The first comment on this thread was lamenting that the issue became partisan. The rest explained why. The partisanship is precisely what makes discussing the fairness of the charges and laws difficult.

In other words, he isn’t on trial for the timing. But he’s friendless because of it.

Thanks for explaining this distinction. Of course Assange isn't "friendless" in general, but I would agree that he is with respect to the sorts of people who have any effect on who does and who does not face USA federal charges. That indicts the entire federal judicial system. As if we needed additional proofs of their evil.

I have no sympathy for Assange. There are legitimate avenues for whistleblowers. Trying to hack into protected government systems in order to leak information to the public while pushing conspiracies about Seth Rich in conjunction with Kim Dotcom is not one of them.

If the doorbell does not work, ring the bell and complain, we will fix it. We never had a issue with the doorbell. Blowing the whistle using the designated pathways is basically useless suicide, as to the socially useful suicide that is blowing the whistle on the outside.

The point of the article is precisely that the hacking allegations against Assange were made up by Icelander "Siggi the Hacker", a sociopath, liar, con-man, pedophile. One of the crimes was stealing funds from wikileaks.

The FBI knew it and gave him protection from prosecution for a lot of his crimes if he witnessed to the alleged hacking. He continued committing crimes without stopping afterwards. They are still protecting him to this day.

You might want to edit this comment to be more clear. While I see you mentioned the Islandic person who obviously isn’t the Australian born Assange, people seem to be getting tripped up.

Done

Why do you suggest Assange is a pedophile? The primary reference I can find for this is when Wikileaks threatened to sue CNN for defamation and CNN apologized. [1]

[1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...

I didn't suggest he was a pedophile. I know my syntax is not perfect, but still... Please re-read it.

The false "witness" alleging Assange hacked, "Siggi the Hacker" was a pedophile, con-man and thief, not Assange. That guy is Icelandic, while Assange is Australian. "Siggi" has just been interviewed in Studin.is saying he invented everything, FBI knew, still gave him immunity, etc. Here are the sources [1] [2]

As for rape charge, you fell prey to propaganda. There was no "condom stealthing" accusation, full stop. There was no rape accusation, full stop. It is all a proven lie, fabricated by the police and prosecutor, which were caught red-handed later on, and documented in a subsequent judicial procedure.

Here's my own TLDR here to somebody else a couple days ago [3]. If you got 20 minute, I suggest the full, sordid story, as told in excruciating detail by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. He gave a long form interview giving all the details of the fabrication, showing the documents, outlining all of lies and judicial misdeeds of both Sweden and the UK [4].

[1] https://stundin.is/grein/13627/key-witness-in-assange-case-a...

[2] https://grapevine.is/news/2020/06/25/wikileaks-doj-witness-i...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653029

[4] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...

Hm seems to have been syntax confusion, I agree with you haha.

Yes, as another reader pointed out, it actually wasn't good syntax |-)

Anyways, "FREE ASSANGE" !

They weren't made up, there were the reason Chelsea Manning was jailed because they had evidence believing that Assange had tried helping her decrypt confidential information. This wasn't information provided to them by Sigurdur. Sigurdur was never a major part of the investigation. People are falling again for propaganda.

I don't think anyone's alleging it's against the law to time news releases. But both countries (both US and UK) have violated their own laws time and again in the persecution of Julian Assange. They have thrown all pretense of due process (e.g. access to attorney) and human rights (denial of medical care) out the window, just to punish him.

There were 10+ violations that would have been more than enough to let a murderer go free.

The problem, in other words, with Assange is that he didn't really commit a crime, or more to the point, that's not why the US is after him. And clearly, as a country, the US is perfectly willing to violate it's own constitution to punish this person. The allegation is that this is, among other things, due to the timing of the releases. And because of the danger that it would make Hillary Clinton lose the election.

It would be funny if it wasn't both such a sad, sad failure for the US state and an enormous crime, committed by the state.

The Kremlin would have probably poisoned him with Novichok nerve agent or jailed him under fabricated charges. The only difference is that the US and the UK haven't generalised usage of nerve agents on dissidents and that they also have to fabricate evidence, instead of charges only. What a waste of legal resources.

If you define yourself in contrast to what Russia might have done and use it as an excuse, you are still justifying political prosecution. I think that might be why people dislike either party in the US. And they maybe should.

Far be it from me to defend the nature of the charges against Assange. The US government has some pretty wildly unconstitutional tools, and in this instance it chose to wield them. That should not stop us from having a reasoned discussion about the merits of the actions that drew such negative attention.

Also, I didn't say anything about timing. Selective and partisan release alone is highly dubious, timing notwithstanding.

What's selective or partisan about it? Did Assange have some damaging information about Trump that he refused to release?

Telling the truth doesn't become partisan simply because the truth hurts one party.

The fact that the media constantly does this let's me assume that this argument is partisan itself and projection. It sound hurt because the hand was caught in the cookie jar.