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Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

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Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#251

Post by boomboomsubban »

kstenerud wrote: post #126
square_usual wrote: post #7

This makes me feel incredibly cynical. I genuinely want to know: would it matter if they did get to observe? I'm sure Amnesty has reported on tonnes of US/UK crimes and human rights violations, and a quick google search shows many such reports. How many of those actually changed anything? Sure, when Amnesty reports on, say, Syria, the US could use that as justification for intervention, but what use is reporting on t…

It would, because Amnesty International has a stronger voice than Craig Murray (the only one currently reporting on this). Craig is a meticulous reporter, but he's also prone to a number of strange conspiracy theories that diminish his credibility (people should be considering that separately from the Assange case, but human nature doesn't work that way). There are a lot of things going on in that courtroom that shou…

>the only one currently reporting on this

This isn't true. The number of press there is incredibly limited, Murray estimated about ten journalists total. Exberliner is another source covering it that I've found, though not as thorough as Murray.

https://www.exberliner.com/topics/julian-assange/

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#252

Post by rootusrootus »

megous wrote: post #88
rootusrootus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. It sure appears that he took sides in the US election in 2016. It makes sense to see a 50/50 split in support, likely correlated roughly with political partisanship.

Easy to see someone who published secrets related to american imperialism, would publish secrets about the candidate that was viewed as imperialist at the time.

A charitable interpretation of his choices in 2016 would be that he thought he was bloodying the nose of the next US president, that he assumed like the rest of us that obviously Clinton was going to win.

But it remains a fact that he chose to spill damaging information about one side and not the other, even though he had information on both. Unfortunately for him, the side he helped turns out to be just as eager for his head on a pike as the other would have been.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#253

Post by mariusor »

zepto wrote: post #229
mariusor wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following the reporting from the witness testimonies and some of them detailed that a lot of work has went into editing (and supressing some of) the documents that he supposedly released without censoring names of assets. I posted these links previously in the thread but Daniel Ellsberg talks a bit about how this was handled: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/16/pentagon-papers-ellsberg-... https://www.craigm…

Those actually seem to confirm my view. They don’t talk about Assange writing a story, or editing reports. They talk about Wikileaks, his publishing organization, working as a peer in cooperation with the NYT, the Guardian, and other publishers. They describe his priorities and concerns and the protocols he wanted to use. All of these are consistent with Assange as the creator of Wikileaks standing as a publisher. Al…

I was trying to illustrate that he was exhibiting editorial discretion over a very bulk and voluminous material. That makes him an editor, on behalf of Wikileaks as the publisher. You might argue that an editor that didn't come from a journalistic background is not a journalist, but I think others feel differently.

I'm pretty sure I read in the articles covering the hearings that some journalist organizations were claiming he is one. Found a mention in day 8 of the hearings reporting (search for mentions of Chelsea Manning): https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#254

Post by mint2 »

lanevorockz wrote: post #110
cassepipe wrote: post #31

I am baffled to see that the majority of the comments here are at best showing no support for what Assange did and at worst are trying to find excuses not to be disturbed in their belief that since we are in a democracy hence everything that's happening is normal. I thought the people here had a sharper political view on what kind of society we could/should live in but I just read people that are always in a hurry to…

I do believe there is a substantial amount of people that just bow to whatever the perceived experts say. That's why you would be called a conspiracy theorist if you said that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Proof be damned and Skeptics should be burn at the stake. What bothers me the most is that Assange only crime in the UK is that he had skip bail from a crime without evidence. Where is the European…

> That's why you would be called a conspiracy theorist if you said that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction.

I don’t know where you live, but at least around California it’s generally accepted that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and the war justification was bush league lies.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#255

Post by rbanffy »

mariusor wrote: post #203
rbanffy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people seem to have little sympathy for Assange (I certainly don't, for his role in Trump's election) and don't seem to realize that any journalist that publishes a leak that involves a government can be threatened with the same accusations the US is making against him. This is not about Assange's personal life or him being a journalist or a hack. It's about the freedom to publish relevant news obtained from…

> don't seem to realize that any journalist that publishes a leak that involves a government can be threatened with the same accusations the US is making against him. Some of the testimonies over the course of last week were exactly about this. How the US government didn't really try to prosecute US journalists for aiding sources to obtain classified material. See Craig Murray's[1] or Kevin Gosztola's reports on the…

Do you trust the US government not to do this if they successfully extradite Assange? What about foreign journalists?

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#256

Post by bcrosby95 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #85

I feel like the powers that be have decided to make this extradition happen. Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him. Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" a…

> Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him.

Sure, but this is how things have always been. Rosa Parks wasn't the first or only black person that was arrested for not giving up her bus seat.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#257

Post by cmiles74 »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #224
rayiner wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the superseding indictment itself: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl... Assange is alleged to have actively recruited hackers and directed them to find particular information from particular sources. Among other things, agreed to assist Manning in deriving a password from a hash file. (It is irrelevant whether he succeeded or not—the crime of conspiracy is complete upon taking the f…

This logic would render all national security reporting illegal. The job of national security reporters is to convince people in government to divulge information they're legally barred from divulging.

In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password.

To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism.

In my opinion I'm not sure how much or how heavy a book should be thrown at someone trying to decode a hashed password, but that's not really what is at issue. Perhaps the issue is, "is this a crime in the UK".

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#259

Post by chrisseaton »

eyko wrote: post #250
plandis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange is alleged to have sought classified material from the US, and for aiding and abetting Manning in obtaining classified material. This would be like is Australia asked the UK to extradite someone who recruited Australians to rob a bank and then materially helped said Australians actually rob the aforementioned bank.

Nation states do not have a right to privacy. Robbing a bank is not equivalent to acquiring state secrets (especially those involving illegal activity). Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Why do people say ‘nation states’ when they mean countries? Neither the UK nor the US are ‘nation states’. They’re both examples I would give of things that are not nation states in fact.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#260

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rayiner wrote: post #187
ugopapa wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or one may compare it with the way journalists collaborate with sources. In fact, it has been discussed in the hearing how Assange behavior is exactly what journalists do to get access to privileged information.

Collaborating with a source is different than assisting a source to obstruct a law enforcement investigation of a computer security breach.

Keeping your sources anonymous is exactly obstructive to investigations, thats the point.
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