Not according to Daniel Ellsberg. But what does he know? Watergate was trivial.
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If Assange should be compared to a historical figure- It’s Bernard Cardinal Law.
Both fled responsibility for sexual crimes and hid in embassy’s- though Law isn’t directly charged with committing a sexual crime. I’m sure Law over saw many worthwhile charity efforts- that doesn’t excuse him from responsibility to face the charges.
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Still, war crimes are war crimes and i am grateful to have been informed of the US government’s criminal actions. I infer from what you wrote that you see no value in being so informed.
And yes Russia is very bad. Very bad.
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I wouldn’t disagree that he should face any charges related to accusations in Sweden. The disagrement regards the good faith of the arrest and whether it was a ruse to facilitate extradition to the US. Which does currently appear justified.
I think the problem were not those Bernie supporters turning to Trump, but those not voting at all. Disclaimer: I am not a US citizen, I wasn’t there and have no first hand experience of the situation back then. To get this sub-thread back on track: I do think that the timing of the release of the DNC mails via Wikileaks played a great role in this. Yes, Wikileaks was reporting a fact, but the consequences must have been clear to everyone at Wikileaks supporting the publication.
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So are you arguing it illegitimate to inform voters of facts prior to elections? What kind of information should voters have access to? Is it the selective presentation of facts? Isnt any presentation of facts likely to irritate someone?
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You don’t think this kind of counterfactual analysis is inherently unreliable? How would you go about quantifying the impact in the Midwest relative to decisions on policy stances?
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Anyone else feel like we need a new Godwin’s Law for relitigating the 2016 primaries?
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The explanation is false, though, because no matter how much disgruntled Bernie fans claim otherwise, the DNC did not cheat Bernie Sanders out of the nomination.
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Quite a balanced treatment from Barrett Brown.
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I wouldn’t argue that the DNC “cheated” Sanders. I wouldn’t even know what that means. We do know that the DNC had an agreement with the Clinton campaign which involved the right to approve appointments, the right approve statements and certain funding arrangements. Personally, i found those arrangements undemocratic and distasteful - they smacked of corruption and distorted the “playing field”. Whether you define such things as “cheating” is a another matter. However, given these acts i am always amused that the Russians are blamed for causing dissension. I suppose if you (allegedly) show how the sausage gets made perhaps you can be blamed if people don’t want to eat it.
Still, it is quite funny.
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I have doubts still as to the accuracy of those rape claims. I always thought they were fabricated to get him to a point that he could be charged, then extradited for other crimes.
As in, believe the victim, unless the alleged perp happens to be a man I support, then it’s obviously a conspiracy. 
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No one here is claiming that he’s guilty yet - just that he should stand trial.
Edit:
But when you run from the trial and hide from extradition- you don’t support that you think you’re innocent.
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Why? Why “fabricate” claims when they could just pick him up directly?
They can literally just send a preliminary extradition request, and they don’t even have to detail the charges for two months.
This is bullshit conspiracy theory that doesn’t even make sense by its own terms.
On the other side, Assange clearly is a person who has a demonstrably and eye-openingly bad grasp of other people’s boundaries. He also has this weird history of fathering an unknown number of uncared-for children in countries around the world. (I don’t know why people never reference it, but hopefully it’s for the protection of the kids.)
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Also, why fabricate the kind of claims that directly make extradition to the US more difficult? Where’s the internal consistency in that theory?
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Oh, it makes perfect sense when you start with the axiomatic certainty that Assange is not guilty of anything ever, and anyone who has something bad to say about him is a stooge of the Evul USA.
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Stand trial for what, though?
He is not being extradited to Norway; he’s going to be extradited to the USA. For reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with either the Norwegian allegations or the 2016 election.
