Julian Assange again...

[Reeve]

Totally agree, not least for the american public where all the major tv networks find it unpatriotic and are pressured not to show any news that might portray the foreing policy or the army as not 100% all holly jolly.

Remember the clip from CNN when they broadcast the gunship crew murdering civilians and journalists. They edited out all shooting, all the laughter from the crew after they killed peopl.
CNN's excuse was that it was too graphical.

US media is in the gutter.

To be fair, I think any pressure the American news organizations are feeling is probably coming from the public, and not the government.

If only I could get BBC World News or Al-Jazeera...

[Deleted]

The guy posts huge blocks of data that has no business being in the public eye. If he were to first sift through the data and find the stuff that showed government malfeasance and then posted that, it would be legitimate. But there's no reason to be posting thousands of irrelevant and sometimes personal emails, memos, and documents. That's just an invasion of privacy. Yes these are public employees, but that doesn't mean you have a right to publicize every little thing they ever emailed.

I think the guy is a sleazeball and an egomaniac, and I hope at some point his site gets shut down. If you find wrongdoing, expose the wrongdoing. Publicizing everything is just attention-seeking behavior.

You never actually read the documents did you?

[Jackmoves]

If only I could get BBC World News or Al-Jazeera...

BBC hardtalk is cool, one of my favorite shows.

[Reeve]

You never actually read the documents did you?

Nope, didn't. I did read plenty of excerpts though.

[ringpriest]

So the British Supreme Court denied his appeal yesterday which means he will be going this way in about 2 weeks, finally I might add, it does not matter if you are guilty or not, if you get called to a court hearing you turn up as far as I'm concerned. Having tried to avoid this for as long as he has, has gained him nothing.

It will be interesting to see what follows though, a lot of people have been going on about how it's all a ploy to have him extraditioned to the US afterwards.... which makes absolutly no sense to me since the UK and the US is probably on even more friendly terms then Sweden and the US. If the US wanted him they would have probably turned to the UK right?

No. In the UK, any request for extradition involves a court hearing. In Sweden, because of the details of the US-Swedish extradition treaty, an extradition to the US only requires a bureaucratic sign-off. Assange and his lawyers would get no chance to protest before he's shipped off to Guantanamo or some other American-run hellhole for torture excuse me, "enhanced interrogation". (You know, the kind of "enhanced interrogation" America considered a capital crime back in WWII when the Japanese did it to our citizens.)

You can find a more detailed explanation at:
http://justice4assange.com/US-Extradition.html#WSJA

[Reeve]

No. In the UK, any request for extradition involves a court hearing. In Sweden, because of the details of the US-Swedish extradition treaty, an extradition to the US only requires a bureaucratic sign-off. Assange and his lawyers would get no chance to protest before he's shipped off to Guantanamo or some other American-run hellhole for torture.

You can find a more detailed explanation at:
http://justice4assange.com/US-Extradition.html#WSJA

The US has no reason to torture Assange. They might want to imprison him, but not torture.

[ringpriest]

The US has no reason to torture Assange. They might want to imprison him, but not torture.

Unfortunately for Assange, the US doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between imprisonment and torture.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...nviction.shtml

[Xarkan]

The US has no reason to torture Assange. They might want to imprison him, but not torture.

I do not entirely understand this?

Torture is done only for the pleasure of torturing yeah? It has no purpose but itself. It can have no other purpose, anything yielded from it is at best suspect

[Reeve]

Unfortunately for Assange, the US doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between imprisonment and torture.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...nviction.shtml

That article's source data is a Salon.com opinion article. Plus, the person in question is a military man who released confidential information to the public. You do not have the same civilian rights as a military person that you do as a civilian. Assange is not in the US military, so this article doesn't have any relevance, even if you were to assume that the questionable source material is true.

[Deleted]

Big Brother wants to silence disobedience and truth with their thought-police.
And everyone just bends over and takes it.

[Reeve]

Big Brother wants to silence disobedience and truth with their thought-police.
And everyone just bends over and takes it.

We are not living in Oceania. Eastasia is not the enemy. Eurasia is not our ally. 2+2=4.

This is not 1984. The US government may do some sketchy surveillance, but comparing it to Big Brother is shameless hyperbole.

[Xarkan]

Eurasia is not our ally.

Mostly it is.. except for the parts that are not but most of it is.. Though it is my understanding the UK are more into surveilance

[ringpriest]

That article's source data is a Salon.com opinion article. Plus, the person in question is a military man who released confidential information to the public. You do not have the same civilian rights as a military person that you do as a civilian. Assange is not in the US military, so this article doesn't have any relevance, even if you were to assume that the questionable source material is true.

Fine, here's the UN special rapporteur on torture, formally accusing the US of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" in the Bradley Manning case. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...n-treatment-un

As for Manning being enlisted, you don't give up your right to NOT BE TORTURED when you enlist. And he has not 'released confidential information to the public' he has been charged with a number of things, including, 'aiding the enemy, and wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it was accessible to the enemy'. He has yet to be found guilty of anything.

As for the relevance, I somehow doubt that the same people responsible for torturing the guy accused of leaking Assange the classified material that Assange then published are going to treat him any better because he's "not in the US military".

[Reeve]

Mostly it is.. except for the parts that are not but most of it is.. Though it is my understanding the UK are more into surveilance

OK, Eurasia is not a country, unlike in 1984. How about that?

[Torq]

WL exposing war crimes that were kept hidden make up for alot of it. Not to mention WL posted on all sorts of corruption issues all over the planet.

I find it hilarious that the first response against to a valid point of invasion of privacy is an "ends justify the means" argument.

Heilarious.

[Xarkan]

As for the relevance, I somehow doubt that the same people responsible for torturing the guy accused of leaking Assange the classified material that Assange then published are going to treat him any better because he's "not in the US military".

It would not be the same people though would it? If a soldier in the us does something then as far as i know they have a seperate system to deal with it. Assange being a civilian would be going through the civilian system. [removed a needless comment] Anyhow i am not saying it is better but nonetheless not the same people

Does counterespionage not fall under the FBI or something? Would it not be their interrogations?

[Deleted]

As far as I've read, Assange has not commited a crime in the US, which means they can not charge him... I might be wrong here though.

That won't stop the US from punishing him, one way or the other. The US justice system is as corrupt as can be.

They don't care about the laws of other countries, they only care about themselves and the people that are a 'danger' to them.

[Deleted]

It look more like Assange want martyr points and be the centrer of the media and is using the system to get it. Because he will get free in a Swedish trial if there is only words against words as evidence....I guess the Prosecutor hope he will confess or say something that they can prove is lie.

[ringpriest]

We are not living in Oceania.

"The U.S. is a Pacific nation" Congressman Rick larsen
http://larsen.house.gov/news/press-r...-council.shtml

"the US is a Pacific nation" Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
nation"http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/665527/US-is-Pacific-nation.aspx

"the United States will maintain our strong presence in the Asia Pacific" U.S. President Barack Obama
http://thepage.time.com/2011/10/13/t...#ixzz1wSwTpwqd

Eastasia is not the enemy.

""we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region"
http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_...c_Guidance.pdf

"Is China America's new enemy?"
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-06/o...?_s=PM:OPINION

Eurasia is not our ally.

Pakistan: The Terror State We Call Our Ally
http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...r-ally/257699/

2+2=4.

Closest one I could find for this is the North Carolina legislature outlawing sea-level rise.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...-rise-illegal/

This is not 1984.

Why 2012 is starting to look like 1984
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computi...ook-like-1984/

The US government may do some sketchy surveillance, but comparing it to Big Brother is shameless hyperbole.

Department of the Treasury: gives influential banks trillions while ignoring rampant fraud

Department of Homeland Security: terrorizes and sexually assaults thousands of Americans every day. Has yet to catch a single terrorist.
(The name alone should be enough to show that we're living in the world of 1984)

Department of Defense: focuses on attacking and/or occupying countries on the other side of the planet

Department of Justice: regularly creates fake 'terror' plots to make itself look good, sells guns to drug dealers

Department of State: currently trying to get Congress to strike the ban on domestic dissemination of propaganda material


While a few of the names may not be precisely correct (Oceana is only part of the Pacific, for example) Orwell's vision is becoming frighteningly accurate.

[Deleted]

In theory yes, who knows what goes on in the corridors when its of the magnitude such as this.

In a spy novel you might be correct, but is the idea that CIA/US government put pressure on the swedish government who in turn somehow corrupts the judges? Tin foil alert