No, we hate him because he turned his high-minded outlet into a clearinghouse for kompromat. Again, if you have specific wrongdoing that you think was revealed in the DNC emails, please point it out. Anybody would be politically damaged if their private correspondence was stolen and distributed, to deny that a positive action to harm a campaign isn’t a factor in the loss of that candidate is weaksauce. Why lie about where the files came from otherwise?
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Yeah. Apparently if you’re actually modded, you get a notification/warning (so I have heard), but any replies, including quote replies or replies to replies, may also get pulled as by-catch. If you didn’t get a notification, then it’s likely that’s what happened.
OTOH, it does then make the conversation less confusing, as there aren’t a bunch of comments referencing something that no longer exists.
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Clintons nomination was pre-ordained. Ergo, the Democratic party subverted democracy. That’s the wrongdoing in question, the one that led to her loss. While the democratic party, being a private club, may not have been legally obligated to respect their own democratic processes it’s not too hard to see why failing to do so was a misstep. I never said that the DNC drop wasn’t a factor in their loss, I said it wasn’t the cause. HRC was the cause, voters abandoned her because of things she said and did, not because Julian Assange let them read about it. Regardless, you can follow whatever narrative your chosen faction promotes, it’s not going to get us out of this mess a second sooner. Blaming journalists, even egotistical ones, is hardly constructive.
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And none of that matters.
As OneOff is trying to point out, once you start saying that A is a journalist and is entitled to special protection or attention because of it and B is a nasty propagandist and can be suppressed, you are allowing the possibility that those in a position to do the suppressing instead say that actually B is a fine upstanding journo, while A is a dirty propagandist.
The issue is not whether Assange is a journalist or not. The issue is not whether his involvement in Wikileaks was as great/important as he claims or whether wikileaks is positive or not. The issue is not even whether he was guilty of the sex crime allegations or not.
The issue is purely whether one thinks that Assange is at risk of being unfairly/illegally treated by the US government or others at their behest without adequate recourse to prevent/remedy that.
If one does, then he needs asylum.
If one doesn’t, then he falls into the same category of ‘failed asylum seeker’ as anyone else and will no doubt be treated just as harshly as any Afghan or Somali who commits an offence in the UK. /s
Ecuador clearly felt he did require asylum and granted it to him.
I think it’s perfectly legitimate to wonder at / criticise Assange’s apparent conduct to his hosts at the Embassy but I can equally understand how incredibly frustrated he must be at being cooped up in there for so long.
Yes, I read the relevant opinion at the time. The difficulty with that is that most of the reasons given in that opinion have fallen away. The Swedes are no longer interested.
The only reason Assange is still in the Embassy is that he is afraid that if he comes out, the UK will lock him up and/or extradite him to the US.
Realistically, there is nothing the UK can do to allay that fear. They could make any assurances they like, how could he possibly accept them given what he and you fear?
Did… did I imagine an entire primary election where millions of people cast votes? And: before you start in with superdelegate nonsense, please take a look back to 2008, when HRC enjoyed the same lead with superdelegates, who promptly flipped over to support Obama when he took the lead in delegate contests. Superdelegates don’t move the needle, in fact, they are moved by the needle of winning primary elections.
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Yeah, Clinton’s nomination was pre-ordained only in the sense that she was the clear forerunner from the start.
In any case, it seems weird to me as an European that people seem to think of the primaries as something like a round 1 of the election.They’re not; they’re the system the Republican and Democratic parties have decided on for choosing their nominee, and AFAIK there’s absolutely no legal necessity for either party to do so. Then again, it seems to me that actual party membership is a rare thing in the US, whereas here, if you’re serious about supporting a party, you join it (and get to influence things within the party, whereas non-party members have no say; the idea of an “open primary” is pretty bizarre over here).
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I think that there was a clear feeling within the powers-that-be of the Democratic Party that, Clinton having been rudely shoved aside in 2008 by that upstart senator from Illinois, 2016 was when she’d finally deserve a bite at the apple.
Much of the way US presidential elections work is hard to understand for us Europeans. This is mostly due to the fact that the US constitution predates things such as political parties, efficient travel, and efficient communications. It could really do with a comprehensive update for the 21st century, but the problem is that the people who would have to engineer that update happen to be the people who would least benefit from it, so it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
As far as the primaries are concerned, what would probably help a lot is to move away from a system where people get to pick one preferred candidate to a system where people get to rank all candidates in order of preference and a winner is determined based on these rankings. That would help ensure that the eventual candidate is somebody that most people could live with, rather than the one that happens to be the most popular at 20% of party votes but disliked by many if not all of the remaining 80%.
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Indeed… One Laurie Anderson’s most recent installations was based on a similar story:
http://www.laurieanderson.com/?portfolio=habeas-corpus
She writes about it here:
It was common for men not having anything to do with terrorism being rounded up and sent to Gitmo… it’s reality most Americans aren’t aware of.
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As far as we know, the US have not yet even deigned to use official channels to tell the UK that they want Assange if ever he decides to come out of the embassy. All we have are various US politicians saying that they’d like to punish him for … whatever exactly?
So any “risk” hinges on the contention that once Assange does leave the embassy the CIA, MI5, … will simply swoop in, pick him up from the pavement and whisk him away to parts unknown, never to be seen or heard from again. We’ve recently seen how well that sort of thing worked for the Saudis. Sure, from a purely technical POV the USA could probably do it if they wanted to, but if they’re interested in hanging on to the last shreds of their reputation as the only worthwhile democracy on God’s Earth (something the Saudis aren’t in any danger of having to worry about) they better not. In any case it is much more preferable to let the guy simply fade into obscurity because, to Assange, that is a way worse punishment than anything the CIA could inflict on him at one of their notorious “black sites”.
The real risk to Assange is that the Brits will lock him up for skipping bail and that the Swedes may still be interested in him after all. That of course is only to do with his own douchebaggery and not with anything WikiLeaks-related.
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The issue of whether he is a journalist was raised in this thread by OO and others as a reason why BB posters should respect and support JA, and the negative answer was based on our understanding of what “journalism” is, not on dicta from authorities.
The only reason Assange is still in the Embassy is that he is afraid that if he comes out, the UK will lock him up and/or extradite him to the US.
What we know is that he says he is afraid of this. We also have evidence from earlier hosts that he has a history of coming up with excuses to not leave the homes where he is couch surfing.
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Bernie should have cheated better.
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I guess she must have lost because everyone was super mean and unfair to her then, and thus bears no responsibility for this situation at all. I’ll check off “because superdelegates” on my card for Clinton apologist bingo.
Seriously, you’re blaming HRC for Trump’s election because she spent years diligently courting party leaders to get their support as superdelegates in the primaries? Why not blame Sanders for Trump’s election, because he didn’t put these years of effort into the nomination?
HRC was a shitty candidate, but she bears no blame for running and losing.
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Whatever floats your political boat. It’s your bingo card. But don’t put words in my mouth. She’s the one who lost the general election. She failed to unite her faction. They had lightning in a bottle and they turned it down, but sure. Keep blaming the people who didn’t vote for her instead of the person who was supposed to be winning their votes. Perfect died in the blue democrat logic. The democrats have never met a critic that they couldn’t belittle. So far, it’s worked out great for them.
Wait… I thought the topic of this post was Ecuador and Assange, not Hilary vs.Bernie?
Newflash; time travel isn’t possible and we can’t change the past. Focus on the present, already.
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Its germane because the hacked DNC emails has been claimed to be ‘newsworthy’, but nobody can quite explain why. And then we get to ‘well, they may not have been newsworthy, but they didn’t affect the outcome of the race, HRC lost all by herself’, and here we are.
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Still seems like it’s a deviation, marginally relevant or not;
Perpetually relitigating an election that happened two years ago won’t change the present shitty circumstances even one iota - it just needlessly sucks up valuable time and energy that could be better used for the fight ahead.
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Good call, Melz. I’ve deleted my own contribution, and suggest to others that they self-moderate their own contribution to the thread derail.
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The forces that put us here are still out there, possibly including Assange and Ickyleaks. We don’t want to forget history, lest it turn around and bite us in the ass again.
I’m not saying nor even implying that anyone ever should forget anything; the past matters, and those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it.
Nevertheless, arguing incessantly over shit that we can’t change is utterly futile.
We have far more pressing, present-day concerns to deal with…
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