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Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules

bbc.com

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

#541

Post by jessaustin »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #491
jessaustin wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear we'd just be in another JFK situation. We're only allowed so much representative government.

Why make him a martyr when they could have done the same to him as they did to Trump?

Well, sure, they would have tried the smears employed against Trump and, more relevantly, Corbyn. In fact, forget "would have", that was actually done. [0] I'm just not sure the accusations would have seemed important to voters. Trump's myriad misdeeds have been salient to public attention for decades. "Collaboration" with Russia may have been one of a few awful actions he hadn't actually attempted over his life, which is exactly why it was emphasized. The go-to war media criticisms of Sanders, e.g. "he thinks healthcare should be provided to all, even during a pandemic!" probably wouldn't have seemed so bad to normal humans. But sure, our enemies have a certain low cunning in addition to their complete control of popular media. They could have surprised us with their choice of smears.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/18/the-ri...

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

#542

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jollybean wrote: post #529
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Uncovering and publishing secrets is the core of journalism.

> Secrecy can be harmful in some cases but it's also essential in many ways

Then they should do a better job of keeping the important things secret. But it's good that they occasionally fail.

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

#543

Post by beeboop »

seoaeu wrote: post #385
phone8675309 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can't we just drone this guy?" -- about Julian Assange from the candidate in the 2016 presidential election that got the largest share of the popular vote

Cry me a river. The vendetta clearly went both ways given what Assange was willing to do to sabotage her campaign.

Assange reported on information. That's what journalists do. Hillary sabotaged her own campaign by the actions she/her team/the DNC took. You can't put the blame on the journalist.

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

#544

Post by dragonwriter »

mmcwilliams wrote: post #367
zepto wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the US intends to murder him.

It might be the case right now but it came out earlier this year that the CIA was entertaining this idea in 2017. This [0] appears to be the originating story and there are corroborating accounts in many other outlets. [0] https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

> It might be the case right now but it came out earlier this year that the CIA was entertaining this idea in 2017.

CIA, DoD, and lots of agencies “entertain” lots of ideas, and even develop plans, for lots of things that never get close to being policy.

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

#545

Post by beeboop »

Zigurd wrote: post #307

Assange knowingly became a front for a Russian disinformation op against the US. he was a factor in helping Putin bring the US to its darkest days politically. He also released a lot of important factual information Americans did not know. Both are true. One does not negate the other.

This is all entirely unsubstantiated. There is no evidence for any of this, and it's very blatantly misinformation and propaganda. It keeps getting repeated so frequently as to look like astroturfing.

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

#546

Post by ben_w »

pydry wrote: post #504
ben_w wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging if any given law is or isn’t just is too far outside my skills to have strong feeling about what Assange did one way or the other. I do know that rule of law doesn’t function if everyone gets to decide for themselves what is and isn’t an unjust law, even though I can say with the benefit of hindsight that Rosa Parks deserved her Congressional Gold Medal, and that I hope I would’ve recognised the law as unjust…

>I hope I would’ve recognised the law as unjust at the time. I'd have hoped so too, but from what you've written it sounds like you would have slotted in with the liberal whites who declared support-for-ending-segregation-in-theory but would also say that "this isn't the right way" or "this isn't the right time". They made rather similar arguments to yours about the primacy of the rule of law as a principle.

I hope I am the sort of person would have supported Rosa Parks — if I’d been on a jury, I want to be the sort of person who would have voted “not guilty” by way of jury annulment.

Four boxes is a reason to take things slow, not a reason to say “no not like that” when the first steps have failed. And when the law bites someone for breaking it, if you think the law is wrong you should support the victim of the law; but that’s not the same as saying the law should not bite at all. A court case is by itself a powerful bite for most people, even without conviction.

I can also see that someone who is constantly being ground down and dehumanised by the law isn’t going to care about an end to the rule of law. I can’t expect someone in that situation to care if rule of law is damaged, because it never protected them in the first place. I suspect the feeling the law is a bludgeon rather than a shield is the cause of the current “ACAB” and “defund the police” slogans.

But is Assange even in that category? I don’t think so, so I do not feel confident predicting how I would vote if I was hypothetically on a jury. I do think the Guardian newspaper in the UK was in the “law is wrong” category, and that it was wrong for the UK government to destroy their copy of what Snowden gave them.

Like I said, complicated.

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

#547

Post by _jal »

lenkite wrote: post #383
mrsuprawsm wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a sad sacrifice, though. Nothing (significant) has changed about the US's imperialism as a result of his disclosures, it's just mildly more acknowledged.

Most left journalists were dancing in joy when Assange got arrested. They never forgave him for exposing the Clinton emails and ensured he was heavily character assassinated over the next several years. He also became a victim of the #MeToo movement at its height. He was openly called evil/narcissist/etc in many "opinion" pieces. All the other important stuff he revealed never got the level of attention it deserved.

> They never forgave him for exposing the Clinton emails

The issue there was precisely how he was emphatically not acting as a journalist.

Journalists do not coordinate news releases with their preferred candidates.

Political operatives do.

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

#548

Post by mpalmer »

ianhawes wrote: post #317
tootie wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dispute him being a journalist. He hosts a website for raw intel that is frequently stolen.

NYT, WP, ProPublica, etc all “host a website for raw intel that is frequently stolen”.

Journalism involves synthesis and above all _vetting_ of source material, not hosting a glorified ftp server for whatever your sources send you.

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

#549

Post by jobu »

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…

> 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.

Steven Donziger is another great example of this rule: https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-...

Chevron has decided to make an example of him by ruining his life in return for a $9.5 billion judgement he won against them in Ecuador.

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

#550

Post by hellojesus »

enriquto wrote: post #280
user3939382 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is how few people even know what he published, especially juxtaposed with his sacrifice. If I go talk to the average person about Snowden or Assange they know little to nothing about what they revealed.

> If I go talk to the average person about Snowden or Assange they know little to nothing about what they revealed. You are doing good, then. Need to keep talking to more people!

I agree, but to me it's troubling so many people simply don't care.

Every time I try to talk to my wife about what the government's doing/has done, she stops me and says, "I really don't care. So long as I can keep living my life without interference, why would I care?"

This also happens when I try to explain basic economics to her.

I find most people I talk to simply don't care so long as they get to enjoy living their dreamy lives.

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