I take it you didn’t read that interview I linked above. Niels Melzer explains how that is not a legal procedure.
Such diplomatic assurances are a routine international practice. People request assurances that they won’t be extradited to places where there is a danger of serious human rights violations, completely irrespective of whether an extradition request has been filed by the country in question or not. It is a political procedure, not a legal one.
I can only recommend people that interview, it changed my perception of what might be happening here. And that is mostly independent of what I think of Julian Assange as a person, or of some of his fanboyz, als I believe the latter that is of little relevance to this discussion.
I never said he would. I said that there were reasons beyond just the sexual assault charges to be cautious about turning himself in. But I actually have never bought into the idea that someone should accept the state’s punishment just because your actions were just.
You can’t have a fair trial when one of the parties can declare major facts classified.
The Swedish charges have absolutely nothing to do with why the USA is seeking Assange’s extradition. Attempting to portray the current proceedings as being about those charges is a disingenuous attempt to disguise of the reality of the situation.
The USA, a fascist-led hyper-carceral state notorious for its use of torture and wildly unjust legal system, is pursuing Assange because he revealed war crimes that embarrassed the empire. Period.
Accepting the idea that the USA has the right to imprison any journalist anywhere in the world, regardless of nationality or country of residence, purely because they have offended the rulers of the empire, would be utterly catastrophic for press freedom across the globe.
I am Swedish, so I have read a bit about the case, and that interview is pretty biased and ignorant about Sweden. My impression is that there was considerably incompetence from the Swedish prosecutor, but no conspiracy. In case you know Swedish:
No, I specifically don’t mean that. I’m talking about the widespread view that civil disobedience requires rendering yourself up to the state as part of the process. I’m applying this to the Assange extradition part of the story, not the rape charges. I firmly believe he should stand trial for those.
I never spoke to civil disobedience (other than comparing his character to Manning) and stated that no purpose is served by prosecution in the US now.
I’m speaking only about his skipping out on the sexual assault allegations. And his character, of course.
I’m amazed at how many guys who think they’re progressive want to excuse those allegations and silence those women. Don’t know why they identify with that - but they sure seem to.
Right, he exposed war crimes and that’s the only thing that he exposed and nothing else he has ever done or ever will do can be judged by anyone, since he’s such a hero for exposing war crimes and he never did anything after that. It’s so funny that you refer to the US as a fascist-led country. I mean, if a certain someone (certainly not Assange, who has only ever been basking in his heroism after exposing all those war crimes) hadn’t helped out with that Russian influence campaign, maybe the US wouldn’t be so fascist, ya know?
Maybe if USA hadn’t been persecuting Assange he wouldn’t have turned to Russia to return the favor, or maybe he just publish information for the principle of it without much concern about the ramifications, because “informaton wants to be free”? If you want a site that publish secret information you have to live with the fact that it is likely to publish stuff you’d rather stayed confidental, but I do wish wikileaks could find some dirt on Putin&co to leak as well.
My understanding is that Wikileaks has indeed received information concerning Russia and has refused to do anything about that. Please correct me if I am mistaken about that. I remember reading that Russian whistle blowers grew tired of waiting for Wikileaks to do anything with the information and just went directly to newspapers in Europe.
I do think that there is a difference between whistle blowing about specific misdeeds and, say, just giving out any and all secret information you can find on an organization (for example, if a corporation is engaged in tax evasion, then go ahead and blow the whistle about that, but don’t also give away every email ever sent to or from a corporate email address while you’re at it for good measure) and I do think that a distinction should be made. I think that the lack of this distinction is what separates Wikileaks from actual journalists.
Should the USA, or any nation that feels maligned, be able to pluck a non-citizen out of another country and bring them in for a trial/tribunal/imprisonment/detention/indefinite detention?
And, corollary to that: should the USA (country 1) be able to hopscotch extradition? A person is arrested in country 2 for a crime in country 3. Meanwhile, the USA prepares charges, and then starts extradition from country 2 for those charges, circumventing country 3’s claim.
Why is any of this OK? Sure Assange is horrible and wikileaks highly questionable. Without them, Trump wouldn’t be in office. What about when it’s someone you like? Let’s say they tried to do this BS to Nelson Mandela? How would we feel then? But that’s not the point. None of this paragraph is the point.
The point: the rules need to be fair at face value. As things are now, these rules have an imperialist feel about them: “the sun never sets on the crown!” Well fuck the crown. Just as we would never allow China or Russia to do this to someone in the USA, we should not be allowed to do it to others.
That rationale falls apart, though, in light of the fact that Assange/WL aren’t attacking the USA with Russia’s help, they’re specifically aiding Donald Trump with Russia’s help. To the extent they ever were, WL is no longer about transparency, but about selectively releasing information that promotes Russia’s interests.
Nonsense. If that was the case he wouldn’t have coordinated with Trump’s team to time the information release to when it would be most advantageous to his campaign.
Also don’t you find it a teensy bit odd that Wikileaks hasn’t dropped a single bombshell on the current administration’s crimes even though this has been the most criminal and most leak-prone administration in living memory?
Given all the rumored links between Trump, Putin and wikileaks. If you worked in the Trump administration and had some vital information, why would you go to wikileaks of all organizations? You’d have to fear both being identified and that the story would be buried. It’s not as if it’s hard to find media willing to publish dirt on Trump. It doesn’t matter to what extent the rumors are true, you’d still not take the risk.
Now you seem to be suggesting that Assange & Wikileaks allowed themselves to become little more than an extension of the Putin/Trump apparatus, utterly useless for anything other than distributing one-sided propaganda. I agree with this assessment.
It’s also why I call bullshit on the “Assange did this because he thinks information should be free” theory.
Now you are [misquoting]. I very deliberately ended “It doesn’t matter to what extent the rumors are true, you’d still not take the risk.”
My guess is that Assange started for purely ideological reasons, but being caught up in politics and getting a bit too high opinion of himself he got in over his head. Intelligence organizations are experts in influencing people like that.
If someone commits a crime in the jurisdiction of a country and there’s a valid extradition treaty, yes, they absolutely should be rendered to that country for trial per the terms of the treaty.
Assange was not ever in the US for such. “Jurisdiction,” indeed.
No one is going to be able to wave away the simple fact, that the US was (and is) gaming the rules re: extradtion, in Assange’s case. You may feel it’s appropriate this time, because Assange certainly is a toad, but it is NOT OK. It’s the action of an authoritarian dictatorship, and we’ve already slid way down that particular slippery slope.
Kneejerk reactions and/or silly memes are not going to change this one iota.
