Other URLs from threads we merged:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/julian-assange-releas...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/us/politics/assange-plea....
A little too heavy handed. Yeah it seems like from the outside he was potentially overly punished, pending further details that may never materialize, but “his freedom is our freedom” is pretty extreme given what he did. He’s not relatable.
Outside of the tech community, he’s not really known except for being that guy who leaked things.
And objectively the internet is a safer place thanks to the Snowden NSA leaks which were directly inspired, not just ideologically but technically in how it was done, by Assange. You can look at the mass adoption of encrypted messaging and HTTPS adoption statistics (which grew exponentially directly after the leaks to become near standard), and plenty of other metrics to see that.
Wikileaks was the spawn of many good things, even despite it’s flaws.
I don't think increased TLS adoption was caused by Snowden or Wikileaks. It was because of the HTTP/2 protocol and Lets Encrypt taking off.
You can read about that history here: https://opensource.com/business/16/8/lets-encrypt
According to Aas, they decided to start LetsEncrypt in 2012. Before Snowden leaked anything.
Similarly, one could argue that encrypted messaging became popular because of the work done on projects like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp (which added "encryption" in August 2012).
[Takes a bite of steak]
Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.
I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in US territory before a US judge who is actually under any obligation to honor the plea deal. The judge could reject the plea deal and remand him to custody or sentence him to US prison.
He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the treaties involved (which in the case of extradition, it is).
There's every chance here that this deal represents a way out for the US as well, and that it will be kept for that reason, but if the US government still wants him to stand trial, a plea deal and the risk of a minor diplomatic scuffle at a point in time where the UK parliamentary election will overshadow the case in UK media isn't going to stop them.
Keep in mind he doesn't have any support from the UK government - they'd rather be rid of him -, and the current UK government is almost certain to be out of government shortly. It's unlikely there'd be more of a diplomatic incident than a slightly stern letter.
I think he has reasonable odds - this case is likely at this point mostly just a nuisance for everyone involved except Assange himself. There's nothing to be gained, other than perhaps for some overzealous prosecutor. But I also would not be one bit surprised if something was to happen.
An Indy article that sums Sir Keir's atlanticist stance in a few short paragraphs: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-...
He would then spend potentially several more years in jail preparing for trial, obtaining discovery, going through discovery, filing pretrial motions, subpoenaing witnesses, etc etc.
Australian Politicians: collective silence
We let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.
1900 days in isolation (human rights violation), falsly accused of rape with the goal to extradite to the US, jailed outside of the US on behalf of the US (but not officially), and just the simple fact that a journalist gets jail time for exposing war crimes.
Yeah, this has nothing to do with law or justice. This is about a handful of people above the law trying to save their *sses. Anything could happen at this point.
Reminds me of when a foreign diplomatic aircraft (Equador) was forced to land in a foreign country (France), because the US thought Snowden might be on board. Remind me of the relevant law that allows for this please? lol
Call it what it is, torture.
Where’s the evidence that he was falsely accused?
I'd say that you could have found all this out yourself with Google, but you didn't even need to. All this info has already been linked in these comments.
Most of the links in these comments aren't authoritative in anyway
... Which weakens the oral evidence.
The only evidence they had; because there was no DNA found on the condom submitted as evidence.
https://medium.com/@njmelzer/demasking-the-torture-of-julian...
> There were never any formal criminal charges, and the Swedish Prosecution Authority’s investigation into Assange was dropped in November 2019 due to a lack of evidence.
https://rsf.org/en/rsf-dispels-common-misconceptions-case-ag...
Let an old spy go off and retire, he can't work anymore anyhow.
Example: Gerhard Schröder was also very obviously bought by Russians. He never went to jail nor was he hunted down.
Assange also did publish actual literal war crimes committed by the US. Not sure how you can just casually ignore that fact?
There's more to this.
Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new court date.
Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn't change facts. There is a separation of powers between the prosecutor who is negotiating the extradition/plea and the judge who independently evaluates the agreement.
They probably just realized they shouldn't dig the embarrassment hole any deeper, and think that an extorted confession is the most face-saving they're going to get.
He committed a crime against the United States, they empaneled a grand jury, and handed down 18 federal charges of espionage and computer intrusion. The US sought extradition just like they would in any other similar case.
While he fighting extradition, he was actively attempting to recruit hackers to break into US government systems and steal information for him.
Assange was the one who was constantly trying to make it political and turned it into a clown show by trying to paint himself as a journalist.
That is the definition of a political crime. Governments are allowed to charge people of crimes which only have the government as victim, but most countries (including the UK) have laws against extradition for such crimes.
And when the person you charge is not a citizen of your country, and the act harming government is simply journalism, you have to be pretty blind to deny that it's political.
> they empaneled a grand jury
which can famously indict a ham sandwich. The grand jury was empaneled in a district in which half the adults work for the spy agencies as I recall.
There's a clown show. We are not obliged to respect this kind of process as something proper and legitimate.
> trying to paint himself as a journalist
He has won a ton of journalistic awards. When journalists call you a journalists, you are a journalist, even if security services and their online yes-men say otherwise.
So offering a deal only to have the UK agree to release Assange and lure him to US territory would definitely be a diplomatic issue, possibly jeopardizing future extraditions from the UK, for instance.
Oh, sweet summer child. In such political cases there is almost zero "separation of powers". Much higher powers than the judge and the prosecutor are involved directly.
So why are you writing all this and then doubling down?
> A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the Northern Mariana Islands District said that Assange would appear in court at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday) to plead guilty and that the Justice Department expects Assange will return to Australia, his country of citizenship, after the proceedings.
Northern Mariana Islands District is US jurisdiction.
Now please excuse me while I find my tanto.
I wouldn't expect the judge not to go along with this though - he is pleading guilty and did serve what is now being called a sentence and presumably the US government can say that there are other benefits to his freedom that should not be overriden by the judiciary.
source: over a decade of experience in pretrial operations
Does the judge have to honor the prosecution agreement or is the judge free to impose a different sentence than what was agreed to by the prosecution?
Here's how it works generally: when you plead guilty the judge warns you that they do not have to accept the plea deal and can sentence you however the hell they wish. You plead guilty and then the judge tells you if they accept the prosecution's deal. I've seen several defendants surprised by the judge not taking the sweet probation deal and turning around and giving the defendant years in prison which they are unable to appeal.
So, in theory, the judge could potentially give Assange some time.
Gpt summary of imminent threat from Assange/snowden whistleblowing:
* ### WikiLeaks (Julian Assange)
-Compromised Security Operations: The release of detailed military operations and tactics could have directly endangered ongoing missions and the lives of soldiers and local collaborators. - Jeopardized Intelligence Sources: Disclosures that revealed the identities of informants, intelligence agents, and collaborators put these individuals at significant risk of retaliation, harm, or death.
### Edward Snowden
- National Security Risks: The revelation of specific surveillance methods allowed adversaries to alter their communication strategies to avoid detection, thereby reducing the effectiveness of intelligence operations. - Compromised Counterterrorism Efforts: Exposing the extent and methods of surveillance enabled terrorist organizations and other malicious actors to adapt their operations to evade surveillance, potentially leading to undetected plots and attacks.*
Don’t they have to prove this?
One of the key things blocking extradition from the UK to the US is that UK law doesn't let them extradite if the person will be tortured, executed, or won't receive a fair trial in the destination country. This isn't something that politicians can bypass, except by changing the law; judges are not political appointees in the UK.
This means the extradition process from the UK to the US relies on the UK receiving assurances, and the courts accepting them, because the US has always followed its agreements in the past. To me it seems unlikely the US would want to jeopardise this.
And what would the benefit be? They've already shown they have the power to ruin people's lives at will, effectively imprisoning them in an embassy for a decade. That seems like a deterrent that will scare off most journalists.
So MAGA would probably take up his cause, but with the Biden admin freeing him (fingers crossed), that's one less thing they can use against Biden in the elections.
The Secretary of State not responding to the Libyan consulate’s security concerns prior to the attack is a serious matter and the source of the documents is not the issue.
Ah, an appropriate example of bending logic and serious ignoring of many facts to end up with this conclusion...
One step less than 'hoax' but it's Snopes and they lean left.
a) think
b) (mis)use the English language
For clarity: do you believe that your cognition on this matter is logically, ontologically, and epistemically flawless?
I hope your seeming high level of confidence is resilient enough to answer this simple question directly, without engaging in rhetoric, meme magic, evasion, misdirection, silence, etc which in my experience is the standard behavior of the normative conditioned Western human mind when it is put into such a situation.
No, I believe my cognition on this matter can be flawed. That's why the qualifiers "would probably be", "apparently", and "parts of".
But I agree with kome's response.
Did you properly qualify each statement in your broader text?
Are you familiar with the terms "rhetoric", "interpretation", "reductionism", "perception", "misinformation", "Meme Magic", "emergence"? Do you think they may have some causal relevance to the (possible/alleged) "technical correctness" of your statements?
Do you think it is possible that speaking out in this manner/style may have non-trivial (which could range from "bad" to "extremely bad") negative effects on the overall system (which I think is at least part of your concern with the behavior of MAGA people)?
> But I agree with kome's response.
If that's the case, would you be willing to answer the questions I asked of kome?
I have a question: do you believe I am actually a chatbot, or are you only speaking as if you believe that I am a chatbot (full disclosure: my theory being that you might be[1] leveraging humor to galvanize support against an outsider in the community, taking a different attack angle than others have tried, etc)?
Regarding HN guidelines: I would say they are highly optimal as they are: ambiguity + (layers of) culture is a very powerful combination, it allows moderators great leeway in using heuristic/cultural pattern matching to "prove" violations by exploiting well known bugs in consciousness (which have been discussed with very little controversy right here on HN many times in the past).
Human conversation and belief (aka: truth) formation is extremely complex, and often counterintuitive.
Thoughts or counterpoints? I think it is an interesting and important topic that does not get nearly enough attention.
[1] though not necessarily with explicit conscious intent, perhaps simply just as an intuitive, culturally conditioned behavior
Regardless: as a fan of novelty and effort, you get my upvote. Also: the bots angle is actually a rather interesting idea, if a person was to put a bit of thought into it.
Perhaps (it is a subjective matter, in more ways than one, and some more importantly than others). What of it?
Or another way of looking at it: which is more important in the big (geopolitical or otherwise) scheme of things...politeness (deceit, ignorance, rhetoric, etc) or truth/accuracy? Don't forget, lives are literally on the line. (Something else I find funny: sometimes lives being on the line is important, other times it is not. It is amazing how inconsistent humans are, even on the very most important matters.)
> their comment is ok
Is this to say that it suffers in no way regarding the specific phenomena that I am asking about?
And if not:
- what does "is ok" mean, precisely?
- do you believe that it does not suffer in any of these ways?
> and i fully understood their logic.
If you did not, would you necessarily be able to know? (Can you realize the architectural problem you are in?)
> I cannot say the same about yours.
What specific "logic" of mine are you referring to here?
Not being a complete and utter asshole, like you are being here. HTH!
What does HTH stand for by the way?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/14/austr...
Worth mentioning that this wasn't David's intentions. He leaked the documents as he thought special forces soldiers were being "unfairly" restricted via tighter rules of engagement & defense oversight in order to protect civilians. He wanted the ABC to tell everyone that special forces were being kept on too tight of a leash, not report on war crimes.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/a...
"He told another media outlet at the time that it was a “different story to the one I wanted. They (ABC) published something about SAS soldiers shooting people by accident, which I found disappointing.”"
I don’t agree with either sentence, but they do not appear at odds with one another.
I disagree on the lack of connection.
He was an Australia citizen left out to dry.
Disgraceful.
I cringe every time I rewatch.
(Then again thanks to Wikileaks we now know US were “assessing” whether Gillard would be a good replacement to Rudd a year before it all happened… so I guess that made her a fan!
Part the Random Caps I use iOS voice dictation
During WW2 we were bombed by the Japanese.
Aus sent troops to the invasion of Vietnam too. You dont do that unless you badly want to suck up to the US. Even the UK who will do virtually anything else for the US didnt do that.
But the fact he is pleading guilty to a serious crime will have further implications for his life e.g. preventing travel, not allowed to apply for certain jobs etc.
I think he'll be fine.
I'm glad he's going home to his family, but this is a least-worst outcome to an awful miscarriage of justice that destroyed many lives.
Let's celebrate the fact that he struck a deal with the US, because those charges were generally bullshit, but let's not celebrate someone otherwise avoiding justice.
"The womens statements about being stealthed were changed to sound even more serious"
"There was no rape"
Pick one. Stealthing is rape. Completely disgusting to pretend otherwise. It'd be okay if your opinion was you didn't like how authorities handled this, but that's not what you're saying.
FTFY
That's the way it goes sometimes. Not all cases are strong enough to allow justice to be done.
That doesn't mean we can then say that he definitely did what people were accusing him.
I believe he basically hid in the Ecuadorian embassy until the statute of limitations ran out.
> Swedish prosecutors have brought cases to court in absentia before
Yes, usually against heads of state for things like war crimes. I don't think there are similar cases I want you to take a moment to imagine your own outrage if Assange was tried in absentia in Sweden and found guilty. Whether or not it is technically possible, doing so would not be a legitimate option.
He entered the embassy in 2012. He was interviewed in 2016. His asylum was withdrawn in 2019. Mentioning "first half" of his stay while avoiding to mention that means he's been there for several years at that point comes across as attempting to downplay how long they waited.
Can you explain why they didn't try in 2012? Or why she didn't try while he was in UK custody prior to his bail?
The prosecutor was criticised by at least one Swedish legal expert at that time for failing to attempt to interview, and called out because she flat out lied and claimed it wasn't possible (and she herself proved that to be a lie when she several years later arranged to interview him).
By the time he was interviewed, he'd already spent far more time in a combination of English jail and stuck in the embassy than he would've spent in a Swedish prison if convicted.
By the time the rape case was dropped, the Swedish Prosecution Authority gave as a reason that "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question", but the bulk of that delay was down to the prosecutor choosing to hold off on interviewing Assange for 6 years claiming she could not do what she eventually did anyway.
The less serious parts of the case were dropped due to the statute of limitations in 2015 before the prosecutor interviewed Assange, because the prosecutor chose not to do her job.
You see why people question her motivations?
As I've said many times, I think her own political/ideological motivations are more likely to be the reason she acted this way than US involvement, but to me it appears to be a clear failure of justice intentionally caused by the prosecutor - whether to Assange or the woman in question depends on what actually happened, and we will probably never find out because this prosecutor failed to do her duty.
> I want you to take a moment to imagine your own outrage if Assange was tried in absentia in Sweden and found guilty
If the trial was conducted fairly, I would take no issue with it. Whether they'd be able to carry a case to conclusion in a fair manner without his presence is a separate matter. The issue is that they failed to try.
I think the prosecutors own justification, which she stated quite plainly is both valid and convincing:
There was very little reason to put effort and resources in conducting an interview with Assange, since he would need to return to Sweden for a fair trial to be conducted.
She was, of course, proven correct when after the interview, Assange continued to refuse to return to Sweden for a number of additional years. Had they conducted an interview after 2 weeks, the outcome would have been the same.
> You see why people question her motivations?
Given Assange's behavior, no, not really. She seems to have made a plainly correct judgement of his actions and resources, and attempted to treat Assange like any other defendant, at least until he turned the situation into an international political incident to try and avoid trial.
> If the trial was conducted fairly, I would take no issue with it.
Note how in the very next sentence you leave the door open to object to any trial on the grounds that it wasn't sufficiently fair. This is my point, Assange's defenders cannot really be placated. There's always some thing to be concerned about, some reason to believe Assange is being treated uniquely unfairly. It's reminiscent of how Trump and his supporters cry out about how unfairly he's treated by the legal system, when in fact both are treated quite normally, Assange just made things worse for himself by turning himself into an international fugitive out of conspiratorial fear.
The first excuse she gave was that it wasn't possible. She lied. You're making excuses for a liar who was called out on her lies before she tried to use that other excuse.
As to the second excuse, if that true, they wouldn't have eventually bothered, but they did, nor cited the passage of time before they could secure evidence as a reason for closing the rape investigation once they had finally conducted the interviews, but they did.
They failed to do their job, and they lied about it.
> Note how in the very next sentence you leave the door open to object to any trial on the grounds that it wasn't sufficiently fair.
That would apply to any trial, in any situation, with any accused. But somehow it seems to get people who try to defend the way the Assange case was handled very worked up.
> Assange's defenders cannot really be placated.
Only being prepared to accept a fair trial is not a high standard, and not one I'm willing to dispense with whomever the accused is. That this is even an issue is very telling about the attitudes involved.
> There's always some thing to be concerned about, some reason to believe Assange is being treated uniquely unfairly.
There "always is" because he's been subjected to gross human rights abuses. The attempt at using his character to justify that is nasty. The moment human rights are made conditional, they are not rights. Nobody should be treated this way.
To me, this case is very revealing. Assange isn't likeable to me. He may well have done awful things, whether or not they can be proven. I'm not arguing this because I like or support him. I'm arguing this because he has human rights like anyone else, whether or not he was guilty of rape, and whatever else he might have done or not.
This entire discussions disgusts me.
This may be the case, but I can find no evidence of such a statement having been made.
> As to the second excuse, if that true, they wouldn't have eventually bothered, but they did,
The justification was to do the interview so that they could continue to maintain the charges, which seems reasonable. Assange (nor anyone else) should not be rewarded for making themselves a fugitive to avoid a trial.
> But somehow it seems to get people who try to defend the way the Assange case was handled very worked up.
Well yes, mostly because (at least until he was actually put in jail in the UK) he wasn't actually subject to any human rights abuses or injustice. He, in fact, was treated with extreme deference and privilege compared to most people accused of crimes, and yet because of his platform people demand his kid gloves be treated with kid gloves.
You cannot claim that someone's self-imposed exile is a human rights abuse. At that time, he was not imprisoned. He could have walked outside and faced justice and, he'd likely have been free sooner and with less detriment to himself.
It is primarily because he had (as we can now see: unjustified) conspiratorial fears about getting disappeared that he suffered so much. And the majority of that was at his own hand, or as a result of him committing additional crimes to avoid facing justice for the alleged ones.
If you actually care about human rights abuses, Assange is a terrible person to platform, both because he is eminently unlikeable and because his suffered "abuses" aren't really. Someone in Riker's likely has it worse, and less ability to improve their situation.
Do not worry about his broken condom, worry about the instrumentation of the Swedish and UK legal system, at the ends of US Political conveniences...
"UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer investigated the rape accusations against Assange and said he had never before seen a comparable case where a person was subjected to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges being filed. He said Assange's lawyers made over 30 offers to arrange for Assange to visit Sweden in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be extradited to the U.S. over unknown charges, and described such diplomatic assurances as routine international practice." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
Anyway, I see you've drunk the koolaid and are in full defense mode, so I'll leave you to it.
Note that "I will come to your soil if and only if you make such and such promise" is not deciding how their justice system should work. It just means that if they don't get the promise, they will not come to their soil. Likewise, we could point out that Sweden has no right to force someone out of their jurisdiction to turn themselves in.
> What I don't remember was any reasoning on why he thought it more likely that he'd be extradited from Sweden to the US rather than from the UK, who are particularly close?
Sweden has a history of extradition, the treaties aren't the same… and though at the time Assange wasn't formally charged by the US, if I recall correctly he did have (founded) suspicions that a grand jury was put on his case. At the time, his chances of being extradited from Sweden rather than the UK were higher.
> you've drunk the koolaid and are in full defense mode
Someone has gone full attack, and I suspect this is not just about "striking a balance".
If you were wanting to come off as less of a kook than the person you were talking to...
TLDR; Sweden turned over two Egyptians asylum seekers to the CIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...
Not long before the Assange case ended, Swedish police kidnapped two asylum seekers (and yes, kidnapped is the right term - it was not an arrest, and has since been found to violate Swedish law) and handed them over to the CIA who handed them over to the regime they fled, which subsequently tortured them. The kidnapping and rendition was both a violation of Swedish law, and a violation of international treaties, and yet nothing happened to the people responsible to my knowledge.
You might see why someone who believed - rightfully, as it turned out years later - the US wanted to file charges and get their hands on him, might worry that the Swedish government would turn a blind eye to him being handed over to the US.
Whether or not he was right to fear that, it seems reasonable to believe his fear was genuine, not least because he chose to put himself in a situation that has kept him imprisoned in inhumane conditions far longer than he would've ever served if he was convicted of what he was accused of in Sweden.
But in any case, the issue isn't whether he was right, but whether he believed he'd be safer in the UK than Sweden, and I think the Swedish prosecutor did a whole lot to make him worry that something fishy was going on. I've written more than once over the years I think she was acting out of political/ideological reasons (specifically, she had a long history of fighting for much stricter treatment of rape cases) rather than due to US pressure, but the net effect was a whole string of incidents around the case that'd easily look mighty suspicious for someone worrying about the US trying to get them.
I don't know whether or not he was right to fear it, but I'm surprised he was.
Do you just not care at all that’s it’s proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Swedish authorities changed and made up evidence against him? There’s official documents that say this. Meanwhile your bullshit hasn’t been proven at all.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Key points include the revelation that one of the women did not accuse Assange of rape but had her statement altered by the police. This alteration occurred under instructions from higher authorities, as evidenced by an email directing the change. The case against Assange was further complicated by the involvement of a second woman, whose testimony was also questionable and possibly influenced by external influences, including a friend in the police force.
AFAICR, they showed up and said "What he did feels wrong, surely that must be some sort of crime?". She wasn't jumped and gang-raped in an alley, so she didn't know it legally counted as rape; the police helped her put the correct name to it. Doesn't seem at all as suspect as you're trying to make it.
> This alteration occurred under instructions from higher authorities, as evidenced by an email directing the change.
Oh my, someone asking their boss what to do and the boss telling them? Wow, that must be a conspiracy!
> The case against Assange was further complicated by the involvement of a second woman, whose testimony was also questionable and possibly influenced by external influences, including a friend in the police force.
Idunno, sounds like you're trying to give the impression that having two cases in stead of one should make the allegations less plausible...? Is that how you usually think about things like that; "Oh, this guy is said to have commited several burglaries, that clearly makes him less suspect than this other guy who is supposed to have committed only one"?
There is a good chance the guy would have end up suicided. There is still a good chance he meets some questionable end. Fabricating charges of what is probably the worst crime with plausible deniability you can do is more than a possibility.
Would you say the same for this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
If "legitimate" means fradulent charges drummed up for political reasons, from testimonies later withdrawn, then yes.
The sentencing guideline for rape in Sweden is 3-6 years in prison, or up to 4 years for "negligent rape", and even if convicted for everything he was alleged to have done, Swedish practice in rape cases would mean there's no chance he'd have gotten anywhere close to maximum sentences.
So without going into whether or not that case was legitimate, or whether or not the handling of it was legitimate, he's suffered more, in far worse conditions, than a Swedish court would have imposed.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/d...
and probably
There is even a documentary where the Navy's Chief Scienctist John P. Craven (the same guy who was part of Project Azorian and the N1 sub) said they could change the assumed position of Russian submarines, which again (possible but the big smile on his face say's all) led to the stranding of submarine S-363.
A documentary about N1, the part where they could change the position of Russian subs is maybe in this one:
https://youtu.be/2XoPPXQYGXU?t=80
EDIT: And of course now i found it (Blind mans bluff genius book btw):
No doubt non-Swedish legal experts with no clue about Swedish laws or the Swedish justice system, meaning their opinions which are based on how the legal system in their own country works, are completely null and void.
It also shows that Sweden is a country were you cannot always rely on the law to deliver justice.
And then I just saw this... wow! I am so glad to be wrong, to see my pessimistic side be completely wrong. Julian is free!
If that graffiti were written in Australia, I think it would be far more likely written as 'Aussie hero'.
I think that's because "Oz" comes from "Aussie", which Americans mispronounce (they say something like "ossy" rather than "ozzy").
It's uncommon for Australians to say "Oz" in my experience, but it's still definitely a thing (albeit mostly in ads/marketing rather than daily speech). And even the ones who never say it still know what it means.
I don't know what people say in the UK because I have never been there.
Btw, I agree with you that US Americans often mispronounce 'Aussie', but I can understand why, if they encountered the word in print before hearing it spoken.
Invariably well-informed and well-spoken, even if somewhat self-centered or arrogant at times.
For him and his family, Im glad hes free.
Five years seems a pretty harsh sentence for publishing leaked information about governments behaving badly - isnt that what good journalists are supposed to do ?
For a person in his position - he must’ve been very naive to have a show on ruzzia today.
If you're a dissident rival foreign powers will give you a platform which you won't get domestically.
Plenty of Russians think Navalny was a traitor because he made western documentaries. It's good to know you agree with them that releasing dissident material with a hostile foreign power means he is automatically a traitor I guess.
I wouldn't say that that is a position I agreed with though. I would say the principled stance is that dissidents should use the options available to them to avoid being silenced - hostile power or no.
We can't all be principled though, can we?
Assange was told he would be falling out a window if he published it. Then he buried it.
He is only about publishing leaks about western countries that don’t directly tell him they will murder him.
That isn’t a free society.
Personally I'm more or less ambivalent whether he walks free or not today, what matters is deterrence is established.
And if he did, it would make perfect sense to charge him with that.
Sure, they implied it might possibly maybe have happened and some suckers believed it. Why wouldn't they? They hated his guts because he exposed a war crime so naturally they'll sling any kind of mud they can - whether there is evidence or not.
In this case not.
I think Assange deserves what he got.
The differences in what they did and how make the distinction.
Snowden saw something the public needed to know and filtered it through a journalist who did everything reasonable to filter and publish what the public needed to know. And the public really did need to know it.
Assange tried to find anything and everything to publish in bulk and did so with no regards to the content or the need for anybody to know. He actually put things in danger and the things he leaked were of limited value and often hyped up to be much more than they were.
If you're an edgy teenager with a "fuck the system" mentality sure you'll appreciate Assange, but I'm not. That's not dystopia.
So - you are saying that governments should not be accountable and transparent in their operations? Transparency within the limits of safety (intelligence gathering/criminal investigation (while it is underway - once it hits the courts and convictions are made, should be transparent) - yet - what happens when those who have the power are abusing it and committing criminal acts?
Yeah - give me the leakers, give me the dissidents - because you end-up with an out-of-control fascist police-state otherwise.
I never saw anything on Wikileaks I thought needed to be leaked.
>Because they (or myself - or yourself) are not empowered to systematically commit crimes by their/our citizens - who pay for the privilege of that through taxation.
You have power over, say, your children, spouse, parents, maybe you manage folks? Do they have a right to dump all your information to each other?
>Yeah - give me the leakers, give me the dissidents - because you end-up with an out-of-control fascist police-state otherwise.
This is exactly the kind of teenage rebel logic I'm talking about. Snowden exposed an actual significant abuse of power issue. Assange didn't, as far as I know with the things I've seen and remember. People who want to blindly rebel but have nothing but vague charges and cannot point to real issues supporting anything anti-government.
Adults need to focus on understanding the real problems of government and providing real feedback on logically sound arguments. Not ambiguous "down with the man" rhetoric. You live in a world that needs government to function and governments need to keep secrets.
This is essentially a pro war crime position.
If, however, I am suspected of committing a crime, the police expects the whole untempered truth and anything else can be considered as obstruction of justice. If I can be held to this standard, so does our public servants in the government.
The government, however, has the power to hide stuff from the public. Leakers and whistleblowers are the only thing that can hold them accountable.
Perhaps journalists are not the best choice, though, don't you think? In a democracy I'd say the most trustworthy people we have to be tasked with filtering our information are our freely elected politicians!
How is that "fuck the system" ?
How is trying to uncover warcrimes a bad thing?
We argue semantics around incidents like this when it comes down to: people doing bad stuff and trying to hide it.
If anything, these laws are completely broken. People should never be punished for exposing bad actors, period. Imagine if that ever happened. Maybe governments and companies would think twice before acting illegally/immorally.
Governments do not want these incidents to happen because they want to keep doing it in secrecy and they enact laws to make uncovering these schemes illegal. Arguing if that's illegal or not is missing the whole point. It will never be legal in a corrupt society like ours.
I mean I don’t blame him for not wanting to be murdered by Russia but he isn’t a freedom fighter when he only leaks things for countries that don’t directly threaten his life.
This argument is completely nonsensical, this idea that who revealed the crime matters more than the actual crime.
What does it matter who "influenced" him, if the information was legit? And is it your opinion that none of this information should be released unless it covers all countries equally? Do you honestly think he should have thought, I can't reveal this crime until I find an equal Russian crime, for equality. What a wonderful, open world that would be! Utterly ridiculous.
This is the same stupidity as "Hunter's laptop". It allows the Idiocracy to dismiss anything because "the Russians!".
Because they may have influenced the timing and content of the leaks to further their own ends. Revealing sensitive information is not a neutral act. It has consequences far beyond the exposure of bad actors.
Grow up.
The underlying principle is the rule of law and the Constitution codifies the powers of the government with legislation codifying more details. That’s why the government is accountable to you, not because of your tax dollars. If you are a citizen who doesn’t need to pay any taxes, the government should be as equally accountable to you as to the very wealthy because of the rule of law and everyone being equal to it.
...yes. That's what a job is. There are also off-duty codes of conduct employees must adhere to.
That’s why the government is accountable to you, not because of your tax dollars.
I didn't say my taxes are why they're accountable. I said my taxes are why I want any and all evil actions taken by them exposed.
Again, we’re aligned on that. But the “ma taxes” argument is facile because for nearly 100 years there wasn’t even income tax so it was secondary taxes through purchases or tariffs. As for off duty codes, there usually aren’t any meaningful ones and they generally are very constrained by the legal system (eg they can’t punish you for political activity). It’s the same reason someone standing up to a politician and screaming “my taxes fund your salary” is blatantly incorrect. The economy is a circular dependent system. For example, government tax dollars pay corporations which then pay your salary which you then get taxed on. You’re over privileging your personal role in the economic system when you make this argument and then the next follow up argument is “well I pay more taxes than you so I should get more of a say than you in how government is run”. It’s a flawed premise that leads to all sorts of directly harmful lines of reasoning. Just argue that we’re a country based on the rule of law and no one is above that. That’s literally the founding principle of the country.
For consistency, you should then feel guilty that criminals use the roads we’ve built. After all that was government dollars used to create jobs infrastructure that murderers use to travel to kill their victim and to escape justice. And what about guns in the first place. Government tax dollars go to sustaining those gun manufacturers in the first place, otherwise we wouldn’t have guns for our military. Those guns are then used for murder and all sorts of bad things. And heck, the internet was created through government funding and many big tech companies make a lot of money from the government and that’s got a lot of crime and victimization that happens. So you should feel guilty about that too.
However, for me, personal feelings about him should not matter in this case. It's a question of how our society treats people that expose bad actors. He's a flawed human being like every other one, but what he did was not wrong even if deemed illegal (by the justice system from the exposed party, who would've guessed).
When presented with evidence of her infidelity, her first and only reaction, "Who sent you those screenshots?! It was Sarah, wasn't it? You know she hates me. Why are you talking to her?!"
IDGAF if Russia and China do the same things. I ASSUME they do them.
The west enjoys the "free world" moniker and the distinction it implies. It should be held to an accordingly higher standard.
Agree with it, I want to read news about different countries, but it looks like the people\bots are obsessed with Russia on reddit.
Also it's interesting to see how people react to the same news about civilian deaths. People are happy when Russian civilians die. I with these forums had a feature to hide/swap country names in a news/posts so people can realize how evil they are.
You know what's even more exhausting? Russia being so bad.
Also, whining about 'relentless "Russia bad!" parroting'.
The way to end the "parroting" is for Russia to stop being bad.
Not saying Russia doesn't engage in propaganda attempts, but they are more or less irrelevant for any domestic discussion then and now.
He directly participated in stealing a bunch of classified information with Manning.
It only ends the argument of whether or not there is still a legal case against him.
I've always found this claim to be extremely shrill — and doubly so now. This is the same country that just agreed to let him plead guilty in exchange for, essentially, time served (~5 years). It's also the same country whose president commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence down to 7 years.
Your basic claim is not an unreasonable one: people plead guilty because they'd rather take the deal than face the possibility of a worse outcome at trial. But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?
> It's also the same country whose president commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence down to 7 years.
The same country who may have a different president come November with a history of calling the Assange case a priority.
Why would anyone feel safe relying on the luck of the draw of the president at any given time to get out of what was an initial utterly extreme sentence?
> But what will it take to stop the rhetoric about the U.S. wanting to lock him up and throw away the key?
When the US stops sentencing people to 35 years like with Chelsea Manning's initial sentence, and there's been a long period without e.g. illegal rendition flights, when Guantanamo Bay has been closed for a few decades and no new camps have taken it's place etc. Maybe when a couple of generations have passed, in other words.
Actually acknowledging and prosecuting the war crimes that were exposed would be a good start.
It’s a difficult area of research, but there are various law schools[0] and charities[1] trying to help people who took pleas because they feared a harsher sentence if they couldn’t adequately defend themselves.
0 - https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE.... 1 - https://innocenceproject.org/
People have breaking points.
And then you'll enjoy more experiences of aggressively-expansionist governments, Houthi-like groups, and the equivalent of Haitian gangs and Sudanese militias, all over the world, fighting to advance their leaders' own narrow parochial desires wherever they think they can get away with it. They'll be using WhatsApp, Starlink, and cheap drones in their efforts, and enlisting like-minded allies.
You'll find yourself looking back wistfully on the days of the Pax Americana, which for nearly 80 years has maintained a flawed but workable rules-based international order. That's even granting that the U.S. has done some bad things — on occasion, very bad things — in furtherance of its own perceived interests and those of some of its powerful interest groups.
1. There is no other country (not even close) that could be trusted with that amount of power (especially considering size)
2. Held up the (illusion of) “neutral” international institutions like the UN. They barely worked in the presence of a “benevolent” power, and will probably completely lose relevance to anarchy and the “right of the stronger” (on local levels), shall the US hegemony subside.
Then on the other hand the US has started undermining their own most important principles:
1. 1971: Removing the gold convertability from the $
2. 9/11: Starting to spy on each and everyone, eastern germany/soviet-style
3. Removing personal freedoms during COVID (not as severe as other countries, though)
If it weren’t for silicon valley, the us would already look like a stagnating state where the economy is mainly driven by government spending. The problem is larping EU socialism will only yield even worse results in the US, since the government seems to be even less efficient.
On the other hand the US is also one of the few countries that have turned around non-violently in the past. Attractiveness for international talent is still immense. So with a few adjustments I’m pretty sure it could be turned around
I would go even further and blame the state of the developing countries on the west too, because their selfish competetivly oriented globalisation left them as vasals since the end of colonization.
This is actually the sadest part, what will remain of this hegemony: a world order made by and for the corrupt. Maybe china makes it better since they resisted IMF, WHO, etc but i have my doubts.
Not that the United States isn't flawed or doesn't do hypocritical or unilateral diplomacy (Israel or anything related to communism, & I guess installing/supporting dictators that support US interests), but is it too much to ask if you can provide me a few examples where the US acted like an exploitative colonial power that hindered developing countries (at least in the past 80 years)?
It looks like china is trying the same thing the west did after WW2: debt trap diplomacy. [0]
The linked article focuses alot on china in a negative way but the origin of debt trap diplomacy began with the bretton wood institutions (IMF, WHO, world bank) in 1944 and resulted in the debt crises of 1980s [1,2] and the globalized developing countries. These institutions where handing out massive loans meant for development but bound to sometimes very harsh economic reforms [3,4]. The effect was not the promised growth but the debt crises and the (imo intentional) economic opening of resource rich but otherwise poor countries to the well developed economies of the west.
Afaik the US did not directly acted as an expoitative power but hindered developing countries as a proxy for multinational corporations. Like for chiquita banana in latin america or for shell in nigeria [5,6].
This story is decades old, explains well the current corrupt-but-useful leaders all over the southern world and i dont even have to go into the petrodollar and its meaning for small oil exporting countries. The US/the west is imo very responsible for the global state of affairs and the gain of power/wealth is the only explaination for the development we took. This is my bridge to exploitation but propably not the smoking gun you where looking for. This topic is so vast to just focus on a single country.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy
[1] https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_debt_crisis
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20100226180656/http://www.africa...
[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2010/12/10/how-shell-infil...
"Freedom" — to be ruled by armed gangs battling for territory (Haiti, Sudan)? To be imprisoned or even killed for disagreeing with the ruling regime (Iran, Russia, China, North Korea)? Or for not wearing the proper head covering as a woman (Iran)? To be poisoned or thrown out a window because you're on the autocrat's shit list? That's certainly "worse," but it's hardly "material conditions."
If you want real "worse material conditions," ask yourself whether North Korean commoners think that their "freedom" makes up for the deprivations that they endure.
The U.S. has been the de facto world policeman for going on 80 years now. Not entirely, but on the whole, the world has been the better for it. Sometimes police make mistakes. Sometimes police are venal or corrupt or vicious. But a world without police would be Haiti, writ large.
Those are all conditions that exist in the current state of the world, so clearly US hegemony doesn't prevent them. The US intervenes only where it serves its interests to do so, and happily cosies up with equally vicious regimes (e.g. Saudi Arabia) when that serves their interests.
I'll take a world where my country has to pay for our own defence, even if it means higher taxes for me, over one where US personnel can kill someone like me and the US will give them a getaway flight with no repercussions.
By that reasoning, murder, robbery, etc., all exist everywhere, so clearly the existence of police forces doesn't prevent them — so sure, let's get rid of the police and other law-enforcement agencies. (Or more succinctly: Half a loaf ....)
> I'll take a world where my country has to pay for our own defence, even if it means higher taxes for me, over one where US personnel can kill someone like me and the US will give them a getaway flight with no repercussions.
If you can make such a world happen, you're of course free to do so. Until then, you might consider acknowledging that the U.S. — for its own mixed reasons, to be sure — provides the key support for an international rules-based order that, on the whole (and with tragic exceptions), has allowed billions of people to live better lives than they would have otherwise.
Right, to justify police forces you have to actually show that they don't cause more crime than they prevent, and by a big enough margin to make it worth the trouble.
> you might consider acknowledging that the U.S. — for its own mixed reasons, to be sure — provides the key support for an international rules-based order that, on the whole (and with tragic exceptions), has allowed billions of people to live better lives than they would have otherwise.
Every gang chief or warlord (including some of the examples you specifically picked out as bad places to live) makes that kind of argument.
I realize that other countries act similarly in terms of foreign policy when they can. Germany hasn't exactly covered itself in glory either. I'm not just referring to the Nazi era. But I am not at all as pessimistic about the multipolar future that probably lies ahead of us as some others are.
Not sure where you live, friend. And perhaps America never should have attempted to be world’s policeman. Neither an international awareness nor an appreciation for the subltiew of diplomacy have never been America’s strong suit.
But rest assured it is tired and over such a role, with two plus decades of military veterans having seen up close and personally how ugly the world can be in places.
Perhaps you are merely a troll but I’m guessing you have seen the most recent trendlines on this planet. They don’t look good. And it appears will get exactly what you seek.
Enjoy…
and a good thing that was too, exposing our government's wrongdoing and lies
What exactly of value was exposed?
People occasionally talk about this tactic as being a bit of a morally grey zone but under cover journalism with an intention of leaking information (if they get their hands on it) do happen from times to times.
I get the feeling if they'd joined the Swedish military and leaked national secrets, things would not have worked out so nicely for them.
That's what Assange was accused of, not being in the military, but actively conspiring with the leaker to steal the documents rather than merely receiving the leaked documents.
...but when handed documents from one another foreign government refuses to publish them
and then it becomes obvious that the leaks were targeting liberal Swedish politicians facing election versus conservative candidates favored by that same one particular other foreign government...
I don't understand why people don't see wikileaks as anything other than a proxy Russian foreign intelligence operation.
Apparently Wikileaks were given documents that had already leaked elsewhere before and refused to publish them because their purpose is novel leaks, not repeating leaks from elsewhere. That has been spun into a narrative that they refused leaks because they are biased, without much evidence.
When there are a lot of disingenuous arguments like this being made to discredit someone that turn out to be unreasonable once you dig a little deeper, like we see with Wikileaks and Assange, it generally is a strong suggestion someone is trying to manipulate people into believing a false narrative.
You know that Russia isn't happy with someone when they end up dead. If the Russian files that Wikileaks published didn't make Russia happy, Assange would be in a box right now, and not headed home.
The result from the political fallout was creation of one of the four constitutional laws that exist in Sweden, the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1949.
One result of that is that if a military personal were to leak information to the press, the journalist would by law be forbidden to ever disclose who that person was. The journalist can be sent to jail if they just happen to disclose it, and must take active steps to prevent it.
The publisher themselves must have the intention to inform the public. If that is true, then the constitution allows the publisher to ignore any other Swedish law like national secret classification for the act of publishing (explicit right given in the constitution).
Legal professors were discussing the situation back during the initial periods when the leaks occurred that Julian Assange now has plead guilty for. The conclusion was that he can not get charged for disclosing national defense information. The constitution do not allow that. He could be charged for conspiring to steal documents (ie, hacking), if the original whistle blower did not have access to the documents in the first place and had material help from the journalist or if they paid the whistle blower to steal the documents (proportional to that action). Conspiracy charges are quite messy however, and since military personal are under different legal laws than civilians, the consensus was unclear if such conspiracy charges is possible, and what if any punishment is available for the courts.
> "There were so many people who were part of this process, and what it showed was people from both sides of politics, for different reasons, arrived at the same place," Mr Joyce said on Tuesday morning.
> "I don't agree with what he did, and I won't, but it wasn't illegal," Mr Joyce said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/great-encouragement-j...
> Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a journalist.
> “We can now… say he was guilty of a very serious offence," he tells the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
> “Most people in Australia would agree it’s not appropriate to steal national security information and publish it - governments have to have some degree of privacy in their communications."
> He adds: “I don’t think many Australians have sympathy for him. Just because he’s Australian doesn’t mean he’s a good bloke.”
If you look at the totality of the BBC's coverage, it's clear that the general consensus is that he did a good thing for humanity that hurt some powerful people, and he's been unjustly punished for it, but that there is a small cohort of people (including some very vocal, powerful ones who get headlines) who disagree with that opinion and think that he did something negative and was justly punished for it.
The trouble is that when you summarise that argument, you lose the "general consensus" and "small cohort" bits and you just get the two points, which together make a rather different story.
The Downer family have recent history in misjudging what "most people" in significant chunks of the Australian public think. Chunks, for example, like the electorate they're trying to be members of parliament in.
I guess it is to be expected from a person whose power is threatened by people like Assange.
At least the PM seems like a more sensible person.
Sure, a "journalist" is somebody who works for a mega-corporation, preferably owned by a billionaire with political ambitions, and reports whatever the party that controls his outlet considers to be fit to print at the moment.
> he was guilty of a very serious offence
When somebody is caught on camera robbing or stabbing, the "journalists" always insist he is "allegedly" guilty until the court decision is made. These rules, however, do not apply to people who publish dirt on politicians.
> would agree it’s not appropriate to steal national security information and publish it
"Journalists" have done it many times though. And got prestigious awards for it. Of course, the situation is different here - his wasn't approved for anybody powerful and didn't benefit any billionaire with political ambitions, so no awards for him.
One of the rare moment's I agree with Barnaby Joyce.
> 79 per cent of people said the Biden administration should drop its pursuit of Assange. Only 13 per cent disagreed. Eight per cent were unsure
It's not a superior or single view per se, but it's probably a set of closely aligned views tempered by a greater breadth of thinking in terms of not being totally stuck in an isolate ghetto spacetime wallow / populist moshpit.
When the people whose specific jobs and lives revolve around the topic have a contrary opinion you should probably take more seriously. Those who don't and elevate their opinions are what we call cranks.
Further, perhaps it is unwise to place much faith in the relevance of formal education to matters of complex political and technical insight deeply mired in populist information warfare and wiser to consider education level to be generally quite independent of formal training in most cases?
(It is probable that if those politicians had been particularly in touch with the views of Australians, they wouldn't have ended up in exile!)
Australia has been a loyal US ally historically and so our politicians avoid criticizing US as not to jeopardize that relationship. It's been a thorny issue in the relationship though as it has made our politicians look weak/cowardly whenever the topic of Assange was approached.
Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even informal exile only normally happens between countries that do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or tax reasons.
Sometimes when a public figure fucks up their career in their home country, they'll move to another country where people don't know about the fuck-up.
This isn't a literal exile, it's figurative.
Who are those? I can't think of any Australian politicians who are prominent in UK discourse, on Assange or any other topic.
Where I live (way out in the boonies), many people have told me that they have a lot of admiration for him. In some spaces in Melbourne, he seems to almost have a cult following.
I am sure he has his detractors in Australia but, so far, I have either not met any in person or they have kept their opinions to themselves.
I think politicians are more likely to dislike him than the general public does, which makes sense; after all, he targeted politicians and policy decisions.
Well not "extradition" in the traditional sense, since Snowden is now a Russian citizen and they don't have an extradition treaty, but hey in a lawless place, anything is possible, they can just ship him to a US-friendly country who will then deliver him the rest of the way.
I wonder if he's got a hiding strategy figured out, with wife and kid(s). Russia's a big place after all.
Or worse. Not say anything other than "get in the car now". It is not like dictators need to explain themselves.
It's the same with an average dim Russian's opinion on Navalny as it is with an average dim American's opinion on Snowden and Assange.
The second link is: <<Full List of Russians to Fall Out of Windows Since Putin ...>>
Ref: https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-russians-fall-windows-put...
http://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&que...
Does this variation of the phenomenon bother you as well, and to the same degree?
[1] I mean this in the technical sense, not merely as shit talk.
Do you think they mostly & consistently have the ability (cold/natively, or even if explicitly prompted)?
Why? He is a Russian Today Kreml-funded Propagandist
Now ideally the media of my own state would be doing a good job on all things own government fucks up. But it turns out, sometimes journalists from elsewhere whose news organizations don't have to care so much about getting exclusive access do a better job on that front — especially if they have an incentive to find things. Even if that means I have to now try to figure out what is complete fiction and which grain of truth (of any) can be found.
So yeah, sue me if I differenciate between the Russian state, a news source financed by the Russian state and a whistleblower financed by a news source financed by the Russian state after the news outlet in Western nations with which he first had contact somehow felt they can't report on their own governments involvment in a human rights violation anymore.
I am not a fan of Assange and I don't think he is a sympatic person, but I think we all owe it to the world to differenciate and see the chain of events instead of lumping together everything ins simplistic answers.
They're someone elses enemy, not mine.
Hope it helps, because it doesn't to millions of people living in their regimes. Authoritarianism apologia is wild.
Not to mention you sidestepped the entire conversation. It sucks for their own people. Their own govt is their enemy - we should be standing next to them, not going "oh yeah you're oppressors of your own people but in my book you're cool because I dislike my own country/Israel/West" or whatever the new excuse is.
If "we" is taken to include the core HN user base (the USofA) then that horse has bolted given the the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the U.S.- and British-instigated, Iranian army-led overthrow of the elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh that more or less kick started the arc toward where Iran-West relations are today.
Did that work well? Should the west keep following a similar course of action?
I am also keenly aware that British Empire involvement started with conquering Palestine & The Balfour Declaration, and ended in the Sergeant's Affair. We have spilled more than enough blood for Zionism and (when we were no longer useful) had our blood spilled by Zionism.
Therefore I reiterate - do not make Iran your enemy on behalf of people who have historically used us as tools to get what they want.
It's no secret he was given a ton of leaked material material on the Kremlin but decided not to publish it.
Sorry, if you are prosecuted and no other network gives you a show, what will you do? I'm sure he would have taken a CNN show as well.
This was also in 2012, before the whole Euromaidan thing. Many European politicians lined up to be friends with Russia.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/13/russia.poli...
Here is a site that claims that the deals went on well after the Crimea annexation:
https://www.declassifieduk.org/under-putin-mi6-linked-bp-ext...
I do not know the second site, so search and check for yourself. Britain also took gas via the Nordstream network that had a pipeline through Northern Germany to England.
I would direct such criticisms towards Blair and not towards someone who was under tremendous pressure and frankly fearing for his life.
I'm against double standards. It was wrong from both Assange, Blair and other Western leaders and activists who claimed to care about democracy and human rights to deal with Putin's Russia the way they did.
No, he is not. Nobody can go through what he has been forced to suffer in all those years without lasting consequences that can't be undone: years of his life have been taken away, his health has been damaged, his family has been hit as well. He may be free to roam around, but he's not the same person anymore. I don't see any happy ending here, especially if there are no consequences for the psychopaths dressed as patriots who forced him into that ordeal.
You might want to trademark it.
Well thats fascinating. Were his kids somehow all born after he was imprisoned?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Assange#Personal_life_a...
I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any countries' courts and justice system after that...
‘Think’ is the operative word here. Assange would not have had a jury trial if extradited without the plea deal, and for a jury trial, mere opinion isn’t enough to convict
Err, yep. An effective symbol in all the ways I mentioned. Namely:
> securing legitimacy for their protracted judicial overreach
and
> deterring whistleblowers in the future
all while
> [avoiding] further diplomatic damage with one of its military and economic allies
Mission accomplished for the US "national security interest".
I'll be very honest. You have a bias. You will fit everything to that bias. You don't care about how the legal system works, or that the plea deal was a great deal for him compared to what they could have pursued. Note that when they got that guilty plea on ONE CHARGE which is inconsequential for him, they dropped a lot of other stuff.
You're kidding right? This has had a chilling effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide. A large part of Julian's support base are journalists, including many of those that won awards from the published leaks that got him in trouble.
Blow the whistle, and then maybe be in solitary for 5 years? An agent from a three letter agency shows up in the middle of your investigation, and reminds you about your life, family, and friends, and what it might be like to not see them for a very long time. Or maybe just don't blow the whistle.
> You don't care about how [...] the plea deal was a great deal for him compared to what they could have pursued
Not sure where you got that idea. As you imply, it's not anywhere near as bad as, say, Julian had been locked up in supermax until he died, but I think 5 years in solitary has secured enough deterrence. And the conviction is the veneer of justification that the US needs to avoid admonition for blatant and prejudiced torture, while enabling them to cease the ongoing diplomatic hassle (and negative press).
> I'll be very honest. You have a bias.
I'll be very honest. You have a bias. /s
Actually, being honest, I don't even know that you do. But believing it doesn't make it true, and saying it here doesn't really further the discussion.
I'll leave you to have the last word
I suppose? There's maybe some qualitative distinction to be made. But essentially I'd say that Assange was:
> railroaded by the criminal justice system, pressured to plead guilty and serve time.
Though time already served was factored into the sentencing. The pressure to plead guilty was the prospect of dying in solitary confinement.
> If not, we should delete the entire thread
TBF, I don't think 'I think Assange is guilty/not guilty' without any factual backup is really a worthwhile contribution to the discussion.
They know they cannot possibly openly share their opinions without the potential for severe penalty. This is exactly why Putin did what he did to Alexei Navalny; it reminds the populace to keep the opinions to themselves or die in the most horrible way possible.
While we’re at it: George W. Bush is a war criminal and should be tried at The Hague.
Obama was the best Republican president we’ve ever had.
See? No.
Using this logic we can say that Trump did what he did to Epstein?
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: we've had to ask you this multiple times before-
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28885166 (Oct 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319175 (Aug 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613766 (March 2021)
The upcoming 2024 elections in the US find both parties trying to court subsets of the population who mistrust the government, so surely freeing Assange was done for realpolitik reasons.
It is not too late for Mike Pompeo to end up serving time. Let's hope that he is brought to justice ASAP.
Arguing that he hasn't personally killed anyone is not a strong rebuke against such allegations.
The risk inherent to collaborationism is also not one anyone but the informant must account for. Just as mercenaries operate in that same high-risk-reward / low-solidarity space, and accordingly join the cast of characters in war zones along with spies and informants without international sympathy.
Revealing information about many murders is very different from doing murder.
At the time, the US Government was prohibited by law (Smith-Mundt Act of 1948) from propagandizing the American people. This was repealed by the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 which allows US Citizens to be exposed to propaganda.
Notably, one US Government strategy for propagandizing is to disseminate/test the stories in the British press and wait for them to be picked up by the US press. This strategy is still used even though the Smith-Mundt modernization act makes it less necessary for legal compliance.
Wikileaks revealed that the US Government withheld and classified information solely for propaganda purposes. In other words, a small group of people deceived the public so that a very expensive and consequential war they wanted to have would not be interrupted by common sense insights that the public would have had.
The intention of my comment was a plain statement of fact. You can’t have an unfair trial if you never have a trial.
Here's a slightly biased summary, but in this case I think the extreme outrage and bias is totally justified.
https://prospect.org/justice/julian-assange-espionage-act-19...
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.
So from 22 September 2019 until his release now he was jailed in very strict conditions without having been convicted of anything, which to me is unacceptable whatever the extradition request situation. Especially now that we see that the instant he pleads guilty he is immediately freed...
What would you have done? "Oh, he ran away again, nothing we could have done, this was totally unforeseeable?"
Was he even wearing a tag on the first bail?
* at least, I assume those crowds were adoring rather than booing…
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.
What I am highlighting is the hypocrisy.
That strikes me as almost tautologically untrue. It simply doesn't seem possible that every decision about how much to highlight or criticize or ignore a country's abuse of their legal system could be based upon ulterior motives. It implies that there can never be genuine moral outrage, and honestly, for me, that just makes your whole point and outlook feel unfounded or uncommonly sad.
For example, how much of the criticism of Otto Warmbier's detention in North Korea is based upon ulterior motives? Is it all of it? Or is it like, 50% or 10% or less? And if it's a smaller amount, are you actually highlighting a hypocrisy that is meaningful enough for it to be the main thrust of your comment?
It feels like someone cooked you a gourmet meal and you said, "Food only ever tastes good or bad because of the salt."
But it is indeed questionable, why someone should submit to such pressure if there are no consequences in this case either.
There is the deeply philosophical, mathematical (Bayesian estimates), legal and political question whether the fact that he admitted that he was guilty increases or decreases the probability/likelihood that he is actually guilty or not.
Seems like the perfect place to kidnap him
Do you believe that Russia benefits equally from the election of either candidate this time around?
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_assassinations
The distinction between Biden and Trump is that Trump is opposed to the machine that's been responsible for decades of disastrous foreign policy, while Biden is the face of that very same machine.
Putin is far from the only foreign leader who would prefer Trump. It's silly to attempt this framing.
It went far beyond a couple of artificial protests.
Russia did support Trump in 2016 (and beyond), Trump was quite happy about it.
But what if the decision is between a stability candidate and a pro-chaos candidate? I think then that Russia would take a side. And I doubt many would debate that one candidate is clearly more pro-chaos than the other.
If you were Russia in 2016, would you have preferred that the next US President be someone competent with significant foreign policy experience, or a Putin-idolizing fool with zero foreign policy experience?
If the Cold War was truly over when the wall fell, we'd have welcomed Russia into NATO. That would have been a huge mistake, as Russia has proven to be antithetical to democracy and an aggressor against the interests of the West, despite dressing up in its skirt.
Instead we've engaged in proxy war after proxy war with very little changing in the best part of 40 years or so. That's no accident.
Suggesting otherwise IMO is to take talking points from the mouth of the Kremlin. I get tired of the "Russia is being bullied by the mean ol' United States" narrative, they're malignant and hostile. I think you're right to raise this point.
This was offered by NATO: Partnership for Peace, NATO-Russia Founding Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations It's Russia that wasn't interested.
And they have repeatedly been caught meddling directly in Western countries (see i.e. multiple assassinations in the West).
Henry Kissinger (Former U.S. Secretary of State) - Expressed concerns about NATO expansion increasing tensions with Russia over several years, particularly noted in discussions and forums during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
William Perry (Former U.S. Secretary of Defense) - Voiced apprehensions about the strategy and pace of NATO expansion, particularly in the late 1990s during his tenure and in reflections thereafter.
Sam Nunn (Former U.S. Senator, Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative) - Warned of strategic miscalculations and heightened conflict risks due to expansion, prominently during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Jack Matlock (Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union) - Criticized NATO expansion for potentially setting the stage for conflict with Russia, in articles and public lectures, particularly during the 1990s.
Yes, that's how propaganda works. But in the face of new information, that propaganda has to be tweaked or abandoned. To keep hammering the same message produces quickly diminishing returns.
If all source material that you can find is hyperbolic nonsense, then you have made up your mind before looking.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/05/25/steve-b...
A pardon can cover previous crimes with or without conviction.
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...
Because he fucked with the powerful.
He exposed terrible things done by large powers, therefore he was persecuted absolutely.
I'm reading at some sites that this isn't really true and that he wasn't literally held in a 2x3m cell for 23 hours every day. Although it's not very clear what were the actual conditions.
edit: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/11/un-expert-to.... it's very vague and unspecific though..
Well, who is gong to stop them?
There are a lot of countries they have never published anything on. They have a smaller number of large leaks, so that is not necessarily out of the ordinary.
I think it is credible that Wikileaks were provided some documents from Russian state-sanctioned actors, who knew Wikileaks would publish them, and that the state-sanctioned actors did so to serve Russian interests. But the claim that Wikileaks as a whole is biased towards Russia doesn't seem likely.
Either he never had been handed any significant leaks on Russia, either he chosed to not publish them.
> Is it not enough that one state committed a crime and he reported it?
It depends on what "it" would be enough for... but if he indeed actively surpressed damaging info leaked to him on par with the stuff he has released, yeah, that makes matters complex.
Another criticism I've seen is that the leaks did not do any redaction whatsoever - even when it clearly pertained to informants in war zones. For that, if the allegations are true, my view is simple: you shouldn't do that. And if you set up an infrastructure for leaking, it is reasonable to assume that you're capable of handling such an important and obviously necessary step.
So "isn't it enough?" - no, it is more complicated than that.
Never? I can easily come up with scenarios where I think you'd also make an exception; If he was a German journalist in 1940 and he discovered what really happened at concentration camps. I'd wager exposing those papers without any redaction would be acceptable.
If you agree, then the rest is just about how you weigh certain crimes by the government, how many and what kind of names you expose, etc.
WL continued to redact information and expended significant resources doing so. If this faltered at all, it was only after the organization came under attack from multiple governments and had to undertake its mission with fewer humans available to perform that level of review. While not ideal, WL does not deserve criticism for it as WL was essentially stabbed in the back by the NY Times and other corporate news outlets.
WL wanted to team up with major corporate news outlets to ensure solid redaction and stewardship. They cooperated once before governments told them to instead publish smear stories against Assange. The timing of the diplomatic cables which embarrassed HRC was not ideal, since it led the US center-left (neocons) to get on board more fully in the character assassination campaign against Assange than would have been possible if GWB and the Iraq/Afghan war corruption was the major scandal impacting the USG revealed by WL.
You can’t diminish facts depending on who is telling them - as long as these are facts.
Besides. The US and Europe and so have fairly free media, so the Wikileaks revelations reached a wide audience. Russia does not have free media, so if there were any leaks like it, it wouldn't reach the Russians as much.
Some people disagree with this, see https://x.com/joni_askola/status/1805628043760685317 and the whole thread
There are legal minimums for how much time prisoners have to be allowed out of their cells but they're pretty low and not always followed
"Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
that's rich coming from an informant.
You can't because no Afghan informant names were leaked.
Anyway, Wikileaks was urged to hide / censor the names because it put their lives in danger: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-wa.... Some were released, others containing most of the names were witheld by wikileaks and the partnered media outlets: https://www.wired.com/2011/02/wikileaks-book/, https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/701412231. Basically Wikileaks admitted fault and carelessness, and people died as a result: https://www.newsweek.com/taliban-says-it-will-target-names-e...
Who died? Who was even named?
> [...] the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thereby endangering their lives.
If many names were published, what is one name?
The information included FOB locations, contact reports, and secret and classified documents. releasing these documents without properly sanitizing the information put american service men in danger.
Without a doubt, leaking classified information puts thousands of lives at risk. Julian Assage is a criminal. At some point you stop being a whistle blower and you become a terrorist releasing compromising information on troop movements, informants, supply constraints, and readiness assessments. Julian Assage is a terrorist and i'm sure he won't live very long now that he is out. He's pissed off too many dangerous people.
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 and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.
After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.
WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles,and for the people's right to know.
As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
Julian's freedom is our freedom.
[More details to follow]