While that is true, it's not like crimes such as sexual assault are that uncommon amongst people governments don't want to silence.Abomination said:
[POLITICS] Julian Assange Arrested
- Thread starter Schadrach
- Start date
I think Saelune was pointing to how, even now, Trump and his supporters think Clinton should be in jail.Dreiko said:
Maybe his influence had an effect. She certainly did lose the popular vote, so you're probably right that she needed to be more targeted in her campaign.
But then, why is Assange being targeted now? Could it have something to do with the fact that much of the leads from the Mueller report was driven by Wikileaks? I'd say so.
And its especially galling when much of this info was know to Wikileaks before the election but they withheld info until after the election. So maybe it did have an impact.
There's a lot of non-mainstream 'alt-media' noise connecting an IMF loan with the Assange handover, leading to a lot of 'deep-state'-type speculation.
It doesn't appear at this point to have anything other than correlation, but I guess it's an interesting bit of information to file away in case any more substantial pieces come to light.
(and yes I clicked that link because I was tricked by 'ccn')
Well, yes it could.
It doesn't appear at this point to have anything other than correlation, but I guess it's an interesting bit of information to file away in case any more substantial pieces come to light.
(and yes I clicked that link because I was tricked by 'ccn')
I'd trust a rapist before I'd trust an American politician. At least the rapist needs direct physical contact to fuck people, while the politician has no such limits.Thaluikhain said:
Blustering aside, the amount of clout Assange's opponents have in this scenario is leagues beyond his. I can't help but allow conspiracy theories to be considered.
You could just admit your little 'contention' backfired. Instead you make excuses.Dreiko said:
Hillary is a victim of false accusations motivated by politics. If you meant what you said before, you wouldnt be defending Julian Assange. So either find a better excuse to defend him, or stop moving goal posts.
I'd trust a politician before I'd trust a rapist, but I also think we shouldn't make rapists like Trump and Kavanaugh into high powered politicians. Also Roy Moore needs to be in jail. Weiner and Franken on the other hand are now out of jobs cause of what they did. Should I point out the party lines?Abomination said:
You have fundamentally misunderstood the way sexual consent works.Dreiko said:
Again, guilt for a sexual offence does not come from the absence of consent itself, but from the perception of consent. In the past, this was taken extremely literally to the point a person could not be found guilty of a sexual offence if they believed their victim had consented, even if said belief was completely ridiculous to any normal person. Today, there is usually a standard of reasonability applied to that belief to close this loophole, but the belief is what is important in determining innocence and guilt.
The question of whether the women in this case tolerated or accepted Assange's actions doesn't actually matter. What matters is that, if we put ourselves into Assange's position within these incidents as described, was he aware that his victims had not consented to the acts he was making them do? Given that on both occasions they had had extensive arguments about it, it is impossible, going by the account as described, that Assange did not know that these women did not want to have unprotected sex with him. He manipulated the situation to take away or abrogate their ability to consent to an act he wanted to do and they did not, and that is a crime.
Imagine if we're dating and I'm really into anal fisting, but you're not into anal fisting at all and we have quite explicit discussions about this. Except one day I just shove my hand elbow deep into your ass without asking you if that's okay. Presumably, you can see why that is wrong. The responsibility is not on you to lie there with my entire fist in your ass and decide whether it's wrong or not, it's wrong because I deliberately did something I knew you did not want me to do.
Considering you didn't even know what the accusations were, I would check who is motivated by politics.Dreiko said:
On top of this Swedish rape law at the time when Assange was accused of rape had a qualifier of the victim being in a "especially vulnerable condition". Among the things that qualified as an especially vulnerable condition was the victim being asleep (also drugged, physically overpowered or in a socially vulnerable position such as boss/employee), which is why he got accused of one count of rape in the first place.evilthecat said:
As you've pointed out before, the counts of sexual assault were all because he initiated or tried to initiate unprotected sex with the women, even after they voiced their desire that he use a condom. As far as Swedish sexual assault and rape cases go, Assange's is pretty open and shut, especially since he supposedly admitted to the circumstances during the first rounds of preliminary hearings. A more cynical person might suggest that Assange realized the implication of him admitting to having sex with a sleeping woman after his first hearing (say, because a lawyer informed him) and his unwillingness to face justice is why he refused to be extradited to Sweden.
I think eventually what Assange released would have been released anyways via declassification, and freedom of information requests after it could damage US counter-terrorism efforts.
That being said, he's still a prick, because of him we have no Paris Climate Deal.
That being said, he's still a prick, because of him we have no Paris Climate Deal.
In practice the release dates on highly classified stuff can be something like 75-100 years: effectively, "everyone involved in this dies before it's made public"Gergar12 said:
Yes, I definitely think he's a prick: egotism, paranoia, self-aggrandisement, frequent lies, lack of empathy... Read, for instance, these articles:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/10655638/Paranoid-vain-and-jealous-the-secret-life-of-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange.html
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/heres-what-i-learned-about-julian-assange
Coupled to a rather unpleasant personality, I suspect Assange is exactly the sort of person to pursue his extreme transparency ideology irrespective of whether anyone else agrees and how much damage it might cause other people in the process.
Like I said, assuming Wikileaks can operate without him, it would be better off doing so.
Other things being equal, perhaps. But if such a situation comes to be because he's found guilty in the case targeting him in the United States, Wikileaks (and journalists in general) will be far less able to get relevant information to the public.Agema said:
Wikileaks - and indeed anyone else - should not have infinite ability to give information to the public. How much I trust the US justice system aside, there cannot be carte blanche to break the law: protections when revealing illegality merit protections, but not for splurging a lot of other information. I am (as above) quite ambivalent his extradition to the USA to face their charges.Seanchaidh said:
Wikileaks is ways admirable, and in ways not. Primarily, I am concerned it is power and information exercised with insufficient responsibility - for instance acting as "useful idiots" to further the machinations of more malign parties. I have concerns that Assange, as such a major figure, has personal agendas. And there are problems with how Wikileaks handles information which have led to many conventional journalists severing formal links and partnerships with it.
In terms of agendas, I am concerned about the fact that how a government runs is ultimately the business of its citizens. Assange has left all sorts of interesting theses in the past suggesting a desire to comprehensively disrupt how (mostly Western, it seems) governments operate. But in doing so, he is potentially setting himself and his crusade over the democratic rights of citizens to determine their own governance.
topkek, he got kicked out because he leaked stuff on the Ecuadorian President. Ballsy and stupid...
Dude should be protected as a journalist. Same way the US Supreme court ruled in favor of the Washington Post on the Pentagon papers... Journalists shouldn't get jailed because they released leaked content. The people that leaked the content should be arrested. A journalist does his duty to inform the public... That is his creed, to inform.
Assange getting mauled on the public stage by anti-Trump bois is just shameless partisan politics. Have some principles, will ya? Protect a journalist for this kind of stuff... Don't attack him because he released stuff that compromised your favorite people.
Dude should be protected as a journalist. Same way the US Supreme court ruled in favor of the Washington Post on the Pentagon papers... Journalists shouldn't get jailed because they released leaked content. The people that leaked the content should be arrested. A journalist does his duty to inform the public... That is his creed, to inform.
Assange getting mauled on the public stage by anti-Trump bois is just shameless partisan politics. Have some principles, will ya? Protect a journalist for this kind of stuff... Don't attack him because he released stuff that compromised your favorite people.
No way. The difference between wikileaks and a journalist, as mentioned in this very thread, is that wikileaks just dumps a ton of classified or secret information with no regards to who might be hurt because said information leaked, while journalists are beholden to press ethics. This is why a lot of actual journalists and journalistic organizations stopped dealing with wikileaks to begin with, because wikileaks released a bunch of ISAF documents without redacting the names of or information about ISAF translators, making them easy targets for the Talibans to kill. A proper journalist or journalistic organization will not only vet sources, but make ethical and practical considerations about who might get hurt if the information they have is released and strive to protect individual integrity and well-being whenever possible. Hence why the Washington Post just didn't file dump the Pentagon papers or why no news organization released the Panama files in their entirety.TheIronRuler said:
Assange has shown no regard for any of the ethical concerns that makes journalists distinct from some random dudes re-printing classified documents (and one can make a comparison here to Snowden, who wasn't a journalist and still was careful to not release information that could hurt individual people and made sure to release the documents he had to journalists to ensure ethical handling of the information). Simply put, Assange has no claims to being a journalist, he's just some dude who runs an organization that releases classified documents. He should be tried like that too.
Sure, as a broader principle, organisations should not be able to release whatever they want.Agema said:
But the US extradition request specifically relates to the release of the Iraq and Afghan war logs, leaked by Manning. Those were of huge public interest, and exposed international lawbreaking.
If an extradition on that ground is upheld, it's a terrible sign for the freedom of journalists to do the same. It's a bad sign for Rusbridger and The Guardian, who also published material leaked by Manning.
This remains true regardless of broader beliefs about Assange or concerns about Wikileaks' lack of boundaries. The specific basis for the US extradition request is intended to punish the investigation of government malfeasance, and the precedent it sets is abominable.
Journalism is something one can do, not an identity that one is; freedom of the press requires that 'journalists' cannot be a class set apart from the rest of the people: for legal protections of the press to depend on any sort of licensing or credential is already a violation of press freedom.Gethsemani said:
Assange is being targeted for doing things journalists regularly do when contacted by whistle-blowers. That is the substance of the case against him in the United States.
Silvanus said:
TheIronRuler said:
I believe the key accusation against Assange is "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion": that he provided Manning with hacking assistance to acquire the data, which is going a step beyond merely receiving and publishing stolen data.Seanchaidh said:
I'd love to know what evidence they have for this: it sounds unconvincing to me. Potentially of course it is a pretext to get their hands on him when otherwise the extradition case may be too feeble. After all, once they have actually acquired him, it's not like they have to give him back if they drop the key charge that secured the extradition.
But like I said, I'd rather see him punished for absconding by the UK courts, and then extradited to Sweden. However, I suspect the UK government, staring at being cut adrift by Brexit and wanting to suck up to anyone and everyone, will probably prefer to hand him over to the USA.
Whose offices were also raided by the UK government, and property destroyed under government supervision, in an attempt to kill the Snowden story in its crib and prevent the public from becoming aware of PRISM. Even someone less unforgiving towards opacity and secrecy in government might call that attempted destruction of evidence. Lest anyone forget, or fail to realize what's at stake.Silvanus said:
There's no possibility the UK refuses to extradite Assange, and any trial in this regard will be purely for showmanship. The UK wants Assange silenced as well, lest we forget the UK had more than its fair share of humble pie at his table over Afghanistan and the diplomatic cables leak. This is also as sure a line in the sand as we'll see in our lifetimes, especially after the past decade's sustained war on whistleblowing and transparency by Western liberal democracies; remember, as is the case above, this isn't only an American problem.