A lot of people don't realize wikileaks had tons of dumps on Russia and conservative US politicians and refuse to accept the information in the progressive leaks due to supposed Russian or conservative involvement.
Also as far as I know people don't realize anything wikileaks ever released has been refuted or proven false. There are google DKIM keys on all the legally and morally incriminating emails.
Just to repeat myself one more time here for those not aware of this since this is the top comment.
Wikileaks has almost definitely influenced the result of Kenyan election in 2007 by releasing the Kroll report about vast corruption.
Assange even got an Amnesty International award for leaking information then. He was a hero back then but suddenly when the shoe is on the other foot, he's a villain.
He became the villain when he became highly selective with the material he releases, which turned him from being a provider for whistle-blowers to a propagandist.
Nonetheless, he's still a journalist even when he does that. Media and free speech can be biased.
You might not want to follow and give credence to such outlets, but they still have freedom of speech, else the credibility of everybody is questioned.
Most people risked their jobs or their lives and freedom to secretly transport stolen docs to Wikileaks. I won’t expect a review complaining about the lack of release.
Whether the material released is selective or the material feed to WL is selective the result is Wikileaks release clearly favored one side.
Assange is also known to have a proclivity for Russia
I can. But... this isn’t happening in a vacuum and there is context to this situation.
While it seems to benefit the public, WL also is aimed at taking particular groups down. The groups being shielded are not “good”. Ultimately “public benefit” is questionable. You don’t know my political beliefs and I made no reference to them...
Ok you are right that it seems that eventually “evil”(going further than just “not good”) guys benefited from the leak. But if we prosecute people like Assange what message does it send to potential whistleblowers? You cannot pick and choose what type of information you want to be leaked.
Wikileaks aims for the best possible exposure of a leak. This influences in what form the information is published and over what timeframe. They dont just dump the entire leak and hope some journalist can be bothered to read it before the next big headline takes the focus away again.
This takes a lot of work. Making sure your sources are protected takes a lot of work and sadly, there is only so much attention people spend on leaks.
If I only paid attention to the mainstream news I would not understand Assage. But I remember when Wikileaks was announced for the first time on slashdot and I read their mission statement.
Every time a big leak happens, the news cooks up a new narrative about who Wikileaks is and what their goals and motivations are. And every time it's just something the editor wants to be true. Its a better story for him to be the hero or the villain. But if you frame the actions of what wikileaks said they were going to do (publish verifiable leaks much more indiscriminately than the press), they've been pretty consistent.
>A lot of people don't realize wikileaks had tons of dumps on Russia and conservative US politicians and refuse to accept the information in the progressive leaks due to supposed Russian or conservative involvement.
Why have zero of these dumps been released with an accompanying note calling out Wikileaks?
How do you know what people leak to WL? do you work for WL?
A russian newspaper was given access to the Russia dump in 2010 and there's no evidence they have conservative info, unless you're able to post a source
Back in the day he was a champion on the progressive side for a while with all the 2nd fake Iraq war stuff and dumping all of Sarah Palin's emails among other things.
I might be partially wrong on the Russia claim. There is some Russia stuff but it looks like they did not publish the huge Russia dump they claimed to have in 2010 but supposedly it was released to a Russian newspaper.
One also has to consider that with regards to his objectionable decisions around 2016 - he had been innocently imprisoned for several years already back then. This takes a mental toll on somebody and will impair clearheadedness.
He ran away from an extradition whose ultimate purpose was to determine if he was guilty or not.
Even if he was innocent of the crime which he personally chose to avoid defending himself against in court — and hiding in an embassy until the statute of limitations expires makes me think otherwise — the fact that he definitely skipped bail and the fact that he’s living freely in an embassy not a prison both independently means he’s neither “innocently” nor “imprisoned”.
Finding mentally vulnerable people and putting them in harm's way to stiffle a perceived opponent is standard operating procedure for the CIA.
If Sweden is serious about investigating sex crimes against the vulnerable they need to dig in all directions to try to find the networks of foreign spies tasked with projects like putting vulnerble women into groups the Americans don't like and making sure something happens.
But they will overlook crimes to protect those allies and follow their playbook to help those allies. So anyone against the Americans would be a fool to deal with the Swedish system if they were entraped only to end up extradited to hell.
The latest news doesn't make Assange any worse. It makes it more transparent how sick and worthless the supposed free world is. Just another bunch of kangaroo courts and a thin veneer over secret police working illegally but with impunity to harm the rights of whoever necessary for their "more important" state secrets, aka system of corruption.
IMO same semantics arguments as the Soviets made sure they could make with dissidents, insane asylums etc.
All the evidence points to Assange being the victim of state sponsored organized crime that won't be investigated and he would be an idiot to "defend himself", etc, when it is clear they will move to military tribunals or murder him in confinement if that fits their problems.
If it was an “obvious fabrication” he ought to have been able to demonstrate that in court. Either the UK one or the Swedish one he ran away from.
Quote:
“””as a matter of fact, and looking at all the circumstances in the round, this person (Mr Assange) passes the threshold of being an accused person and is wanted for prosecution”””
He would never get to set foot in Sweden. Remember he offered to conduct the interview over the phone, and the Swedes said no. Why would they do that? Only thing that makes sense to me is if they wanted to get him to Sweden physically, so he could be sent to the US.
Because that’s how their laws work (I think? Only 70% sure) and it’s unreasonable for an accused person to ask for random special treatment and expect to get it.
He allegedly broke pretty specific Swedish sex law which probably doesn't have an equivalent in the UK..
In normal extradition treaties, being in the UK was safe from being in anyone's custody which is the ideal for no possibility of the US starting an extradition.
No one can know the specifics of the US' soft power and assets except the US, and even then only in some abstract collective sense.
> He allegedly broke pretty specific Swedish sex law which probably doesn't have an equivalent in the UK..
It does. IIRC this was specifically referenced by one of the judges. Even if not explicitly mentioned, by my reading the accusations included the following offences from the 2003 Sexual Offences Act:
* Rape
* Assault by penetration
* Sexual assault
With at least one reference to section 75/2/d “Evidential presumptions about consent”
Now I’m not a lawyer, but actual lawyers did in fact argue this case and I’m going with what they said.
Unless you think Assange is an international legal expert I don't really get your point.. His behavior seemed rational for a man who kicked a bee hive unless you don't believe in bees.
My point is that your claim was false. There is nothing obscure about the law, the (alleged) acts were also offences in the UK.
Further to your new points, he had legal representation from human multiple rights specialists including from a lawyer with the title of Queen’s Council.
Skipping bail also cost his supporters £93,500. He was demonstrably not short of favours.
No, I don’t see his behaviour as “rational”. Rather I see it as arrogant, a person who thinks he knows more than he does, the kind of person who ends up the subject of a notalwaysright.com post.
(Unlike Manning and Snowden, about whom I am rather positive.)
The government filed a motion to seal a criminal complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia. [1] Such a motion, according to Local Rule 49B in this district [2] lays forth that such a motion shall include
(1) A statement as to why sealing is necessary, and why another procedure will not suffice;
(2) References to governing case law; and
(3) A statement as to the period of time the government seeks to have the matter maintained
under seal and as to how the matter is to be handled upon unsealing.
The slip-up happened in the third condition: the period of time the government seeks to have the matter maintained under seal. In the motion, paragraph 5, they argue it "would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint", which implies that, at the least, the government has prepared an indictment against Julian Assange.
Could they have filed this motion without referencing Assange? Possibly - if another suspect is sought in connection. If they could have referenced another sealed criminal complaint? That I don't know, frankly.
edit: The motion was filed on 22nd of August this year.
edit 2: Could also be that they have made a copy-paste error. At that point you possibly cannot tell IMO if that is the case. There is the prosecution that says this was made in error.
If it was a copy-paste error from another filing, that means that there is another filing (sealed, as no previous public filing has) which relates to charges against Assange.
Either way, the same basic information is revealed by the error; the only way a copy-paste error changes the basic import is if it's from a dummy document, but then you have to believe the Justice Department uses “Julian Assange” as the name of the generic defendant in dummy documents.
if the NSA position is "you dont have to hide anything if you are innocent" why the DoS are pursuing the wistleblower who expose goverment secrets? wait, I think it works only one way.
Something to this effect is accurate. Assange aired war crimes commited by my country to the world that were purposefully and fraudulently classified. Rather than own up to the crimes commited, the politicans at the time chose to shoot the messenger and created an international incident.
I don't think the NSA has actually ever made that argument. There is, after all, a lot of law governing privacy. And the NSA's capabilities and required procedures are also specified in minute detail.
Even though these rules are far from adequate, their mere existence already shows a shared assumption that privacy is a legitimate interest. Arguing against the very idea of privacy would mean trying to prove far more than they could ever want, and doing so against essentially everyone else.
Obviously we don’t know all the facts here, but since this is linked to the Mueller investigation, we can make an educated guess that this is not to do with anything that occurred before Assange entered Ecuador.
Whilst we know a fair bit about his actions before (for which he was never charged), afterwards gets significantly more obscure but certainly he’s been hanging out with some dodgy characters (including the one mentioned in the article) and appears to have been a sitting accomplice in a plot to destabilise the US.
So, whilst this disclosure is a huge cock-up, there’s no reason to believe any of this has free press or free speech implications.
> hanging out with some dodgy characters (including the one mentioned in the article)
> (from the article) The conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1
A publisher talks with their source and get indicted as accomplice in a plot to destabilise the US. This very much a free press issue and is not the first time nor the last time it will happen.
Watergate happened because Woodward and Bernstein was hanging out with the dodgy character Deep Throat. Daniel Ellsberg discussed the release of stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization X. Indictments there would had very real free press or free speech implications, and thankfully we remember history as not destroying the free press those times.
The motion itself [1] has zero reference to the Mueller investigation. It is in fact about Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2242b, which is states that
"Whoever [...] knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 10 years or for life."
The defendant in this case is not Assange, but obviously someone who has some sort of connection with Assange in this matter, as stated in paragraph 5 of the motion. Could it be that it is something just the get him and then slap some additional charges onto him? Sure. But this motion does not tell us that.
> Except that that plot's sole function was publishing documents in the public interest.
No, it (allegedly, at least) was not.
It's maybe arguable that it was, or if it wasn't that that's all Assange was aware of about it's mechanism of serving it's function, but to the extent that either of those is sufficient to raise a first amendment claim in the first place, it is still a disputable fact claim, which is what we have trials to weigh evidence to resolve.
And because a journalist wants to protect his source (aka. Seth Rich/his family) we have people calling him a traitor and worse. Sadly, this is one time I wish he'd put down his integrity and finally unveil who delivered him Hilary's emails.
A budding and vocal DNC personality with access to all the information which was gathered gets murdered at 4AM in the streets in a 'botched robbery', someone who championed Bernie, and was in a position to out how Clinton (and the rest) stole the election from him and you believe that to be a Russian narrative. Problem here is, if you ask 1000 people who Seth Rich is 999 of them would say, who? So to say that affected the election is simply bizarre.
This stupid conspiracy theory couldn’t be more debunked. Not only does it make no sense, it’s been investigated and denounced as nonsense from dozens of organizations and professionals.
But that’s the thing about conspiracy theories: they’re unfalsifiable. Any journalist or publication or investigator or law enforcement agency or intelligence agency that disagrees is now part of the conspiracy.
Let’s play it this way: what evidence would thoroughly convince you that Seth Rich died in a simple botched robbery instead of a sprawling international conspiracy?
I don't know about that. Assange alludes it was Seth Rich (calls him out by name) and says:
"Whistle blowers go through significant efforts to get us materials and often significant risks. There's a 27 year old who works for the DNC that was shot in the back, murdered, just two weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington..."
Right from his mouth, not Russian propaganda - unless you're suggesting Assange himself is a Russian propagandist. It's a very interesting interview regardless.
> Right from his mouth, not Russian propaganda - unless you're suggesting Assange himself is a Russian propagandist.
That's exactly what is claimed about Assange; that at least in regard to the 2016 election he has acted as a willing agent of a Russian propaganda operation.
In the "Collateral Murder" era, Assange seemed to be nothing more than a whistleblowing journalist with good intentions.
At this point though, it's very clear that Assange is a partisaned actor with a very clear and very biased agenda (the fall of America). Whether or not you agree with that agenda does not change the fact that it is anything but impartial and he can't be trusted to deliver fair or balanced reporting.
Having politicians say on media that you should get drone killed or get the death penalty for being a journalist do get personal, as does it when the candidate is implicated as interfering with a police investigation (US diplomats in Sweden was documented to have visited the prosecutor in the case of Sweden vs Assange and put diplomatic pressure on it). Plenty of commenters during the 2016 election concluded that Assange had a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton.
But it doesn't matter much as any leaked document always get studied and verified as much as it is possible. If the leak information is a source code for a state written virus, NSA documents, or banking information, in the end it is journalists at news papers that dig further, verify and follows up on the leaked information.
The facts are that Assange does not release information as soon as it has been vetted, and he does not release everything that could be released. This is not a man who wants to reveal the truth at large, this is a man that wants to reveal certain truths and not others with a very specific political agenda.
I fully supported Assange when he seemed an unbiased actor in pursuit of the truth and holding the US and others accountable for their actions. I was horrified at many of the early Wikileaks leaks, but glad that such things were being brought to light. But now it seems that Assange neither cares for the transgressions of any other country save the US, and neither does he seem to care for the truth for the sake of it.
“WikiLeaks published thousands of emails that year from Democrats during the presidential race that were stolen by Russian intelligence officers. The hackings were a major part of Moscow’s campaign of disruption.“
So, his indictment, if it’s happening, is related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election?
It also doesn’t sound like we have clarity if Assange is going to be indicted:
“It was not clear if prosecutors have filed charges against Mr. Assange.”
The message being sent seems to be that shining light on government things, a hero makes not.
I'm not going to compare Assange with Superman, but remember that Superman was Clark Kent and he would have also shown the world if someone did nasty things while publicly wearing a halo of virtue (government).
Does anyone happen to know why the NYT are reporting Russia as a source of the democrat emails as a fact without any caveats? Is there any actual evidence for it at all?
Supermax in a few years. USA does not forget or forgive these things. The later moves to help Russia distribute emails that moved a US election are just the icing on the cake.
Any release of damaging information about a party involved in an election can change the result. This has not been a problem before when Wikileaks almost definitely influenced the result of Kenyan election in 2007. Assange even got an Amnesty International award for leaking information then.
I suppose you're referring to pizza-gate. I'm also assuming you did zero digging into that narrative on your own. Keep eating that gov't cereal from the MSM.
I highly doubt it's something we expect. Plenty of media outlets passed information along similarly to Wikileaks. Any charges limited to actions we know publicly are going to be a disaster on so many levels, and everyone involved knows it. It would be monumentally stupid to pursue charges based only on what we know publicly. The NYT story makes this clear.
I suggest withholding judgement until we see the actual indictment. The other indictments that are (possibly) related that have been made public have provided a lot of detail and evidence.
Totally agree. Though open source intelligence suggests that Assange did launder information he received from Russian intelligence services.
He played a key role in the chain of them influencing the presidential election. To me this is not a case of clearly being a crime or clearly not being one. Room for further investigation and a trial.
I think it's pretty clear wikileaks has been used in a partisan manner in the 2016 presidential elections. I don't believe most serious journalists would have published most of Podesta's emails, if any. Especially considering the probable sources.
Because most of them are completely irrelevant and there is very little informational benefit to warrant this privacy violation. I mean... risotto recipes?
After wikileaks published the material journalists did cover some of it. And even so, they partly regret that, in light of what we know now.
It really isn't. You're just becoming more aware of it. There are good journalists, dishonest journalists and everything in between at the Times, which for all its issues is still probably the best newspaper in the world. I'd be a fool to take what they say as fact because they say it as much as they pretend it's so.
First of all Wikileaks is not a media outlet. But that's not even the point and that's another story.
The point is the "timed" the action to purposefully benefit one side and in effect benefit itself, while purporting all the time that it is a paragon of openness.
Whole problem with WikiLeaks has been it is telling the truths, half-truths or not even telling anything in some cases.
At the end of the day WikiLeaks has a agenda and it become a tool, albeit a political one.
> Unfortunately, Assange and in effect WikiLeaks took a political and partisan position, and gave the moral footing for the authorities to that end.
So free speech, due process, and publishing rights are only granted to the nonpartisan? Are you kidding me?
This is part of a coordinated and well-funded effort by the CIA to reduce sympathy for him and his cause, so that they can deny him human rights without a big stink as soon as he's in US or US-ally custody. It's absolutely shameful.
Not sure which set of free speech you subscribe to but I really doubt WikiLeaks publishing stealing information falls under the definition of US constitution of free speech. It is NOT.
I am not sure what publish rights you are talking about. You must be kidding yourself, if I may borrow your language, to talk about publishing rights and WikiLeaks in the same breath.
The thing is I do love the principle on which WikiLeaks was founded. Is what WikiLeaks doing legal ? Hell, no. But morally I know it is the right thing to do.
Again, as mentioned elsewhere, my problem with WikiLeaks is has taken a side. And telling the truth selectively and conveniently. And that does not deserve the moral approval, which I would have given earlier.
>I really doubt WikiLeaks publishing stealing information falls under the definition of US constitution of free speech.
It actually is legal to publish stolen information, and there is a lot of legal precedent in the US saying it is.
And that's a good thing as it is sometimes the only way to hold those in power accountable for their actions they'd otherwise hide. See e.g. Pentagon Papers, Iran-Contra, US torture program, Snowden, Panama papers, just to name a few, all of which were at least in part based on leaked (read: stolen) information.
Also the Trump administration is leaking like a sieve these days. Do you consider the journalists who publish such information criminals too?
This is legally different to stealing the information yourself and/or instructing somebody else on how to steal information. I'd wager they'll at least try to pin the latter on Assange if they ever get him in a court.
> Again, as mentioned elsewhere, my problem with WikiLeaks is has taken a side.
Being anti-Democratic Party is not inherently being pro-anyone-else. The Democratic Party was being shady as fuck and regardless of who you or they prefer to be or not be president, exposing their corruption was valuable and useful—irrespective of where that information came from or who it may have indirectly benefited. I do not think the results from that publication constitutes Wikileaks "taking a side".
People could make the argument that they could have assumed that publishing would have had a certain outcome or effect upon the election, but one cannot reasonably assert that they would have had to reach the exact same conclusion about the effects of publishing. It's a big stretch to ascribe motive or bias based on your assumption that you can't assert someone else must have made (especially without the benefit of hindsight).
Which "side" precisely do you think Wikileaks has taken, and what specific facts support such a conclusion?
It is very hypocritical of you to ask facts when whole your arguments is based on conjecture.
Again, I don't have a problem with releasing information. But timing the release with a coordinated effort to profit from it, it reeks of corruption from WikiLeaks.
Agreed, whereas previously they told the unconvenient truth, they grew into a political outlet asking their twitter followers to vote for specific presidency candidates
So far it has yet to end, which is quite surprising. Sad to see how far my country will stoop to attempt to abscond with a foriegner, he will not have a fair trial if extradited.
I'm Australian - it's sad for me to see how little our government will do to protect one of our own who has helped to expose the war crimes of our allies, and has himself still not been charged with any crime, notwithstanding clearly transparent character smear rape allegations that have been dropped anyway.
And when asked his position on the issue of an Australian citizen in effectively indefinite imprisonment, our pathetic excuse for a Prime Minister simply dodges the question by making lewd comments about the questioner.
Should Buzzfeed journalists be prosecuted for publishing the dossier about golden shower, at least parts of which have been proven to be false? As far as I know, there is nothing wrong with publishing information in partisan manner. Has anything Wikileaks published been proven to be doctored or edited in any way? I am under the impression not even DNC is disputing authenticity of the emails.
I agree but the parent commenter implication that an outlet could be prosecuted for printing the Steele dossier is a non sequitur for many reasons here.
Yeah whilst we don't know the indictments yet, I think it's safe to say that they might be related to the documents which he published from the Russian hacking.
The rumors that he knew that he was talking with the GRU and that the documents were stolen by the Russian government is one thing.. But the idea he had foresight that the Russian government was trying to get Trump elected is something that might come out.
Progressives, like myself who supported Wikileaks are curious at what Mueller has put together. If the worst is true, then Assange used Wikileaks as a tool to try to make sure Clinton did not become president. It's known that Clinton did not like Assange before the hacking leak, it's my guess that Assange published those documents in some effort to undermine her election chances. Part of me, think's that's OK. if it's OK for someone to come out with some crimes that someone might have committed and stand up and testify to that, then it's in the voting public's best interest to have all the facts..
Then again, there's the possibly non-zero chance he knew that this was coming from the GRU or at least the Russian government, which anyone in his org should have had experience in asking themselves the larger questions around this...
Is my comment really an attack or a name calling? Surely you meant the parent comment? They called me someone who is yearning for a witch burning but that simply isn't true.
I typed politely and nicely, while the parent was awful and divisive.
> but quite impossible when commenters stoop to lower levels like this.
Like what? Could you please explain? I really don't understand what I did. Surely you meant to reply to the person talking about burning people to death being something that liberals are acting like they want to happen? That is surely the comment you meant to delete and call out, not mine?
Have you read the other thread about Julian Assange on HN today with hundreds of replies? It's full of people calling him a traitor and/or an evil Russian spy that should go to prison for life. Many sensible comments defending Assange as a journalist got down voted all the way to the bottom.
And maybe he's done nothing wrong and is being punished by the elites for disclosing information damaging to them. War crimes by US military, never answered for, rigging of primaries for candidates chosen by the political establishment, instead of working class people who the party is supposed to represent (ha ha ha).
Prison for life to a journalist based on charges centered around releasing true/undisputed documents? That is pretty close to burning at the stake in 21st century standards imho.
They appear to be progressives. The most aggressive of the posts are from people who seem to be very strong Democrats/liberals who are blaming Assange for 2016 election result. The smaller part of progressives defending Assange seem to be Bernie supporters (so a minority in progressive movement).
I am definitely reading that vibe too. The blame anyone that doesn't support you was supposed to be a facet of GOP politics. Apparently it's ALL mob justice and your with me or against me from here on out. Sucks.
It's probably true the left is on average more passive, but to claim it's unlikely any progressive would spew vitrol or be violent?? Ever heard of antifa?
Check out Sargon of Akad's youtube channel, he does a good job of documenting and commenting on "progressives" especially when they are behaving hatefully or violently.
(Any reason for the down votes? You may not like Sargon, but he he addresses exactly what the OP is talking about a lot of the time.)
Any good Assange did blowing the whistle has been completely undermined by his collusion with Russia to help thwart democratic institutions and processes.
I classify Snowden as a patriotic whistleblower. I classify Assange as a Russian agent.
The case on Snowden isn't that clear, either. I do believe he did something good for the world overall. I'm not entirely convinced he hasn't been working for the Russians at some time before or after the original leaking.
he wholeheartedly received and used information from the Russian GRU in order to help Trump win. and he did this over the course of years.
"messenger"? more like russian asset.
I'm not American so I don't claim to understand the politics, but it seems to me that Russia is one of the few countries capable of resisting US pressure, which makes people like Assange and Snowden gravitate towards it. The alternative would be imprisonment or death for them
With the slight problem that there are no Human Rights in Russia and people like Snowden or even Assange then have to be seen as stooges of the Russian government/intelligence agencies.
Because, basically, there is no way they can say no if the Russian intelligence really wants them to do something.
I do believe Manning got a fair trial. She also got all the medical help she needed for her gender transition. She did violate the law, and quite severely. She also put American soldiers at risk. And she got a pardon. Overall, it didn't go that bad, did it?
So yes, I do believe the United States is a lot better regarding Human Rights. Even in Guantanamo bay the prisoners are kept in relatively Human conditions.
"Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, the Guardian has learned.
A tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuador’s London embassy in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to another country.
One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky."
One big issue with your conclusion - there is no context. What alternative destinations would you propose? Any US whistle blowers or leakers that manage to gain the ire of the US government itself need to seek refuge in an area that will not bend to US pressure. Given the remarkable scale of influence of the US today that leaves very few places, and even fewer that can provide a comfortable life. Among the top there would be Russia and China.
If the US wanted to punish Assange maybe the best way is to massively ignore him and get everyone else to do the same. He's an attention freak, so walking out of his self-imposed imprisonment to resounding silence would hit him where it hurts.
(Personally I think whistle blowers are an important part of applying transparency and checks to companies & governments, just some of the information merchants aren't the nicest of people.)
> Mr. Assange has lived for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and would have to be arrested and extradited if he were to face charges in federal court, altogether a multistep diplomatic and legal process.
> Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules
So, yes, simply "living" in the embassy. Nice dodge, NYT.
The USA are the bad guys here, and no amount of deliberate obfuscation by the CIA is going to be able to ultimately hide that. This whole thing is a national shame.
When he leaves he will be transferred to the US and tortured, just like Manning was. His trial will be a farce, just like Manning's (did you know POTUS—Obama at the time—declared Manning guilty prior to trial?). You, or I, or anyone would skip out on bail if appearing means you get given to torturers who will torture you without a trial. That's not his choice, it's the choice of the people out to physically harm him.
If he stays he will never receive a trial or be allowed to face his accusers.
Either way his human rights are violated. That's why it's arbitrary detention.
It's why his indictment has been kept secret; they want to physically grab him before they have to justify, legally, the charges against a journalist who published things in the public interest. If they weren't being shady about the whole thing, he could have been charged by now - but doing so would require them to be subject to legal scrutiny. They don't want that, because they don't have a leg to stand on. They won't tip their hand officially until he's already physically in their (or their allies') custody.
> When he leaves he will be transferred to the US and tortured
If that was the real concern and not merely the excuse, why bother with Sweden? The UK has an extradition treaty with the USA. Sweden’s extradition treaty with the USA “”“prohibits extradition on the basis of "a political offense" or "an offense connected with a political offense."”””
When the President of the United States is denying you the presumption of innocence and publicly declaring you guilty of a crime before a trial, it doesn't matter what branch of government they are in: you are not going to receive a fair trial.
