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Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

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Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#241

Post by selfishgene »

dragonwriter wrote: post #209
INGELRII wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not mutually exclusive. * Sometimes individuals must break the law for greater good. This is called civil disobedience, or civil resistance. * Just because one is breaking the law for common good, civil servants can't and should not be expected to stop enforcing the law. If you allow that, it's the end of the rule of law based society. The whole idea of just society is that you restrict what individuals in the g…

> civil servants can't and should not be expected to stop enforcing the law In general, criminal law permits but does not mandate prosecution and every prosecution is a judgement about not only the law but policy priorities. This argument is almost completely vacuous where it concerns offenses primarily against the state (it has some weight in equal protection terms when there are victims besides the state and the is…

Exactly. A judge not too long ago was observed on camera stealing a gold watch from an airport security checkpoint bin at Login Airport in Boston MA and was never charged with the crime.

A group of judges met behind closed doors to discuss the incident involving Judge Patricia Curtin and concluded that she "intended eventually to give it back."

This is apparently part of a much larger pattern of "unequal protection under the law" in Massachusetts:

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/secret-courts/

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#242

Post by dragonwriter »

prepend wrote: post #117
threeseed wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the entire fabric of international law works though. Citizenship and postal address are irrelevant. If you break the law in another country and there is an extradition treaty then you will face the consequences.

So if I buy something from a Saudi Arabian e-commerce site am I at risk for extradition from Ireland to Saudi Arabia for the capital offense of being gay? Clearly I was gay while doing stuff online on a Saudi Arabian server.

> So if I buy something from a Saudi Arabian e-commerce site am I at risk for extradition from Ireland to Saudi Arabia for the capital offense of being gay?

Probably not, because that's not within the scope of what Ireland would be willing to extradite for.

But that's a question of Saudi Arabia’s practical ability to bring you to trial, not one of whether or not any law they have would apply to you on principle.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#243

Post by officialjunk »

geofft wrote: post #187
officialjunk wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name another news source that has made no retractions in the past 13 years?

Sure, PR Newswire has never retracted an article in the past 13 years, to my knowledge. They've published corrections given to them by sources, but the original article was accurate to what the source gave to them. They are truly modern-day heroes.

That is impressive. I was unaware. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#244

Post by kordlessagain »

cies wrote: post #189
Synaesthesia wrote: post #82

Wikileaks has a faultless record. They’ve never had to retract a publication. Assange, like him not not, was a reporter, who reported uncomfortable facts about the military and our ruling class. He is being punished, tortured really for this “crime”. He has been endlessly and baselessly slandered. All that alleged bad behaviour while he was imprisoned in the embassy ... funny how there’s been no footage of it, despit…

See what HKers are doing because they wanted to (initially) safe guard their reporters? See what the west here does to stop rather similar practices of which Assange happens to be at the receiving end? Very little. We let him die, and I include myself into "we". This is just abhorrent. And it seems we dont even know what to point our anger to, the US govt? The UK? The fucking-were-so-enlightended Swedish govt? Any (w…

> See what HKers are doing because they wanted to (initially) safe guard their reporters?

Psychological projection can be contagious, when used with blame: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intense-emotions-and...

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#245

Post by sixQuarks »

droithomme wrote: post #81
sixQuarks wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've researched, the Hillary emails were most likely from an internal source.

Correct. Former Ambassador Craig Murray has stated that a disgruntled DNC employee, unhappy with the treatment of Sanders, personally gave him the emails in Washington and he couriered the emails to his friend Assange who then published them. And as has been pointed out the Podesta emails were taken through a phishing email which was sent to thousands of people (so it wasn't spear phishing) and which he foolishly fel…

It's disappointing that even the Hackernews crowd, which is generally more skeptical and intelligent than the general population, has fallen victim to Russiagate hysterics. I get that Donald Trump is vile to many, but that's a sad excuse to let critical thinking go out the window.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#246

Post by whamlastxmas »

spaced-out wrote: post #127
corporate_shi11 wrote: post #107

I was part of a news and current events Facebook group a few years ago, when WikiLeaks was primarily known for leaking evidence of the US Military's abuses in the middle East. Most of the people in this group were Democrats or otherwise on the Left. They cheered WikiLeaks and loved that it was exposing the abuses of a group they didn't like. Fast forward to 2016, and WikiLeaks begins publishing damaging information r…

The reason many people turned on Wikileaks was because he clearly sided with Trump in 2016. He released the info he had on Hillary to damage her campaign, even though it didn't show anything illegal, yet he refused to publish the documents he had on Trump. People sided with him because they believed he was impartial, and turned away from him when it was clear he wasn't.

[flagged]

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#247

Post by geofft »

officialjunk wrote: post #243
geofft wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, PR Newswire has never retracted an article in the past 13 years, to my knowledge. They've published corrections given to them by sources, but the original article was accurate to what the source gave to them. They are truly modern-day heroes.

That is impressive. I was unaware. Thanks for sharing.

I mean, the reason is that PR Newswire just reprints things they're given from others. They're not investigatory journalists in the usual sense by any means.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#248

Post by iblamedang »

aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #207

I forgot that HN is a place of massive censorship, so unfortunate that people have gamed HN to censor views they don't like. I don't blame dang or anyone like that, it's just the way HN works and has been gamed, but it really shows the limits of reasonable discourse on this platform.

Id find it easier not to blame dang if he wasn’t largely at fault. “I’m only doing my job” and “defending the ethos of HN” don’t work for me. I don’t buy it. Peter Thiel’s involvement ended any doubt for me.

The arcane word games and hoops you had to concoct to say the above without having your comment removed would be hilarious if they weren’t so necessary :/

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#249

Post by jessriedel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #215
jessriedel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, civil disobedience means you believe the specific law itself is wrong, but not the law-making process . The justness of the law-making process is why the classic method of practicing civil disobedience involves accepting the punishment. MLK: > In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, loving…

> Yes, civil disobedience means you believe the specific law itself is wrong, but not the law-making process. The US Civil Rights movement generally practiced civil disobedience because the views the laws, the law making process, and the process of selecting who could even participate in the law making process as unacceptable. The key assumption was that enough of the people who could participate in that process were…

> The US Civil Rights movement generally practiced civil disobedience because the views the laws, the law making process, and the process of selecting who could even participate in the law making process as unacceptable.

This is conflating two aspects of the civil rights movement. It's of course true that there were also objections to the law-making process. But the segregationist laws would be unjust (and hence require violating under MLK's civil disobedience) even if the law-making process perfectly reflected the majority will of the people. It's this latter point that is relevant to INGELRII's comment.

> I don't think Assange was engaging in civil disobedience, nor do I think he would have been justified if he were, but doing so does not and never has relied on faith in the justice of the existing law-making process any more than it does in the law being violated itself.

If the law-making process is illegitimate (e.g., if there is a dictator), then no one thinks you have a moral duty (in the deontological sense) to obey the laws, nor to accept the consequences for breaking them. It's only the situation where the law-making process is legitimate -- reflecting the immoral will of the majority -- where the question comes up of whether (1) you can morally violate the unjust law and (2) whether you are duty-bound to accept the resulting punishment.

Re: Julian Assange “slowly dying” and “often sedated” in Belmarsh prison

#250

Post by tasty_freeze »

selfishgene wrote: post #234
tasty_freeze wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to build a false narrative with nothing but true information. Say I put up a website that every day posted a story about a Jewish person who had been convicted of a financial crime. Say I promoted this site and built up a fan base. If every story was 100% true, nothing but real convictions. Would you say this is an honest, faultless website?

Not unless you computed percentage of financial crimes committed by Jews as a percentage of total number of financial crimes committed in the United States. If we saw that this number was appreciably higher than 2%, then we could immediately draw the conclusion that the justice system in this country is biased against Jews, right? (This would be just like we do in the case of blacks when it comes to "more dangerous"…

Your point only reinforces mine -- a website presenting nothing but facts can still offer a false narrative; it takes more work to establish the true narrative.

As for the subtext of your message, you seem to be doubtful that the justice system is biased black people. I have no doubt you are a smart person, so it baffles me why on a post about how complex issues need a broad and nuanced understanding you'd take this simple-minded sarcastic swipe.

You appear to think that the social justice issue was determined simply based on the fact the black people are incarcerated at a higher rate than the general population, and political correctness demands that it be attributed to judicial bias. There is a lot of research supporting this bias; it isn't just a PC justification.

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