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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#691

Post by pydry »

corimaith wrote: post #632
pydry wrote: post #556

[flagged]

Probably not. Society is more complex than that, especially when you mix perverse actions with seemingly honest intentions. If you reveal 10 military secrets that put lives at risk but then have 1 piece of whistleblower evidence to protect yourself that's a shortcut to getting all your secrets revealed. There is no society in which revealing state secrets would be tolerated without being quickly destroyed by their en…

Nobody ever charged Assange with releasing secrets which led to to the death of any operative.

And if he did, it would make perfect sense to charge him with that.

Sure, they implied it might possibly maybe have happened and some suckers believed it. Why wouldn't they? They hated his guts because he exposed a war crime so naturally they'll sling any kind of mud they can - whether there is evidence or not.

In this case not.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#692

Post by aredox »

skilled wrote: post #638

If you care about this news and you are able to do this financially, consider supporting Julian's fee for having have had to take a private plane for this entire process: > Julian Assange has embarked on flight VJ199 to Saipan. If all goes well it will bring him to freedom in Australia. But his travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: he will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian gover…

How much of that price is real, and how much of it is grift?

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#693

Post by d_burfoot »

impossiblefork wrote: post #443

This isn't something good though, in fact it's really bad. He's actually agreed to confess to something which the US should have no legal authority over. We must remember that the US are torturers who tortured people here in Sweden, right at Bromma airport, even after specifically agreeing not to torture them. It is not a country which should have any influence whatsoever outside its borders; and this is someone who…

> It is not a country which should have any influence whatsoever outside its borders

I wholly agree, as an American citizen

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#694

Post by dctoedt »

frognumber wrote: post #103
tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't. Generally: lower court decisions don't create binding precedent. Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and publishing classified information"; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.

Legally, no. Practically, yes. I've been in situations where there was no precedent, and in asking what would happen if this went to court, decisions were made based on how lower courts ruled. Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice, etc. all /influence/ courts.

> Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice, etc. all /influence/ courts.

Correct. As a general rule:

- When the "black-letter law" dictates a result (that is, a statute or binding precedent), a judge will generally follow it — unless the judge really wants to achieve a particular result and is willing to do mental-gymnastics rationalizing or to try to get the law changed.

In other situations, judges are typically very busy but they still want to get it "right," in accordance with whatever their personal mental model of life suggests, and they don't like being reversed on appeal. So they (judges) look for support — and try to anticipate possible counterarguments — from a variety of sources, as suggested by the adversaries' counsel battling each other's arguments — each of whom is motivated to help the judge do what counsel want by finding the sorts of things mentioned above.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#695

Post by superkuh »

nabla9 wrote: post #535
superkuh wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. What they are charging him with is a brief speculative chat discussion about potentially having Manning provide the hash of a password to Assange to help crack it. But this discussed behavior never actually happened and was never referenced by them again. That's the conspiracy charge they indicted Assange for. If you don't believe me then read https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa... . I…

True according to Assange himself. Keep up with the events.

You're still confused. In order to not be imprisoned forever Assange admitted to the charges which are outlined in the above justice dept. link and summarized by myself. He did not admit to guilt for anything you're making up or imagining.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#696

Post by pradn »

frereubu wrote: post #503

I'd encourage people to read this excellent piece in the London Review of Books by someone who was contracted to ghostwrite Assange's autobiography, and who initially felt very sympathetic towards the aims of Assange and Wikileaks: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n05/andrew-o-hagan/ghost... I found it very insightful and nuanced when it comes to Assange and his motivations, presenting him as neither hero nor vill…

Andrew O’Hagan's article on Assange is rather famous, not only for its contents, but also for being 25,000+ words in a magazine that still pays per word. The LRB can pull it off because they're subsidized by the editor's family funds.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#697

Post by syngrog66 »

I am amused they are flying him from London to "a remote Pacific island" and announcing it in public and pointing out his route and stopovers along the way. Sooo many "wrongness" buttons being pressed, haha. Assange is among a small set of Westerners who I've assumed that if they dont end up in US prison would either end up in Russian exile or have an "accident" arranged for them, or disappeared by Russia. Snowden is in this set -- and he's already fled to Moscow. Trump is in the set too. A few others. Though Trump is a special case becsuse of the complexities of his US SS protection. But they are all the kind of traitors/assets that either Putin would want to keep a close eye on if they couldnt off them entirely.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#698

Post by josefresco »

CaptWillard wrote: post #642
jml78 wrote: post #601

My issue is that he was influenced by Russia. Aka they threatened his life and he then proceeded to leak information about the US but keep Russian secrets. I mean I don’t blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia but he isn’t a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for countries that don’t directly threaten his life.

I really don't want my government acting like my ex-girlfriend. When presented with evidence of her infidelity, her first and only reaction, "Who sent you those screenshots?! It was Sarah, wasn't it? You know she hates me. Why are you talking to her?!"

A better analogy would be if one of your friends had dirt on your whole friend group. One of those people then (allegedly) threatens your friend, and as a result they release information to harm everyone BUT the one who threatened them. "Sarah's" information might be accurate, but her choosing what information to reveal makes her actions suspicious.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#699

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

vidarh wrote: post #506
hn_throwaway_69 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>innocent until proven guilty and all that To be fair, he was refusing to face trial. And he is expected to plead guilty, so he isn't innocent. That said, there may be legitimate questions about whether the United States should be entitled to exercise jurisdiction over foreign nationals who are not physically present in the jurisdiction for national security offences.

Pleading guilty under the threat of either continued incarceration in inhuman conditions or extradition somewhere that could potentially murder you says nothing about guilt in anything but strict legal terms. It's a coerced plea.

Aren't all pleas basically coerced pleas though? The entire point is that you plead guilty to a lesser punishment in order to avoid the chance of a much more severe punishment.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#700

Post by kleiba »

colechristensen wrote: post #650
pydry wrote: post #556

[flagged]

I think Snowden is a hero who deserves a medal from the president. I think Assange deserves what he got. The differences in what they did and how make the distinction. Snowden saw something the public needed to know and filtered it through a journalist who did everything reasonable to filter and publish what the public needed to know. And the public really did need to know it. Assange tried to find anything and every…

Yeah, I also agree that the public really doesn't need to know everything their leaders are up to. It's much better for us if we only receive pre-filtered information.

Perhaps journalists are not the best choice, though, don't you think? In a democracy I'd say the most trustworthy people we have to be tasked with filtering our information are our freely elected politicians!

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