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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
321–330 of 1001 posts
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#322> Julian's freedom is our freedom. A little too heavy handed. Yeah it seems like from the outside he was potentially overly punished, pending further details that may never materialize, but “his freedom is our freedom” is pretty extreme given what he did. He’s not relatable.
Yes the world is clearly a worse place because of Snowden, without him just imagine the true power the national security state could have achieved and how much safer we’d all feel.
Yes, he is a true hero of NSA. The secrets were too big to allow just anybody to leak them.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#323Congratulations! I share in the popular jubilation and sense of epoch-making reconciliation, that aligns with the stars, even tho I think Assange acted like an egotistical fool who squandered the great lens of transparency and accountability he had created through misjudged self-importance and vulnerability to manipulation by his sources for their own ends. Hopefully his Second Act brings good fruits without the thor…
Yes, we should whip him for not having a level head when the entire US government is against him. Someone like you and I would have been sure to keep humble and not be egotistical when seeking asylum and fair justice against an entity that has military bases all over the world
Well you don't know what I would do (except for what I'm saying here where you can see I wouldn't do what he did! haha), but I understand if you're speaking for yourself.
I think precisely in that situation is when you need that kind of ability. But I wouldn't say we should whip him! Again speaking for yourself I suppose hahahahahaha! :)
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#324So 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…
I would add to what you wrote that I personally have reservations about revealing the identities of confidential sources, activists, etc. He willfully published not only the sources in active warzones who were feeding information to the US, risking their deaths, but also the secret identities and conversations of activists in Belarus who were summarily imprisoned or killed. And it's not that they're committed to alwa…
i have a very, very hard time feeling sympathetic to the elements put in danger here.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has been reporting on this. Apparently there was one zealous person in DOJ pushing the Assange case and everybody else thinks it's too weak to be worth it.
Don’t forget Hillary was fixated on Assange for a long time, and was even quoted with “Can’t we just drone the guy?”. The direct spat lead to Assange helping Trump and the Russians publish Hillary’s email server spool. I don’t like that Assange ended up helping Trump and Russia, but you can’t blame him for helping the one person who can kick the person out of office who wants to Tomahawk you
I don't think the issue is whether Clinton made this comment or not. The legend simply points out what every one is thinking. That this threw the election for her, and that is likely her entire perspective on this. The Trump admin was likely motivated to prosecute, so as to appear they were not in collusion with the release of the emails, and the current administration directly backed HC. People like Kromberg do not come out of a vacuum.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#326Why is this case located with the United States District Court For The Northern Mariana Islands?
Because it's about as far away from the US mainland as you can get and relatively close to Australia where he's going. Also it's conveniently very far away from any journalists. At least, I can't imagine those shipping out in large numbers on short notice.
So, they get to rubber stamp this and get it over with without too much scrutiny in the media before the man starts giving non-stop interviews in Sydney or wherever he is going in Australia.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#327Good, this was getting majorly embarrassing for all countries still involved with this legal mess. The man dying in prison stuck in legal limbo without any conviction whatsoever (innocent until proven guilty and all that) would have been a PR disaster for the UK. And of course there's also the issue that the UK is very likely to get a new government that would have likely been leaning to just letting the man go in an…
> At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent thing to do.
(massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished)
The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituents. His backbone has a restitution coefficient somewhere in the Oort cloud.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#328> Court documents revealing Assange's plea deal were filed Monday evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born. I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in…
IANAL but the judge can't both reject the plea deal and sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the t…
> Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident.
Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new court date.
Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn't change facts. There is a separation of powers between the prosecutor who is negotiating the extradition/plea and the judge who independently evaluates the agreement.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#329Is there any risk that he could face further charges in Australia?
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#330Wow that's the greatest news of this year! Congrats Julian!