Julian Assange and Wikileaks

I remember hearing, at the time, that they were already in talks about it when Julian Assange started hiding in the embassy (which was just more evidence to me that it was all a charade built on trumped-up charges).

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

In talks about extraditing him for crimes that the Swedish-US treaty says a person can't be extradited for? That sounds rather strange.

If the US is able and willing to get an EU member to break their extradition treaty and hand over Assange, or extradite him or different trumped up charges, then why isn't it getting the UK to do it? Do people honestly belive that Sweeden is a bigger lapdog to the US then the UK is?

edited 9th Feb '16 8:31:33 AM by Silasw

Can't say I was really informed at the time, more like drinking conspiracy theories.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

No. People believe that every country who isn't a rogue/pariah state is a US lapdog. You know, Cold War thinking and all that.

There's the concern that if in transit, he'd get "swiped" by the CIA or so such similar agencies, who don't exactly follow treaties.

If the CIA black bagging is the risk then who on earth would he be safe on Euador? Also such an idea assumes that the UK isn't okay with the plan, as otherwise we'd had let the CIA black bag him a long time ago (they would need our permission to do so, due to the five eyes agreement).

Plus he'd be transferred strait to Swedish custody, the CIA do some crazy shit but I don't think even they'd actually break a man out of a European ally's jail so as to kidnap him.

If the CIA are the threat (despite them never making a move on him before) then shouldn't Assange be kept in jail for his own protection?

edited 9th Feb '16 9:41:35 AM by Silasw

Quito announced that they're seeking a third party to help negotiate between them and London regarding Assange to get him to leave the UK.

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

Hopefully to Swedish custody.

It would be good if he would get a trial in Sweden, and I've no doubt about the trial being far; but I do fear, as he does, that he might be delivered to the US once he arrives in Sweden, or captured in transit.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

The USA is not going to send the CIA into Sweden to arrest/kill someone the Swedes are going to lock up for rape anyway.

You think that the Swedish government is more likely to carry out an illegal rendition than the British one (who would have custody of Assange before he’s sent to Sweden and have had custody of him in the past), care to share your logic for that?

I know there’s a stereotype of Finns hating Sweeds, but this is ridiculous.

Also what said, the US wouldn’t bother normally and currently the US government is aligned with Wikileaks.

edited 10th Jan '18 3:09:58 PM by Silasw

I may be wrong, but Quito ATM is not considering the Swedish.

They're also considering a neutral negotiator.

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

CIA knows he's not worth the political blowback that would occur, no need to martyr the bastard anymore than he already is.

edited 10th Jan '18 4:39:10 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I actually don't even know why I just skipped from the embassy to a trial in Sweden. In all of my previous comments about this I've agreed with the consensus that the trip through the UK is the most dangerous part for him, where he's most likely to be arrested and renditioned to the US. I really don't know why I didn't think of that at all when I wrote my post.

Yes, of course, the UK is the biggest threat for him.

I do, however, also believe that Sweden might extradite him to the US. I don't think they currently have an extradition treaty, but it's not as if they couldn't make some kind of arrangement, anyway, especially if it's true that Sweden are getting closer to NATO.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Why would the Americans want him extradited so badly? If he goes to Sweden it's to go on trial for rape. Why martyr someone when you can let their own heinous actions destroy them?

And the current occupant of the White House has no reason to go after him, he's (well, mostly Wikileaks, probably on orders from the Kremlin) done little but help Trump and his ilk throughout Europe for a while.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

This part is developing, but Quito now is preparing Ecuadorian ID for him as part of plans to leave the embassy. Not sure if all media outlets are covering it aside from the Russians.

But it looks like that the Ecuadorian diplomats in the UK can't afford to keep him holed up there any longer. At one point, Assange was told to stop posting pro-Catalonian independence posts online. Also, the Metropolitan Police Service disbanded their surveillance op on him mostly due to the bill racking up to $19 million.

IIRC, the Swedish Police Authority got rid of the rape charges last Spring.

edited 10th Jan '18 5:26:18 PM by Ominae

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

I'm not happy that this thread treats him as guilty of the rape charge before there's been a trial. Is that a good way to treat criminal cases - decide that because you don't like the accused, or because the accused is famous, they have to be guilty? It's not as if there's a lot of public evidence against him or anything, and from what I read of the case back when Assange offered to participate in the trial if he could do it long-distance, it didn't look like a particularly strong case.

I'm definitely not suggesting that he's innocent. I wouldn't presume that he's guilty, though, before there's a trial or if sufficient evidence comes out to make the verdict fairly obvious.

As far as I know, there's no reason to assume that he'd be found guilty if he did get his trial in Sweden. He could very well be innocent of that crime. (I'm sure he's committed a bunch of crimes in his work with Wikileaks, and possibly with Russia and Trump's campaign, but none of that is related to the charge against him in Sweden.)

Of course, I could be wrong and maybe there's enough publicly available information about the case to suggest that Assange is almost certainly guilty, but I havent seen it and thus I don't agree with the people who discuss this case as if there's already been an investigation and trial that resulted in a verdict.

edited 10th Jan '18 6:09:05 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Presumption of innocence is granted you by the court, not by the general public. Women don't generally invent rape accusations, and as such they deserve to be believed until we have a serious reason not to. Assange's offer to participate "long distance" has always been a sham; why have the trial if he can't be imprisoned afterwards?

Frankly, I think it's telling that people who think Assange is guilty of the crime he's been accused of committing are being told they're being unfair, yet the same people saying that about us are inventing an American plot to assassinate Assange out of apparently thin air. Does innocent until proven guilty only apply to Assange?

x5 You're giving the current administration too much credit. I doubt they've actually thought about that.

edited 10th Jan '18 6:13:54 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.

Reminds me of his offer to turn himself in if Manning received clemency. When most of her sentence was commuted, he responded by Moving the Goalposts. Then again, I doubt anyone really took his offer seriously.

edited 10th Jan '18 6:18:43 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Assange is a bad actor with a track record of lying like a rug. Not sure why people want to treat him like a victim—let alone act like we shouldn't believe the women.

Everything I've ever read about him and even his own tweets have convinced me he's an egomaniac asshole who really hates the USA, hates the Clintons, and doesn't really respect women in general. If he ever really cared about transparency, those days are long gone. He's clearly just in it now because he likes the idea of thinking he's a big time influence on geopolitics.

Maybe he's not guilty. Maybe. But let's just say I would not be the least bit surprised if those accusations were true.

edited 10th Jan '18 6:34:19 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Assange's public track record of misogyny is long and ugly, and his defense has been to claim it's all a secret plot. Think I'll believe the women until I have a reason not to.

Presumably he would have made arrangements with the Swedish authorities for his safe transportation to Sweden. I'm sure the Swedish court would have held that as a condition before agreeing to more serious long-term interrogations than the ones they actually did carry out through the Venezuelan embassy.

I know that some people are suggesting this, but he and most of the people who agree with his decision to seek protection are saying that he might get extradited to the US, where he would be unlikely to face a fair trial (as is the case with very many of the inmates at Guantanamo and some of the black sites that have been revealed). I'd call that a fair reason to seek refuge.

Assassinating Assange would be stupid because it would just martyr him and make the perpetrators look tyrannical. Even then, there definitely are consiracy theories about this, especially after two of his lawyers died (but, to anyone looking at those cases with an open mind, those deaths were not assassinations or otherwise suspicious). Those conspiracy theories are silly.

The Swedish authorities have actually canceled the arrest warrant and stopped the investigation for all of the chargest except the most serious one. Currently, Assange's status is that Sweden won't seek to arrest or try him unless he travels to Sweden before the statute of limitations on the final charge expires in late 2020. (It's worth pointing out that the reason most of these investigations were dropped was that the statute of limitations had expired - so it's not about whether there was a strong case or not, nor can any judgment about his guilt or innocence be made based on this.)

Right now, the criminal charges that would have him arrested in the UK pertain to his escape to the Venezuelan embassy when he was under bail. If there was no fear of extradition to the US, he could submit himself to the UK authorities and pay the fines or do the time for breach of bail.

I broadly agree with this. Assange was in Sweden during the initial investigation into the allegations against him, and was told by the authorities there that he was free to leave. Then a new investigation was launched and this mess ensued. The fact that the investigation was concluded and then started again is not very suspicious to me; it's only a small question mark on the investigation. Either the women changed their story - which seems fairly common in these kind of cases, and does, of course. not necessarily indicate that they're lying - or, more likely, the authorities and/or lawyers involved in the case noticed that the women's accounts described a scenario that matches the criteria for a more serious crime than the one originally investigated.

I'll give his defense some plausibility for the fact that he has never asked to be excused from the trial in Sweden - his problem has always been with submitting to UK authorities, not Swedish ones. That indicates that he, at least, believes that he'd be found innocent. Of course, that does not mean that he is innocent.

I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually turned out that Assange was guilty of the crime with which he's charged in Sweden. I wouldn't be surprised if he was innocent, either. He's definitely a pretty sleazy guy, what with his fake offer to turn himself in in exchange for Manning's freedom and the fact that his site (so, presumably, he, too) worked with Russia to undermine democracy in the US and help the Trump campaign. I'm definitely not a fan of his, even though I do believe Wikileaks initially did some good work (but they probably weren't balanced about which countries' or specific governments' crimes they would cover).

EDIT: Prompted by some of the posts above, I did a quick search to find clues that Assange is a misogynist. Well, well. There's an absolutely ridiculous tweet by him where he equates Hillary Clinton and Marine Le Pen as two women who lost because they are women. Taken at face value, the tweet looks like it's actually not happy about this, but of course it's very, very problematic to a) try to explain these election results in such a simplistic way that reduces the female candidates' political positions and other aspects of them as candidates to just their gender; and b) to equate two candidates who are so strongly opposed to each other just because they happen to be women.

I also found some articles about a documentary that was made by a journalist who followed him closely for years, and apparently there's a lot of stuff there where Assange questions the accusations against them and seems to think about his public defense in terms of discrediting the accusers or trying to frame the accusations and investigation as some sort of feminist activism. That's deplorable.

So yeah, he does seem to be a misogynist and probably some other forms of bigot, as well. No wonder Trump says he "loves Wikileaks" while his Attorney General calls arresting Assange a "priority".

Having read this stuff, I'm more inclined to believe that Assange is guilty. I still wouldn't be very surprised if an investigation proved that he's not, but that would be a bit more surprising to me than that he is guilty.

I still wouldn't suggest that he definitely is guilty, though, before a trial is held. This case is a bit more complex, and more likely to have political motivations, than even the cases of Trump, Clinton, and Moore. There are also fewer accusers, although two is still plenty.

edited 11th Jan '18 2:45:04 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.