This topic has gotten a little entangled with election politics, but there’s no easy way to untangle it into separate topics without breaking readability on both sides, so you’ll excuse me if I permit both in this topic to maintain my sanity on a Friday evening. 
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i find it remarkable that you seem to think that no one bears responsibility for the election of 45 besides the dnc and clinton. that those people who failed to vote for clinton because “the perfect” bernie sanders wasn’t on the ticket have no responsibility for any of it. i call bullshit on that as it seems a rather amoral position to take, as if you want to believe that actions have no consequences. anyone involved in progressive politics in 2016 knew the incredible misery that would be caused by electing the cheetoh to the presidency, the hideous distortions in the judiciary, that massive injury to real people because of his capture of the regulatory agencies. these were utterly predictable. and yet they withheld their vote from an alternative that was clear enough that even a well-informed child could tell the difference.
yet as much as you and others want to cast aside your guilt, as much as you want to evade moral responsibility for the evil that stalks the white house, you cannot. there is literal blood on your hands. you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. look at that angry and pathetic man in the white house who uses the powers of the office to destroy and loot, look at him! he is yours, you and all your kind who turned their backs upon humanity out pique, out of spite. that man and all his moral monstrosity is yours. he is your gift to this country. his crimes are now your crimes, his guilt is your guilt, his desultory depredations are yours.
edited to make clear that my use of the most intensely pejorative language in the first paragraph was directed at a particular political position and not meant as a personal epithet.
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You know I have a bit more respect (not much but a bit) for the Trump voters as they at least go off their asses and voted rather than sit home and whine about how ‘both parties are the same’ ‘They stole it from Bernie’ etc.
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As the post I responded to is hidden- and may get eaten - I’ll delete my comment and repost the gist.
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Yes. There are no people who didn’t vote. The decision of how to use your vote determines who was elected. Those progressives who didn’t vote, voted for Trump.
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I have flagged this post to suggest that the moderators unhide it. As far as I can tell, flagging is the only way to send that message.
Saying that a position is that of “an amoral ignoramus” is not the same thing as calling another poster an amoral ignoramus. It is an attack on the idea.
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i appreciate the support. i got a message about the flagging and i edited the comment to make some distinctions more clear. however, i note that all of the comments i quote-replied to in my comment are completely gone so i don’t know if it matters anymore.
edited to add–oh, i see now that the user i quoted has been anonymized.
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The arguments are still sensible.
The flagging thing is an issue, though; it seems not too hard to make a post disappear, harder to bring it back to life.
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The Swedes aren’t interested any more, but the US certainly is. US officials in the Trump Administation have said that Wikileaks is a hostile nonstate intelligence agency, that First Amendment protections don’t apply to him, and the US attorney general and the CIA are actively seeking to capture Assange. It’s expected that he would, at minimum, face a lifetime sentence if tried in court. More likely, he would just disappear and be held in torturous conditions for the remainder of his life. The UN body on arbitrary detention says he’s been arbitrarily detained (not for douchebaggery, either) and the Orgasnization of American states human rights court says his rights have been violated – for breaking stories that we at BoingBoing have relished for years.
Here’s an old piece on the revelations in the emails:
Bias in favor of the Clinton candidacy and against Sanders are shown, among other newsworthy items, in the emails. A popular favorite at the time was news that Donna Brazile, who was affiliated with CNN at the time, notified the Clinton campaign of a question that was to be asked of her during a town hall debate. She later took over as chair of the DNC, which adds an additional reek to the whole affair.
It’s hard to assess newsworthiness, but I get 550,000 hits from Google when I put in “dnc emails wikileaks”. Granted, many of them are about the investigation of the underlying leak. However, many of the news stories discuss the substance of the emails and find them newsworthy. One key fact that emerged from the evidence, though, is the clear institutional bias in favor of HRC over Sanders at the DNC, a body that was supposed to be neutral in the primary contest.
It doesn’t matter when you come to the choice during the general.
That said - it’s just the fact that Sanders did not win the popular vote in the primaries. If your argument is that he should have won because without superdelegates he would have won the delegates- you’re making the same argument you’re accusing the other side of. That an anti democratic result should prevail.
He lost the election by not getting enough votes from voters. It wasn’t even close - he was trounced.
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If you ask them over a few beers, they would probably like to get their hands on a lot of people if only they could. They’d probably love to capture Putin or Maduro or anyone on a very long list of names, too, if they could just get away with it. But until Assange is officially indicted for an actual crime in the USA and there is an international warrant out for his arrest and extradition this is nothing more than posturing. Remember how Hillary Clinton was supposed to be “locked up” for all the crimes (up to and including conspiracy to murder) she had purportedly committed over decades? By comparison, Assange is small fry, and he isn’t even a US citizen so they can’t charge him with treason. That takes care of the “attorney general” angle.
As far as the CIA side of things is concerned, Assange is too notorious to simply disappear from view, especially if the only country that is really interested in his disappearance also prides itself on being the champion of the free world, democracy, and the rule of law. This is not Saudi Arabia we’re talking about, and for all his douchebaggery Assange is not a random guy off an Afghani side street that nobody important and/or vocal and/or well-connected will miss.
More importantly, it has been amply illustrated by now that Assange is a sleazy douchebag and even his more egregious “leaks” obviously haven’t done much harm to US policy or the USA’s reputation in the long run (certainly not as much harm as the incumbent POTUS is doing in the course of his daily work) – so why ever would the USA want to deliberately make the guy a martyr in the eyes of his supporters and destroy the last square inches of moral high ground they’re clinging onto, by abducting him and secretly torturing him to death? Assange is not worth the fallout. It’s a lot more expedient to just leave him be; if the Ecuadorians eventually do kick him out of the embassy and then nothing else happens, that’s just more evidence of his douchebaggery for having spent seven years or more inside the place being a general nuisance while whining how everybody is after him.
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I don’t think the US will signpost the operation. He may just disappear, like many victims of oppressive states.
What is surprising and sad is how this bonkers conspiracy theorist still manages to suck gullible followers into his elaborate fantasy about himself.
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I believe it’s widely suspected that there are sealed federal indictments against him in the US. So, I’m sure they could try to make something stick, like espionage, which you don’t have to be a US citizen to be guilty of. The time in jail for the multi-year trial and the expense of a competent defence would do much to destroy what remains of his life even if he’s not convicted. Yeh, freedom of the press!
I wouldn’t bet my life on the decency and respect for human rights of this administration – would you?
Leaks from a leak organization. smh.
On Sunday, over 11,000 of Wikileaks’ Twitter direct messages were published by Emma Best, a freedom of information activist. The messages, some of which contained names that were redacted, represent the largest leak of internal communications Wikileaks has ever experienced.
I’ll take Emma Best and Muckrocks over Julian and WikiLeaks any day.
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A non transparent transparency organization is like military intelligence.
I looked for 990’s - quick search - didn’t see them.
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I don’t even know where they’re incorporated.
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inactive nonprofit THE WIKILEAKS PARTY LTD. (Australia, 20 Feb 2013-23 Jul 2017) -
inactive WIKILEAKS COMMUNITY PLC (United Kingdom, 31 Jan 2011-27 Dec 2011, C/O Rodl & Partner Legal Hanover Square 16 Mayfair, London, W1S 1HT) -
WIKILEAKS PLUMBING SERVICE (South Africa)
Plumbers, heh heh.
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FINALLY! Some concrete evidence of imminent threat to Assange from the US! /s
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Yep, that sounds credible 
There may be and then again there may not be, take your pick.
As I said, the US has very little to gain by trying to go after Assange. After all, the guy is obviously his own worst enemy, and the best strategy right now is really to do nothing at all and let him dig his own hole. Anything else that the US could do would not accomplish a lot except loads of very, very bad PR.
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That sounds likely. It would, in effect, be a case of the cat planning to make the canary “disappear” and blame it on the goldfish and/or the hamster.
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