Julian Assange arrested in London • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#391

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #87

mikorym wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the Swedish rape case fishy. Are there any facts (going both ways) to speak of at all?

The accuser has ties to the CIA. You don’t need to know more than that. It was all really badly staged.

"Nation state wants to destroy reputation of someone they claim is doing massive damage to them. Intelligence agency sanctions some character assassination, efforts to frame him for a crime."

Comes up with "wake up sex without a condom for an otherwise consensual episode", and operative isn't overly motivated to pursue charges.

If this is the best the CIA can muster, I don't feel outrage so much as profound sadness at the waste of our resources (leaving aside, for the sake of example, related moral or ethical questions, and merely talking abilities and logistics).

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#392

Post by realusername » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #256

mikeq101101 wrote: post #144

The comments here disgust me. People here used to have some principles, now there's so many people just repeating establishment talking points.

I don't know to what you're referring, but the facts of the matter are: 1. He was wanted for questioning for rape and sexual misconduct in Sweden. According to police records, he had sex with a woman who demanded that he wore a condom, which he did at first. Then next morning she wakes up by him penetrating her without consent. She then asks "are you wearing anything", to which he replies "I'm wearing you". The sexua…

Well, that's some nice arguments about the Sweden case you are bringing up. We will see very soon if Sweden will want to extradite him validating your theory or if we will end up extradited in the US instead (spoiler: it will be the second option).

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#393

Post by icebraining » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

rndgermandude wrote: post #135

jackweirdy wrote: post #2

> Ecuadorian embassy withdrew his asylum and UK police were invited in to arrest him. According to a journalist at Sky news https://twitter.com/NewsTMac/status/1116274082922803200

He has been a citizen of Ecuador since 2017. This was an extradition.

Being a citizen is not relevant to whether it's an extradition. "Extradition is an act where one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction". The Ecuadorian embassy doesn't have its own jurisdiction.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#394

Post by thinkingemote » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

hardlianotion wrote: post #42

dpwm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? There's many ways this could be a "good" thing: exposing the farce of international law when the US government and military claim global jurisdiction over a man who never set foot there seems just one of them.

As far as we know, there is no extradition case in place.

Reload the page

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#395

Post by bhouston » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

nagVenkat wrote: post #220

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #91

It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers. There's a few avenues: 1) Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time. 2) Conspiracy to commit espionage. Probably the most like…

There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released. He has been most certainly accused of breaking United States laws. Edit: To indict someone, the government has to show the grand jury that there is sufficient evidence. It is very easy to indict someone (hence the phrase “A ham sandwich can be indicted by the grand jury”) but one has to acknowledge the fact that the federal government h…

> There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released.

Details here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#396

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:10 PM UTC

_iyig wrote: post #172

In the Afghan War Documents leak, Julian Assange refused to redact the names of Afghans who informed on the Taliban. He referred to them as “spies and traitors” in comments to the media. A reporter for the Guardian claims he said, “Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.” Nasty way to diss on fellow leakers, in my opinion. I wonder if Mr. Assange feels he hims…

From your link:

Guardian journalist, David Leigh, claimed that Julian Assange initially refused to redact the names of informants.[62] In his book, co-authored with Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, Leigh claimed Assange to have said in relation to whether the names should be redacted, "Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."[63] In response to the book's publication, WikiLeaks posted on Twitter: "The Guardian book serialization contains malicious libels. We will be taking action."[64] When Douglas Murray relayed these comments in a debate, Assange interjected "We are in the process of suing The Guardian in relation to that comment."[65] The Guardian claimed the following day that they had 'not received any notification of such action from WikiLeaks or its lawyers', two months after the publication of the book.[66]

So what you report is a claim that Assang himself has strongly denied.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#397

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:11 PM UTC

tabs_masterrace wrote: post #326

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that fr…

> It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed.

Personally I find it disgusting that you'd dismiss these charges so quickly out of hand because they don't fit your existing bias surrounding this guy. But hey, rape isn't a big deal, right?

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#398

Post by detaro » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:11 PM UTC

tabs_masterrace wrote: post #326

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that fr…

> Something like that wouldn't fly in Germany for example.

I'd not want to rely on that if it touches something "important"/secretive. Minor issues that can be clearly blamed on a single person are easier to admit and follow up on than things that would have widespread impact.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#399

Post by deiznof » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:11 PM UTC

mikeq101101 wrote: post #144

The comments here disgust me. People here used to have some principles, now there's so many people just repeating establishment talking points.

HN seems to be pretty good, actually, they seem to understand that Assange has been the target of a propaganda campaign. On reddit or anywhere else I'd agree with you.

Re: Julian Assange arrested in London

#400

Post by ptero » Thu, Apr 11, 2019, 12:11 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #353

tabs_masterrace wrote: post #326

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that fr…

>> It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed. The sexual charges really don't look fabricated or to have had any political motive at all. The wikipedia article on the allegations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_... ) makes it clear that the charges were dropped after Assange was initially questioned by the police, then…

> From my reading anyway, Assange crossed a line, perhaps not realising that what he was doing

To me, this points to the fact that there are likely many transgressions of all kinds that each person in the civilized world commits. Those are unlikely to lead to anything beyond an occasional minor fine, but the government prosecutors can use those as ammunition for future cases totally unrelated to original offense. This is not how we want the law to work. My 2c.