Oh come on, as others have pointed out trump doesn’t have friends, he uses people that best serve his interests at the time and then stabs them in the back. Or as @angusm put far better than me…
The far more worrying aspect is one authoritarian government toadying up to another authoritarian government.
He’s not there yet. It’s far from a done deal that he will get there.
He’s currently in London, found guilty of a bail failure charge. Being extradited to the US is only going to happen after more court time (maybe years of it).
The Swedish charge was only deactivated. It became a cold case, not a closed case, and charges were never “dropped”. (Some are past the statutes of limitations, because of time, not prosecutorial intent).
Who knows what they’ll do at this point, as it’s purely at the discretion of the Swedish prosecutor about whether it’s worth it to justice overall, to get involved in this circus again. The original complainant is still complaining.
Assange will be put on trial. We do have legal constitutional precedent for freedom of the press. Look I know our confidence in the legal system is being tried daily, but I’m guessing if they are charging him it’s going to be with something actually illegal, rather than this being like John Adams trying the censor the press with the sedition act.
That is not why Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are imprisoned.
This is:
Chelsea Manning was released under Obama. Releasing evidence of American atrocities is fair whistle blowing and should be applauded. But that’s not the only thing he released.
And now she’s back in prison. For refusing to answer questions, most probably about Wikileaks.
It’s worth remembering that Assange is as responsible for Manning’s predicament as anyone.
If Assange had been more careful about what content from Manning’s leaks he published then she might not have been caught. Also worth remembering that Obama commuted Manning’s sentence while Trump unilaterally decided to impose a cruel discriminatory rule banning transgender people from the military entirely, so it’s not like Wikileaks did her any favors by putting Trump in office.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but the erosion of the Bill of Rights has advanced so far past the Alien and Sedition Acts that it’s wishful thinking to trust the US injustice system to robustly protect it.
To be clear, I’m not arguing whether or not WL should have published everything Manning gave them, I’m ambivalent about that. I’m taking issue with the proposition that it’s not journalists’ or private citizens’ job to protect state secrets, which, as I argue above, I believe is their moral (and sometimes legal) responsibility in some circumstances.
Celebrating the most will be Erik Prince and Blackwater, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Sessions, and Pompeo. And in general any war criminal or corrupt MIC insider whose only remote sense of potential retribution would have been from Wikileaks. Rejoice rightwing nutjobs, warmongers, totrturers, and enemies of transparency, one of your most annoyingly vocal foes has finally been silenced.
I don’t find it hard to believe that the charges could be both 100% valid and also exploited by the US Government for their own ends.
It’s often joked at hacker conventions that attendees should follow the 3-2-1 rule and have at least:
every day.
I agree with wanderfound
Ya I was chastised in the thread I started about saying he’s going to be extradited pretty quickly.
Funny how all those sealed indictments just became unsealed.
Trump is a “friend” to people can still help him or to people who can blackmail him. Perhaps Assange has a “deadman’s switch” ready to dump a crap load embarrassing data on Trump.
In which case the thinking might be they have to bury him in a dark cell awaiting trial until Trump’s presidency is over.
CNN has an ongoing roundup here:
According to them, one of the main drivers was concern for Assange’s mental health:
Javid told members of parliament that both the UK and Ecuadorian government had “become increasingly concerned about the state of Mr. Assange’s health.”
The first action of London’s Metropolitan Police was to have him medically assessed and deemed fit to detain, he said, adding that Assange had received access to doctors while holed up within his diplomatic shelter.
I imagine years of house arrest wouldn’t do wonders for the psyche. Then there’s this:
The interior minister said that “in the next few hours” the government of Ecuador will provide additional evidence that justifies the decision to end Assange’s asylum.
During former President Correa’s government and while Patiño was chancellor, “they tolerated things like Assange putting feces on the embassy walls and other behaviors far from the minimum respect that a guest can have,” said Romo.
But then, the suggestion that the ousting was, in fact, for further political activities taking place there:
“For several years now, one of the key members of the WikiLeaks organization and a person close to Assange has lived in Ecuador,” Romo said at a press conference Thursday.
This member “works closely and has traveled with Ricardo Patiño to Peru, Spain and Russia.”
Patiño was chancellor during the government of former president of Correa, who was in power when Assange was granted asylum.
CNN has reached out to Chancellor Patiño. Previously Patiño defended the innocence of Assange saying his fight was a “fight for freedom of expression.”
Two Russian hackers are also suspected of meddling in the attempt to destabilize the government and their information will be delivered to the Office of the Attorney General of Ecuador, Romi said.
“We are not going to allow Ecuador to become a hacking center and we cannot allow illegal activities to take place in the country in order to harm citizens or other governments,”
IMHO, as with most of these situations, the facts are not so black-and-white. There’s a significant difference between “open defiance” vs “continuing political opposition” while in the embassy vs “concern for the mental state” of Assange. I’d recommend not being quick to draw conclusions here.
Again iMHO, I don’t believe that’s what drove the Ecuadorian embassy to make this move, even if that was the “tool” used to enact the removal initially. Regardless, having those charges be tried may be the one good thing to come out of this whole affair now.
And let’s not forget WikiLeaks outing of thousands of Afghan interpreters for coalition forces by releasing completely unredacted documents.
According to David Leigh and Luke Harding’s book about WikiLeaks, Assange’s response was: ‘Well, they’re informants so, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’
WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables containing medical information from Saudi Arabia and Jordan including that of people who had mental health issues. They even released the names of teenage rape victims.
A great idea, destroyed by the narcissism of its founder and any semblance of empathy for innocent people who may find themselves in the way.
You’re totally right about the grudge, good point. I do believe that the leaking became quite right-leaning in the run up to the 2016 election. I find it incredibly hard to believe that there was nothing to publish from the republican camp that wouldn’t be as damaging as the Podesta dump.
