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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

#861

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

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…

I don't think Assange operated in any kind of self-interest per-se, I think he operated based on a principle of maximum transparency.

I definitely don't think that is always a positive thing but I struggle to think of anything which Assange leaked which I really disagree with. Probably some parts of cablegate should not have come out as they were very "inside baseball" talk between diplomats and were too easily construed negatively in the media, though, I think for the most part our allies realized that they said the same things about us in their private communications and there was really no major fallout from it.

Now, all that said, Assange did break the law and I don't think there should be no consequences for that but the way the US went about this (across 3 different presidencies) is just terrible. Nudging and cajoling and perhaps berating our Swedish allies to jin up a "rape" case against him so he could be extradited from the UK to Sweden and then obviously to the US, and, denying that we were doing that was just dirty on our part. I'm sure if there is a cablegate 2.0 we'd find we did some fairly terrible stuff to persuade our Swedish allies to prosecute this.

Ultimately the simple reason I think there is near positive reaction to this news is that everyone understands that even given what he did, it does not merit almost 15 years of prison in some really terrible conditions. Should he have walked away free? Maybe, maybe not but he should have had a fair trial with fair charges and faced a fair jury and he never got any of that, he was effectively extrajudicially jailed.

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

#862

Post by gklitz »

sabarn01 wrote: post #783
gklitz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clinton is not democracy. Anti-Clinton is not anti democracy. Being anti the US government is not anti democratic. And no, letting USA or any other nation for that matter commit war crimes quietly does not support democracy.

If Assange showed any interest in also undermining Russia or other authoritarian regimes I would feel more compassion. I think criticization of the US foreign policy is fine and the press has a role. To me his case has always been grey. States have secrets its just the nature of the world.

> States have secrets its just the nature of the world.

So let’s just check your bias. Assuming an American journalist living in England exposes video of Russia gunning down civilians and shows they are covering it up. Would you say the right cause of action would be for that American to be procedures in Russia because “ States have secrets it’s just the nature of the world.” and apparently hiding war crimes and prosecuting journalists who expose them is also just states rights?

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

#863

Post by brookst »

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...

> I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any countries' courts and justice system after that...

Couldn't disagree more. By this logic, no country should criticize any other country's courts and justice systems because they all have problems and massive miscarriages of justice.

Do we want more scrutiny and criticism or less? I think the world is better if the US and UK aggressively criticize and pressure other countries to improve AND ALSO everyone else criticizes abuses by the US and UK and pressures them to improve.

IMO that is a much better world than one where nobody is highlighting abuses or asking anyone else to improve.

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

#864

Post by tboyd47 »

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…

We need more of his type of self-interest and less of the kind shown in the Panama Papers and Epstein flight logs.

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

#865

Post by nikkwong »

skilled wrote: post #860
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 gue…

The US government needs to prosecute actors who infiltrate secure systems with the aim to leak state secrets as a way to prevent this type of behavior from happening in the future. Say what you want; even if the premise of leaking is seeking to enrich the interests of the public--there are many state secrets that are secret for very good reasons, such as protecting the lives of informants, diplomats, etc.

There were many documents that WikiLeaks released that seemed to have been released under the auspice of "full transparency" but really served no public good and inflicted a lot of harm. Releasing the names of afgan informants, cablegate, that airstrike video where journalists were killed (can't remember the name specifically), etc. I just don't know if I agree that the public should know everything.

Think about the case of the NSA--yes they were spying on Americans in egregious ways and overextending the scope of their mission and authority. But at the same time, we do want a lot of their methods to remain secret. They have thwarted many potential terrorist attacks since 9/11; and if we, and our adversaries, knew exactly how and who they were spying on--I'm sure Americans would be less safe.

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

#866

Post by wizzwizz4 »

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…

> 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.

Julian Assange was an irresponsible arsehole. Doesn't mean his treatment was anything resembling just. While he probably put a lot of people at risk, I've not heard of anyone actually getting hurt as a result of his actions. Given that, and given his treatment in prison, he's more than served his time.

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

#867

Post by [deleted] »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #861
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…

I don't think Assange operated in any kind of self-interest per-se, I think he operated based on a principle of maximum transparency. I definitely don't think that is always a positive thing but I struggle to think of anything which Assange leaked which I really disagree with. Probably some parts of cablegate should not have come out as they were very "inside baseball" talk between diplomats and were too easily const…

[deleted]

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

#870

Post by ToucanLoucan »

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...

> Why, though?

Because he fucked with the powerful.

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