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USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

judiciary.uk

611–620 of 646 posts

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but why compare the US to Norway Because it is currently fashionable in the US to esteem, exalt, or even hallow many things Scandavian. If you live in the US, you’ve no doubt seen this. To many in the US, the Scandavians have just nailed it everything social-economic. Personally, I wish we’d take more influence from their diet (fish! fish! more fish!)

> Personally, I wish we’d take more influence from their diet (fish! fish! more fish!) I mean, the furthest you can get from fresh fish in Norway is pretty different to what is seen in most the US. I'm not sure that Fish is the answer there

> I'm not sure that Fish is the answer there

Well, there was no question so I’m not sure what fish is or is not the answer to.

Anyway, you cannot deny America’s obsession with Scandinavia culture, economy, and society.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly is his fate if the appeals process which the US is planning fails to change anything? Does he live free in the UK or will he be prosecuted in the UK for something else? I can’t find any information about that.

Honestly, I am going to bet he looses in the end. The US government has unlimited time and will around these things (look at what they did to the mob). Let’s say he steps one foot out of the UK to another country that has an extradition treaty, US issues warrant and it starts all over again. It is likely given the fact that the UK judges only reason for not granting the request was how he would be held that the US go…

> The US government has unlimited time and will around these things

So why are Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon still free after the same extradition denial years ago?

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second link says "each full body scan of an individual would generate 6 Micro Sieverts (µSv)" so 2 scans per day would be 12 µSv, and a dose chart [0] shows the average daily background dose to be 10 µSv while a flight from NY to LA is 40 µSv. So it's a bit like taking that flight every 3.3 days. So maybe it's no worse than being a pilot / flight attendant? [0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-nee…

12 µSv in two 500 ms bursts is very different 12 µSv spread out over 1 hour of flight time. The difference in intensity is 3,600 fold. It's the difference between being subjected to 1 hour of 30 degree celcius heat and 1 second of 108,000 degree celcius heat.

To bolster your argument: only the Kelvin scale is eligible for multiplication operations, so 30C * 3600 = 1,091,067C when converting to K and back.

On the other hand: I expect 500 ms of such extreme heat would instantly kill a human, although I'm having a hard time finding an answer for such a short time scale. Since X-ray imaging doesn't instantly kill, it's apples and oranges, but point taken.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second link says "each full body scan of an individual would generate 6 Micro Sieverts (µSv)" so 2 scans per day would be 12 µSv, and a dose chart [0] shows the average daily background dose to be 10 µSv while a flight from NY to LA is 40 µSv. So it's a bit like taking that flight every 3.3 days. So maybe it's no worse than being a pilot / flight attendant? [0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-nee…

2 scans a day for 1 year would be 4,380 µSv, or 4.3 mSv. The yearly dose limits recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is 1 mSv per year for the general public, and 20 mSv for “occupationally exposed workers” [1]. Since Assange is receiving this for very specific reasons, I don’t think he would fall into the general public. So he is receiving less than a quarter of what is consi…

Thanks, this is very informative. Does the peakiness of being subject to X-ray scanning (a duty cycle like 500ms on, 12hr off) come into play when comparing with those other occupations, though?

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#615
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the US government is at fault, that still doesn't mean Wikileaks can't also be at fault. Two wrongs don't make a right. Between the two wrongs, am going to focus on the one where the most powerful military on Earth guns down civilians & journalists. Especially given Julian has already paid dearly for exposing what we should have known. The war criminals themselves haven't spent a day behind bars. > Names of…

> WikiLeaks asked for these names so they can redact them. No, they asked for those names knowing that the US government couldn't possibly give them since that would expose the identities of people who would then be put at risk of their lives. In other words, they purposely put the US government in a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. As I've already said upthread.

The US government SHOULD be put in that situation since they are war criminals. I don't understand why we should give leeway to criminal organisations.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#616
post #597
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re comparing Norway’s 2 year recidivism rate with the US’s 5 year rate. The US’s 2 year rate is 29%.

What I find striking are the reported recidivism rates of Sweden and Norway: 43% vs. 20% after 2 years. Sure, Norway is richer and socially/ethnically more homogeneous, but can this be the whole explanation for this extreme difference, considering the two countries are otherwise very similar?

Well Norway is a fraction the size of the US in population.

I would imagine that wealth, cultural homogeneity, and a very small population accounts for at least 80% of the explanation. So not the “whole” explanation, but the critical mass of why it works, sure.

It’s questionable to assume that Norway’s system could scale up by a factor of even 3x, let alone something sixty times the size. I’d be interested if it could produce results in a country like Spain or France with 50m people before calling on the US to simply do what Norway does but with 350m people.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to be pedant, I just don't think what Assange did is investigative journalism, which was an important part of the comment I was replying to.

Of course it is and was, it's very valuable investigative journalism, which was picked up by major newspapers (Guardian, NY Times) who won awards for their work.

It isn’t cut and dry. What the newspapers did was very clearly investigative journalism. But it is argued that investigative journalism requires some sort of care and responsibility when dealing with the safety of others. Assange’s classified data dumps did not redact names and details that could/did put people in danger. Is simply broadcasting information investigative journalism? Maybe. What if amongst the documents there were lists of names/locations of persecuted minority populations within an authoritarian country? Is it journalism to simply publish the list, giving the country greater ability to target those people? Or does it require using that information expose the targeting and the implications of why that list exists and what the implications are while protecting the identities of the vulnerable people?

I don’t think anyone is arguing that a lot of the information was valuable and needed to be brought to light. The “devil is in the details” of how it was done and what responsibility was taken on his part.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#618
post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture matters, and survives migration.

Now you're losing me. In what way does "culture" matter? Socioeconomic status has nothing to do with "culture".

Well as Devil’s advocate, look at how people in Japan reacted after Fukushima. The world was awed by how awesome their “community spirit” was - nobody denied they exhibited far more social cohesion, sacrifice and civic responsibility than would ever be on display in the US.

That’s a cultural difference on display. Culture is not determined by race, so let’s not conflate the two. Culture is something you are immersed in and it does influence behavior.

There are also massive downsides to extreme cultural cohesion, looking at it another way.

But let’s not deny that social culture has a bearing on individual and group behavior. It has a massive impact. Conflating that observation with race or _racism_ seems a particularly unhelpful neuroticism of the US.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did address this above but you ignored it.

You didn't. Assange found that it was difficult to be a real journalist. Instead of attempting to be responsible and do the investigative work required to figure out names that might be worth publishing, he threw up his hands and published them all That's not investigative journalism. It's much closer to muckraking.

I know, you'd consider the likes of NYT/WaPo to be 'real journalists'.

The ones that had so cozy of a relationship with the Pentagon that they saw no problem in being government mouthpieces and getting the public to support a war in Iraq that killed 200k+ people on a made up pretense of WMDs. Same for Lybia, Syria etc.?

Because that's how you get the level of government access to be what you'd consider a 'real' journalist.

I am glad that you don't get to define who makes a 'real' journalist and who doesn't. Julian is not one of these[1] indeed.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a population of 5 million Norwegians, the descendants of whom actually rank very high in socioeconomic indicators in the US Why does this matter? > one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world, thanks in large part to being one of the highest per capita oil exporters in the world for decades Their GDP per capita is almost identical to the US. (And the US has tons of oil too for what it's worth.)

Because who the people are, who administer the prison system, and who are the objects of the prison system's rehabilitation program, matters. Humanity isn't a mass of identical copies. Certain traits, that might be highly conducive to effective rehabilitation, concentrate in certain regions of the world. A smaller polity also tends to mean a much more accountable government which might be expected to be much more eff…

Don't we think the way we handle prisons greatly affects the culture around them?

> Smaller population size tends mean much smaller regional variations in socioeconomic conditions and fewer regions with the extreme conditions associated with high crime rates and pervasive criminal sub-cultures.

Do US regional prisons in non-hotspot areas do much better?

How many criminal sub-cultures extend past a single city?

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