At the time a fairly extensive collection of polemic was written that liberally used the word "paranoid".
The argument from his opponents seems to have mostly shifted towards "yeah, but he deserves it".
I hope some people will take this as their "Iraq" moment, where the mechanisms of consensus-building by propaganda are laid bare. This is how powerful interests work: they push people to take sides with selected (or no) information, and by the time the full picture emerges, it's too late.
The major red pills in approximate order are
1) I'm being misled systematically
2) I've been misled since school
3) They are fully aware of what they are doing
4) Given the choice, they would prefer me dead over defiant
This is just one instance:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043329
Also, pasted from a different comment in this thread:
> "It's certainly my belief, based on what the attorney general said, that they have already got an arrest warrant for him and they are just waiting for the appropriate moment in the appropriate country," Toobin said. [0]
(I can't help but find it ironic that in a thread about trying to silence a whistleblower, your comment trying to hold someone accountable for their past mistakes is being voted down).
[0] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/01/sweden.interp...
"The right does not have a monopoly on paranoia, as the conspiratorial fantasies of supporters of Julian Assange show. ... Greenwald argued that Assange was not a coward who dare not face his Swedish accusers but a true dissident, who was camping out in the Ecuadorean embassy because he had a genuine fear of persecution."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/nick-c...
"No one is detaining Assange except himself." https://twitter.com/charlesarthur/status/787431124020625408
"show me any reliable document anywhere that shows that anyone is detaining Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy." https://twitter.com/charlesarthur/status/794992629138288640
(I always love arguments of the form 'Initiative X has never been publicized in an official government document, therefore it's paranoid conspiracy theorizing to suggest it exists based on any other evidence at hand.')
Arthur even doubled down in January this year to insist he had not been wrong: https://twitter.com/charlesarthur/status/1221173664579825666
https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/82147538290599116...
Intriguing. People with a security clearance are required to give intelligence reports about people they have contact with?
I'm not really sure how agents, or contact, are defined. I think the law is intended to keep IC people honest and forthcoming about foreign attempts to turn people.
(Disclaimer: I have never held a security clearance.)
This is roughly true of me. My opinion shifted to "he deserves it" because there appears to be strong evidence that he committed a crime. Why should my opinion not change based on new information? (Is this something you are not open to? Do you intend to defend Assange whatever information about him comes to light?)
That being said, if you read more carefully, what people were actually saying is that he was unlikely to be extradited to the US for leaking classified information, as it would be hard to prosecute someone in the US merely for doing that. But he is now charged with other crimes that are more clear cut.
It's not a crime to break USA secrecy laws (or, in fact, any US laws) while not being a citizen or resident of the USA. With the caveat that the behaviour is not also illegal in whatever country the alleged perpetrator is actually a citizen/resident of.
What you are saying underlines my point. It was indeed unlikely that Assange would be extradited merely for leaking classified information, as it is difficult for even a US citizen to be successfully prosecuted for doing that. But he is being charged with other crimes.
The original charges against him would have resulted in a failed extradition (as the prosecution admit). So the US government changed the charges during the trial to "better" ones that were more likely to succeed. Without giving the defence any time to prepare a case defending against those new charges.
This isn't justice. I'm ashamed as a UK citizen that we're not able to stand up to the USA and conduct an extradition hearing that is actually just. Especially since the USA refuses to extradite one of its citizens to the UK when charged with murder.
I'm furious as an Australian citizen (I'm dual-national) that we're not fighting to prevent such gross injustice to one of our own citizens. The Aussie government has done nothing, said nothing, about any of it. It's pathetic and infuriating.
For it to be a show trial there would have to be no realistic possibility of the jury finding him not guilty. I don't see why that should be the case.
As such, whether or not you agree that the judges behaviour actually is biased, if the judge is biased there is no reason to trust the US courts will be unbiased either.
The pre-written decisions alone, read out unmodified after listening to testimony is irregular enough that it is illogical to assume this judge is doing her job, as there is no evidence to suggest she is..
It's common for judges to read out their decisions. (Do you expect them to memorize their lines like actors?)
I don't know how you think you can know that the decisions are "unmodified". It's quite likely that the judge has prepared multiple options in advance and chosen one based on what happened at the hearing.
There is absolutely no way that this would be pursued if it were not for his running Wikileaks. This is a clear case of using selective enforcement to enforce a rule that could not be created on a law. (Given the first amendment, what he did that we really don't like is very squarely protected by the Constitution.)
First, if Assange did not violate the law of the US, then there is no cause for extradition. And so it does make sense to be talking about the US legality at this point, since USG going against its very own charter indicates that he will not receive a fair trial.
More generally, the United States Bill of Rights is framed as listing natural rights that everyone has. Yes, NSA is violating your US fourth amendment rights, despite you not being a US citizen. YMMV with practical enforcement though.
The Declaration of Independence went further, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
However, no legal guarantees of rights are made in the declaration.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Applying Nigerian law to people who aren't citizens of Nigeria would rightfully be questioned. The USA is not exempt from that. Just because it's illegal in the USA doesn't make it illegal everywhere
You'll get 100% agreement from me on that, and for example I think the ongoing promulgation of global US jurisdiction using USD as a wedge is a travesty.
But we're discussing human rights and restrictions on government, not what the US has declared illegal for US persons being applied to non-US persons. We're really talking about applying US law to the US government, operating abroad.
But we should hold our governments to the standards they are purportedly founded on, rather than buying into the justifications that they themselves have created. The opportunities to concretely do this are rare, but extradition trials being judged by a different government are one of those places.
Most US spying programs violate the 4th amendment. And have been ruled Constitutional as long as the targets are not US citizens. And if you want to seize someone's assets, you just sue the assets. The owner has been ruled to not have standing to object. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture for more.
Despite our law enforcement and government swearing to uphold the Constitution, it seems to be more useful as toilet paper sometimes.
Note that it's completely irrelevant that he failed to crack the password. Failure to successfully carry out a crime to completion just means that you're incompetent, not that you're innocent.
Were I on a jury, I would refuse to convict because I would consider there to be a reasonable doubt that the IM was real and not invented by the government to make their case.
Or do you mean that that’s the only evidence that’s publicly known at the moment?
What Assange is actually guilty of is running Wikileaks with the explicit purpose of making it hard for interest groups within the government to conduct "business as usual" against the interests of both the world and the American public.
On the positive side, Wikileaks helped convince the USA to get out of Iraq, and helped cause the Arab Spring uprisings that removed several dictatorships. On the downside, Wikileaks has become a pawn used by foreign espionage groups attempting to manipulate the US public. See the DNC email dumps which appear to be the work of Russian hackers attempting to manipulate the US election.
Go ahead and charge him with what he actually did, and convince the world that on the balance it does more harm than good. But don't manipulate governments around the world to pursue him by dishonest means.
And the rest of my point stands. The US government is not particularly upset that he failed to crack a password. They are upset that he created Wikileaks and publicly embarrassed a lot of influential people.
He doesn't have to prove it, just show that it's plausible. The burden of proof is on the prosecution.
>The US government is not particularly upset that he failed to crack a password. They are upset that he created Wikileaks and publicly embarrassed a lot of influential people.
I think they probably are upset that he tried to help someone hack into a DoD system.
> he was unlikely to be extradited to the US for leaking classified information, as it would be hard to prosecute someone in the US merely for doing that.
The Espionage Act of 1917[0] covers that situation quite well. It’s what all whistleblowers are charged with. We’ve even put a few people in prison for it, and the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in two cases in 1919[1][2]. Snowden is wanted for it.
As for how it covers this situation, the text of the act[3§1] says:
> That (a) whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or [...]
It does list other reasons such as aiding the enemy, but I feel that this part is what the prosecution would argue.
Now, would the US have jurisdiction to even argue this as the crime happened outside the US? That I do not know, but I have a feeling the courts would say they do as the crime was against the (federal) state.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debs_v._United_States
[3]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Lar...
Moreover, other countries have laws analogous to provisions of the Espionage Act, and it's hardly impossible that some alleged act could be viewed as detrimental to the security of both the US and another country.
Note that I'm speaking generally here, and not in reference to the facts of this particular case.
Assange didn't kill anyone just for your information and claiming ignorance can only get you so far before it becomes a lie.
The problem is, he is NOT a US-Citizen, by that fact he cannot be a traitor.
A Agent? No because he did not acquired that information, by that actual definition every country and every press outlet is a agent.
So what has he done? MAYBE endanger the life of US Citizens, which is really not important since he is NOT a US-Citizen.
Note also that Sweden only found out that the UK had removed Assange from the embassy because America had begun extradition proceedings against him, even though Sweden still wanted to get hold of him.
Sweden has assisted the US before in breaking their own laws to help black bag their residents. The UK instead makes you bounce through their whole court system, not wanting to be overruled by one of their former colonies.
Does this not effectively prove that? The US has made a decision, and like a good vassal the UK judiciary is delivering Assange to them.
Sweden has provided it's own police to assist CIA operatives in black bagging it's own residents against it's own laws and process and sent them to an Egyptian prison clearly to be tortured and then blamed it all on a dead politician.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
To the extent that it is now sycophantic towards the USA, it already was — the “special relationship” meme in UK politics has been around for a long time.
The UK's record on unlawful rendition flights (at America's behest and otherwise) is also not good and our extradition treaty with the US very one-sided; though there was a reasonable possibility its courts might have stymied a European Arrest Warrant for something his lawyers argued wasn't equivalent to a charge and wasn't equivalent to the crimes in English law...
The Iraq release from Manning's leak occurred after he left Sweden. Getting him back onto Swedish soil would have been the first step.
> The UK's record on unlawful rendition flights (at America's behest and otherwise) is also not good
The UK has never allowed rendition from the British isles, and certainly would not allow a former colony to subvert their court system.
Assange lived happily on Swedish soil for ages, apparently without any particular fear of unlawful rendition. He voluntarily attended a police station regarding sex offence allegations, his lawyer had ongoing discourse with the prosecutor regarding the reopening of the case, and he was still happy to continue live in Sweden. He then left the country when they informed his lawyer they did want to charge him.
I'm not sure the fact the US wasn't even aware of the Iraq release at the time undermines my observation that this behaviour looks more like somebody seeking to avoid facing sex offences charges in court than unlawful abduction. And likewise that Swedish actions look like a slow motion bureaucratic response to sex offence allegations that would have been tricky to prosecute and not a dastardly plot to get him to the US.
The fact the US has subsequently chosen to actually open a case against him based on something they didn't even know about at the time doesn't really change that (although FWIW I think it's politically unwise for them to bother)
> The UK has never allowed rendition from the British isles, and certainly would not allow a former colony to subvert their court system.
Apart from British soil having been a stopping point for CIA rendition flights and its enthusiastic cooperation with US schemes overseas, the UK has also routinely bent its own law to deport asylum seekers before their appeals are completed in manner not dissimilar to the Swedish cases which keep getting cited. (The same Home Secretary that was happy to push the unlawful 'deport first, appeal later' policy was, ironically, also the only thing stopping Gary McKinnon from being legally deported to the US after exhausting every single appeal, because our court system isn't that fussed that the US might be overzealous with national security related hacking prosecutions. But I doubt Assange had much hope of helpful intervention from her...)
Rendition of residents of the British isles, at least.
Even if that were the case, that's not the right comparison. The comparison has to be of the combination of extradition to Sweden plus rendition from Sweden vs. the easier of extradition or rendition from the UK. Since, after all, he was already in the UK, not in some indeterminate state that the US could collapse to either Sweden or the UK at its preference with no effort.
In the rendition case, you avoid the possibility of airing all sorts of dirty laundry in a foreign court, so it makes sense that they'd pursue that for as long as they could, and once that was not an option pursue extradition while heavily limiting public access (as they have here).
I see this repeated all over the place as if it were an obviously established fact, but there is no reason to think that this is true. Extrajudicial actions and their consequences are inherently unpredictable. It's pure speculation to say that it would have been easier to do it from Sweden than from the UK.
In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial means.
The proof is an empirical one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
> In any case, this particular line of Assange apologism is rather obviously out of date, since we see that the US can (in all likelihood) quite easily extradite him now that he's out of the embassy, and thus has no reason to use extrajudicial means.
If they went the Sweden route, they wouldn't have needed this public trial that we're all commenting on, and he'd already be in US custody.
It's far from clear to me that the US wants to avoid a public trial. It's not as if Assange is particularly popular these days.
Except the UK has a very clear no extraordinary rendition policy, and even the idea that UK airports had been used as a refueling stop for rendition flights was a minor scandal in the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6736227.stm Meanwhile Sweden has broken it's own laws to assist the US in black bagging it's own residents.
> By the way, you might want to look at the "aftermath" section of that Wikipedia article.
Can you be more specific? My reading is that Sweden found it's own actions to be illegal, paid out a settlement to those whose genitals were electro shocked in an Egyptian prision, but no Swedes faced any real consequences.
> It's far from clear to me that the US wants to avoid a public trial. It's not as if Assange is particularly popular these days.
And yet even this article you're commenting on goes into the large amount of work going on by the US government to remove observers, including Amnesty International, from the proceedings.
> this article you're commenting on goes into the large amount of work going on by the US government to remove observers, including Amnesty International, from the proceedings.
I think we all agree that the USA is acting like a bad guy here, regardless of how we feel about Assange and Sweden.
We know this only because Wikileaks leaked cables from the US embassy after they were called in for the Swedish government to object that this continued to happen even without the governments knowledge.
So one thing is what the Swedish government itself would be complicit with. Another is whether the US cares and whether the Swedish government would have the power to stop it.
Personally my pet theory is that the Swedish charges were not something that happened with US involvement, but an overzealous prosecutor, but that there were enough iffy things going on that I understand why Assange would fear being sent there - that fear does not need to be justified to be real.
But I also know that as someone living in the UK, even with the kangaroo court Assange is currently subject to, I'd far prefer to face an extradition hearing in the UK to Sweden, because even in the face of this I wouldn't trust the Swedish government to be able or willing to resist as much as the UK government.
They will participate when the US takes someone from a third country.
The trial is going to be public, as I understand it, so who cares if Amnesty International are there or not? They'll see and hear the same things as anyone else who is there. But anyway, if you are right, this just goes to show that the US can avoid a fully public trial and yet still extradite him, which by your logic gives them even less motive for using extraordinary rendition!
There is not a shred of evidence to show that the US had any intention of kidnapping Assange. We are in the realm of pure conspiratorial speculation here. ("They are bad guys; this would be a bad thing; therefore they would do that thing.")
Can you give any examples of this happening? Particularly given that we have access to the same diplomatic cables from the US embassy in the UK as the Swedish one which showed continued rendition flights from Sweden?
Zooming out a bit, there is very little analogy between the Agiza/Alzery case and anything that could conceivably have happened to Assange. Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Alzery were asylum seekers whose asylum applications failed and who were then deported to their home country. The correct legal procedures around deportation were not followed (and of course the Egyptians broke their promise not to torture the two men), but it is a huge stretch to try to make an analogy between this case and some supposed plot to kidnap Assange once he was in Sweden. The latter would have been a vastly more flagrant breach of the law than a rushed deportation, and would have made a mockery of Sweden's original extradition request.
The simple fact is that it is extremely unlikely that the US would have kidnapped Assange from any location.
The idea that it was harder to extradite him to the US from the UK than from Sweden, and that the extradition to Sweden was a pretext, was a very odd one - a priori I would have said it was the other way round.
Were you one of the people that said he wouldn't be extradited to the US?
Assange was arrested in his absence and wanted for questioning in relation to accusations against him of rape and sexual molestation. This was the first step in the criminal prosecution procedure in Sweden, and only after the questioning would the prosecution authority be able to formally indict him.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
Everyone repeating this nonsense should just take the time to read the British High Court judgment, which sets it all out very clearly.
It's worth reading this interview [1] with Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, which reveals in shocking detail the level of manipulation around this entire case.
As Melzer says "You just have to look at how the case was run: For Sweden, it was never about the interests of the two women."
[1] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
I do not see how that conflicts with the interests of the two women.
It's really worth reading the interview closely to understand how thoroughly justice has been perverted in numerous countries to get at someone who revealed horrendous crimes.
It's worth engaging in the facts on this issue, rather than gripping onto a received narrative in dismissive fashion, and the interview really goes into significant detail, including behind-the-scenes behaviour of Sweden that Melzer was privy to as UN Special Rapporteur on torture.
It's one of those articles where people go in with the perspective you show here, and come out the end of it stunned by the truth of Assange's unjust treatment.
In fact Melzer starts out by stating he began with the same attitude, initially refusing the case as "My impression, largely influenced by the media, was also colored by the prejudice that Julian Assange was somehow guilty and that he wanted to manipulate me."
It is probably one of the best summaries of his case I've read, from a highly credible, independent investigator:
https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
It's always surprising to see just how grubby Assange's defenders are willing to get, up to and including rape apologism.
The accusation you raise is a key part of the interview with Melzer.
The original witness statement was intentionally destroyed, and the supervisor of the policewoman who conducted the questioning wrote an email telling her to rewrite the statement.
(The original copies of the mail exchanges between the Swedish police are actually displayed in the article.)
The statement that forms the basis of that claim "was edited without the involvement of the woman in question and it wasn’t signed by her. It is a manipulated piece of evidence out of which the Swedish authorities then constructed a story of rape."
As to your attempted lazy smearing – it doesn't really do you any favours here.
As a final plea, perhaps read-up on the details so you can get a better understanding of the case:
https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
If indeed this evidence was all fabricated (I doubt it, but who knows), then the best venue for evaluating that claim would have been a Swedish court.
Now we will never really know exactly how strong the case was. But it was strong enough to justify bringing Assange to trial, and he has done himself no favours by hiding in an embassy for seven years.
The basic issue that this article goes to is that the judge has broad discretionary power to hurry the defence along, and is using it. That is not unreasonable - defence by stalling tactics can't a legitimate strategy, so the judge must have those powers and be free to exercise them at her discretion. It is appropriate for the judge to have powers to guillotine witness time and to make procedural decisions. Even if they are unusual decisions.
The only thing Assange's defenders can hope for here is a great case study of how the US government doesn't care about details, they will reach out and try to grab anyone who makes it clear how they are operating. And then develop a rationalisation after the fact.
Really the most interesting thing in this article is the pervasive misspelling of "Sweden" as "the United States". I seem to recall a whole bunch of people arguing that Assange wasn't going to be extradited to the United States once they extracted him from the embassy. Possibly I am not remembering correctly and nobody admits to arguing that now.