So tired of people perpetually regurgitating that endless argument, as if it can somehow change the past.
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I think the UK can extradite if they get a promise that the US won’t use the death penalty (or cruel and unusual treatment) as punishment.
They aren’t supposed to change the charges on a whim after extradition. They’re supposed to run any new charges through the UK courts for approval, and they’d still need to be without the death penalty.
Thank you. But understand the seriousness of this matter. More wasn’t just being abstractly philosophical; he made his statement because in the end he himself would be in mortal danger with a Government Of Laws, rather than the Government Of Men that we are rapidly moving towards.
Sorry, mixed up my metaphor! More would be in danger from a Government Of Men, not of Law.
I understand it is serious. I’m not saying it isn’t. I don’t think Assange will get a fair shake in the US, most likely. I think it will be a hyper-partisan mess.
But the rape complainants were also cheated of the rule of law, directly, by Assange, acting all by himself. I hope that doesn’t seem like a quibble. It’s not Assange’s rights over all others, because that wouldn’t be fair, would it?
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No, it was 0%. The wsws.org article includes this: “On March 26, WikiLeaks’ Twitter account called attention to the investigation, while citing a New York Times report that Moreno had been in discussion with the Trump administration - via a May 2017 trip to Quito by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort - on handing over Assange in return for debt relief.”
He was never threatened with expulsion while Correa was in power, no matter what he did. In this case (as in so so many others), it was “all about the benjamins”.
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Frankly, I think Assange would rather be extradited to the US than Sweden. Why? If he’s extradited to the US, he gets a ton of attention, and gets to play the martyr against his big, nasty monster nemesis, the USA. And if we were talking about any other administration, I think that’s exactly how it would play out. But with the Trump administration, that would be a huge miscalculation. If there’s even a tiny chance he has incriminating or even embarrassing info about Trump or his campaign, they would have zero hesitation to just drop him out of the plane over the Atlantic. Oops. There’s currently no one holding them accountable.
Whereas, if Assange is extradited to Sweden, there’s a decent chance he will be publicly revealed to be the rapey asshole that he seems to maybe be, he’ll serve a few years in a relatively humane Swedish prison, then fade into obscurity. From what we’ve seen of Assange’s narcissism, that might be a bigger nightmare for him than getting dropped out of a C130.
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Because he’s made himself an enemy of the U.S. state. Which he did by revealing some info on how rotten the U.S. state is.
As Noam Chomsky put it last night,
The efforts to silence a journalist who was producing materials that people in power didn’t want the rascal multitude to know about—OK?—that’s basically what happened. WikiLeaks was producing things that people ought to know about those in power. People in power don’t like that, so therefore we have to silence it. OK? This is the kind of thing, the kind of scandal, that takes place, unfortunately, over and over. . . .
The other scandal is just the extraterritorial reach of the United States, which is shocking. I mean, why should the United States—why should any—no other state could possibly do it. But why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? I mean, it’s an outlandish situation. It goes on all the time. We never even notice it. At least there’s no comment on it.
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I certainly wouldn’t call the rapes a quibble.
However, the people now completely in charge of his fate (they operate out of DC & Langley) would. If some underling at those locations brings up the rape charges in a questioning manner to those deciding Assange’s fate, they’ll be laughed out of the room or fired on the spot, for being too naive.
I thought this too. It’s depressingly plausible.
I think he’ll fight extradition from the UK as long as he can, because it is physically more comfortable than being in the States. But I think you’re right that he’d choose going to the US over Sweden for the reasons you’ve said.
In some ways he made that choice a long time ago.
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Who knows? They could command a lucrative book deal while still staying in hiding. There is mystery about Sergei’s activities since the spy swap. He travelled internationally and was in contact with UK intelligence. As you know, the media do not “out” (our) spies or report on their activities.
I think we can safely rule out the GRU or SBU being responsible for him not calling his mum on a weekly basis anymore, as the Russian press reported him doing in the past.
Plot appears to be thickening nicely…
They need more people to torture/break to obtain Wikileaks encryption keys, data about Assange, etc.
There’s also these little tidbits:
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One more tidbit:
On the same day as Assange’s arrest, Facebook removed Rafael Correa’s page with 1.5 million followers because he published the secret offshore bank account number used by Lenin Moreno’s family:
The removal of Correa’s page for violating Facebook’s “community standards” is an unprecedented move, and the former statesman is the most high-profile public political figure to ever be removed from the social platform–placing the economist and icon of Latin American “socialism of the 21st century” in the same unlikely category as right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones.
TPTB are mounting an all-points offensive on freedom. Why now???
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I read the emails. not the spin and they were pretty blatant.
But don’t take my word, read some yourself:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/
I particularly like this nugget of DNC neutrality strategizing to paint Sanders with either a “jewish” or “atheist” brush to bring him down with the christian dems:
“It may make no difference but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Brad Marshall, CFO of the DNC, wrote in an email on May 5, 2016. “He had skated on having a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
So there is no confusion, that is the chief financial officer of the DNC conspiring to sabotage a frontrunner in the primaries. Not spin, fact, in his own words. Wich he has never denied.
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One of the best skits on SnL is this asange skit:
Yes, I remembered that one! I thought it a bit off. But politics isnt beanbag, whatever that is. So apparently you get to play quite rough. It aint cheating if its a private club and your lawyer offers a well reasoned opinion. The court case was excellent fun, and involved all sorts of stuff you generally only come across in “Wonderland”. Like believing multiple impossible things simultaneously.
If we can’t work through this shit and hold two things in our heads about this situation at the same time… Imagine other comment boards on this issue.
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They are like… 3rd in line at best and will probably be content if we bring him back to the states.
He NEEDS to go stand for rape chargers, though.
To be fair, they have greater extraterritorial reach in the global south. It’s not like they’ve staged a seal team six to pick up either Assange or Snowden, because they are in countries that would never tolerate such attempts on their soil. I suspect, despite their protestations, the Pakistani government welcomed and coordinated the Bin Laden assassination. In this case, the US seems to be working through the legal system set up with our allies in the UK - again, he SHOULD go to Sweden, not the US. Sweden SHOULD press their claim now.
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