Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 792 posts

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#521

Post by 93po »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #262
lettergram wrote: post #183

To fully appreciate the context: - he’s not a us citizen - none of the “crimes” happened on US soil - he’s a world famous journalist with prior work - was charged with bogus crimes in Europe in an attempt to arrest him. All dropped - the person who stole the files he released is already free and the tax payers paid for their transition

- the alleged crimes were committed against the US, i.e his participation in the exfiltration of secret data from US government. Surely his physical location when committing these crimes should have no bearing on whether it's a criminal matter. - calling him a journalist is a mighty stretch even before he started, let's call it his "full-stack collaboration" with the Russians - Manning served the time and is thus fre…

>- calling him a journalist is a mighty stretch even before he started, let's call it his "full-stack collaboration" with the Russians

This is wildly unsubstantiated and at best fear mongering propaganda.

>- the alleged crimes were committed against the US, i.e his participation in the exfiltration of secret data from US government. Surely his physical location when committing these crimes should have no bearing on whether it's a criminal matter.

It absolutely should matter. Why should someone who's not a citizen and wasn't located in the US be held to US laws? Does every person on the planet now need to memorize the laws of every country and fear extradition if I were to accidentally view gay porn, which is illegal in Saudi Arabia?

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#522

Post by VictorPath »

bladegash wrote: post #83

The framing of Assange as an innocent “journalist” being persecuted for just doing his job is, in my opinion, disingenuous. I do not necessarily agree with all the actions the US Government has taken with him, or their handling of some of the information that was leaked. However, I do not agree that a “journalist” should be able to enable espionage, let alone encourage/incite it. In case my point is unclear, I consid…

> Further, I am of the opinion, being someone who was quite literally in Afghanistan when he leaked the information he did, that any probative value of the information Manning leaked was overshadowed by the indiscriminate way in which it was done.

It's funny to me that you were marauding around Afghanistan a couple of years ago and would use the word indiscriminate to describe Assange.

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#523

Post by jollybean »

pydry wrote: post #329
jollybean wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"he managed to rip off the mask and expose the unbridled imperialist evil lurking" That's a bit absurd given showed the total opposite: Gigabytes of diplomatic cables of highly sensitive data revealed a US Diplomatic Corps trying to do a decent job in a world rife with ugly corruption. The 'Arab Street' saw the information and they saw the US trying to assuage and nudge brutally corrupt leaders. The cables didn't uni…

>The cables didn't unite Arabs against the US - they exposed the ruthless corruption of their own governments I'm sensing that you believe that this is something you think that should have been concealed from them for their own good. >It's shocking that someone could read about Arab governments doing 'very bad things', the US government trying to stop them, and then come away with the notion that the US is the bad ac…

"Your reply suggests that you may have been part of the institution that committed and covered up the war crimes "

Oh no, you outed me! I'm a CIA plant!

How were you able to slyly prove my complicity in war crimes from a mere comment about travelling abroad?

A testament to brilliant and rational deductive thinking and logical inference, that must prove 'America is Evil' as well of course ...

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#524

Post by ls15 »

krisrm wrote: post #318
vbezhenar wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countries which do not bend before others. Russia, China, Iran to name a few examples. They can protect those fleeing from the West. Just like West can protect people from those countries. World is not unipolar.

Protect? Or use them as tokens in international tit-for-tat diplomacy?

Both?

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#525

Post by 93po »

cainxinth wrote: post #236
lettergram wrote: post #183

To fully appreciate the context: - he’s not a us citizen - none of the “crimes” happened on US soil - he’s a world famous journalist with prior work - was charged with bogus crimes in Europe in an attempt to arrest him. All dropped - the person who stole the files he released is already free and the tax payers paid for their transition

> “he’s a world famous journalist with prior work” That’s a claim not a fact. It’s also possible he was an asset for a hostile intelligence service posing as a journalist. I’m not normally one to side with Mike Pompeo, but I agree with his assessment on this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/politics/mike-pompeo-c... “‘WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence…

> It’s also possible he was an asset for a hostile intelligence service posing as a journalist.

Also possible he's the flying spaghetti monster. There's equal evidence for both (none)

Mike Pompeo sounds extremely salty about negative press coverage. Of course they're going to do their best to discredit Assange after he embarrassed them so thoroughly.

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#526

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

kstenerud wrote: post #204

This should be a sobering view of how the world really works. Above a certain threshold, every veneer of civilization vanishes no matter what the country (some have a higher threshold than others). At this level, only power matters. And the first rule of power is: Don't embarrass the powerful unless you can call on a lot of power to defend yourself. Laws can't protect you; they can be thwarted and bent, and the legal…

Big guns policy. Whoever has the highest number of guns is in charge. We are still tribal monkeys after all with a thin veneer of civilization.

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#527

Post by pozdnyshev90 »

queuebert wrote: post #471
realce wrote: post #246

Fabricate a narrative that allows your country to murder tens of thousands of people == fine and not illegal. Tell soldier how cryptographic maths work == double castration and the CIA tries to assassinate you. Don't forget that the Collateral Murder video showed not only Iraqi citizens but also Reuters journalists being machine-gunned from the sky. No person has ever been criminally charged for these murders.

As an American, I find it very hard to decide what to think about these issues. Our military certainly makes mistakes, and people should be held accountable, but on the other hand the U.S. upholds much stricter rules of engagement than any of its enemies (hell, even stricter than our cops). Should credit not be given for that?

>but on the other hand the U.S. upholds much stricter rules of engagement than any of its enemies

And where did you hear that from? Our "independent" papers of record aka state department stenographers?

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#528

Post by leto_ii »

FredPret wrote: post #492
leto_ii wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> right and wrong, good and evil are human judgments This is nonsense that opens up the possibility to justify pretty much any kind of abuse or atrocity. > The international rules-based order is safeguarded by powerful entities… because it’s in their best interest. If the international order was actually rules-based it would have been safeguarded by international institutions, not by a single capricious superpower. >…

> This is nonsense that opens up the possibility to justify pretty much any kind of abuse or atrocity. Hilarious. Do you think there’s big judge in the sky that determines what’s good and bad? There is only human conscience, and powerful people who decide to enforce their conscience. > If the international order was actually rules-based it would have been safeguarded by international institutions, not by a single cap…

> Hilarious. Do you think there’s big judge in the sky that determines what’s good and bad?

Mankind has reached a point where it realized that certain rights (natural rights [1]) are not really arbitrary cultural constructs, but more akin to the laws of nature. We're still not at a point where we fully understand the "moral laws of nature" (e.g. I suspect if we stick around as a species we will end up extending more rights to certain other species), but we're improving (at least on paper).

> powerful people who decide to enforce their conscience

Again an attitude that can be used to justify anything. If the powerful people decide it's ok to have slaves? Or that a certain ethnicity should be cleared off the face of the earth?

Luckily, post WW2 we have established international institutions (the UN for one) that at least on paper provide legal underpinning for what the right rules should be and for how they should be enforced.

> If there’s an international institution that can enforce rules, then that institution is the capricious superpower, and woe betide those that mess with that institution.

This is simply insane warmongering. Since you throw such threats around casually I suspect you might be a US citizen. I can assure you that to the rest of us seeing this kind of attitude coming from your political/economic/intellectual leaders can be a very scary thing indeed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#529

Post by jollybean »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #478
jollybean wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"he managed to rip off the mask and expose the unbridled imperialist evil lurking" That's a bit absurd given showed the total opposite: Gigabytes of diplomatic cables of highly sensitive data revealed a US Diplomatic Corps trying to do a decent job in a world rife with ugly corruption. The 'Arab Street' saw the information and they saw the US trying to assuage and nudge brutally corrupt leaders. The cables didn't uni…

> revealed a US Diplomatic Corps trying to do a decent job in a world rife with ugly corruption. This, too, is journalism. Showing that the world isn't black and white, that sometimes the US does bad things that we should work against and sometimes they do the right thing, that's important too. Secrecy is harmful to democracy. It's obvious why the state department tries to keep their internal communications secret, b…

It's not 'journalism' to release arbitrary secrets even if the transparency might be beneficial.

Secrecy can be harmful in some cases but it's also essential in many ways, it's really not an argument at all. Nobody would be able to do their jobs otherwise.

Re: Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

#530

Post by ByteJockey »

iechoz6H wrote: post #405
seanw444 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't imagine why anyone would want to run to China to hide from the U.S. of all places, in this scenario. "I'm going to flee from one dystopian state, to another even more dystopian/technocratic/autocratic state!"

I'm not sure technocratic means what you think it means: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/technocr... i.e it's a net positive to have a technocratic state, deferring decision making to those with the technical skills to do it.

> it's a net positive to have a technocratic state, deferring decision making to those with the technical skills to do it.

Deferring to the technical experts is great when you want to know how to do something.

Deferring to them when you're deciding what to do is not necessarily as good.

Post reply on HN