Julian Assange arrested in London • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#571

Post by monocasa » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #529

belorn wrote: 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.

The ease by which the US can extradite him from the UK is precisely why I thought poorly of the claim that he felt his life was endangered by going to Sweden .

The UK makes the US go through the legal extradition process, whereas Sweden has been happy to just let the CIA fly in and kidnap people completely outside the legal process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#572

Post by megous » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #413

megous wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People take real risks when telling on others. That it may be later revealed and their targets may try to take revenge is part of that. There's no clear just way to view the entire situation. Though Assange was unreasonable to call them all "spies and traitors", if that's what he did.

> People take real risks when telling on others. That it may be later revealed and their targets may try to take revenge is part of that. I'm not sure if you meant to defend him but that describes Julian Assange's own situation pretty well.

I only meant to point out that being an informant for occupying force is not some clear cut morally good situation from an outside POV on the informant, when the giving of information leads to:

- killing people by bombings

- locking people up without usual safety/legal process regards, and torturing them (either directly, or by having a pretty nasty jail)

Innocent people are often killed, and locked up. This is not some precise process.

Also being an informant druing war for one side is not the same thing as being an informant for police in the peaceful western country, or informing on curruption via leaks. These are wildly differing contexts.

You can't view informants with high regard, unviersally. People will falsely report on neigbours, to settle some past grudge, because they know trigger happy Americans will bomb/storm the place, if they can make the story plausible enough. Even if you assume good reports, bystanders get killed, or snatched up too. And through all this you have to still assume us-vs-them mentality, that all Taliban members are bad, and informing on them is good.

So there's a grain of truth in the view that was ascribed to Assange, above. But it's unreasonable, to go full way, and make all informants be traitors and whatnot.

There's this book, that makes good points about the complexity of the situation in Afghantistan, and the US intervention:

https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/125006926...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#573

Post by armitron » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #527

throwawaylolx wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm? This just goes to show that the USA didn't need to manufacture rape allegations in Sweden just in order to get Assange extradited, since their best chance of doing so was to extradite him from the UK.

The rape charges helped to chip away at his character, isolate him and erode popular support. It's not hard to believe that intelligence services could do something like that. That's their MO.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#574

Post by luckylion » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

papermill wrote: post #438

So now Trump has both assange and manning in prison? Funny how the entire media has been soft on Trump on this matter. You would think "journalists" at CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WaPo, etc would be going crazy over Trump's attack on free press, leakers and people holding power to account. Who has done more to try and hold power to account than assange and manning? Wonder what the economist is going to write? After all he w…

"The media" has been pretty anti-assange for quite some time, increasingly so since the 2016 election, so those awards are forgotten, I'd wager.

It's going to be interesting. On the one hand it's a great opportunity to shit on Trump, on the other hand he's doing their bidding. My guess is that it's going to be a variation of "we hope the cruel man-child in charge isn't going to overstep the lines of due process, we will pay close attention #DemocracyDiesInDarkness", which he won't, and that will be it and everybody is happy, because "he did get his chance in court", like Manning.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#575

Post by citilife » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

I still don't understand how he is subject to U.S. rule of law if he:

a) Isn't a U.S. citizen

b) Not residing in the U.S.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#576

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

antt wrote: post #518

techntoke wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No one was talking about extradition until an hour ago either. Yet here we are.

nobody talked about him losing his shelter in the embassy until Goldman Sachs puppet Moreno came into power, yet here we are.

sorry I don't see your point.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#577

Post by rndgermandude » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #560

rndgermandude wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was in Sweden at the time. The UK couldn't have extradited him from Sweden to the US. Not saying that the Swedish charges were all manufactured, just following your hypothesis.

Ok, you'll have to explain the plan to me. How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him? Assange was traveling between lots of countries at the time. It's not as if he was permanently based in Sweden. And Assange being accused of a crime in Sweden does not in any way make it easier for the US to extradite him from Sweden on other charges. edit : Also, the usual conspiracy story was t…

Jailing him undermines him directly by restricting his freedom. A charge of sexual misconduct will discredit him particular in the mostly-left-at-the-time circles that supported him. Having him in jail in a "friendly" nation also gives you time to prepare your proper, "iron-clad" extradition warrant... because if he is free who knows where he will be once you get your stuff ready.

PS: the "timeline issue"... asked and answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633178

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#578

Post by fixermark » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #567

threeseed wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange is anything but a uniform thorn. He has continually supported and looked out for Russian interests. If he wasn't biased there would be a lot more public support for him.

You're basing this on what? St. Mueller has finished his investigation, and precisely no one will be going to prison for "Russian election meddling". If they didn't do this horrible thing (that is entirely protected by 1A), then how could anyone have helped them do this horrible thing?

First Amendment protections are not extended to non-US citizens.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#579

Post by idlewords » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #91

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…

The accusation is that he aided Manning in breaking in to classified computers: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#580

Post by thefounder » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #494

alex_young wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I bet the formal guarantee will be negotiable, especially when on the other end is the US. That's why UK has a special relationship after all. Assange would have been safer in Russia than UK for sure.