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Julian Assange arrested in London

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#491
post #459
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wikileaks/Assange during the recent US presidential elections. that’s what did it for me. even now, knowing what we now about Russian interference, they still have the “Hillary Clinton email archive” proudly displayed on their homepage. also, there are those rape cases for which he ran away. shady stuff.

Even if Russia leaked the emails (not certain as the media would have you believe at all, not saying it’s conspiracy but It’s not conclusive), the information regarding massive corruption in the DNC was true, and that information being public is 1) good and 2) important.

Isn't it confirmed that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails on the day that Trump famously said: 'Russia, if you're listening...". Wasn't that in the indictment for the 12 members of the GRU?

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#492

and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media, chances are pretty high that he will rot in a US prison for life or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The US is a terror state that uses torture and secret prisons. I hope that EU countries will stop extradition asap.

It's pretty shocking here to see pro-fascist comments like this which reward the Russian Intelligence operation called "Wikileaks" and its constant war against democracy, liberty and free elections in not just the U.S., but also Europe. Sometimes you have to wonder why folks this guy truly hate the U.S. and the West and side openly with mediocre spies involved in intelligence operations against his own home. But this…

Honestly, either side of this argument feels like attempts at manipulation to me.

The end result is that it is becoming harder to trust any statement, not really what we want either.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements[1] between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)? I think if he does a little bit of time for jumping UK bail then the second he walks out from a UK prison the CIA will be all over abducting his ass. And he'll never be heard off again. I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone t…

> is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)? Extradition is based on criminal law, even if the offense is terrorism; and, yes, it's a matter of human rights law without exception. (That is not to say they might not do a covert rendition rather than an extradition with death on the table, but the fact t…

thanks for clarifying this

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. No one is talking about death penalty except people trying to inflame the situation.

Tell that to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. We've executed for sharing secret documents before, and may again.

The Rosenbergs weren't extradited from a country which would require a formal guarantee that the death penalty would not be used, so are not a relevant precedent.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#495
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crimes did he commit? Honest question. I heard that someone accused him of being a rapist but then dropped the charges so I guess it was false. What else is there?

> [..] but then dropped the charges so I guess it was false. There are many reasons for dropping charges besides "she obviously lied". One of the reason might be that nobody wants to get all this attention and ensuing insults and death threats. In this specific case, there wasn't even much debate over facts, only law. She refused to have sex without a condom, then woke up to him having sex with her, without a condom.

There has to be more than one accusation to prove guilt. Did police get any physical evidence?

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#496
post #473
post #110

My introduction to bitcoin was due to this https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m... 2010, about November, when Wikileaks was loved by everyone here on HackerNews. When donations were piling up by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. When Assange was the postgresql security hacker turned whistlblower-enabler and journalist. Then suddenly all donations, globaly, halted to Wikileaks. Bitcoin was the only way…

> censorship resistant transfer of value But how do you get actual value out of it, i.e. currency? AFAIK most exchanges have pretty strict money laundering rules these days, it's not like Wikileaks could just open an account to liquidate those BTC donations...

It is possible to exchange for cash and it isn't money laundering to just change BTC to cash.

An exchange may face political pressure to stop facilitating wikileaks converting BTC to USD/GBP/EUR but thats about the extent of it.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#497
post #473
post #110

My introduction to bitcoin was due to this https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m... 2010, about November, when Wikileaks was loved by everyone here on HackerNews. When donations were piling up by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. When Assange was the postgresql security hacker turned whistlblower-enabler and journalist. Then suddenly all donations, globaly, halted to Wikileaks. Bitcoin was the only way…

> censorship resistant transfer of value But how do you get actual value out of it, i.e. currency? AFAIK most exchanges have pretty strict money laundering rules these days, it's not like Wikileaks could just open an account to liquidate those BTC donations...

There are several ways to bypass exchanges. LocalBitcoins and Bisq are two ways. There are more though.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#499

Any possible relation to the arrest of Assange? IMF board approves $4.2 bln financing deal with Ecuador March 11 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved the $4.2 billion financing deal with Ecuador https://www.reuters.com/article/ecuador-imf/imf-board-approv...

Good question: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/extarr2.aspx?memberK...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#500
post #487

I would like to locate all HN comments which said he never would get arrested on behalf of the US, and that Assange objections was all just pretense for trying to escape justice from the UK/Swedish legal system.

Yeah, moments before the arrest, many people in this thread were accusing him of paranoia/manipulative intents:

>He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, but Sweden wasn't allowed to extradite him without UK's permission first [0]. He could've gone to Sweden and face the charges, and avoided this whole thing. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.

>If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.

>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.

And beyond HN, journalists have some interesting articles too. The Guardian's James Ball in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/julian...

>The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon

>Assange does not want to be trapped in Ecuador’s embassy, and his hosts do not want him there. Their problem is that what’s keeping him trapped there is not so much the iniquitous actions of world powers, but pride. Perhaps it’s not Ecuador and the UK that need a mediator, but rather Ecuador and Assange.

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