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Which is a bigger risk for him? Being in sweden or the uk? Is your opinion, with absoultely nothing at stake, somehow more accurate and superior to his, when h

by harry8 6y ago

Which is a bigger risk for him? Being in sweden or the uk? Is your opinion, with absoultely nothing at stake, somehow more accurate and superior to his, when he has everything to lose? I don't know the answer to which country is worse. But I'll grant him the right to make his best bet when, against his will, he is all in for having published evidence of war crimes. I don't know Assange at all. I might not like him at all if I did know him personally, I couldn't say. What is clear is the job they've done on him to "other" him and stop people from sticking up for his rights, which are of course their own rights has been utterly superbly done. Everyone sticking up for our rights has to clear their throat about not being "An Assange supporter" to even make obvious, simple and uncontroversial points about the rule of law and equality before it. That bothers me quite a bit.

ben_w 6y ago
The thing he was afraid of potentially happening to him in Sweden is in fact actually happening to him for real in the UK right now. It is a logical requirement for him to be more at risk in the UK than Sweden, unless you wish to deny that the events being reported on in this linked blog are real. I completely agree our personal opinions should not define who we support or oppose in a court of law. Even if he had gone to Sweden, been convicted, been given the maximum sentence for those offences, served that entire sentence, and only then been released: that does not change how guilty he is or isn’t of the new accusations by America. Likewise in reverse: even if he is completely innocent of every crime is accused of by America, and the American courts exonerate him and proclaim the prosecution to have been brought for purely political reasons, and end up prosecuting and convicting his persecutors instead of him, that does not mean he is incapable of being guilty of the crimes he was accused of by Sweden, and for which the statue of limitations has now expired.
- harry8 6y ago
  I think you missed the point which probably means that I expressed it poorly. He has to guess which country he will be more at risk in. He can't /know/ any more than you or I can know. He has the right to make his best guess and potentially be wrong about it because he has everything at stake. If you or I or anyone else thinks he has made the wrong guess. Fine. But acknowledge that he has the right to make the best guess he can and had rather more at stake with that guess than a mere opinion. What has changed utterly is the formerly bogus claim that he need not worry because the US were not pursuing him. The people who claimed that, of which there were very, very many had nothing at stake and were completely, totally and utterly wrong. I haven't seen anyone acknowledge "Yeah I thought he was making excuses but it turns out he was right when he said the US were after him and I was wrong about that one thing at least." Easy to say anything at all when there are no consequences to us. We should acknowledge it. Indeed from a different angle we should cherish it and protect it.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Hmm; you start off with a point I agree with completely, but then you seem to take further steps I don’t think are warranted. Everything up to this sentence, we are on the same page: > But acknowledge that he has the right to make the best guess he can and had rather more at stake with that guess than a mere opinion. I would say he has the capacity, not the right. The right stopped the moment his appeals against his extradition to Sweden ended. I do totally agree that people think differently when their skin is on the line. That’s part of why I’m in the “well I recon” rather than “totes innocent” or “he’s a wrong’un” camp. At the time, and now, it feels logically incoherent to argue that Sweden is less safe for Assange than a country which has literally just decided to extradite Assange. Doubly so if you want to claim that Assange did not commit the offence and America conspired to fake it, because of the latter was true America could easily have done so with other offences that would have him sent to the USA direct. America not liking Assange was obvious even back then, but it felt (and still feels) irrelevant to the specific claims in Sweden.

by harry8 6y ago

ben_w 6y ago

The thing he was afraid of potentially happening to him in Sweden is in fact actually happening to him for real in the UK right now. It is a logical requirement for him to be more at risk in the UK than Sweden, unless you wish to deny that the events being reported on in this linked blog are real. I completely agree our personal opinions should not define who we support or oppose in a court of law. Even if he had gone to Sweden, been convicted, been given the maximum sentence for those offences, served that entire sentence, and only then been released: that does not change how guilty he is or isn’t of the new accusations by America. Likewise in reverse: even if he is completely innocent of every crime is accused of by America, and the American courts exonerate him and proclaim the prosecution to have been brought for purely political reasons, and end up prosecuting and convicting his persecutors instead of him, that does not mean he is incapable of being guilty of the crimes he was accused of by Sweden, and for which the statue of limitations has now expired.

harry8 6y ago
I think you missed the point which probably means that I expressed it poorly. He has to guess which country he will be more at risk in. He can't /know/ any more than you or I can know. He has the right to make his best guess and potentially be wrong about it because he has everything at stake. If you or I or anyone else thinks he has made the wrong guess. Fine. But acknowledge that he has the right to make the best guess he can and had rather more at stake with that guess than a mere opinion. What has changed utterly is the formerly bogus claim that he need not worry because the US were not pursuing him. The people who claimed that, of which there were very, very many had nothing at stake and were completely, totally and utterly wrong. I haven't seen anyone acknowledge "Yeah I thought he was making excuses but it turns out he was right when he said the US were after him and I was wrong about that one thing at least." Easy to say anything at all when there are no consequences to us. We should acknowledge it. Indeed from a different angle we should cherish it and protect it.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Hmm; you start off with a point I agree with completely, but then you seem to take further steps I don’t think are warranted. Everything up to this sentence, we are on the same page: > But acknowledge that he has the right to make the best guess he can and had rather more at stake with that guess than a mere opinion. I would say he has the capacity, not the right. The right stopped the moment his appeals against his extradition to Sweden ended. I do totally agree that people think differently when their skin is on the line. That’s part of why I’m in the “well I recon” rather than “totes innocent” or “he’s a wrong’un” camp. At the time, and now, it feels logically incoherent to argue that Sweden is less safe for Assange than a country which has literally just decided to extradite Assange. Doubly so if you want to claim that Assange did not commit the offence and America conspired to fake it, because of the latter was true America could easily have done so with other offences that would have him sent to the USA direct. America not liking Assange was obvious even back then, but it felt (and still feels) irrelevant to the specific claims in Sweden.