I am going to hold the celebrations until we are sure there isn't anything else on the horizon. He isn't getting a pardon and being declared free and clear of charges in the US is very difficult. Who knows what state prosecutor might want to bring new state charges. He may also be wanted as a material witness. If I were him I wouldn't set foot outside Australia ever again.
Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#712This 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
Be careful what you ask for.
The United Kingdom went from a country with enormously outsized global influence to just another European nation. The downward spiral has been stark. The economy stagnates, more and more people live in poverty, and voters decided to inflict further self-harm by cutting themselves off from economic treaties with neighbors based on an illusion of self-importance.
If America ends up in the same place, its collapse will be harder and more dangerous.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you and I'm a bit surprised that more people don't see the difference between what Manning and Snowden did and what Assange was up to (including apparently Snowden himself). At the time, I was initially a person who thought that what Wikileaks was doing was a net good for the rule of law, but changed my mind when I learned about the selective nature of what they publish. The fact that they were playing p…
If we consider other forms of journalism, it seems quite normal that a newspaper or TV station offers a specific political perspective, the news it publishes being selectively curated by its editor. Perhaps the issue is not that Assange had an editorial slant, but that his publication stood alone; we had no whistleblower's equivalent of CNN or the New York Times to consult for contrast as Wikileaks began playing the…
Yeah all the famous, immortalized people we look back on in history have had a bias. The dude has a bone to pick with the Democratic party. So what. He exposed corruption deep in government regardless. Saying "yeah he exposed crimes, but he mostly only did it to spite the liberals, so does was it really a good thing?" is bizarre.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#714I wouldn't call his work on Wikileaks "groundbreaking", he was clearly only willing to leak documents his benefactors wanted him to. I agree that whistleblowing shouldn't be punished like we usually do, and the attempts to imprison him were a farce, but I still think he's a piece of shit who ruined any journalistic credibility he had when he got in bed with Putin.
And whistleblowing is for a different case, it is when you work for an organization and see illegal or dangerous things, and choose loyalty to the law / public interest instead of the organization whom you work for. Here it is different, it is an activist sponsored/supported by an enemy state actively seeking to create chaos in a foreign government.
Agreed, but I wonder if the west is stronger for it. If he had spread only lies and propaganda that the people ate up, maybe we’d only be stronger from the experience, but revealing actual problems in our system allows us to fix what otherwise lacked incentive to fix. Maybe.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#715So 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…
>Are you still a journalist?
If he were an american citizen then the answer is yes as nothing much would stop him from being a journalist. You can speak and journal from prison there.
What your asking implies is was he more an agitator or conspirator. Well he is about to admit to as much out of necessity, more to the point, will the next round of international journalists feel so much grey area hunting is necessary to bring us the truth about governments acting in the red area? I suspect many a journalist would go back in time and spill coffee on Hitler if it helped unearth those state secrets.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sweden does as the US tells.
The people downvoting your comment are ignorant on reality. It is common knowledge that Sweden has been used by the CIA as a black site. Sweden has been a satellite state to the US for a long time, just as other countries are or have been satellites of Russia. Edit: Your down votes do not change reality. More important countries than Sweden have been satellites, such as East and West Germany.
"Common knowledge" and "black site" have never made sense together in the same sentence unless you are a conspiracy nut.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#717My 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?!"
The good 'ol gas-lighting. Nice.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If anything, Sarah is a victim too.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#719Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The judge can't sentence him, but if the judge refuses the plea deal he can order him to be taken into immediate pre-trial detention and schedule a bail hearing in the near future; and then refuse bail due to him being a flight risk (previously ran from authorities). He would then spend potentially several more years in jail preparing for trial, obtaining discovery, going through discovery, filing pretrial motions, s…
My answer above is slightly wrong, see my clarification:
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a “real” Australian, and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints, looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?
>> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even informal exile only normally happens between countries that do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or tax reaso…
It might be turnabout. The settlers of Aus were exiles from England.