According to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, who just visited Assange [1], he has fallen gravely ill and shows all the signs of prolonged psychological torture.
Apparently at first he assumed Assange was just a good actor, but after visiting him it had become clear to him and the medical experts with him that this is a case of treatment amounting to psychological torture, the likes of which (psychological, not physical) he has not seen in 20 years.
He's been giving numerous interviews about the matter and says that extradition to the US should be ruled out at all costs and that he has very real fears for Assange's health and for the probable violation of his human rights.
> that this is a case of treatment amounting to psychological torture
I don't deny his symptoms, but I strongly deny that "his treatment" by others led to those symptoms.
His own decisions and actions, namely, to live in a cramped room for years, and not going to see a doctor, led to those.
Now, you may argue that he was right to do so. But it was by his own volition. Sweden would have given him first-class medical treatment and much better living conditions, even if he would have been put in a prison cell (which isn't too likely).
This is a deeply ignorant statement considering he's currently looking at being extracted to the US, who are considering a 175 year sentence. The article you're commenting on lists all the anomalies that happened with his case.
The choice appears to be stay in the embassy and hope his lawyers could have closed the warrant or spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement as Chelsea Manning was. To say any of this was his choice is an incredibly cruel take.
I agree with you. I believe he even offered to present himself to Sweden if he could be guaranteed that he would not be extradited to the US. A Swedish prison would be a country club in comparison. But I think the concern of the UN here is that the circumstances were prolonged due to the refusal of all states to abide by a more or less binding UN ruling.
Regardless of positions on the issue, it's important to recognize that the UN has essentially no power. The only time it does is when certain powerful member states (mostly security council) agree to back a measure. In other words, half the UN's member states voting to back a measure does not matter if said member states are small ones. Same is true of enforcement: there has to be consensus, which is unlikely to happen against America.
"Binding", in that the parties had signed the convention and agreed to "uphold" such rulings. They instead claimed that "Assange was free to leave at any time", i.e. that they were "upholding" the ruling. At the very least, Assange would be entitled to compensation as a means of enforcing the ruling, should the states refuse to comply. Which court would rule about such compensation is not clear to me. Perhaps the European court of Human Rights, but that is speculation on my part.
Neither the UK nor Sweden would give him guarantees that he would not be extradited to the US. The UK stopped all attempts by Ecuador to leave the UK (he became a Ecuadorian citizen and was appointed as a diplomat, but was refused diplomatic immunity by the UK). Assange stated many times that he wanted to go to Sweden, but only on the condition they wouldn't extradite him to the US.
So, I think staying the embassy was the only option for him, given that the US clearly wanted to have Assange and had already tortured Chelsea Manning for simply being the source of a leak. Not to mention that "Collateral Murder" was literally a video about the US military murdering journalists and then killing first responders. If they were willing to cover up their killing of US journalists, god knows what they'd be willing to do in Assange's case.
> No state in the world gives a non-citizen political asylum to avoid a rape trial
The granting of political asylum does not prove the crimes alleged are solely political. That this point is granted zero further attention weakens every subsequent claim.
The granting of political asylum is itself a political act. Particularly when extended by an executive. When Assange’s asylum was granted, Assange was popular and well known. The Ecuadorean leader drew power from an anti-American base. Years later, most Americans don’t know who Assange is [1]. The leadership in Ecuador changed, and with it the political incentives that made Assange valuable [2].
I don’t think Assange fled the Swedish charges per se. But there is insufficient evidence to show he didn’t commit any bona fide crimes under U.S. law. Yes, he exposed war crimes. But he also published sensitive information of zero public benefit yet detrimental to those exposed, e.g. agents in terrorist organisations or the medical records of gay men in Saudi Arabia [3].
I am unfamiliar as to how those balance under American law. But to dismiss the latter solely because of the former is to say a good deed single-handedly excuses bad deeds, which isn’t justice.
There is a lot of FUD spread about what WikiLeaks has published. I see the same accusations being repeated over and over, rarely with any explanation of the actual meat of the accusations.
For example, you say that WikiLeaks has released a huge amount of material of zero public interest, and give the example of them supposedly outing a gay man in Saudi Arabia. WikiLeaks actually published a huge cache of Saudi diplomatic cables, which are obviously of immense public interest. Those cables detail the Saudi government's backroom dealings with foreign countries and internal repression. One cable mentions the arrest by the Saudi government of a gay man. That is the cable that people use to accuse WikiLeaks of outing someone in Saudi Arabia.
> But there is insufficient evidence to show he didn’t commit any bona fide crimes under U.S. law.
Assange is an Australian, currently in the U.K., and was accused of rape in Sweden. We shouldn't let the apparently global reach of U.S. law go unexamined.
So as an American, with an American targeted business (and having never visited the EU), doesn't the EU's GDPR law make the same attempt at global reach should a European decide, unbeknownst to me, to visit my web properties? Or are you suggesting that laws that try to assert such global scope are wrong in general?
That's a good question - if your business has no presence in the EU, then I would think the GDPR is toothless? But yes, I don't like such laws in general.
Although the attempt is certainly not the same, as I don't think you can get extradited for GDPR violations.
How could anyone possibly think this was ever about the law? When he first published "Collateral Murder", you knew what it was about, and you knew how it would (eventually) end for him. Does anyone not living under a rock, think what is happening to Assange is even remotely based on law and justice? spoiler alert: it's not!
Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did fine [1].
I’m not convinced that, had Wikileaks filtered their material like the ICIJ did with the Panama Papers [2], they would have been charged. Ignoring the collateral damage caused by Assange’s decision not to curate, like every journalist is trained to do, doesn’t make it immaterial.
My first reaction to this is that the climate has changed since then. The use of the Espionage Act and nonjudicial targeting of reporters and leakers has been on the rise for a few decades; it's not just Assange but Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Joseph Wilson, and Barrett Brown. If James Bamford published the equivalent of Inside the Puzzle Palace today, I'd fully expect him to face prosecution. The softer reaction to the Panama Papers had less to do with protections for responsible publication than with the leaker never being caught, and the near-total absence of notable Americans.
But honestly, saying earlier leakers did fine also seems pretty selective. Deep Throat did fine because he kept his identity secret for 30 years. Woodward did well because his publications forced Nixon to resign, producing an administration that wasn't being directly harmed by the leaks.
Before Nixon's resignation, those associated with leaks suffered quite a bit more. Daniel Ellsberg had his medical records stolen from his psychiatrist's office. When Nixon thought the Brookings Institute had Vietnam files, he ordered their office robbed and later planned a firebombing to enable an FBI raid; this was apparently preempted only because the Pentagon Papers were published. Other reporters and editors were regularly targeted with tax audits for criticizing Nixon. Martha Mitchell was kidnapped and sedated to prevent her from discussing her husband's role in Watergate. Many of the people targeted most heavily, for instance for FBI harassment and break-ins, were activists instead of reporters, but Assange's place on that continuum is hardly clear.
It does seem excessive to claim that this was an inevitable outcome. But I don't think the recent or Nixon-era experiences of leakers justify any belief whatsoever that responsible leakers face less retribution.
All of your examples of journalists being harassed by the government relate to Nixon...who was on the verge of impeachment for his abuses of power...
Of the 4 examples you provided, only Wilson didn't violate any laws. Drake and Kiriakou were government intelligence officers and violated federal laws regarding the disclosure of classified information. For Kirakou, the problem was not that he blew the whistle--the problem was how. He could have blown the whistle in a manner that protected classified information, such as by reporting to the Congressional oversight committee, which is what Drake tried to do. Drake was shielded from prosecution because he attempted to follow proper procedure all the way to the extremes and only breached disclosure rules when he was rebuffed. Kirakou didn't even try, which is why he ended up serving time. Brown may have committed a number of hacking-related crimes while a member of Anonymous; his criminal charges related to that and not to his reporting. (Being a journalist only shields you for journalism-related activities. It's not a magic shield to protect you from any crime you commit.) Wilson was never charged with a violation of the Espionage Act, so I'm not sure why he's on your list....
Did you follow the Snowden case? In early interviews he talked about working for the CIA and in order to coerce a senior official, they got him drunk and then had the cops arrest him for DUI. Then told him if he didn't comply, the DUI charges would end his career. Can you put 2 and 2 together here?
He was accused of two things. One was removing the condom during sex and that is not seen as rape but a lesser charge but the other one, having sex with a sleeping woman without a condom was rape. He is obviously not convicted yet so we don't know how it would hold up but in Sweden if someone is too drunk, sleeping or in a otherwise vulnerable position it is seen as rape. There is some more nuance to it but that is generally so.
Of course women makes up shit but it seems pretty far fetched that CIA would plan a couple of fan girls to have sex with him and then claim that he removed the condom.
Please don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how you feel about a divisive topic. Note that they include: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Edit: it looks like you've posted quite a few unsubstantive comments to HN in general, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991361. Please stop doing that. We're trying for something a bit better than internet default here.
Edit: I suppose I should also mention that there are no pinned comments in this thread, and the current top comment is one you would probably agree with. Top comments come and go. As for "get intervened", I don't think any moderators saw it before you posted this.
The whole "didn't flee rape charges" (or some form of that claim as the 'charges' thing hadn't happened at that time IIRC) situation is always odd to me.
Sweeden considers espionage a political crime and does not extradite people for political crimes. Sweeden seems like a great place to be if you're wanted for political crimes. Not a great situation in life, but a good place to be for that.
The usual theory in response to that is that the US was going to kidnap him from Sweeden or something (it seems to be the standard response I get). I find the idea that a kidnapping would be less likely in the UK or Ecuador fairly absurd. If the US (or any nation) really wanted him that bad, it seems like a first world country that doesn't extradite political crimes would be a RELATIVELY great place to be... and if things are as folks say about governments wanting to kidnap him, I think they could have done it long before the embassy events too.
I think Assange at some point (maybe the start, who knows) really has struggled with the "truth" in favor of grooming his own narrative. This is hardly unique to him, politicians do it all the time too, but it also makes his stated motives and explanations hard to belive. On their old Facebook page (not sure if they still had one) in the early days if you followed up and asked "hey want happened to what you said you were going to release today" they'd delete your post in short order, and any post about their past plans to release whatever it is they had promised ... IMO their willingness to control the information for their own purposes seemed to betray whatever people wanted Wikileaks to be. Not that they should just dump it without consideration but their actions did not seem to follow the ideals.
This article talks about "never about the law", and yet in the end he's charged with helping someone try to break into a computer. IMO that is a step beyond what a journalist should do. That's the law, it's a legitimate law IMO, and we'll see how the trial goes as for proving it and what if any punishment there is.
Might not extradite for political crimes, but they straight up let CIA kidnap people from their soil. If Assange was returned to Sweden, he'd be let out on 'house arrest' and he'd just dissapear into the dark one night.
As long as there will be Russian subs sailing under the nose of the Swedish authorities in Swedish teritorial waters then I’m pretty sure every Swedish government will play by the rules dictated by the US.
A country like Switzerland can afford to act a little bit more neutral because they are located in the middle of Europe, with no close enemy in sight, but when you share the same sea with the Russians things are different. Come to think of it even the Swiss had to renounce part of their famous banking secrecy when the American IRS came asking for questions.
That's not a particularly logical reason. If the CIA was that hell bent on extrajudiciously killing Assange, then he picked a terrible place for protection. The Ecuadorian government is rife with corruption and England is part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. The CIA would have had no problem getting to Assange if they really wanted to. He would have been safer in Sweden.
If you will notice, Assange is not being extradited to Sweden, he is being extradited to the USA.
Or in other words, this fear of being extradited to the US was completely justified, and everyone who thought otherwise was wrong, including you.
You are wrong. He is being sent to the US. That proves you wrong, and makes everything you have to say about Sweden incorrect, because he is being sent to the US.
Assange's argument not to be extradited to Sweden was that he could then be extradited to the US from there. This was patently absurd given the much closer cooperation between the UK and the US, and this has been demonstrated because the US is extraditing him directly from the UK.
That the US would try to extradite him was never really in doubt. The conspiracy theory was that the Swedish charges were trumped up because it would be easier to extradite him from Sweden.
The system is rigged but our society lacks the idealism necessary to make a change. We have no shared values. The only thing we agree about is who has power... So whoever that is can decide what values should be upheld; unfortunately those people are usually greedy psychopaths whose entire value systems revolve around personal aggrandisement and enrichment.
Our system empowers psychopaths because those people are attracted by power more than any other kind of person. I think the best solution is to abolish democracy and to replace it by a random number generator which elects government officials by random (kind of like jury duty). Randomn selection is the best way to prevent a system from being gamed.
The biggest issue here imo is he encouraged his sources to get more information for him in way that could be considered to have a alleviated him of the protections a journalist would normally receive. I used to be a fan of Assange but hes lost his way entirely. That being said the US government ought not to be prosecuting actual whistleblowers.
He starts by asserting that things which are incompatible with his personal opinions are factual errors or some artifact of a corporate media conspiracy.
He doesn’t say “wake up sheeple” but this is unlikely to result in a good discussion and he has no new information or analysis to contribute.
He's compiling a list of existing information that, as per his assertion, every media outlet seems to ignore which therefore serves to misinform the readership.
The author isn't attempting to add anything new, he's merely trying to reincorporate the facts back into a narrative that has strayed from the appropriate journalistic path.
Here's an exercise: try to find an actual fact in that blog post and then look to see whether it was in fact not covered in the stories about Assange. For example, “he wasn't fleeing rape charges” is true only to the extent that journalists said “charges” without explaining that it was an arrest warrant which could lead to those charges — that was heavily covered at the time and for the subsequent years in which it ended up, among other things, being litigated to the U.K. Supreme Court[1], all of which got a ton of publicity for years.
Again, I'm not saying anything about the actual merits of the case or the conduct of any of the parties involved, only that I don't think a good discussion will come out of an inflamatory blog post by someone who lacks particular legal expertise, knowledge about the case, and seems to be using it as grist for preexisting grievances about “corporate media”.
The fact that he illustrated is: how the media keeps ignoring salient points about the case. They consistently get it wrong. That consistency is not a mistake, it's by design.
I feel like that phrase gets bounded about all the time when people don't see their own narrative parroted back to them. Same with the following part of the sentence.
How so? That no rape charge against Assange does or did exist is a matter of fact, not opinion... As is the fact that the extradition warrant (for questioning over an alleged sexual assault) was issued by the Swedish prosecutor and not the judiciary.
I think it’s fair to say that the quoted wording in the Guardian is clearly factually incorrect on those points at least.
It is unfortunate, the world has to be seen in black and white terms. The hit piece on The Guardian misses the mark here, yet the more you know about The Guardian the more you realise what the paper 'guards' and for whom.
There is no guarding of the truth in the abstract sense plus there is definite lying by omission. The paper is a left-wing gatekeeper, giving out enough of the truth to keep people doing things like going to anti-Trump rallies but not thinking that actual change is possible.
In this context of gatekeeping you can expect the paper to be 'clickbaiting' the readers with lots of Assange stuff. Supporting Assange and wanting him to get fairly treated is popular with the readers, none of whom would dare advance a controversial truth themselves.
When push comes to shove the Guardian are on the warmonger side, which is unfortunate if you have been a life long reader of the paper. They get orders from on high about what they can and cannot say, if there is a D-notice they will oblige rather than go front page.
It is not that hard to research examples of this, for a while 'off-guardian' did a good job of doing so. But even then they did not get into the D-notice stuff, where, incredible as it seems for a democracy, you can have facts and stories vanish into thin air on the government's say so. This is also the case in the U.S. where Special Administrative Measures can be used to make a story completely disappear. By the time this happens to a story you really do have a 'revolutionary truth' out of place with the times and deeply taboo. For this reason no examples can be cited, but this is something to bear in mind next time there is something weird like the Scripal incident.
My point being that although this is not a helpful article, The Guardian are not whiter than white, they fulfil a very important role in public diplomacy.
> When Assange’s popular recognition fell, and Ecuador’s political incentives changed, the asylum was rescinded.
An important side note: this is the why the state always attacks the personality and popularity of activists, and why it's important to defend personalities and people.
For example, let me say that, having met Cody Wilson several times and spending several hours with him on a couple of occasions (and moderating a panel on which he sat), I found him to be an absolute standup guy. He seems like a genuine patriot to me and a person of big heart and bravery.
It's absolutely routine for basically anyone accused of sexual assault to find a whole bunch of men reporting that they seemed to be a standup guy. That doesn't mean they remain a standup guy when left alone around women.
He met the girl via a website that claimed to be age-verified. Turns out she lied about her age, and the site didn't actually (properly) verify her. He still should've verified her age himself, but it kinda changes the narrative.
Consensual sex with a minor isn't by definition. I mean, even the _charges_ say 'sexual assault', so this is not something the GP is inventing out of thin air.
The fact that different countries have different cutoff ages for statutory rape (the girl was 16, whereas some countries set the limit to be as low as 15, in particular most of Europe is 16 or below) makes this much less of a clear cut than your comment implies.
It really isn't a lie. The state of Texas considers a 30 year old man fucking around with a "girl younger than 17 years" to be sexual assault. He has been charged with 4 counts of sexual assault.
Why can't they just be a standup guy that has issues dealing with women in specific circumstances? Why are they defined by that specific case and not their holistic behavior?
Snowden ran after charges were filed against him. He admits to his actions. If he had stayed, he could have beaten the charges in court, because it is a defense to prosecution for a lesser crime to be committed (improper process of whistleblowing) to prevent a worse crime (various). But while Snowden is not innocent of the crime, he's simply got a valid defense to negate a guilty finding.
Rushdie fled a fatwa issued by a religious cleric, not the government, following the publication of The Satanic Verses. He was not charged with a crime by the government, but numerous individuals attempted to assassinate him for what they viewed as blasphemy of their religion.
The Dalai Lama, the then-legitimate ruler of Nepal, fled the Chinese occupiers of his country and set up a government-in-exile. He has never been charged with a crime by China.
Timothy Leary actually did commit a number of drug-related crimes including distribution, and ran because he was quite guilty. He also got caught a number of times and saw the inside of a number of jails and prisons...
Police have said that Wilson flew to Taipei before they were able to interview him about the allegations. He never took his scheduled flight back to the United States.
My grandfather fled a certain regime decades ago in order to avoid prosecution. His horrible crime was being born in the wrong race. Sadly my great-grandfather did not have the same luck, and his whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Not fleeing did not really help in proving his innocence. Remember, being innocent is in eye of the beholder.
Anyway, he might be accused of sexual assault but he actually did nothing immoral. He just visited a legal site and had consensual sex with someone who claimed to be an adult at the time, and is in fact an adult now.
Would you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately. Continuing like this will not only get this account banned, but your main account as well.
The guy ran and seeked asylum because he feared he will 'be made an example of' by USA. He sat in that tiny room for 6 years while US actors were working hard to smear him as a rapist and Russian puppet, while insinuating that everyone who claims USA is targeting Assange, or that there are indictments just waiting for his arrest is a conspiracy theorist.
The moment he was removed from the embassy protection (again, as result of extreme pressure by USA onto Ecuador), the indictment for a death-sentence charge becomes public, and his personal belongings are illegally given by Ecuador to USA.
No, but knowingly releasing documents that were partially or entirely forged by the Russian intelligence agencies does make one a Russian puppet.
Which is exactly what Wikileaks did, openly, at Assange's direction...despite the misgivings of the rest of the staff that the releases were timed for political effect on the US campaign on not out of some desire for the truth.
This is the first I've heard that the DNC/Podesta emails were forged, do you have a source for that?
And personally, assuming the emails are legit, I would rather they release that info before the election when it actually matters instead of afterwards. If a candidate is engaging in collusion/corruption to rig the primary against a competitor (Sanders) and receiving debate questions prior to a debate that's something I'd want voters to know about.
This is in regards to emails leaked from a journalist David Satter by Fancy Bear, the article doesn't say those were published by Wikileaks and I couldn't confirm elsewhere that they were. The article does mention:
>The Clinton campaign warned about the files pilfered from Podesta and published on Wikileaks, though it never offered any proof.
While the Podesta emails are believed by US intelligence to have been hacked by Fancy Bear as well, the wikipedia page on the Podesta hack says this:
>Cybersecurity experts interviewed by PolitiFact believe the majority of emails are probably unaltered, while stating it is possible that the hackers inserted at least some doctored or fabricated emails. The article then attests that the Clinton campaign, however, has yet to produce any evidence that any specific emails in the latest leak were fraudulent.[4] A subsequent investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies also reported that the files obtained by WikiLeaks during the U.S. election contained no "evident forgeries".[5]
In regards to the DNC server leaks, there is no convincing evidence the Russians were involved and I do not trust the conclusions of an analysis done by a third-party cyber security company contracted by the DNC (Crowdstrike)
Technically, if you hack a mail server, you'll get access to DKIM private keys. I would only trust these mails DKIM signature if I personally received them prior to the breach.
Doing the Russians' bidding by enabling their interference in the US presidential election and openly stating his preference as to the result destroyed any possible credibility as a "journalist" and made him look very much like a Russian puppet.
>Doing the Russians' bidding by enabling their interference in the US presidential election
How specifically did he do this? Publishing 'Collateral Murder' embarrassed a lot of people in Washington and probably affected elections afterwards, yet I never heard anyone make these accusations back then. And this hysteria about Russia over 40k worth of Facebook ads and some twitter bots is outrageous, Facebook/Twitters policy of censoring conservatives likely has a much more significant effect on elections than those ads and bots ever could.
>openly stating his preference as to the result destroyed any possible credibility as a "journalist" and made him look very much like a Russian puppet.
The entirety of the corporate media openly stated their preference during the election as well, to put it lightly.
Releasing emails from the DNC is one thing, but releasing them with timing especially to have maximum political impact against one candidate is another thing entirely.
Timing the release of relevant information for maximum impact is exactly what any self-respecting media organisation should do.
Your statement only makes sense if Wikileaks had similar information regarding the Trump (edit: or other conservative) campaign and refused to release it.
You conveniently ignore the "political impact against one candidate" bit.
So your statement only makes sense if you assume that all journalists are trying to influence politics to the benefit of their preferred candidate in their reporting.
My point is, unless he also had info on Trump/Republicans, he couldn’t have impacted their campaign. So impact of just one candidate/party was inevitable. Then, optimise for max impact.
Wouldn't it have been dishonest to let people vote before they knew the DNC unfairly treated candidates that polled better against Trump like Sanders despite claiming to be neutral when taking people's money?
Releasing after the fact would have been dishonest and less helpful to either party. It also would have been dishonest to people who donated.
Yes, the DNC chairman resigned and was immediately given the golden parachute of being hired by the Clinton campaign, but the DNC could have made things right instead of that joke resignation. It's not Wikileak's fault the DNC is corrupt and stayed corrupt instead of doing the right thing, and they did the right thing by giving them a chance.
Is there verifiable intelligence to support this? I recall the Roger Stone story which didn't look like it had much depth to me. And I know Assange had a show on RT for a while. But has any evidence surfaced of an actual conspiracy involving Wikileaks and the Russians?
I did notice a big uptick in what I thought was right wing, pro-Trump statements on their twitter feed, and especially on Assange's twitter feed, shortly after Trump was elected. However, I assumed that was part of some strategy to win favour with Trump (perhaps hoping that Wikileaks would become popular with the new administration since Trump had been so pro-Wikileaks during his campaign speeches).
His show on RT was actually really good. It's worth your while to give the interviews he conducted a look. People often attack him for his show being aired on RT, but I get the impression most of them haven't watched it.
In his interview with Nasrallah, he presses Nasrallah about Hezbollah's support for the Syrian government. It's clear that Assange is critical of Hezbollah's involvement in Syria, which undermines the idea that Assange is a Russian puppet. He also asks Nasrallah about whether God is a tyrant, which elicits an interesting response.
Interesting observation. I didn't know Assange signed his tweets with a PGP key. What I find odd though is that he hadn't got a message out of the embassy through supporters such as Pamela Anderson that his twitter feed was compromised.
The Russian puppet claims only started after Hillary lost to Trump, and they had no recourse but to push forward with the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, which was originally prepared to punish Trump after he loses.
Since he won, the holes in narrative were not covered up well, and it has fallen/is falling apart.
Now you have developed your own conspiracy to prove how wrong other people’s conspiracy was. Do you see the irony?
Why did Assange defend Putin after the Panama Papers? I thought he loved transparency. When did Assange start his RT show, funded by the Russian state?
I think people are only claiming they potentially do. It is unlikely the DOJ would seek the death penalty for the particular violations, especially since he would not be extradited if they did. What happens after he sets foot on US soil though is unclear (as in, I don't know what the law says about adding charges after the extradition).
It doesn't matter what people claim that the charges may "potentially" carry the death penalty because that would violate reality. The death penalty would exceed the maximum authorized statutory punishment for the charges laid against Assange.
Moreover, while it would not violate both international law, various treaties, and the US Constitution protections on due process to charge Assange with crimes that could theoretically carry the death penalty after his extradition, any attempt to actually impose such a penalty were he found guilty of any such crime would violate all of the above, ensuring that he could not be executed for his crimes in America. At worst, he could face life in a maximum security facility.
I am not convinced by any of this. His lawyers have argued repeatedly that he should not be extradited because he would face the death penalty, torture or mistreatment. Ecuador sought written assurances from the UK that he would not be extradited to any country where he would face the death penalty, including the US. The UK has stated it will not extradite him to any country where he faces the death penalty. But this is based on what he has currently been charged with, not what he may be charged with under the espionage act (core political charges).
Whilst I am sure you are correct that the specific charges against him in the superceding indictment do not carry the death penalty, other charges could.
I'm ignorant enough to not see why you believe it would be a violation of international law, treaties and the US Consitution to execute him. The US executes people and subjects them to solitary confinement and even punitive measures that lead to death of inmates all the time (take the recent example of someone who the jailers denied water for seven days until he died).
You don't have to look further than the treatment of then Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning to see that Assange has a very real basis for believing that he would not have his rights respected (which in his case, as far as I can see, could very well include application of the death penalty).
Just to clarify what I originally replied. I'm saying that the very willingness of the US to charge Assange under the espionage act shows their willingness to apply a law that could potentially be used to seek capital punishment. That is what people are complaining about, not that he has actually at this time been charged with a specific violation that would result in the death penalty.
Even Nostradamus could correctly predict the fallout from his own actions. Saying "the US will come after me" isn't a revelation when you do things the US government doesn't like. The question is whether they are justified in doing so.
If the USA does in fact seek to make an example of him, it's important to answer whether Assange should stand trial for the crimes the USA alleges he has committed.
I think the answer to that question is yes. Assange should stand trial and, more importantly, the verdict rendered should be fair and just.
The verdict will have implications for journalism and the First Amendment, and insofar as Assange has acted under the auspices of free speech and journalistic integrity, I believe he should be found not guilty.
Insofar as he has acted as an enemy of the United States and outside the jurisdictional domain of journalism, such a verdict may be more difficult to justify.
I don't see any relation to the Unz report nor do I understand why you're even mentioning it. The page you link to doesn't mention Johnathan Cook at all.
Please provide a citation that backs up your allegation.
It's the same article, published on the UNZ review. The UNZ review also helpfully gives you a page of all articles a given author has published on their page. http://www.unz.com/author/jonathan-cook/
It seems conclusive that Jonathan Cook is a regular writer for the UNZ review.
I don't know anything about Jonathan Cook but calling somebody a regular writer somewhere when they actually just write articles for syndication feels disingenuous.
UNZ is fringe. It definitely posts some anti-semitic stuff, some truther stuff, some straight up foreign propaganda... That said, I've always seen it as a sort of free speech public service, a place where you can go and dip into some wrong stuff. It's an intellectually interesting place even if you disagree with most of the articles there.
You can also read Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul there. There is something to be said for writers allowing a place like that to exist. By allowing their work to be published there, they are making a statement against censorship. UNZ feels more philosophical and principled than some sort of hate speech depot. This isn't Stormfront.
Here is a quote from the mission statement:
"This is not to say that I personally agree with all or even most of what these writers believe or claim. However, sometimes the most valuable insights are obtained by reading opinions sharply divergent from one’s own. Facing a sharp intellectual or ideological challenge forces us to more effectively frame our arguments and buttress the weaknesses in our logic and evidence that had previously remained unnoticed. Taking the measure of an effective critic is always more valuable than listening to a mindless echo. And I would always prefer reading something disturbing than something dull."
> but calling somebody a regular writer somewhere when they actually just write articles for syndication feels disingenuous.
The author gets to choose where their writing get syndicated to. It’s a conscious decision, for whatever reason they make it: money, principle, or just good friends with the owner. So I don’t think it’s disingenuous to point it that they have chosen to write regularly for UNZ.
I haven’t judged UNZ either way, I’m just providing a citation for the claim that Jonathan Cook writes fro UNZ. Make of that information what you want.
> The author gets to choose where their writing get syndicated to.
Is it? I don't know how writing syndication works, but I had the understanding that you worked with a syndication company, and they just make the content available for anyone willing to pay the syndication fees for access to the content.
Anyone who questions the official narrative with evidence and logic is deemed an alt-right conspiracy theorist now. I've seen people try it with Chomsky.
I am far away from what is called "alt-right" (brown Mexican, pro-socialism and critical to the current US government) and still feel that what this article is describing is quite right.
Julian Assange's case has been a witch hunt, from the "outside" it is so easy to see, how the US institutions move the strings to get a person. It almost happened with Gary Mckinnon, it happened with some hackers in Australia, it was about to (and still might) happen to Edward Snowden.
Like it or not, US influence in the world right now looks very similar to how the Roman empire was, and as it is expected, it will do everything possible to keep it that way.
Since you're replying to the top comment, are you saying COINTELPRO is creating this story in favor of journalism and journalistic rights, wanting to save Assange? That seems wildly counter to COINTELPRO's history.
The whole thing looks like a mess where it looks like every party did something wrong.
Let's not forget that Wikileaks violated certain journalistic standards for divulging confidential information. It's a "two wrongs do not make a right" situation.
Yes, the rape charges are an awfully convenient distraction. But they exist, and should be investigated.
The ones that say if you get a pile of cables containing war crimes and private medical records of no public concern [1], you publish the former and not the latter.
A fuller background: Jonathan Cook was a journalist for the Guardian newspaper.
I have read his articles for many years now. Most of them (mainly on Palestine) are interesting and (so far as I can tell) accurate. I would say that he is a respectable journalist, and probably a darn sight better than most of those in the mainstream media today. Doesn't mean I always agree with him, or his (usually rather left-wing) political views.
There was a time when journalists like Cook could make a living writing for a mainstream newspaper, but these days there is no place for his reporting on e.g. Israel in such places as the Guardian.
Yes, and he appears to harbor a grudge against the Guardian, which you can see by the number of inflammatory articles tagged Guardian on his blog.
While it's quite possible that among all news sources, Jonathan Cook seems to have worked for the one horrific news source in the world, and is doing us a service by constantly exposing their acts, Occam's razor would suggest otherwise.
I've read a sampling of his articles, and he seems to be either an extremist, or someone who wishes to profit by appearing to be one. His posts seem mostly to be lacking a bit in rational discourse (with gems like "As far I can tell, none of the facts in the Guardian’s story is untrue. But that does not stop it from being a blatant lie"), and without much diversity in subject.
"While it's quite possible that among all news sources, Jonathan Cook seems to have worked for the one horrific news source in the world, and is doing us a service by constantly exposing their acts, Occam's razor would suggest otherwise."
That is rather unfair. He's not likely to write about his experiences at e.g. the Mail, because (so far as I know) he never worked there.
>Jonathan Cook is a writer for the alt-right conspiracy rag
This is the new attack vector of the left: if you associate with, speak to, write about or interview anyone who has ever said anything "bad", you are "bad", forever, and that's it. The definition of ad homimen.
Newsflash for you: the old media models are dead. People publish things in all kinds of fora. This doesn't make you a stereotype or representation of the average bias of said publication. Do you actually rely on a site like MediaBiasFactCheck to determine the value of the content you read, rather than your own judgement?
In any case, an actual response to the idea of an ad hominem attack:
Reputation matters, so does context, and words do not stand alone. When taking in speech, it is important to understand the motives of the speaker, to be aware of their level of credibility. This isn't anything new or special, I learned it in high school history. People are biased, and you need to be aware of those biases when evaluating their speech.
Some examples: 1) If someone tells you, "Come in, I'd like to have you for dinner", there's a difference if that person is your father-in-law or Jeffrey Dahmer. 2) If someone tells you that some person X should be freed from charges, there's a difference if it's coming from that person's lawyer, or from the victim of the alleged crimes. 3) If you're about to cross a bridge, and one person says it's not safe to cross, and a second says it is, it makes a difference which one of the two is a structural engineer.
In the case of this particular article, I began to read it and came across several statements that were attempting to gloss over or ignore reported facts. At this point, I wanted to know if it was the result of sloppy reporting (maybe this was some personal rant), or perhaps part of a structured agenda, which is when I started to research the author. I found out that the author is a regular columnist for a company run by a known funder of racist hate groups that itself funds racist and hate speech, with poor journalistic practices.
I personally believe that we have a choice in how we earn a living (google death star contractors), but even if you don't, I think it's only fair to the reader to be aware of the writer's biases.
Concepts like reputation, trust, and credibility are as old as time, a concept which permeates all cultures... Just think of the idea of a court which cannot consider the reputation or credibility of different parties.
How does your perspective of left vs right work on this?
To second the Tomte's reply: The grandparent comment attempting to discredit Assange's accuser and the charges is fabricated.
There were two women who both filed similar complaints with the police, and neither of them has changed their allegations.
You can read the facts of the charges yourself, and the established timelines. Whatever you feel about the charges, the timeline of events is well-established and credible. Whether or not he is guilty of rape is for the courts to decide.
I'd generally prefer discussion on Hacker News was kept civil. If the parent had a reputable source for their assertion, I'd be interesting to see it. A lack of a source is also interesting.
Either way, asking for a source is better than just saying 'I don't believe you'.
I don't claim my assertion is hard to find, it's been all over every newspaper all over the world.
Whereas the originally offered assertion is one that's predicated on a big cover-up (that's the whole point of the submitted blog post). So the interested reader cannot actually find it himself, he needs the gracious support by the asserter.
The US gov got him where they wanted him, but let's hope Assange breaks this cycle of the U.S. gov arresting and accusing whistleblowers of espionage by not taking any plea deal or pleading guilty. He needs to take this all the way to the Supreme Court.
Calling him a whistleblower may have fit early on in his 'career', but by the end he was a huckster and an agent, knowing or unknowing, in state level espionage.
I absolutely think the case should go to the Supreme Court, if only to clarify the culpability journalists and news agencies have when they publish illegally obtained information.
part of the snowden leaks was a document where the gov recognized JA as an increasing threat, and laid out plans to character assasinate him and other psyops things, and most of the bullshit being spewed about him is easily identifiable as feddback loops on that operation which continues today
Apparently at first he assumed Assange was just a good actor, but after visiting him it had become clear to him and the medical experts with him that this is a case of treatment amounting to psychological torture, the likes of which (psychological, not physical) he has not seen in 20 years.
He's been giving numerous interviews about the matter and says that extradition to the US should be ruled out at all costs and that he has very real fears for Assange's health and for the probable violation of his human rights.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/julian-assange-showing-sy...