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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#161

Post by carlosjobim »

searealist wrote: post #104
ggm wrote: post #101

Politically shrewd for each of the 3 primary governments involved, removes the issue from the agenda. I'd say its zero-sum outcome for any player: as many people will be angry as happy he's freed. the point being it can't be weaponised as easily as having him in the cell. Sweden may differ of course. I don't think either of the 3 primaries care what Sweden thinks.

Sweden does as the US tells.

The people downvoting your comment are ignorant on reality. It is common knowledge that Sweden has been used by the CIA as a black site. Sweden has been a satellite state to the US for a long time, just as other countries are or have been satellites of Russia.

Edit: Your down votes do not change reality. More important countries than Sweden have been satellites, such as East and West Germany.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#163

Post by gizmo »

slg wrote: post #121
chaoskitty wrote: post #110

It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of whistleblowing, which informs us, the citizens, about what our governments are doing that's illegal, than about the illegal activities themselves. What does that say about those people? Are they easily led by emotion? They certainly don't care about the rule of law, if breaking the law by others can so easily be ignored. They aren't particularly patriotic, i…

>It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of whistleblowing... This is true in both directions and Assange is the perfect example of that. Someone being a whistleblower is not a get out of jail free card and there are still laws regarding how whistleblowing should be handled and what qualifies. Assange leaked a lot of important stuff that qualifies, but that wasn't all he leaked or did. A shockingly f…

Julian Assange published evidence of war crimes committed by the US Army. Both the leaker/whistleblower (Manning) and Julian Assange got their lives ruined over it. What is the lesson here? That if you value your life you should look the other way when you come across evidence of serious malfeasance? That killing innocent people is not a real crime but embarrassing those in power is the worst crime imaginable?

This is much bigger than Assange.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#164

Post by senectus1 »

funkhouser wrote: post #119

Hilarious that he was counting in Trump to get him released, but it wound up being under Biden. You can tell it’s election year for the USA. Probably hoping for a little extra PR from it all for being the Good Guys (tm)

Trump was never going to release him.

Assange was just a soundbite for him to dogwhistle.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#165

Post by dang »

esnard wrote: post #45

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators…

That is the text of https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1805388007475732646, for those keeping track. (We merged that thread hither from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40782571.)

Other URLs from threads we merged:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-releas...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/assange-plea....

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgggyvp0j9o

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#166

Post by dietr1ch »

cletus wrote: post #153

So I have a couple of thoughts on this. For context, I'm a big fan of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Julian Assange is... more interesting. Imagine you're a journalist and someone hands you a shoebox full of SD cards with classified materials including video evidence of war crimes. Most of us would agree it is the ethical thing to do to publish that and you're definitely a journalist. Now imagine you had a conta…

If only government secrets were just their grandma's recipes.

Why do governments are given special treatment when some of their secrets are crimes that are disclosed too late to get anyone involved in a trial, and happened too long ago to do anything about it.

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

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#168

Post by dumdumdumdum »

sackfield wrote: post #109

In an ideal world we would get to do a reverse investigation to understand which government officials were complicit in his very obviously politically motivated detention, action would be taken upon those individuals to ensure accountability, and the system itself would be updated so powerful interests can't abuse the law like this. How far are we from this world?

[flagged]

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#169

Post by stainablesteel »

if everything written here actually happens, i suppose this is as satisfying an ending that everyone can get

i really hope this man will be free. there's still a really bad precedent set that they will imprison you first, make you serve your term, then get your day in court to go free.. its a bit crooked and i really dont like this

part of me thinks this is happening now because the presiding dominant western political establishment is losing power everywhere and they don't want the growing adversarial camp to hold freeing him as a victory while being able to set the precedent of his guilt to someday have in their back pocket the ability to do this again without the perceived unfairness

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#170

Post by ambicapter »

sackfield wrote: post #113
dboreham wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responsibility has to be pretty defuse, right? You can at least begin with all the presidents in office since he was prosecuted, until N-1 since presumably the Nth just released him.

Diffusion of responsibility is definitely a defense in these cases, but the system should recognize this shortcoming and assign accountability (at least in an ideal world). Although I'm willing to bet that the true actors here weren't necessarily presidents (even though they would ultimately be accountable like you say). Would be interesting to see who demanded what and when.

Diffusion of responsibility comes from diffusion of power, which is an intended goal of many stable systems of government. Cuts both ways.
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