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Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

declassifieduk.org

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Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#11

Post by agd »

rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

In summary, it's as you say. Wikileaks has released a tonne of sensitive material which has often made the US look bad and revealed war crimes. The US wants to punish Assange as the leader of Wikileaks to deter others from doing the same.

Most journalists and lawyers (although not all) believe that Wikileaks' activity is journalistic, and therefore that Assange can't be prosecuted for this activity. So the US is trying to charge him for other things, e.g. for helping others hack.

Whether other states have been involved in leaking info to Wikileaks... who knows? It's likely, because, well, why wouldn't they? However no one has suggested the info released by Wikileaks is false.

As far as money, I believe most of the Wikileaks funds have come from public donations and often their legal advice is paid for by friends or pro bono. So I don't think there's anything nefarious going on there.

What has been clear is that the US will go to extreme lengths to get him into a US jail, from discussions about rendition, assassination, and faking evidence (e.g. with a key witness in this trial), to significant political pressure on allies and other states to cooperate with them on this. He is an 'enemy of the state' in their eyes.

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#12

Post by gampleman »

rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

> States have a reasonable need to keep things secret, even against the immediate best interest of the citizens

Do they? Perhaps this is the crux of the matter, as I would say that a democracy has no reason to keep anything secret against the best interests of its citizens. It may have some operational need of secrecy for things that are in the interest of its citizens (i.e. it's in my interest that nuclear launch codes are kept secret) or can balance these with other rights and responsibilities (i.e. the right for privacy of its officers or the duty of care in not disclosing the dispositions of its forces in a war).

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#13

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

agd wrote: post #11
rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

In summary, it's as you say. Wikileaks has released a tonne of sensitive material which has often made the US look bad and revealed war crimes. The US wants to punish Assange as the leader of Wikileaks to deter others from doing the same. Most journalists and lawyers (although not all) believe that Wikileaks' activity is journalistic, and therefore that Assange can't be prosecuted for this activity. So the US is tryi…

> What has been clear is that the US will go to extreme lengths to get him into a US jail, from discussions about rendition, assassination, and faking evidence (e.g. with a key witness in this trial), to significant political pressure on allies and other states to cooperate with them on this.

Right, and that's kinda messed-up given the standards we place on modern democracies and ourselves.

Given the revelations, where are the consequences for those involved? How can we effect the consequences we want?

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#14

Post by kstenerud »

rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

This is not about how good or bad he is; it's about how the wheels of justice are continually being perverted by both the USA and the UK legal system (Scottish and British) in order to secure his extradition.

A quick high-level list:

- Bugging his conversations with his lawyers (the people involved have been charged in Spain and a trial is ongoing there, and some American nationals added to the Interpol list).

- Preventing an expert witness from testifying in Spain about this bugging by arresting and convicting the expert on laughably bad evidence so that he can't travel to Spain.

- Holding the accused in continual isolation for years now in one of the most brutal prisons in the UK (hell hole doesn't even begin to describe it).

- Holding his hearings in a remote location so as to dissuade people from attending.

- Barring most of the people who do try to attend, including human rights observers (almost unheard of in non-dictatorships, and a first for non-violent offenders).

- Ensuring that the accused cannot hear the proceedings or talk effectively with his lawyers by locking him in a glass box (normally only used for extremely violent offenders).

- Preventing the accused access to his lawyers outside of the courtroom (this alone is enough to declare a mistrial).

- Allowing the USA to change the indictment and submit different evidence months into the proceedings after it became clear they couldn't win, and then giving the defence a single day to prepare (hundreds, possibly thousands of pages).

- Allowing the USA team to flout court proceedings, and then preventing the defence from doing what they are allowed by law to do, preventing expert defence witnesses saying it will take too long, cutting cross examinations short, denying admission of evidence after weak, sometimes bizarre USA objections, etc.

Although the last judge was terrible in many ways, she did block the extradition on the grounds of suicide risk (personally, I think she just didn't have the stomach to be the one to sign him over). What they need now is a sympathetic judge to overrule this one point and disallow any arguments to the other points. That's what this latest chapter is about.

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#15

Post by varjag »

agd wrote: post #11
rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

In summary, it's as you say. Wikileaks has released a tonne of sensitive material which has often made the US look bad and revealed war crimes. The US wants to punish Assange as the leader of Wikileaks to deter others from doing the same. Most journalists and lawyers (although not all) believe that Wikileaks' activity is journalistic, and therefore that Assange can't be prosecuted for this activity. So the US is tryi…

Wikileaks have released a ton of material compromising physical safety and well being of people who confided with US diplomats.

Wikileaks also went out of its way to share this information with regimes it had affinity to, like Lukashenka's Belarus.

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/02/wikileaks-belarus-...

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#16

Post by pjc50 »

This is rather a broader problem in the UK: the country is run by an extremely small group of people who all know each other and who have the capacity to appoint each other to positions of power, all the while getting sympathetic coverage from the press, who they also crossover with.

(I wonder why Dame Cressida Rose Dick DBE QPM won't investigate the House of Lords cash-for-peerages scandal? https://news.sky.com/story/met-police-urged-to-launch-cash-f... - but why do we have a permanent unelected legislature anyway? That has to be a corruption magnet)

I do find the hyperfocus on Assange rather weird though.

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#17

Post by Lhiw »

rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion. Could someone provide a more impassioned / balanced list of pros and cons? From my vague point of view, I get that he is sort of a journalist (so should be protected), but also the stuff he leaked did go quite far, like borderline-espionage scale (or is that…

> Most voices in support of Assange seem to come from people with strong conviction that he is clearly a good guy (unsurprisingly). I don’t really have an opinion.

Aside from already expressing your opinion.. you then continue to give your opinion in much more detail.

You lack even the basic understanding of what has been done to him yet you've somehow formed this fully fledged opinion on the subject?

Your post reeks of CIA shill.

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#18

Post by DocTomoe »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #9
ryanlol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no universe in which Assange deserves the treatment he would receive in the US no matter how bad of a guy he is.

But there's a special place in earth where it routinely happens: the US of A. What Assange is suffering pales against what happened in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Nobody ever paid.

Well, Assange is not in the US quite yet - right now he is only being tortured by the British. Apparently, this will change soon, so ...

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#19

Post by tjpnz »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #9
ryanlol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no universe in which Assange deserves the treatment he would receive in the US no matter how bad of a guy he is.

But there's a special place in earth where it routinely happens: the US of A. What Assange is suffering pales against what happened in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Nobody ever paid.

In the case of Abu Graib there were consequences for the soldiers directly involved.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_priso...

Re: Assange judge is 40-year ‘good friend’ of minister who orchestrated his arrest

#20

Post by IgorPartola »

1cvmask wrote: post #2

Obviously the judge will be “impartial” and not recuse himself. Only bad countries don’t have justice like China and Russia according to the main stream media.

Is there a word to describe the effect of someone ending a comment in a phrase (in this case “according to the [mainstream] media”) that instantly invalidates the rest of the argument to a reader?
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