22 ms·

Assange Hearing Day 17

352 points by jjgreen 6y ago

Hitton 6y ago
Once again it shows what a kangaroo court is Assange hearing.
- kmlx 6y ago
 it only seems like this because Craig Murray is reporting on it.
 - k1m 6y ago
 No, lots of people are reporting on it, just not the corporate media. See here for links to people who are: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/guide-to-journalists-assange-trial-upset-by-media-blackout/ https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/guide-to-journalists-assa... Craig Murray is providing the most thorough write-ups of each day in my opinion, but you can easily follow the others listed in that link above if you want to see how others report it. Doubt you'll get a very different picture.
 - kmlx 6y ago
 yes, you will get a very different picture by following literally anyone else.
 - k1m 6y ago
 Please provide links to others who are at the hearing who are providing a very different picture.
 - nullc 6y ago
 I disagree. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
 - marcus_holmes 6y ago
 partly because the courtroom is so restricted and hardly anyone else is actually there
 - Semaphor 6y ago
 Note for anyone else checking: The links are weirdly hidden. Every paragraph ends with "Find [possessive] updates here", with "here" being a non-underlined or otherwise highlighted link. It happens because their CMS has some really weird html output: text <a>linktext</a>. I only post this because at first I thought the list was only linking to twitter.
 - notional 6y ago
 This poster comes into nearly every Assange Trial thread and attempts to discredit Craig Murray and discredit his reporting. No attempt to actually discuss the trial at all. Stop feeding the troll.
 - scoot_718 6y ago
 Nobody needs to discredit Craig Murray. He does that with his own reporting.
- megous 6y ago
 It's the continuation of the previous mistreatment: https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html
jaboc 6y ago
I follow Assange hearing on Craig's blog for a while and whole trial is really a clown show. No media has the balls to report on it. Even the Amnesty International monitors are not able to observe the hearings. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/why-are-amnesty-international-monitors-not-able-to-observe-the-assange-hearing/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/why-are-amnes...
thinkingemote 6y ago
This isn't some conspiracy of the MSN even though we in HN are interested in it and passionate about this. Remember, the News reports things that are new, different, unique. We are not the audience of the MSN. We are not their users. Here's a way to put it into perspective: If you read any newspaper, or watch the TV news, or listen to the radio news, try to remember the last time you heard about a trial every day it was going on, about evidence for the defence and prosecution, about items of law and interviews with witnesses. The vast majority of court reporting gets reported on when it ends - when the jury makes their decision or the Judge passes the sentences. A smaller number gets reports when the court case starts (and items of fact are established) and a similar number may have an occasional report in the middle when some juicy or salacious or sensational piece of evidence is revealed. A tiny number will get reported on every day and then maybe once every 5 years or so. News is about what is new even when it's of great interest to a small number of people. Day 17 of a hearing is not news to almost all news organisations. ---- Edits: I think Craig is doing amazing stuff, his blog is great and necessary to cover this hearing for us and other interested people. It's also worrying about the entire set up and exclusion of most of public and for observers like Amnesty. I caution about falling into the trap of "MSN is bad", the news just be doing news stuff. You can expect them to report on it when it ends.
- k1m 6y ago
  I disagree. This is clearly a hugely important case. It's not that day 17 isn't significant to the media, it's that the whole case has been treated with hardly any interest at all from day 1. Another HN commenter pointed out earlier that the BBC, for example, devoted far more coverage to Johnny Depp's libel case than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24491707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24491707 As for papers like the Guardian, who benefited the most from Assange's work, they've been even more conspicuously silent. Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist, explains why in his piece 'The US is using the Guardian to justify jailing Assange for life. Why is the paper so silent?' https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
  - gimboland 6y ago
kmlx 6y ago
> Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, epic, huge, massive grain of salt as he's a known conspiracy theory fan with a wide array of issues.
- kmlx 6y ago
  i really really don't get how this guy ends up on the first page of HN. he clearly has issues: > As a blogger, he tried to dispute Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury poisonings and has written about Salmond’s acquittal on sexual offences charges. > Murray has claimed “corrupt” institutions conspired against the former First Minister and insists the former First Minister's female accusers lied. > He also wrote about having “definite good source information” about MI5’s involvement in the Salmond allegations - a claim that led to him being mocked. tldr: Cults and conspiracy theories offer the easy answer to hard reality or as one of his friends put it: > He is profiting from fuelling the conspiracy theories that have no concrete basis.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Having issues is not a disqualifier from HN. If there's a better source, mods would switch it. But no one else is reporting on this major event.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    He ends up on the first page of HN because there is hardly any reporting of the extradition hearing. If the press was doing its job, his reporting wouldn't be necessary.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    I think his background as a UK ambassador who was then hounded by the UK establishment[0] has given him a frame of reference where it's hard not to see conspiracies. However, it's true he is currently being taken to court by the Scottish government for contempt of court over his reporting of the Salmond case. That's not something that happens to the average conspiracy nutjob. [0] and yeah, I totally believe his stories of the UK political establishment closing ranks against an outsider. I grew up in that world, and that chummy upper-class clubhouse can get very cold and hostile very quickly. It also has very long reach.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
To summarize: * The prosecution claimed that Assange had not been caught with a razor. The reason for denying this is that hiding a razor suggests Assange might be thinking of suicide. * The defense pointed out that an official report from the prison confirmed that Assange had hidden a razor in his cell. The prosecution is surely aware of this report. In plain English, the prosecution lied to the court. The judge refuses to consider the prison report, however, because it is new evidence. * Defense claims that Assange was moved to the healthcare ward because of suicidal thoughts. The prosecution claims that he was moved there so that he could be put in isolation, so that the prison would not be embarrassed by more leaked photos of Assange. In other words, the official line is that the prison concocted false medical pretenses to put Assange in solitary confinement.
- TheUndead96 6y ago
  Either they are planning to kill him and frame it as a suicide, or his life has been made so miserable that suicide appears to be an escape. Both are awful to consider. I'm not informed enough to know whether any of the leaks he facilitated lead to the unnecessary harm of innocent people, but I deeply respect his dedication to the truth. As far as I know he has not outed his sources. We should aspire to be as brave as the likes of Assange and Snowden.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Based on currently available information I view snowden on a different tier to assange. Assange has always been a political activist as well as whatever else he is, whereas Snowden is much less active. The relations wikileaks had with the Trump campaign and GRU do make me somewhat less sympathetic with him. On a smaller scale wikileaks have on multiple occasions published lists containing innocent bystanders's full contact and card details - this is clearly a statement in and of itself (not Redacting the details of someone who made a $50 donation to the democrats is wrong and meditated)
    - TheUndead96 6y ago
      That's a good point, I had not thought of it in those terms. Snowden was much more "I saw something wrong and I did something about it".
acqq 6y ago
Basically, one contended issue was if there was a proof that something important happened: if a razor blade was found by Assange. Prosecution initially claimed it hasn't. Then the direct evidence of the event was shown by the defense, written by a reporting officer. Then the prosecution claimed something like "but there was no punishment of Assange by the Prison Governor". Then: "Baraitser, [the judge] who was aware that this was a major car crash, grasped at the same straw Lewis was clinging to in desperation, and said that if the charge had been dismissed, then there was no proof the razor blade existed. Fitzgerald pointed out this was absurd. The charge may have been dismissed for numerous reasons. The existence of the blade was not in doubt. Julian Assange had attested to it and two prison warders had attested to it. Baraitser said that she could only base her view on the decision of the Prison Governor." "On Thursday Edward Fitzgerald [defense] handed the record of the prison hearing where the charge was discussed to Baraitser. It was a long document. The Governor’s decision was at paragraph 19. Baraitser told Fitzgerald she could not accept the document as it was new evidence. Fitzgerald told her she had herself asked for the outcome of the charge. He said the document contained very interesting information. Baraitser said that the Governor’s decision was at paragraph 19, that was all she had asked for, and she would refuse to take the rest of the document into consideration." Basically, the document seems to contain the statement that the razor blade was found (edit: or, as some point out, something else that would be very inconvenient for the prosecution). The judge refuses to accept the document even after saying that "she could only base her view on the decision of the Prison Governor" appearing to cherry picking only one paragraph of the existing document which doesn't contain the claim. If true, that's definitely a new low that I couldn't have imagined could happen. Everybody should read the whole report to see for themselves even more details about what was happening there.
- jjgreen 6y ago
  I never thought I'd see the day when a judge is so obviously guilty of perjury.
  - matthewheath 6y ago
    Why is the judge guilty of perjury? Certainly her decisions have been questionable, and she will probably be criticised by the High Court, but perjury is specifically about lying under oath -- and she hasn't done that.
unixhero 6y ago
Harrowing.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
It seems they are now bringing additional allegations[1] to other Wikileaks Associates _and_ people who gave talks at CCC between 2013-2015. Namely Jake Appelabaum who is currently (doing a PhD[1] with T. Lange & DJB). The US seems to have a hard-on also for members of the "Rosa-Luxembourg Stiftung" who insulted the empire by giving talks about their illegal drone wars[2][3] and shed light on how German engineers were working as sub-contractors for US airbases in Germany (as data scientist and software engineers). EU countries, especially Germany, France (I have less hope for Eastern-EU or Sweden) need to stop extraditions to US of A stat. Also these US terrorists dressed up as politicians need to be sanctioned (I understand this is a pipe dream) and prosecuted at the ICC (another pipe dream). --- [0] (in German) https://www.heise.de/tp/features/USA-spaehten-fuer-Assange-Anklage-Veranstaltungen-in-Deutschland-aus-4909851.html https://www.heise.de/tp/features/USA-spaehten-fuer-Assange-A... [1] https://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/students.html https://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/students.html [2] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones [3] https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/14090/drone-warfare-origins-consequences-and-the-worldwide-resistance-to-it https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/14090/drone-warfare-...
- scoot_718 6y ago
  Sounds like a legitimate grievance if they're going out and recruiting people to steal secrets. In fact if they can prove a money link, they just look like a branch of the FSB.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    for anyone who disagrees with US policy and considers it hostile, abusive, hypocritical (and hence a threat to their own values) ... their view could be: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so it doesn't matter where the money comes from as long as they work on the same goal (e.g. stopping the war mongering hypocrisy that is US foreign policy). The current (dire) state of Russia after all is a failure in US foreign policy (the biggest tragedy and a massive lost opportunity in how the US handled the crumbling USSR). In Europe we have a refugee-crisis and constant debates about what to do with them. In that debate we forget that it was the US that invaded Iraq, Lybia - they are responsible for it. Sure the Wagner group is there now as well profiting the same way as US contractors. But Africom, Blackwater and every yank in a uniform are a much larger threat to peace than Russia & China combined. (regardless what nutter occupies the whitehouse)
abellerose 6y ago
My gosh, Assange should've committed suicide months ago. Why would he want to live through the nonsense of the United States justice system? He must be mentally ill from being stuck inside at the embassy for so long. No matter how precious you may think life happens to be. Death is the only answer at this point for preventing further years of anguish. Such a sad universe to make a man live such a fate while not acting upon his best interest.
- cryptica 6y ago
  I feel terrible for the guy. He has to be subjected to the full weight of the corrupt global system. The elites are fucking crooks for allowing this. All billionaires crooks. They're crooks for participating and they're crooks for quietly tolerating it.
  - cnst 6y ago
    That's because the whole game is crooked. Imagine a billionaire not playing by the "rules". They simply don't have the guts to see if there'd be any repercussions. People make fun of places like China and Russia which always find some irregularity if a billionaire/oligarch tries to question the establishment. But what do we have here at home in the West?!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cryptica 6y ago
I don't see how the razor blade has anything to do with mental illness in this case... I think anyone in Assange's position would be perfectly sane to consider suicide. The world is a truly messed up place these days and especially for him. If anything, it's a sign of his sanity.
metadatabad 6y ago
It's extremely appalling what the US and UK regimes are doing to this hero. Won't someone do something??
tyingq 6y ago
I'm very curious how someone in solitary confinement would get a razor blade.
- DanBC 6y ago
  What do you think "solitary confinement" is, and why do you think that would make contraband harder to obtain and hide? (Also, it's called segregation in England). You can get a rough idea of searching in this document (p46) https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/Prison%20conditions%20in%20the%20UK.pdf https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org... You can get a rough idea of how poor English prisons are from this link: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/03/two-in-five-prisoners-who-died-in-segregation-in-england-and-wales-known-to-be-at-risk https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/03/two-in-five-...
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Well, it sounds like fewer interactions with people, and so fewer opportunities to get a razor blade.

352 points by jjgreen 6y ago

Hitton 6y ago

Once again it shows what a kangaroo court is Assange hearing.

kmlx 6y ago
it only seems like this because Craig Murray is reporting on it.
- k1m 6y ago
 No, lots of people are reporting on it, just not the corporate media. See here for links to people who are: https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/guide-to-journalists-assange-trial-upset-by-media-blackout/ https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/guide-to-journalists-assa... Craig Murray is providing the most thorough write-ups of each day in my opinion, but you can easily follow the others listed in that link above if you want to see how others report it. Doubt you'll get a very different picture.
 - kmlx 6y ago
 yes, you will get a very different picture by following literally anyone else.
 - k1m 6y ago
 Please provide links to others who are at the hearing who are providing a very different picture.
 - nullc 6y ago
 I disagree. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
 - marcus_holmes 6y ago
 partly because the courtroom is so restricted and hardly anyone else is actually there
 - Semaphor 6y ago
 Note for anyone else checking: The links are weirdly hidden. Every paragraph ends with "Find [possessive] updates here", with "here" being a non-underlined or otherwise highlighted link. It happens because their CMS has some really weird html output: text <a>linktext</a>. I only post this because at first I thought the list was only linking to twitter.
- notional 6y ago
 This poster comes into nearly every Assange Trial thread and attempts to discredit Craig Murray and discredit his reporting. No attempt to actually discuss the trial at all. Stop feeding the troll.
 - scoot_718 6y ago
 Nobody needs to discredit Craig Murray. He does that with his own reporting.
megous 6y ago
It's the continuation of the previous mistreatment: https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html

jaboc 6y ago

I follow Assange hearing on Craig's blog for a while and whole trial is really a clown show. No media has the balls to report on it. Even the Amnesty International monitors are not able to observe the hearings. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/why-are-amnesty-international-monitors-not-able-to-observe-the-assange-hearing/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/why-are-amnes...

thinkingemote 6y ago

This isn't some conspiracy of the MSN even though we in HN are interested in it and passionate about this. Remember, the News reports things that are new, different, unique. We are not the audience of the MSN. We are not their users. Here's a way to put it into perspective: If you read any newspaper, or watch the TV news, or listen to the radio news, try to remember the last time you heard about a trial every day it was going on, about evidence for the defence and prosecution, about items of law and interviews with witnesses. The vast majority of court reporting gets reported on when it ends - when the jury makes their decision or the Judge passes the sentences. A smaller number gets reports when the court case starts (and items of fact are established) and a similar number may have an occasional report in the middle when some juicy or salacious or sensational piece of evidence is revealed. A tiny number will get reported on every day and then maybe once every 5 years or so. News is about what is new even when it's of great interest to a small number of people. Day 17 of a hearing is not news to almost all news organisations. ---- Edits: I think Craig is doing amazing stuff, his blog is great and necessary to cover this hearing for us and other interested people. It's also worrying about the entire set up and exclusion of most of public and for observers like Amnesty. I caution about falling into the trap of "MSN is bad", the news just be doing news stuff. You can expect them to report on it when it ends.

k1m 6y ago
I disagree. This is clearly a hugely important case. It's not that day 17 isn't significant to the media, it's that the whole case has been treated with hardly any interest at all from day 1. Another HN commenter pointed out earlier that the BBC, for example, devoted far more coverage to Johnny Depp's libel case than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24491707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24491707 As for papers like the Guardian, who benefited the most from Assange's work, they've been even more conspicuously silent. Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist, explains why in his piece 'The US is using the Guardian to justify jailing Assange for life. Why is the paper so silent?' https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
- gimboland 6y ago

kmlx 6y ago

> Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, epic, huge, massive grain of salt as he's a known conspiracy theory fan with a wide array of issues.

kmlx 6y ago
i really really don't get how this guy ends up on the first page of HN. he clearly has issues: > As a blogger, he tried to dispute Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury poisonings and has written about Salmond’s acquittal on sexual offences charges. > Murray has claimed “corrupt” institutions conspired against the former First Minister and insists the former First Minister's female accusers lied. > He also wrote about having “definite good source information” about MI5’s involvement in the Salmond allegations - a claim that led to him being mocked. tldr: Cults and conspiracy theories offer the easy answer to hard reality or as one of his friends put it: > He is profiting from fuelling the conspiracy theories that have no concrete basis.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Having issues is not a disqualifier from HN. If there's a better source, mods would switch it. But no one else is reporting on this major event.
- vidarh 6y ago
  He ends up on the first page of HN because there is hardly any reporting of the extradition hearing. If the press was doing its job, his reporting wouldn't be necessary.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I think his background as a UK ambassador who was then hounded by the UK establishment[0] has given him a frame of reference where it's hard not to see conspiracies. However, it's true he is currently being taken to court by the Scottish government for contempt of court over his reporting of the Salmond case. That's not something that happens to the average conspiracy nutjob. [0] and yeah, I totally believe his stories of the UK political establishment closing ranks against an outsider. I grew up in that world, and that chummy upper-class clubhouse can get very cold and hostile very quickly. It also has very long reach.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

To summarize: * The prosecution claimed that Assange had not been caught with a razor. The reason for denying this is that hiding a razor suggests Assange might be thinking of suicide. * The defense pointed out that an official report from the prison confirmed that Assange had hidden a razor in his cell. The prosecution is surely aware of this report. In plain English, the prosecution lied to the court. The judge refuses to consider the prison report, however, because it is new evidence. * Defense claims that Assange was moved to the healthcare ward because of suicidal thoughts. The prosecution claims that he was moved there so that he could be put in isolation, so that the prison would not be embarrassed by more leaked photos of Assange. In other words, the official line is that the prison concocted false medical pretenses to put Assange in solitary confinement.

TheUndead96 6y ago
Either they are planning to kill him and frame it as a suicide, or his life has been made so miserable that suicide appears to be an escape. Both are awful to consider. I'm not informed enough to know whether any of the leaks he facilitated lead to the unnecessary harm of innocent people, but I deeply respect his dedication to the truth. As far as I know he has not outed his sources. We should aspire to be as brave as the likes of Assange and Snowden.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Based on currently available information I view snowden on a different tier to assange. Assange has always been a political activist as well as whatever else he is, whereas Snowden is much less active. The relations wikileaks had with the Trump campaign and GRU do make me somewhat less sympathetic with him. On a smaller scale wikileaks have on multiple occasions published lists containing innocent bystanders's full contact and card details - this is clearly a statement in and of itself (not Redacting the details of someone who made a $50 donation to the democrats is wrong and meditated)
  - TheUndead96 6y ago
    That's a good point, I had not thought of it in those terms. Snowden was much more "I saw something wrong and I did something about it".

acqq 6y ago

Basically, one contended issue was if there was a proof that something important happened: if a razor blade was found by Assange. Prosecution initially claimed it hasn't. Then the direct evidence of the event was shown by the defense, written by a reporting officer. Then the prosecution claimed something like "but there was no punishment of Assange by the Prison Governor". Then: "Baraitser, [the judge] who was aware that this was a major car crash, grasped at the same straw Lewis was clinging to in desperation, and said that if the charge had been dismissed, then there was no proof the razor blade existed. Fitzgerald pointed out this was absurd. The charge may have been dismissed for numerous reasons. The existence of the blade was not in doubt. Julian Assange had attested to it and two prison warders had attested to it. Baraitser said that she could only base her view on the decision of the Prison Governor." "On Thursday Edward Fitzgerald [defense] handed the record of the prison hearing where the charge was discussed to Baraitser. It was a long document. The Governor’s decision was at paragraph 19. Baraitser told Fitzgerald she could not accept the document as it was new evidence. Fitzgerald told her she had herself asked for the outcome of the charge. He said the document contained very interesting information. Baraitser said that the Governor’s decision was at paragraph 19, that was all she had asked for, and she would refuse to take the rest of the document into consideration." Basically, the document seems to contain the statement that the razor blade was found (edit: or, as some point out, something else that would be very inconvenient for the prosecution). The judge refuses to accept the document even after saying that "she could only base her view on the decision of the Prison Governor" appearing to cherry picking only one paragraph of the existing document which doesn't contain the claim. If true, that's definitely a new low that I couldn't have imagined could happen. Everybody should read the whole report to see for themselves even more details about what was happening there.

jjgreen 6y ago
I never thought I'd see the day when a judge is so obviously guilty of perjury.
- matthewheath 6y ago
  Why is the judge guilty of perjury? Certainly her decisions have been questionable, and she will probably be criticised by the High Court, but perjury is specifically about lying under oath -- and she hasn't done that.

unixhero 6y ago

Harrowing.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

It seems they are now bringing additional allegations[1] to other Wikileaks Associates _and_ people who gave talks at CCC between 2013-2015. Namely Jake Appelabaum who is currently (doing a PhD[1] with T. Lange & DJB). The US seems to have a hard-on also for members of the "Rosa-Luxembourg Stiftung" who insulted the empire by giving talks about their illegal drone wars[2][3] and shed light on how German engineers were working as sub-contractors for US airbases in Germany (as data scientist and software engineers). EU countries, especially Germany, France (I have less hope for Eastern-EU or Sweden) need to stop extraditions to US of A stat. Also these US terrorists dressed up as politicians need to be sanctioned (I understand this is a pipe dream) and prosecuted at the ICC (another pipe dream). --- [0] (in German) https://www.heise.de/tp/features/USA-spaehten-fuer-Assange-Anklage-Veranstaltungen-in-Deutschland-aus-4909851.html https://www.heise.de/tp/features/USA-spaehten-fuer-Assange-A... [1] https://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/students.html https://hyperelliptic.org/tanja/students.html [2] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones [3] https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/14090/drone-warfare-origins-consequences-and-the-worldwide-resistance-to-it https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/14090/drone-warfare-...

scoot_718 6y ago
Sounds like a legitimate grievance if they're going out and recruiting people to steal secrets. In fact if they can prove a money link, they just look like a branch of the FSB.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  for anyone who disagrees with US policy and considers it hostile, abusive, hypocritical (and hence a threat to their own values) ... their view could be: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so it doesn't matter where the money comes from as long as they work on the same goal (e.g. stopping the war mongering hypocrisy that is US foreign policy). The current (dire) state of Russia after all is a failure in US foreign policy (the biggest tragedy and a massive lost opportunity in how the US handled the crumbling USSR). In Europe we have a refugee-crisis and constant debates about what to do with them. In that debate we forget that it was the US that invaded Iraq, Lybia - they are responsible for it. Sure the Wagner group is there now as well profiting the same way as US contractors. But Africom, Blackwater and every yank in a uniform are a much larger threat to peace than Russia & China combined. (regardless what nutter occupies the whitehouse)

abellerose 6y ago

My gosh, Assange should've committed suicide months ago. Why would he want to live through the nonsense of the United States justice system? He must be mentally ill from being stuck inside at the embassy for so long. No matter how precious you may think life happens to be. Death is the only answer at this point for preventing further years of anguish. Such a sad universe to make a man live such a fate while not acting upon his best interest.

cryptica 6y ago
I feel terrible for the guy. He has to be subjected to the full weight of the corrupt global system. The elites are fucking crooks for allowing this. All billionaires crooks. They're crooks for participating and they're crooks for quietly tolerating it.
- cnst 6y ago
  That's because the whole game is crooked. Imagine a billionaire not playing by the "rules". They simply don't have the guts to see if there'd be any repercussions. People make fun of places like China and Russia which always find some irregularity if a billionaire/oligarch tries to question the establishment. But what do we have here at home in the West?!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cryptica 6y ago

I don't see how the razor blade has anything to do with mental illness in this case... I think anyone in Assange's position would be perfectly sane to consider suicide. The world is a truly messed up place these days and especially for him. If anything, it's a sign of his sanity.

metadatabad 6y ago

It's extremely appalling what the US and UK regimes are doing to this hero. Won't someone do something??

tyingq 6y ago

I'm very curious how someone in solitary confinement would get a razor blade.

DanBC 6y ago
What do you think "solitary confinement" is, and why do you think that would make contraband harder to obtain and hide? (Also, it's called segregation in England). You can get a rough idea of searching in this document (p46) https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/Prison%20conditions%20in%20the%20UK.pdf https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org... You can get a rough idea of how poor English prisons are from this link: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/03/two-in-five-prisoners-who-died-in-segregation-in-england-and-wales-known-to-be-at-risk https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/03/two-in-five-...
- tyingq 6y ago
  Well, it sounds like fewer interactions with people, and so fewer opportunities to get a razor blade.