It’s victim blaming. Would you say a victim of Stockholm Syndrome is “free to leave at any time”? No, because that’s a ridiculous argument. Would you say Snowden is “free to leave [Russia] at any time”? No!
So why is it an acceptable argument when it’s Assange? Because he possibly committed a crime in Sweden? Because he indiscriminately blew the whistle on the US government’s crimes?
Sure, he’s a puppet of Russia, but to say he doesn’t deserve the same protections as the rest of us is to argue for tyranny.
Just for the sake of argument, say you are a bank robber who successfully barricaded yourself somewhere (really uncomfortable) where police cannot reach you. You are then free to leave at any time, but would be arrested as soon as you did.
Would you really argue that police would have to drop the case to avoid torturing you?
Your line of thinking seems to presuppose that the threat of arrest was somehow unjust, but you never really argue for that point.
He’s wanted because he embarrassed the United States government. Espionage laws are a horrible attack on free speech and freedom of the press and I’m appalled the Supreme Court previously ruled they’re constitutional.
For example, in the case of the bank robber I would actually agree that it would amount to torture if police were clearly communicating to the bank robber that they were intent on killing them as soon as they showed up, no matter what they did.
So there is nuance to this and I don’t think that nuance ever gets you around to actually arguing the case and the facts of the case.
Fleeing from the law made Assange seem like a coward, which worked against his cause. There is no better way to seem guilty than to run from a legal process that most people feel is fair, even if you personally think otherwise.
This comment comes up a lot in regards to Snowden too. I'm not a huge fan of Assange, but my feeling is that the people who whistleblow on corrupt governments at great personal risk don't owe you their martyrdom as well. It's very easy to claim that other people should be sacrificial lambs, but typically that argument falls apart once it gets personal -- if the government was attacking people in this forum right now, we wouldn't see so many people arguing that they had a duty to allow themselves to be used as an example of the potential harm.
I believe people like Snowden have the right to try and protect themselves from unjust systems, and fleeing from said systems is a particularly harmless measure with very few problematic knock-on effects.
Assange didn't do that. He just claims unfair persecution.
> They want to use special procedures they want to be able to close the courtroom, they want the public not to be able to go, know what's going on. And, essentially, the most important fact to the government and this is the thing we have a point of contention on, is that they do not want the jury to be able to consider the motivations.[0]
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/edward-snowden-nsa-cbs-this-mor...
Assange would want to argue that he isn't a spy, but a whistleblower. The argument would be that he willingly broke a law in order to expose more illegal behavior by the government. In order to make that argument, he has to be allowed to talk about what the government does.
Under the espionage act, though, the government can say that the details of their activities are classified, and therefore are not admissable evidence in a public trial. Therefore, their guilt cannot be proven because any claim of illegal behavior could not be backed by evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#Criticis...
Easy to nominate someone else for martyrdom.
That was Assange's choice: a prison in the UK, or a prison in the USA. He didn't feel that the USA would either be safe or provide a fair trial, and so he stayed put.
Didn't it mean he would be free to stand trial for the rape allegations?
Do those women not have a right to have their case heard?
No, there were never any charges filed against Julian Assange in Sweden. He was wanted for "questioning" by a Swedish prosecutor in a case that has now been entirely dropped due to a complete lack of substance. Assange's assertion was that this Swedish investigation was created entirely as a pretense to seize him and ship him to the United States for his activities as a publisher (an assertion that has proven to be true given his current status). There was nothing preventing the Swedish prosecutor from questioning Assange in the UK - they have traveled abroad to question subjects of other investigations in the past.
The Trump administration pushed the pedal on it.
And to think that Assange was scared as hell of Hillary Clinton, which actually would be a much better option for him now, imagine Hillary forgiving Assange, she had a lot to gain from it, Trump doesn't care, he just really doesn't.
Then again, such theories seem to have blossomed in the information age, so perhaps not.
If you are talking about US Prisions then there is a Good Case to be made that is true. The Treatment of Prisioners in the US is abhorrent
Yeah, but the victim is the woman he raped and that will not see any justice, because he ran...
That's false.
> He is being accused of a very specific thing which at best might be classified as sexual misconduct.
it's rape in Sweden.
I don't know why you split hairs on this simple fact.
What he did does not fall within the definition of rape, please do not accuse him of doing a much worse thing than he did.
He was arguing that rape is rape, even if in different states they have different laws.
If you rape a girl the fact that in some country she is of legal age and in others she's not, it doesn't change the fact.
It is rape, she said no, he forced her, it is rape.
Please accept it, because it's what happened.
> He was arguing that rape is rape, even if in different states they have different laws.
It was while he was defending Minsky and he was actually arguing that sex does not magically become rape depending on the country that you do it.
> It is rape, she said no, he forced her, it is rape.
He did not force her though. He had consent to have sex with her. It's just that they agreed to have a condom on but he apparently ripped it or something and she noticed it only afterwards.
No, he wasn't defending Minsky, please stop saying that!
He was arguing that the definition of rape should not change based on the country you're in, or to put it in other words: if you are 16 in Italy, you can give consent to have sex, if you are 17 years and 364 days old in U.S.A., you can't.
That shouldn't change the definition of rape.
> It's just that they agreed to have a condom on but he apparently ripped it or something and she noticed it only afterwards
That's not what she says.
I was not there, did you?
I tend not to believe to a man that has at least 4 children with 4 women and he "prefers them virgins so he can be the first one to impregnate them" when it's about using condoms.
https://gawker.com/5757325/julian-assange-has-at-least-four-...
BUT we're seriously OT here.
This is the first time that I said that...
> He was arguing that the definition of rape should not change based on the country you're in, or to put it in other words: if you are 16 in Italy, you can give consent to have sex, if you are 17 years and 364 days old in U.S.A., you can't.
Yes, just because having consensual sex with a 17 and 364 days years old is illegal in some places and the law there calls it rape it does not make it rape in reality. Same thing applies here. Just because the Swedish law calls it rape it does not mean that it really is rape.
> That's not what she says.
This is what Guardian says https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange... - can you show me your source where she says that he raped her?
many have done before you, and still doing it.
So, please stop.
It never happened.
> Yes, just because having consensual sex with a 17 and 364 days years old is illegal in some places and the law there calls it rape it does not make it rape in reality
Stallman was arguing exactly on the opposite: just because it is of legal age in some country, it doesn't make rape any less rape.
He was talking about Minsky, who he was not defending.
> can you show me your source where she says that he raped her?
Here: https://web.archive.org/web/20190502114026/https://www.aklag...
Stallman was replying to "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands." with "Does it really? I think it is moraily absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17. i think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexuai assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone."
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190502114026/https://www.aklag...
They use rape as to include breaking a condom -- which is exactly why Stallman and I are against using terms like rape to describe a much less serious (or a much more serious) offence, because it confuses people.
They use any definition their law uses to define rape.
If it is rape for them and you do it in their country, it is rape.
> which is exactly why Stallman and I are against using terms like rape to describe a much less serious
I don't think you and Stallman agreee at all.
Stallman was against using "sexual assault", because it can be conflated with opinions like "assault means using violence" while it's not necessary to be sexual assault.
Stallman was in fact in favour of using "statutory rape" which is not ambiguous.
If I, a man, agree to have sex with a woman after we both agree to use a condom, but I find out that she knowingly punctured the condom, I didn't consent to that.
If you consent to have sex with a woman as long as she promises to not cheat on you and she breaks that promise, is that rape? I would claim that it is not.
Presumption of innocence is a basic concept in law, and an international human right.
We don't know at this point if he raped, assaulted, grabbed by some part of the body, or did anything to any woman. There was not a trial, no judge, no proofs, no videos.
What we know is that Wikileaks most probably contributed to save lots of women from being massively raped. There was a global sense of impunity for armies before and a totally different situation after Assange. Soldiers were allowed to do anything they pleased with civils including children and women. Not so easy anymore
But in general, the arument is flawed. If I rob a bank and barricade myself in my basement when the police shows up I'm not being subjected to torture because I'll face jail for my bank robbery if I leave the basement. Not after one day nor after ten years.
That's a bit silly in my view.
Also, as far as I'm aware, Assange didn't claim he was tortured, the UN experts on torture came to that conclusion.
It's about the people in power following a standardised process based on the crime that was supposedly committed, and being applied uniformly, vs the "rule of man" where things are handled on an adhoc manner based on who's in power and who's being charged.
The system can be breaching the "rule of law", not the individuals targeted by that system.
The idea that having to flee charges is tantamount to being tortured implies the state does not have that right. If there is to be the rule of law, the state has not only the right but the obligation.
Assange jumped bail after a multi stage judicial process on charges of rape and sexual molestation.
Ms Frank was hiding to avoid genocidal extermination by an occupying force during war.
They're not equivalent.
However I want to strongly push back on the argument that: something can't be torture or abuse because the person is physically able to leave. The absence of a locked door does not capture the full scope of coercion and psychological in many situations.
This sort of excuse is often used by cults and domestic abusers to justify why the terrible things they do are not abusive. People die or have life long psychological trauma from hazing rituals that they are "free to leave at any point".
Are you saying we should take your word over theirs?
Saying "he could have left" in this situation, after being shown exactly how that would have/did go down, is like camping out in front of your ex-girlfriend's house with a baseball bat, then telling the officer you didn't beat her and thus did nothing wrong. Except the whole world can see you totally did beat her when she finally left the house.
As I said, framing it as that simple of a choice may lack some nuance in describing the pressure he was under. But it is factually true that he was not forced to stay in the conditions which are being criticised. Some would also say that the nature of the conditions was somewhat of his own doing, since the relationship with the embassy is well documented to have deteriorated greatly over time. I can't vouch either way, and it seems people are downvoting normal conversation so I doubt it will be productive to continue.
He has always been free to face his accusers.
BTW, the comments guidelines state
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article?The U.S. does have the death penalty, and it would be on the table if the U.S. didn't tell the U.K. he won't get it. It's still possible that the U.S. lied of course.
Either way, he'll likely be put in prison in the U.S. for the rest of his life.
Citation needed.
The fact that Swedes are being honest here, doesn't prove anything.
For sexual assault he'd likely already be getting out of prison in Sweden, or at least be very close. Extradition to the U.S. has always been the real threat to him. The fact that he's facing extradition now proves it was a valid concern.
Even if the Swedes were honestly just trying to get him for sexual assault, he was still gonna face U.S. extradition. It doesn't matter if they were helping the U.S. knowingly or not.
Yeah... not really.
He's guilty of being a dick to women and is finally paying for it.
According to court transcripts, Assange said he “wanted to impregnate women” and “preferred virgins because he would be the first to impregnate them”. He also reportedly told one of his alleged victims that “Sweden is a good country to have kids in”.
It’s unclear if Assange has engaged in this behavior with other women, but it is clear that he was fixated on, if not obsessed with, impregnating women. By the time he was accused of sexual assault, he had impregnated at least four women, all of whom gave birth to the children.
“An actual court case is going to be very, very hard for these women,” he warned. “They will be reviled forever by a large segment of the global population, so I don’t think it’s in their interest to proceed that way.”
“I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism,” Assange said in a 2010 interview during which he also described Sweden as “the Saudi Arabia of feminism”.
He clearly deserve what happened to him in Sweden, I don't know about the rest, but the Sweden rape case was the nail on his coffin, and he's the sole responsible for it.
https://bylinetimes.com/2019/05/02/julian-assange-is-a-misog...
I'll take things that are not crimes being used as proof of a crime for 1000, Alex.
Rape is a crime.
And this wasn't the first time he was accused of rape.
It was at least the fourth time.
So yeah, being that kind of dick to women is a crime in my book.
Which would have been no different to the UK
Lets take the conspiracy theory at face value
1) Assange in UK 2) Sweden tried to extradite him (via an EAW) relating to charges in Sweden 3) Assange goes to Sweden 4) The charges are dropped, but instead the US extradites him from Sweden to the US
1) Assange in UK 2) Sweden tried to extradite him (via an EAW) relating to charges in Sweden 3) Assange goes to Sweden 4) The charges are actually real, he goes to trial, gets off, then the US extradites him from Sweden to the US
1) Assange in UK 2) Sweden tried to extradite him (via an EAW) relating to charges in Sweden 3) Assange goes to Sweden 4) The charges are actually real, he goes to trial, goes to jail, then the US extradites him from Sweden to the US after his sentence
1) Assange in UK 2) Sweden tried to extradite him (via an EAW) relating to charges in Sweden 3) Assange doesn't goes to Sweden 4) The US extradites him from UK to the US
Why is Scenario 4 any different to scenarios 1, 2, 3?
Sweden has historically been more than happy to just let US intelligence just black bag Swedish residents and take them to prisons in countries that allow torture, whereas until recently the UK wouldn't even let extraordinary rendition flights refuel on British territory.
There aren't many countries with the death penalty that the UK has an extradition treaty with - 12 out of 121.