Hiding in the embassy he retained freedom to continue his egomaniacal demagoguery.
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It wasn’t a good faith request. Sweden’s extradition agreements already say they can’t extradite for political crimes. Assange was demanding an ironclad promise that Sweden would never extradite him for anything ever, which is a legally impossible promise for any country. Hypothetically, if it turned out he murdered somebody in New York in 2001, he wanted a blanket, guaranteed, get-out-of-jail card forever. He was asking for something his lawyers knew was an impossible request, so that he could pretend to be reasonable.
I don’t think he should go to the US. He should have went to Sweden. I know you said you agree with this, and you’re not alone in this.
That’s why the ACLU defended a klansman in a free speech case.
I wonder if that klansman had thousands of people demanding that in order to protect free speech, everybody had to say the klansman couldn’t actually be a racist, or that his klan membership was only a ruse cooked up by the CIA? I don’t think the ACLU thought his free speech case meant a klansman shouldn’t be put on trial for non-speech related hate crimes or rape.
(I’m not saying you’re arguing exactly this, but it’s a similar line to how people conflate what Assange is in jail for right now, with what they’re worried he might someday be in jail for).
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Let’s be clear here, though. He was dealing with the US government, who, back in 2010, didn’t exactly have the best track record on things like, I dunno, illegal black sites, handing over detainees to third party countries who would torture for them, illegal extradition, designating people into legal gray statuses so they could imprison them without trial (then claim they were now radicalized due to their harsh treatment and therefore needed to remain in prison for life so as not to constitute a threat), were assassinating their own citizens using classified reasons and classified legal theory.
And, oh right! He’s being extradited at some point so he can be charged with being a co-conspirator with Manning. Laugh out fucking loud.
The guy absolutely had reason to fear torture and violation of his human rights as a prisoner of the United States. Is Manning out of her near-solitary confinement yet? Because, you know, she refused to testify before a grand fucking jury?
I don’t like Assange, and I think he’s a titanic-sized douche bag. But the guy had a reason to seek political asylum.
edit: Yes, I know he was avoiding extradition to Sweden, and yes he was asking to avoid extradition period for anything. But the US is trying to get him on a charge unrelated to free speech right now. They’re clearly trying to pin something on him because of exercising his free speech in the past.
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Its not defacto. Those rights are negotiated, reciprocated and laid out in treaties.
And it’s not an uncommon thing applied when they feel like. Extraditions are routine between nations with extradition treaties. Mostly for uninteresting things like theft. Rather than “always” choosing some one “unsavory” to push some precident.
Shit we use extradition daily inside the US to move defendants across states.
Plus what @tuhu said. He’s at increased risk of extradition due to his attempts to evade the Swedish charges. Just like his promise to turn himself in if Manning was granted clemency, it was a bad faith proposition. Just like pointing to how Manning was treated in a military court, under military law is canard.
That doesn’t matter. He was there voluntarily and could haven left at any time. In the meantime he has never been held to account for multiple rape accusations. Those victims have never seen a proper airing of their accusations or a chance at validation.
The issue is not how long he put himself in time out.
And yet you think his time in self imposed exile is punishment enough?
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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 12 hours unless flagged)
Just a thought, but the police generally don’t recoup their “losses” on any of the crimes they investigate. (I’m sure they do when they can.) I think they should still investigate rapes and murders, even though it costs money the state doesn’t get back. They have discretion, but it was always going to be a money-loser.
But they could have been trying to avoid spending money on future copy-cats. If it’s a case this much in the public eye, maybe they were trapped in having to see it through or otherwise risking every wanted rapist in the UK, running to any embassy they could find, if there was a successful and famous example.
It’s why they kept trying for Ronnie Biggs, way past when it made “financial sense” to continue, because they knew him running around made a thousand other cases more complicated by people inspired to make a run for it. (If Ronnie was in that embassy, you can bet they would have waited in the bushes for years too, and I don’t think the US even knew his name.)
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Yeah, not enough time.
Again, if Assange were what he believes he is, Wikileaks would be dumping Trump’s tax returns, internal RNC mails and making life hell for every Swiss and Cayman Islands bank and every military contractor. But he isn’t. He’s not even an accidental ‘useful idiot,’ he’s a deliberate co-conspirator in efforts to disrupt, damage and delegitimize American Democracy. After his 50 weeks in a British Pokey, I hope he does real time in America – real, hard, one-hour-a-day-of-sunlight time where he has to make friendship bracelets with Ted Kaczynski if he wants any human contact at all.
No, American Democracy isn’t in great shape. But we. the people get to fix that; Julian Assange doesn’t get to damage it even more so he can look like a hero to Libertarian jerks*.
- But I repeat myself.
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He could just walk out anytime he wanted to.
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Wait, hold on. So, because Assange allowed the racist elements within our country to expose themselves to the light of day, rather than slinking around on message boards, we’re supposed to cheer and hope that he gets his human rights violated for exercising his freedom of the press? You do realize the US Constitution doesn’t grant that right, but merely guarantees the government can’t infringe upon it, right?
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The register values, stack pointer, and MMU info probably wouldn’t be helpful.
From one prison cell to another, right?
Assange didn’t just do that, and Wikileaks is not ‘the press.’ The press has fact checkers, accountability, trained professionals. Assange is just an individual who broke laws, and did so selectively, and did so for his own gain. He’s not a journalist, he’s an extortionist, And we send those to jail.
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I never said that. I would suggest that you should read the post before responding, except that in the very part you quoted, I said that he should be extradited to Sweden, so I have no idea how you could think from that that I thought his self imposed imprisonment was enough. I said that, if all he was trying to avoid was being tried in Sweden, hiding in the Embassy was an incredibly stupid way to do it, which suggests that it was motivated by (legitimate) fear of being extradited to the US, rather than fear of facing trial in Sweden.
“The Press” isn’t what you think it is. Unless Thomas Jefferson and all the rest of the founding fathers were referring to all those non-existent editors and fact checkers that didn’t exist when the constitution was written.
The Press means “The printing press”. Look it up. It clearly relates to being free to print the truth. Which he did.
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Chelsea Manning has been in general population since Aptril 5. She can leave jail at any time if she testifies in front of the grand jury, as everyone is required to do if they recieve a valid subpoena.
You’re saying because it was a stupid thing to do, then Assange must have had another reason to do it, because Assange wouldn’t do something stupid? Nah.
Rape is also a stupid and evil way to achieve sex.
It doesn’t suggest that nobody would do it just because it’s stupid and evil, and that it makes a lot more ethical and legal sense to not rape.
If, as you’re suggesting, he was motivated by a fear of being extradited to the US, Sweden was always legally safer for him than walking around London.
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That’s awesome that she’s not being subjected to near solitary confinement anymore. Love to hear it when someone’s basic human rights aren’t being violated anymore.
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Solitary is bad. Also, people should do their civic duty.
Just as the Second Amendment covers all guns, not muzzle-loading muskets, so too must the meaning of ‘press’ change. And they had Editors in 1776, and they had fact-checking.
I guess I don’t know why you’re so determined to defend a piece of human trash.
