4 ms·

The surreal aspect of this is the UK prosecution's assertions that the US prosecution is not politically motivated. All you have to do is look at the speech tha

The surreal aspect of this is the UK prosecution's assertions that the US prosecution is not politically motivated. All you have to do is look at the speech that CIA Director (now Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo made about Wikileaks and Assange in April 2017.[1] These passages give a taste of his remarks: > It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. > No, I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history. > We know this because Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators today. > That Assange is the darling of terrorists is nothing short of reprehensible. > No, Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong. > Assange is a narcissist who has created nothing of value. He relies on the dirty work of others to make himself famous. He is a fraud—a coward hiding behind a screen. > First, it is high time we called out those who grant a platform to these leakers and so-called transparency activists. We know the danger that Assange and his not-so-merry band of brothers pose to democracies around the world. Ignorance or misplaced idealism is no longer an acceptable excuse for lionizing these demons. > Third, we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now. But if you listen to the UK prosecutor, Assange is just being prosecuted because some low-level prosecutor in the US decided, on their own initiative, to build a case against him. The fact that high-level officials in the US government have been openly calling for an example to be made of Assange is supposed to be irrelevant. The UK should have dismissed this extradition request out-of-hand when it was first made, given the obvious political motivations behind it. The US-UK extradition treaty makes it very clear that extradition is not allowed in such cases. 1. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2017-speeches-testimony/pompeo-delivers-remarks-at-csis.html https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2017...

salawat 6y ago
This is the problem of interpretivelaw in the hands of a politically ductile interpreter. This is the same type of abuse around structure on political extradition that the United States Second Amendment (whether you agree with it philosophically or not) gets treated with. The plain, unambiguous English contextually tortured to confer that which it in no way does. The Interstate Commerce clause and regulatory mandate is perhaps a less controversial example where jurisprudence has recognized that the Federal Government can assert authority in ways completely counter to a straightforward reading of the law. Words, statutes, and legal language are meaningless theater if all we do is lampshade or cast them aside when they are inconvenient or the first time they are found to be politically inconvenient or unpopular. I weep for Justice. She's out in a dark alley somewhere in a dumpster while political expedience seems to win in the limelight lately.
himinlomax 6y ago
> Assange is a narcissist who has created nothing of value Nixon probably said the same thing of Ellsberg.
PJDK 6y ago
I think in this case politically motivated would mean something more like "Assange is a journalist sympathetic towards Biden so we're trying to get him for tax fraud". In this case it's "Assange is working for Russian Intelligence against the interests of the US let's get him for a specific crime he committed towards that end". You can of course disagree with the Russian asset part of the statement, but I don't think that qualifies as "politically motivated" in the kind of sense it would (or should) bother an extradition hearing.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  He published material that embarrassed the US government - information like the US government spying on the UN, American helicopter pilots killing Reuters journalists in Baghdad (and the US military then covering it up), and the US tolerating and working with Shiite death squads in Iraq. When governments go after people for publishing embarrassing truths, that's political. Everyone knows why the US government wants Assange behind bars. The CIA Director / Secretary of State made it abundantly clear in his speech that the US intends to go after Assange in order to send a message that the 1st Amendment is no barrier to prosecuting journalists for what they publish. The UK prosecutor is playing dumb.

salawat 6y ago

This is the problem of interpretivelaw in the hands of a politically ductile interpreter. This is the same type of abuse around structure on political extradition that the United States Second Amendment (whether you agree with it philosophically or not) gets treated with. The plain, unambiguous English contextually tortured to confer that which it in no way does. The Interstate Commerce clause and regulatory mandate is perhaps a less controversial example where jurisprudence has recognized that the Federal Government can assert authority in ways completely counter to a straightforward reading of the law. Words, statutes, and legal language are meaningless theater if all we do is lampshade or cast them aside when they are inconvenient or the first time they are found to be politically inconvenient or unpopular. I weep for Justice. She's out in a dark alley somewhere in a dumpster while political expedience seems to win in the limelight lately.

himinlomax 6y ago

> Assange is a narcissist who has created nothing of value Nixon probably said the same thing of Ellsberg.

PJDK 6y ago

I think in this case politically motivated would mean something more like "Assange is a journalist sympathetic towards Biden so we're trying to get him for tax fraud". In this case it's "Assange is working for Russian Intelligence against the interests of the US let's get him for a specific crime he committed towards that end". You can of course disagree with the Russian asset part of the statement, but I don't think that qualifies as "politically motivated" in the kind of sense it would (or should) bother an extradition hearing.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
He published material that embarrassed the US government - information like the US government spying on the UN, American helicopter pilots killing Reuters journalists in Baghdad (and the US military then covering it up), and the US tolerating and working with Shiite death squads in Iraq. When governments go after people for publishing embarrassing truths, that's political. Everyone knows why the US government wants Assange behind bars. The CIA Director / Secretary of State made it abundantly clear in his speech that the US intends to go after Assange in order to send a message that the 1st Amendment is no barrier to prosecuting journalists for what they publish. The UK prosecutor is playing dumb.