Assange expelled from embassy and arrested for both Bail Act offence and US extradition request

Cristalle

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If he had gone to Sweden and faced the charges there he'd probably not be going to the US at all because it's harder to extradite from Sweden.

He's a complete shitbag but i'm not exactly celebrating yet since I can't tell what will come of this. Lots of free speech journalism whistleblower stuff going around about him when that's complete garbage- he selectively released and editorialized information on behalf of one country against another. He's a spy.
I agree that he's a shitbag but I don't necessarily agree that he's a spy. I want evidence of that before declaring him as such. People in the media have their biases, and they're allowed to. Hell, they published like 16 negative articles on Bernie Sanders in one day, across various publications. That happens all the time. That is part of our "journalistic" climate.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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Is that the one who used to work for the CIA ?
I wasn't aware that anyone involved in the case had worked for the CIA, though I think one of the complainants had worked for a Cuban human rights organisation that had, at some point, had some connection (funding maybe) with the CIA.

Nor do I really see what that has to do with anything. Assange didn't raise the issue in any of the multiple extradition hearings, so he clearly didn't think it relevant. If he's changed his mind, then doubtless he'll raise it with the Swedish court as part of his defence.
 

Arkady Arkright

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I wasn't aware that anyone involved in the case had worked for the CIA, though I think one of the complainants had worked for a Cuban human rights organisation that had, at some point, had some connection (funding maybe) with the CIA.
Nor do I really see what that has to do with anything. Assange didn't raise the issue in any of the multiple extradition hearings, so he clearly didn't think it relevant. If he's changed his mind, then doubtless he'll raise it with the Swedish court as part of his defence.
This has led to widespread allegations that the woman is a CIA agent, planted as a honeytrap to bring down Assange. One blogger notes: "[Assange] just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America's foreign policy.
 

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Maybe not a spy, but he's not a journalist. Wikileaks isn't a community organized gathering of secret information given out for the good of everyone because information should be free. Wikileaks is Assange's personal weapon to attack people that he doesn't like or agree with.

It's long, but this article from the guy who didn't become his ghost writer is an interesting read.

 

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I was thinking about this earlier today. When you look at Assange and what he's done and then take a step back and look at cascading consequences, it is horrifying.

Think about it. Without him, we likely wouldn't have a Trump presidency, which in turn wouldn't have boosted nationalism around the world. Without Assange, the US would likely be battling climate change instead of fighting as its champion. Without Assange, the world would likely be hosting serious international debates about how to humanely and intelligently deal with the massive refugee crisis that is just barely starting now and will turn into a flood as areas of the world become inhabitable due to the climate change the US government pretends doesn't exist. If not for Assange and his campaign to help Trump win, the future of the US democracy wouldn't be a fragile question in which much of the world is held hostage. He didn't do any of those things by himself. But, if not for Assange, they likely wouldn't have happened and it is very arguable that Trump would not have been elected.

Wikileaks in 2016 was bad enough in that it served as a tool of one government against another. But, what is to me the key of what it did is the rapid expansion and legitimization of conspiracy theory outlets and the boom of hate and misinformation that they have spouted ever since. No, he didn't do any of it all by himself, but I don't see this all happening if not for Wikileaks tilting the scales in 2016.

Of course, he won't be punished for all that and obviously there's no law anywhere that would cover it. There isn't any way to prove it except for the publication of the emails. But, it doesn't change the cause and effect and I believe that if society survives climate change he will someday be listed as a major catalyst in the disaster we are living through now.
 

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I was thinking about this earlier today. When you look at Assange and what he's done and then take a step back and look at cascading consequences, it is horrifying.
I don't know how much of that is true, but it does get me rattling inside thinking about it.
 

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So you'd have been better off never hearing of Snowden, or how much our governments are spying on us ?
We'd have been way better off if they wouldn't have released the DNC emails, which became a bunch of everything over nothing. They, and he, were working for one purpose only, and there was nothing noble in that. There is nothing noble about Julian Assange. (Unless you consider 'working' in service of Vladimir Putin as noble) He didn't even have the human dignity to walk upright out of that embassy where the coward has hidden like a dementia-ridden exiled King for almost 7 years. Instead, he made it a dramatic spectacle, just to inflame people.

I'm not sure how much you think his early actions tip the scale to his advantage, but in my opinion, his later actions far outweigh them. I blame a lot of Trump's damage on actions directly attributed back to Julian Assange. Read Wikileaks emails between them and Donald Trump, Jr., then try to make me believe his purpose is noble. He's an egomaniac with bad hygiene and fondness for dramatics who lost his way a long time ago. Nothing about that makes him a hero.
 

danielravennest

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Has anyone else considered the possibility that Assange might give up people in Trump's circle in return for a reduced sentence? He seems craven enough.
 
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We'd have been way better off if they wouldn't have released the DNC emails, which became a bunch of everything over nothing. They, and he, were working for one purpose only, and there was nothing noble in that. There is nothing noble about Julian Assange. (Unless you consider 'working' in service of Vladimir Putin as noble)
I feel inclined to think that wikileaks started out as a noble cause, but at some point Putin got his claws in it. There might be a very interesting story behind this if he is brought to the USA and spills his guts. This isn't to say I view him as a tragic hero. I suspect he was always more about being a showboat than doing good.
 

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Has anyone else considered the possibility that Assange might give up people in Trump's circle in return for a reduced sentence? He seems craven enough.
Yes, that is what I was hoping for, but look at the current DOJ. If anything, they will want to bury him at Guantanamo Bay so deeply that he'll never see the light of day just to make sure that doesn't happen.
 

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Here's the thing, no matter what else he may or may not have done that was noble or not - he's been avoiding rape charges in Sweden. Maybe Wikileaks was a Russian long game [because, like, they aren't known for them, duh], and maybe it wasn't. Maybe he started off with noble intentions, and maybe he didn't. Maybe Wikileaks did some good, maybe it didn't. But I really, really getting tired of people treating a potential rapist as if a> it didn't matter if he did, they should have felt honoured' to z> its all just a setup and the accuser is a cia plant.

That shit just shows that our society is in far worse shape than I thought.
 

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Here's the thing, no matter what else he may or may not have done that was noble or not - he's been avoiding rape charges in Sweden. Maybe Wikileaks was a Russian long game [because, like, they aren't known for them, duh], and maybe it wasn't. Maybe he started off with noble intentions, and maybe he didn't. Maybe Wikileaks did some good, maybe it didn't. But I really, really getting tired of people treating a potential rapist as if a> it didn't matter if he did, they should have felt honoured' to z> its all just a setup and the accuser is a cia plant.

That shit just shows that our society is in far worse shape than I thought.

Right now, if Assange finds himself in Swedish jail he should be grateful he didn't get a worse fate.
 
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I feel inclined to think that wikileaks started out as a noble cause, but at some point Putin got his claws in it. There might be a very interesting story behind this if he is brought to the USA and spills his guts. This isn't to say I view him as a tragic hero. I suspect he was always more about being a showboat than doing good.
I don't think it's so much that Putin got his claws into it but rather it started out as a vaguely left-wing, anti US endeavour. The concept of a whistle-blower repository is good, this implementation wasn't.
 

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Hillary Clinton responds to Julian Assange's arrest: 'He has to answer for what he has done'
Wikileaks played a damaging role in Clinton's failed presidential run in 2016, releasing an archive of over 30,000 emails sent from Clinton's private email server while she was US Secretary of State, as well as internal communications between the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Speaking at an event in New York on Thursday, Clinton said Assange should "answer for what he has done."

"The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged," she said of Assange.
 

Innula Zenovka

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While we'll have to wait to see what the full extradition request looks like, this analysis of the indictment by a leading British human rights lawyer suggests that the alleged criminality is pretty lightweight:



Certainly, as I understand it from what the various legal commentators are saying, he's got a much better chance of resisting this extradition request than he ever had of resisting the Swedish one, so I think he's not going anywhere for the next year or so, at least (assuming Sweden doesn't reactivate the rape case, which is under consideration).

Point of information -- I've seen speculation that the US may have additional charges waiting for him in on arrival in the USA.

That won't work, I don't think -- section 18 of the US-UK extradition treaty rules that out, at least not without the consent of the British government, which would be subject to judicial review in the UK, so it really would be pretty difficult.