, but of free press.

yes my point exactly. Are you suggesting the press in the US isn't 100% propaganda both on the left and right?

> You make it sound like you would like the world to fall into a black and white good guys/bad guys hollywood formula.

not at all. I dislike that idea and much rather we all live with less but instead get along. But it's much worse: it's not a future scenario, but we're already there! Whether you look at US, UK or any other place in the West identity politics distracting from the biggest money grab/heist in history (on the back of the poor as well as whatever is left over from a middle class). Just look at the divide among people in the West (in their own countries).

The press feeds on that negativity and is very much guilty of maintaining it. There is nothing to be proud of when it comes to our press! Speaking of the US specifically instead of the West, the majority of people there is too poor to afford feeding themselves without 2 or free jobs, nobody there got time to worry about complex problems and how well a story was researched. They're perfectly happy with bite-sized outrage and identity bullshit not caring about some "foreign wars" when they don't know if they can eat tomorrow or whether their children will be debt slaves for the rest of their days. Free press doesn't exist if people don't listen to them and rather tune into FoxNews, Breitbart, Infowars (and CNN on the other side of the spectrum).

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#446

Post by frereubu »

matt4077 wrote: post #332
shrewduser wrote: post #286

I just want to know, from the people who seemed to have turned against Assange, how do you know it's not a concerted disinformation / propaganda campaign to remove all his credibility and reduce public support? By my reckoning It's really hard to know what to even believe about a guy who might credibly be targeted by that.

- By everything I've read of his behaviour, even before he became famous, the accusations seemed to be very much his style - The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape. - The supposed CIA connection of the accuser is a laughable 10-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection involving her atten…

I tried to remain skeptical about this, but this piece from 2014 in the LRB is what tipped me over into feeling that, as you put it, it's "very much like his style" on the balance of probabilities, particularly given the LRB's disenchantment with establishment power: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#447

Post by throwaway_m73 »

matt4077 wrote: post #349
tabs_masterrace wrote: post #326

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…

> 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. Collateral Murder was published in April, 2010. The warrant came in November of that year, seven months later. Yes, sure, it possibly takes that long to organise a conspiracy, especially if you have to recruit a Swedish feminist student into the CIA and also g…

Don't know what you're talking about with the CIA. More likely they just looked up any previous court cases in every previous place he lived, couldn't find anything open but a juicy closed case that they could ask re-opened as a favor.

That's not so strange. Considering that they closed the investigation on the grounds that they couldn't reach him, but refused to question him in london, it seems plausible the whole thing was just a play to get him on their soil.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#448

Post by acct1771 »

matt4077 wrote: post #332
shrewduser wrote: post #286

I just want to know, from the people who seemed to have turned against Assange, how do you know it's not a concerted disinformation / propaganda campaign to remove all his credibility and reduce public support? By my reckoning It's really hard to know what to even believe about a guy who might credibly be targeted by that.

- By everything I've read of his behaviour, even before he became famous, the accusations seemed to be very much his style - The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape. - The supposed CIA connection of the accuser is a laughable 10-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection involving her atten…

This is incredibly ill-informed, or very carefully constructed disinformation, and I'm uncomfortable that I can't tel the difference.

For example: there were many illegal, suggestions of illegal, and offensive things in those, and related, email leaks, for supporters and detractors of HRC.

> If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him?

That was not the intent. More likely for discrediting him to the social-progressives (potential new fanbase) who are outspoken and active enough to make a huge uptick in the even larger viral explosion that Wikileaks deserves/ed.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#450

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

ttmb wrote: post #416
dandare wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does my post appeal to emotion, it openly appeals to emotion. On the other hand, your post uses the appeal to middle ground fallacy. If your list of priorities starts with anything other than stopping the routine torture of children, then your grand scheme of things is probably evil.

This is hardly the rational discussion you claimed to be starting.

Any "speaking as a parent" argument is hardly likely to be rational.
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