Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nbcnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 1001 posts

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

#851

Post by wahnfrieden »

Wytwwww wrote: post #833
esnard wrote: post #45

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators…

> 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day Why, though? I didn't even think that was a thing in Britain, at least if you're not some very high risk criminal convicted of violent crimes, which I don't think he is? Regardless of what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other prisoners...

It's used as a torture method

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

#852

Post by qarl »

chinathrow wrote: post #814
benreesman wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when canaries were useful as a deterrent: even with an apathetic public on balance the tech community was pretty vigilant. These days Snowden is screaming into the void even as concerns HN readers, never mind that he was completely right at great personal cost the first time. I still trust Moxie, and Carmack/Palmer/etc. seem to be taking a stand, there are others, but it’s getting thin.

Palmer?

You know, the billionaire class who give money to Trump and use their techno skills to invent new and super deadly weapon systems thereby increasing their dragon-like hoard.

True patriots.

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

#853

Post by mythrwy »

tootie wrote: post #811
drojas wrote: post #764

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more an…

Read some Steven Pinker. Your observations about our present state are not wrong, but seriously consider every other point in human history and realize we are not worse off in any measurable way. In fact, much better.

I have no doubt Steven Pinker is very well off indeed.

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

#854

Post by nailer »

nailer wrote: post #625
stef25 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did poke a rather large stick at a rather large bear.

So did Woodward and bernstein but they were imprisoned for five years.

Weren't. Sorry, I'm using voice dictation and it makes errors like this.

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

#855

Post by shafyy »

tootie wrote: post #811
drojas wrote: post #764

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more an…

Read some Steven Pinker. Your observations about our present state are not wrong, but seriously consider every other point in human history and realize we are not worse off in any measurable way. In fact, much better.

[flagged]

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

#856

Post by ben_w »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #763
Neil44 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1901 days in prison, after all that time since 2012 holed up in a room in the Ecuadorian embassy first.

He was in isolation in a high security prison without having been convicted of any crimes since 22 September 2019. He was only released after 'admitting' that he was guilty... I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any countries' courts and justice system after that...

"Following his arrest, he was charged and convicted, on the 1st May 2019, of violating the Bail Act, and sentenced to fifty weeks in prison."

So sure, given you said "since 22 September", but with a huge embassy-shaped reason why they didn't let him out on bail a second time.

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

#857

Post by pipes »

kome wrote: post #671
tim333 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Afghans too "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian... I'm ambivalent about his jailing. If you are going to get heroic people killed then you can't cry too much if you get jailed a bit.

Well, his words were unfortunate, but considering how the Americans left Afghanistan in total chaos a few years ago is even more unfortunate, to put it mildly. They threw most of their allies and collaborators under the bus. The American government has NO moral superiority. And they just need to shut up.

I didn't say the American government had moral superiority, I'm saying he thinks it's alright to kill people who worked with the American government. He supports transparency in government but at the same time supports killing people for the alleged crime of working for their enemy. No judge, no jury, just murder. This calls into question what exactly he stands for.

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

#858

Post by runlaszlorun »

jorblumesea wrote: post #840
drojas wrote: post #764

This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more an…

The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised. Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing…

This fact isn’t stated often enough.

Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in the audio. And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s themselves, would be pointing what obviously looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight- not to mention bringing women and in children with him in the minivan.

If this highly edited footage was the worst that could be found in such a large dump of documents- I’m highly underwhelmed.

Evidence of war crimes? Hardly. A chance to see how ugly these conflicts are and another reason why Americsn troops perhaps should never have been there in the first place? Yep, absolutely.

But my hunch is that the entire event is a Rohrschack test where most people will take away from it the same perceptions that they walked in with.

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

#859

Post by ben_w »

nikkwong wrote: post #850

Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive? Assange certainly did great work to reveal government corruption and abuses of power. At the same time, some state secrets are best kept secret for national interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of regard for protecting this type of information. It often seemed that he was working in his own self interest rather tha…

> Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive?

Not really, though I am frustrated as it does feel like he's only popular because he's an underdog sticking it to The Man.

Even in isolation and ignoring the preceding case — for which he fled to the embassy in order to not risk the very outcome he's now facing (c.f. going to the USA, "Assange would appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled territory north of Guam", even though that wasn't even on the cards at the time he fled) — many other journalists manage to publish damning evidence that seriously upsets their governments without having to solicit for it (AFAICT, no journalists have gotten into trouble for publishing Snowden's leaks, just Snowden himself), while some other journalists who broke the law to get their scoops also faced court for breaking the law to get their scoops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_arrested_in_the...

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

#860

Post by skilled »

nikkwong wrote: post #850

Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive? Assange certainly did great work to reveal government corruption and abuses of power. At the same time, some state secrets are best kept secret for national interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of regard for protecting this type of information. It often seemed that he was working in his own self interest rather tha…

But of course it is positive. This is a huge deal, even if only one that will benefit himself. I don’t know anything about any secrets that he showed any lack of regard for, but I definitely know about the files he exposed that showed the US government is a bunch of cowards who manipulate people and then use the full force of the law to defend themselves when caught with their pants down.

Instead of making people guess what you mean by nuanced, you simply should go ahead and provide that nuanced perspective and see if anyone wants to engage it.

Post reply on HN