341–350 of 1001 posts
Is there any risk that he could face further charges in Australia?
But the fact he is pleading guilty to a serious crime will have further implications for his life e.g. preventing travel, not allowed to apply for certain jobs etc.
Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton.
Politics is complicated.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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! :)
Am I the only one who feels suspicious about this and would hesitate to trust the persecuters? Maybe that's not a entirely a reasonable reaction (I just woke up about 10 minutes ago) but it's how I feel currently and I'm wondering if anyone else would feel the same. The U.S. as a national entity certainly isn't above lying, as leaks regarding them have shown.
This isn't really between the US and Assange; it's between the US and UK. If the US doesn't honor the rules for extradition then the UK may decide not to extradite people in the future.
Most notably, the UK-US extradition treaty, which has exemptions for political offenses (e.g. espionage), has been found not to apply.
This article is decent https://theconversation.com/julian-assange-how-british-extra..., but from the middle of the trial. Craig Murray's blog is also a good source of info.
> 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 i…
I assume you mean the famous "collateral murder" videos?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...
That is my biggest issue with the whole wikileaks thing. Because it might borderline a warcrime by being careless - but it was no murder. Yet it was framed as the US army just killing journalists for fun. But it was not at all like this.
There was active fighting, the journalists that were killed were embedded with active fighters - and their camera misstaken for an RPG. Those things can happen, especially if the journalists do not mark themself as journalists.
"The cameras could easily be mistaken for slung AK-47 or AKM rifles, especially since neither cameraman is wearing anything that identifies him as media or press"
The second attack while civilians evacuated and the children killed in the van - that was the bad thing. But it was still in the context of US troops receiving fire. So not at all allright, dirty war in a urban area - but not intentional murder. It was collateral damage in a wrong war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
First, Assange isn't a whistleblower, nor a leaker. He was a publisher. Wikileaks received leaked documents from whistleblowers and published them. Or at least received documents from somewhere and published them. In the beginning Assange tried to vet the leaks he published. He contacted the US over the Manning leaks to go over them so he could publish without risk, the US refused. So Assange set up a huge team of jo…
It might have been somewhat leaked before, maybe because of misscomunication/individual action. But it was not known widely before - still, Wikipedia made the decision to publish all unredacted on their own:
"WikiLeaks said that on 2 September it would publish the entire, unredacted archive in searchable form on its website"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.