11 ms·

> Julian had twice been stripped naked and searched, eleven times been handcuffed, and five times been locked up in different holding cells. On top of this, all

> Julian had twice been stripped naked and searched, eleven times been handcuffed, and five times been locked up in different holding cells. On top of this, all of his court documents had been taken from him by the prison authorities, including privileged communications between his lawyers and himself, and he had been left with no ability to prepare to participate in today’s proceedings. Still barely any mention of this case in the mainstream American or UK press. Until recently Amnesty International refused to even recognize Assange as a political prisoner, and the only thing they had said about him was that he was "not a political prisoner". They've since changed their tune, but it sure took them long enough. A man is being tortured in plain sight in the UK and no one in the media cares to report on it.

tyingq 7y ago
It won't make the US press, because all of that is a pretty typical US jail experience, sadly.
- spinglespingle 7y ago
  the US has successfully become a 3rd world country. power in the hands of a few: check corruption at the highest possible level: check a gradually more authoritarian "leader": check a people who support such a leader: check military might used against political opponents: check enormous amounts of poverty cleverly ignored: check the list goes on. i suppose there is a time for every powerful nation to go into a deep decline that it will never recover from, and such decline usually starts when people ignore what's going on right in front of them. had russia done to assange what the us is doing now all of them EU, US and other hypocrites would be jumping like their arse was burned: but human rights. but torture. but freedom of the press. but this and that. well, enjoy your dystopia.
  - anonsivalley652 7y ago
    Yep. This is because of the vicious circle of money capturing power through greater wealth, greater corruption, and greater power. As Chris Hedges calls it: inverted totalitarianism. Autocratic plutocracy by force by other means. It's like how many Americans are chained to their jobs by healthcare and other benefits, but let's not call it slavery or indentured servitude (student loans) because anarcho-capitalism with "no government, no regulations and more greed will solve everything! It will just work itself out magically!"
  - smoyer 7y ago
    I think we're more like a first-world banana-republic.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    As if any of this is recent. People keep voting for the same crooks, generation after generation. Another election cycle, nobody is talking about the wars, just what benefits the government should pay for.
    - glennvtx 7y ago
      Nailed it. Just vote harder, amirite? This has come so far from the individual freedom that the bill of rights was envisioned to protect. Now the question is "what is right thing to do for me" rather than "what is the right thing to do." The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. - anon
      - linuxftw 7y ago
        It's crazy. I always speak out about the wars, that's the single most important issue of our day. The government is literally killing people overseas, spending literal trillions of dollars. You would think it's something we can all agree on, but people treat you like a literal crackpot.
        kyleee 7y ago
        Keep spouting off, it's better than being silent about it all
  - westmeal 7y ago
    I mean, and this is just my opinion, this decline has been happening for a loooong time. Reagan just made things even worse by the war on drugs. Consolidation is just making things worse. I mean seriously look at the effective tax rate in the US for corporations over time [0]. The US is just making legislation to benefit corporations instead of individuals. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/US_Effective_Corporate_Tax_Rate_1947-2011_v2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/US_Effec...
  - partomniscient 7y ago
    No, it just has the really high levels of corruption like a 3rd world country. They still have rather large amounts of both weapons and economic leverage.
  - dzonga 7y ago
    the US has been a rich 3rd world country, since Reagan.
- use-net 7y ago
  For one, it is "Der Freitag" (The Friday), not "Die Freitag" newspaper. But does it matter in this Stalinist show trial knock-off?
- belorn 7y ago
  From time to times there are detailed articles by writers that happen to have a brush with the US jail and legal system. I can't recall any where they could not shake hand with their lawyer and have their court documents, including privileged communications from their lawyer taken. The typical US jail experience is bad, but I don't think the evidence say it is that bad.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    I've personally seen all of that and worse. Anecdotal, of course. It is worth noting that the experience varies wildly in the US. Every city, county, federal, etc, jail has its own set of written and unwritten rules.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Is it typical for the US to jail Australian journalists or publishers in another country in a supermax prison in solitary confinement for almost a year on trumped-up charges to seek extradition for doing their job? You're conflating different entirely situations. The US MSM won't cover it because the powers that be won't let them and the MSM doesn't want to outrage people how publishing and reporting facts has been perverted into a "crime" because it doesn't suit those in power. If you're Jesse Ventura, Cenk Uygur or Phil Donahue, that's off the top of my head who just MSNBC has tried to silence. Chris Hedges - NY Times is another. Please get a clue rather than oversimplifying or rationalizing your lack of big-picture understanding and desensitized lack of empathy.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    "You're conflating different entirely situations." Not really. I'm saying that stories about poor jail conditions, excessive holding cell time, no speedy trial, violations of attorney-client privilege, etc, won't get much air time in the US. It's not newsworthy because it's common. We have the highest per capita incarceration rate of any country, deplorable jail conditions, and nobody cares. It's not whether I'm conflating. The US public will conflate and think, "yeah, bad jail conditions, poor rights protections, lack of due process, excessive confinement, already knew about that. yawn." Editors are aware, so this won't be big featured news here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
101404 7y ago
An interesting learning was, how to most effectively frame a person if you want them to lose public support. They first did the "rapist" framing. Making up a case that never existed and repeating it in the media all the time. Surprisingly, that didn't work as effectivity as expected. So they switched the framing from "rapist" to "right wing". That seems to have achieved the intended outcome with many previous supporters.
- mcv 7y ago
  These are not things that "they" did, though. They're things that "he" did.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    Well, no. Assange did not accuse himself of rape and then push out a media narrative about it over successive months. "They" (in this case, Swedish and other legal authorities and various news agencies did). And though the question of his level of guilt in those cases remains somewhat ambiguous as far as I know, the now dropped rape cases have the whiff of political smear to them. Regardless of Assange's merits or failures as an activist or human being, the current conditions he's being subjected to absolutely do indicate a man being made an example of for politically motivated reasons and in violation of basic legal guarantees. That is something that's far more dangerous than anything he himself is likely to be convicted of.
    - mcv 7y ago
      The way the rape case was initially dropped and then picked up again certainly seemed weird, and there may have been political pressure behind it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, though. The stories of the women involved seemed very credible, and unlikely to have been made up, considering they were supporters of him. But I totally agree that this treatment in this extradition case sounds terrible, and the judge seems strongly biased against him. Does not sound like a fair trial. In any case, Assange is a controversial figure. He's done things I wholeheartedly support, and things I strongly oppose. I support his early fight against censorship and the release of the collateral murder video. I disagree with releasing all the material concerning sensitive operations unchecked and unedited. I am concerned by the rape stories, strongly oppose his self-centered grandstanding, and my working theory is that he went mad, possibly with power, due to the massive size of the Manning leaks. I supported the rape investigation, but oppose his extradition to the US, because I doubt he's ever going to get a fair trial there. And now it looks like even the extradition trial from the UK is not going to be fair. He's a complex figure with good and bad sides. His are a bit more extreme than most. I find it hard to form a simple opinion about him, because nothing about this is simple. But it seems obvious to me that both blind support and total condemnation are wrong positions to take in this. I agree he's being made an example of for political reasons, and that's very wrong, but that doesn't automatically mean he's entirely innocent either.
microcolonel 7y ago
That trial may not be unlawful in the U.K. the way it would be in the U.S.
mnem 7y ago
A quick search using Google news in the UK shows that all the main broadsheets and many of the tabloids have Assange related stories over the past several days at least. I don’t think it’s fair to characterise the media as disinterested.
- have_faith 7y ago
  None of the homepages I looked at today (Guardian, BBC) has a single mention of Assange. Yes they all had token articles buried somewhere though if you search.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    There is only so much space front pages have and much more impacting news events transpiring currently. The aspect as you say that even the Guardian has no mention of this upon its front page, should be testament to that, more so as they would be the first ones in many eyes to jump all over this if it was felt by them to be front page material over other content. However - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/26/julian-assange-lawyers-argue-us-charges-are-purely-political https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/26/julian-assange... does not appear to be a token article in any way, shape or form. Though if one is to label anything not upon the front page as a token article, then I concede that point from that perspective, albeit I disagree with that assertion given the substance and depth of the article in this instance.
    - have_faith 7y ago
      Fair point regarding it perhaps not being a token article. What I was trying to express is the lack of attention the trial is receiving, no one I know has mentioned it because the media has decided not to give it any obvious coverage, obvious in the sense that people realise it is something that is currently happening. The Guardian has chosen many mundane subjects to grace it's homepage that I think most readers would agree are much lower on the importance scale. Someone at the organisations has obviously decided "yes, we need to cover it, but just do the minimum we have to to appear to not be ignoring it"
saiya-jin 7y ago
> Until recently Amnesty International refused to even recognize Assange as a political prisoner, and the only thing they had said about him was that he was "not a political prisoner". That... is saddening. I donate cca 120$ to AI every 6 months believing they would right some wrongs out there where it matters, but I'll strongly consider dropping this. Maybe they don't have balls to go directly against US government, but then we are talking about huge amount of wrongs that will never be challenged. As a non-US person, like 95% of the world, I couldn't care less if his actions of revealing massive US war atrocities and breaches of international laws potentially endanger some US spies.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
officialchicken 7y ago
So you're upset that he's NOT being tried in the press, and instead under judicial review in a court of law? I don't see any problem here.
raxxorrax 7y ago
It really is a testament to how shitty main stream outlets actually are. To be fair, there are some exceptions, but not that many as it seems. If they don't feel the need to defend press freedom, it is probably not worth reading their detached antics.
mft_ 7y ago
Tortured? I mean, some of what you describe is unpalatable, unpleasant, and maybe (IANAL) contrary to expected standards of the treatment of prisoners... but tortured?
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Excuse me, solitary confinement in a supermax prison for almost a year is torture, cruel, and unjust for a simple, nonviolent skipping bail charge. This sort of thing should've been 2 months at a minimum security prison in genpop at the most. This is purely political persecution by British toadies of American hegemony. If you can't see any of this, then you are blind.
  - mft_ 7y ago
    Thanks for your informative (and measured) response. To clarify, I'm no expert on the Assange case, and was responding to the previous commenter, whose account didn't mention solitary confinement in a supermax prison for almost a year. If that is indeed the case, I'd agree it sounds pretty awful.
    - k1m 7y ago
      Here's what Nils Melzer the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture had to say: > Question: At what point does imprisonment become torture? > Nils Melzer: Julian Assange has been intentionally psychologically tortured by Sweden, Britain, Ecuador and the U.S. First through the highly arbitrary handling of proceedings against him. The way Sweden pursued the case, with active assistance from Britain, was aimed at putting him under pressure and trapping him in the embassy. Sweden was never interested in finding the truth and helping these women, but in pushing Assange into a corner. It has been an abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself. On top of that come the surveillance measures, the insults, the indignities and the attacks by politicians from these countries, up to and including death threats. This constant abuse of state power has triggered serious stress and anxiety in Assange and has resulted in measurable cognitive and neurological harm. I visited Assange in his cell in London in May 2019 together with two experienced, widely respected doctors who are specialized in the forensic and psychological examination of torture victims. The diagnosis arrived at by the two doctors was clear: Julian Assange displays the typical symptoms of psychological torture. If he doesn’t receive protection soon, a rapid deterioration of his health is likely, and death could be one outcome. Source: https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
mc32 7y ago
I guess A.I. can say Assange wasn’t a prisoner until he left the embassy, then he was detained and imprisoned. Never the less, A.I. is probably influenced by politics as much as any other organization. Like the ACLU. Before the 2000s they were more about principles by and large and now it’s become principles+politics.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  It’s about funding for amnesty int. On a side note, it can be confusing when you refer to them as AI
leftyted 7y ago
If you read this post and think it's a bizarre exaggeration, consider that the UN declared that Assange's decision to confine himself in the Ecuadorian embassy was "arbitrary detention". Similiarly, Ecuador's decision to temporarily deprive Assange of internet access was compared to solitary confinement, supposedly tantamount to torture. Clearly there's a certain amount of hysteria surrounding this case. Assange is not a political prisoner. The US is going after him for allegedly being involved in the exfiltration of state secrets, not for opposing or criticizing the US. Also, being strip-searched, handcuffed, and confined to a cell is not torture. None of that is to say that Assange is guilty or that American legal reasoning holds up.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  Assange did not "decide to confine himself" anywhere. That's like saying that if someone has threatened to beat you up if you leave your house and is waiting outside all the time, then you've "decided to confine yourself to your home". Anyway, this has all been deliberated upon by international bodies - the UN working group on arbitrary detention has come to the conclusion that Assange was being _detained_ by the UK in the embassy, unfairly. Now things have changed, with the UK apprehending him. He _is_ a 'political prisoner'. The definition is: "Someone imprisoned because they have opposed or criticized the government responsible for their imprisonment." Indeed, the US is (mostly) responsible for Assange's imprisonment, and the imprisonment is because of his oppositionary and critical actions towards the US. The fact that Assange is held "by proxy" does not change his status. (Note that being a political prisoner does not mean you did not do what you're charged with. You may have and you may have not. Also, it doesn't mean you're a good or bad person.)
  - leftyted 7y ago
    The only way you, or the UN, can justify these perspectives is if you grant 0 probability that Assange was involved in the theft of state secrets or if you think he was involved, but it was okay because "the US is evil". Fine. But you can't expect the US government and its allies to accept that theory...
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> Still barely any mention of this case in the mainstream American or UK press. Remember when Assange was a hero to these people when he exposed bush era war crimes? Isn't it funny how propaganda works. When we think of propaganda, we think of what is being said. But many times propaganda is what is not said. What is covered is just as part of propaganda as what is ignored. Another interesting aspect is when it comes to superificial issues, the mainstream press can be adversarial. But when it comes to certain issues, they all sing the same tune or are equally quiet. Why the hysterical focus on the protests in hong kong and not the ones in bolivia? Why the hysterical focus on democracy in hong kong but not bolivia or venezuela? Why the neverending focus on the muslim ughyurs and hardly a peep about the suffering of the muslim yemenis or palestinians? Why does foxnews/etc and the nytimes/msnbc/cnn appear to be so antagonistic while moving lockstep when it comes these stories? The nytimes/msnbc/cnn claim they care about democracy, but they hardly had anything negative to say about trump's invitation of his hand selected and unelected "president" of venezuela to the state of the union.

tyingq 7y ago

It won't make the US press, because all of that is a pretty typical US jail experience, sadly.

spinglespingle 7y ago
the US has successfully become a 3rd world country. power in the hands of a few: check corruption at the highest possible level: check a gradually more authoritarian "leader": check a people who support such a leader: check military might used against political opponents: check enormous amounts of poverty cleverly ignored: check the list goes on. i suppose there is a time for every powerful nation to go into a deep decline that it will never recover from, and such decline usually starts when people ignore what's going on right in front of them. had russia done to assange what the us is doing now all of them EU, US and other hypocrites would be jumping like their arse was burned: but human rights. but torture. but freedom of the press. but this and that. well, enjoy your dystopia.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Yep. This is because of the vicious circle of money capturing power through greater wealth, greater corruption, and greater power. As Chris Hedges calls it: inverted totalitarianism. Autocratic plutocracy by force by other means. It's like how many Americans are chained to their jobs by healthcare and other benefits, but let's not call it slavery or indentured servitude (student loans) because anarcho-capitalism with "no government, no regulations and more greed will solve everything! It will just work itself out magically!"
- smoyer 7y ago
  I think we're more like a first-world banana-republic.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  As if any of this is recent. People keep voting for the same crooks, generation after generation. Another election cycle, nobody is talking about the wars, just what benefits the government should pay for.
  - glennvtx 7y ago
    Nailed it. Just vote harder, amirite? This has come so far from the individual freedom that the bill of rights was envisioned to protect. Now the question is "what is right thing to do for me" rather than "what is the right thing to do." The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. - anon
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      It's crazy. I always speak out about the wars, that's the single most important issue of our day. The government is literally killing people overseas, spending literal trillions of dollars. You would think it's something we can all agree on, but people treat you like a literal crackpot.
      - kyleee 7y ago
        Keep spouting off, it's better than being silent about it all
- westmeal 7y ago
  I mean, and this is just my opinion, this decline has been happening for a loooong time. Reagan just made things even worse by the war on drugs. Consolidation is just making things worse. I mean seriously look at the effective tax rate in the US for corporations over time [0]. The US is just making legislation to benefit corporations instead of individuals. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/US_Effective_Corporate_Tax_Rate_1947-2011_v2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/US_Effec...
- partomniscient 7y ago
  No, it just has the really high levels of corruption like a 3rd world country. They still have rather large amounts of both weapons and economic leverage.
- dzonga 7y ago
  the US has been a rich 3rd world country, since Reagan.
use-net 7y ago
For one, it is "Der Freitag" (The Friday), not "Die Freitag" newspaper. But does it matter in this Stalinist show trial knock-off?
belorn 7y ago
From time to times there are detailed articles by writers that happen to have a brush with the US jail and legal system. I can't recall any where they could not shake hand with their lawyer and have their court documents, including privileged communications from their lawyer taken. The typical US jail experience is bad, but I don't think the evidence say it is that bad.
- tyingq 7y ago
  I've personally seen all of that and worse. Anecdotal, of course. It is worth noting that the experience varies wildly in the US. Every city, county, federal, etc, jail has its own set of written and unwritten rules.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Is it typical for the US to jail Australian journalists or publishers in another country in a supermax prison in solitary confinement for almost a year on trumped-up charges to seek extradition for doing their job? You're conflating different entirely situations. The US MSM won't cover it because the powers that be won't let them and the MSM doesn't want to outrage people how publishing and reporting facts has been perverted into a "crime" because it doesn't suit those in power. If you're Jesse Ventura, Cenk Uygur or Phil Donahue, that's off the top of my head who just MSNBC has tried to silence. Chris Hedges - NY Times is another. Please get a clue rather than oversimplifying or rationalizing your lack of big-picture understanding and desensitized lack of empathy.
- tyingq 7y ago
  "You're conflating different entirely situations." Not really. I'm saying that stories about poor jail conditions, excessive holding cell time, no speedy trial, violations of attorney-client privilege, etc, won't get much air time in the US. It's not newsworthy because it's common. We have the highest per capita incarceration rate of any country, deplorable jail conditions, and nobody cares. It's not whether I'm conflating. The US public will conflate and think, "yeah, bad jail conditions, poor rights protections, lack of due process, excessive confinement, already knew about that. yawn." Editors are aware, so this won't be big featured news here.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

101404 7y ago

An interesting learning was, how to most effectively frame a person if you want them to lose public support. They first did the "rapist" framing. Making up a case that never existed and repeating it in the media all the time. Surprisingly, that didn't work as effectivity as expected. So they switched the framing from "rapist" to "right wing". That seems to have achieved the intended outcome with many previous supporters.

mcv 7y ago
These are not things that "they" did, though. They're things that "he" did.
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  Well, no. Assange did not accuse himself of rape and then push out a media narrative about it over successive months. "They" (in this case, Swedish and other legal authorities and various news agencies did). And though the question of his level of guilt in those cases remains somewhat ambiguous as far as I know, the now dropped rape cases have the whiff of political smear to them. Regardless of Assange's merits or failures as an activist or human being, the current conditions he's being subjected to absolutely do indicate a man being made an example of for politically motivated reasons and in violation of basic legal guarantees. That is something that's far more dangerous than anything he himself is likely to be convicted of.
  - mcv 7y ago
    The way the rape case was initially dropped and then picked up again certainly seemed weird, and there may have been political pressure behind it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, though. The stories of the women involved seemed very credible, and unlikely to have been made up, considering they were supporters of him. But I totally agree that this treatment in this extradition case sounds terrible, and the judge seems strongly biased against him. Does not sound like a fair trial. In any case, Assange is a controversial figure. He's done things I wholeheartedly support, and things I strongly oppose. I support his early fight against censorship and the release of the collateral murder video. I disagree with releasing all the material concerning sensitive operations unchecked and unedited. I am concerned by the rape stories, strongly oppose his self-centered grandstanding, and my working theory is that he went mad, possibly with power, due to the massive size of the Manning leaks. I supported the rape investigation, but oppose his extradition to the US, because I doubt he's ever going to get a fair trial there. And now it looks like even the extradition trial from the UK is not going to be fair. He's a complex figure with good and bad sides. His are a bit more extreme than most. I find it hard to form a simple opinion about him, because nothing about this is simple. But it seems obvious to me that both blind support and total condemnation are wrong positions to take in this. I agree he's being made an example of for political reasons, and that's very wrong, but that doesn't automatically mean he's entirely innocent either.

microcolonel 7y ago

That trial may not be unlawful in the U.K. the way it would be in the U.S.

mnem 7y ago

A quick search using Google news in the UK shows that all the main broadsheets and many of the tabloids have Assange related stories over the past several days at least. I don’t think it’s fair to characterise the media as disinterested.

have_faith 7y ago
None of the homepages I looked at today (Guardian, BBC) has a single mention of Assange. Yes they all had token articles buried somewhere though if you search.
- Zenst 7y ago
  There is only so much space front pages have and much more impacting news events transpiring currently. The aspect as you say that even the Guardian has no mention of this upon its front page, should be testament to that, more so as they would be the first ones in many eyes to jump all over this if it was felt by them to be front page material over other content. However - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/26/julian-assange-lawyers-argue-us-charges-are-purely-political https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/26/julian-assange... does not appear to be a token article in any way, shape or form. Though if one is to label anything not upon the front page as a token article, then I concede that point from that perspective, albeit I disagree with that assertion given the substance and depth of the article in this instance.
  - have_faith 7y ago
    Fair point regarding it perhaps not being a token article. What I was trying to express is the lack of attention the trial is receiving, no one I know has mentioned it because the media has decided not to give it any obvious coverage, obvious in the sense that people realise it is something that is currently happening. The Guardian has chosen many mundane subjects to grace it's homepage that I think most readers would agree are much lower on the importance scale. Someone at the organisations has obviously decided "yes, we need to cover it, but just do the minimum we have to to appear to not be ignoring it"

saiya-jin 7y ago

> Until recently Amnesty International refused to even recognize Assange as a political prisoner, and the only thing they had said about him was that he was "not a political prisoner". That... is saddening. I donate cca 120$ to AI every 6 months believing they would right some wrongs out there where it matters, but I'll strongly consider dropping this. Maybe they don't have balls to go directly against US government, but then we are talking about huge amount of wrongs that will never be challenged. As a non-US person, like 95% of the world, I couldn't care less if his actions of revealing massive US war atrocities and breaches of international laws potentially endanger some US spies.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

officialchicken 7y ago

So you're upset that he's NOT being tried in the press, and instead under judicial review in a court of law? I don't see any problem here.

raxxorrax 7y ago

It really is a testament to how shitty main stream outlets actually are. To be fair, there are some exceptions, but not that many as it seems. If they don't feel the need to defend press freedom, it is probably not worth reading their detached antics.

mft_ 7y ago

Tortured? I mean, some of what you describe is unpalatable, unpleasant, and maybe (IANAL) contrary to expected standards of the treatment of prisoners... but tortured?

anonsivalley652 7y ago
Excuse me, solitary confinement in a supermax prison for almost a year is torture, cruel, and unjust for a simple, nonviolent skipping bail charge. This sort of thing should've been 2 months at a minimum security prison in genpop at the most. This is purely political persecution by British toadies of American hegemony. If you can't see any of this, then you are blind.
- mft_ 7y ago
  Thanks for your informative (and measured) response. To clarify, I'm no expert on the Assange case, and was responding to the previous commenter, whose account didn't mention solitary confinement in a supermax prison for almost a year. If that is indeed the case, I'd agree it sounds pretty awful.
  - k1m 7y ago
    Here's what Nils Melzer the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture had to say: > Question: At what point does imprisonment become torture? > Nils Melzer: Julian Assange has been intentionally psychologically tortured by Sweden, Britain, Ecuador and the U.S. First through the highly arbitrary handling of proceedings against him. The way Sweden pursued the case, with active assistance from Britain, was aimed at putting him under pressure and trapping him in the embassy. Sweden was never interested in finding the truth and helping these women, but in pushing Assange into a corner. It has been an abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself. On top of that come the surveillance measures, the insults, the indignities and the attacks by politicians from these countries, up to and including death threats. This constant abuse of state power has triggered serious stress and anxiety in Assange and has resulted in measurable cognitive and neurological harm. I visited Assange in his cell in London in May 2019 together with two experienced, widely respected doctors who are specialized in the forensic and psychological examination of torture victims. The diagnosis arrived at by the two doctors was clear: Julian Assange displays the typical symptoms of psychological torture. If he doesn’t receive protection soon, a rapid deterioration of his health is likely, and death could be one outcome. Source: https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...

mc32 7y ago

I guess A.I. can say Assange wasn’t a prisoner until he left the embassy, then he was detained and imprisoned. Never the less, A.I. is probably influenced by politics as much as any other organization. Like the ACLU. Before the 2000s they were more about principles by and large and now it’s become principles+politics.

chaostheory 7y ago
It’s about funding for amnesty int. On a side note, it can be confusing when you refer to them as AI

leftyted 7y ago

If you read this post and think it's a bizarre exaggeration, consider that the UN declared that Assange's decision to confine himself in the Ecuadorian embassy was "arbitrary detention". Similiarly, Ecuador's decision to temporarily deprive Assange of internet access was compared to solitary confinement, supposedly tantamount to torture. Clearly there's a certain amount of hysteria surrounding this case. Assange is not a political prisoner. The US is going after him for allegedly being involved in the exfiltration of state secrets, not for opposing or criticizing the US. Also, being strip-searched, handcuffed, and confined to a cell is not torture. None of that is to say that Assange is guilty or that American legal reasoning holds up.

einpoklum 7y ago
Assange did not "decide to confine himself" anywhere. That's like saying that if someone has threatened to beat you up if you leave your house and is waiting outside all the time, then you've "decided to confine yourself to your home". Anyway, this has all been deliberated upon by international bodies - the UN working group on arbitrary detention has come to the conclusion that Assange was being _detained_ by the UK in the embassy, unfairly. Now things have changed, with the UK apprehending him. He _is_ a 'political prisoner'. The definition is: "Someone imprisoned because they have opposed or criticized the government responsible for their imprisonment." Indeed, the US is (mostly) responsible for Assange's imprisonment, and the imprisonment is because of his oppositionary and critical actions towards the US. The fact that Assange is held "by proxy" does not change his status. (Note that being a political prisoner does not mean you did not do what you're charged with. You may have and you may have not. Also, it doesn't mean you're a good or bad person.)
- leftyted 7y ago
  The only way you, or the UN, can justify these perspectives is if you grant 0 probability that Assange was involved in the theft of state secrets or if you think he was involved, but it was okay because "the US is evil". Fine. But you can't expect the US government and its allies to accept that theory...

dntbnmpls 7y ago

> Still barely any mention of this case in the mainstream American or UK press. Remember when Assange was a hero to these people when he exposed bush era war crimes? Isn't it funny how propaganda works. When we think of propaganda, we think of what is being said. But many times propaganda is what is not said. What is covered is just as part of propaganda as what is ignored. Another interesting aspect is when it comes to superificial issues, the mainstream press can be adversarial. But when it comes to certain issues, they all sing the same tune or are equally quiet. Why the hysterical focus on the protests in hong kong and not the ones in bolivia? Why the hysterical focus on democracy in hong kong but not bolivia or venezuela? Why the neverending focus on the muslim ughyurs and hardly a peep about the suffering of the muslim yemenis or palestinians? Why does foxnews/etc and the nytimes/msnbc/cnn appear to be so antagonistic while moving lockstep when it comes these stories? The nytimes/msnbc/cnn claim they care about democracy, but they hardly had anything negative to say about trump's invitation of his hand selected and unelected "president" of venezuela to the state of the union.