5 ms·

I'm pretty skeptical of most of the Pro-Assange reporting that happens because so often it seems very unreliable - cherry picking things, misrepresenting things

I'm pretty skeptical of most of the Pro-Assange reporting that happens because so often it seems very unreliable - cherry picking things, misrepresenting things etc. For example, I don't know enough about the Assange charges to say what is relevant or not relevant to the extradition, but just from a basic premise - what most people know Assange for is nothing to do with hacking Iceland MPs so it seems pretty unlikely that this would be a material part of the extradition. It would be kind of weird if that were a core part of the extradition, yet this article seems to be making out this is the star witness. I just doubt it frankly. It doesn't help the author that they repeat tired old accusations about the judge being biased.

simiones 5y ago
You should look into this a lot more. The core fact is that there are very little potentially valid reasons that Assange could be extradited - the prosecution is mostly grasping at straws, as he has done nothing wrong by UK laws. That is why ancillary witnesses like this Thoradsson become crucial: the prosecution needs to invent something that could be a good enough excuse to get him in the hands of the US "justice system" (for people like Assange or Snowden, it is obvious there would be no real justice in the US).
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > he has done nothing wrong by UK laws Two points here. He has skipped bail, which is most definitely illegal. Why he skipped bail is a different issue, but it cannot be denied that he has skipped bail. Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction. Also I've never understood the whole Sweden is a stepping stone to the US. in my little understanding, I don't see why the US would seek to only issue an extradition order when he was in Sweden. They won't grant extradition to a place where there is a material risk of the death penalty (well, unless you're an asylum seeker, but that's a different issue.)
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    Skipping bail in the UK isn't a justification for extraditing to the U.S.. Assange has beeen charged with a misdeamonor and with violating the Espionage Act, which has never before been used against a journalist. It's a huge attack on the 1st amendment. I personally also think it's unjust to extradite someone to a country without them actually have commiting crimes in that country (has Assange even been to the US)? It's like a US citizen being extradited to Saudia Arabia for watching porn on US soil.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      > It's like a US citizen being extradited to Saudia Arabia for watching porn on US soil. Its not the same. Regardless of your feelings on Assange, and regardless of your feelings on what the US had been doing in those cables, had this been a russian/chinese/british/french spy, they would have been treated far more aggressively. Again, this isn't a justification, or indeed an endorsement of either Assange, or the US & UK. but, it's clear by UK standards, Assange has a case to answer. The moral case is entirely different, on that I am not equipped to answer.
      - partomniscient 5y ago
        It's also clear that UK standards aren't very high. The US want their laws to apply beyond the US to non-US citizens. They can fuck off.
      - naasking 5y ago
        > Regardless of your feelings on Assange, and regardless of your feelings on what the US had been doing in those cables, had this been a russian/chinese/british/french spy, they would have been treated far more aggressively. Because actual espionage is working to undermine one government at the behest of another. That's not what journalists do, so the espionage charges against Assange are bullshit.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction. The issue isn't one of jurisdiction, it's whether his actions would have been illegal in the UK _if_ they occurred in the UK. If not, why would the UK extradite? He wasn't in the US at the time and wasn't under US jurisdiction.
- ianhawes 5y ago
  This is correct. The DOJ will unveil a “superseding indictment” once he is on our soil that will eliminate the testimony and charge him with more vague crimes like “wire fraud” and “conspiracy” that carry multi-year sentences. The require allegations of much more serious and harder to prove crimes in order to extradite him. He will be held for 3-5 years before his trial begins. The trial will last a month and he will be found guilty of at least 1 charge, enough to receive a sentence of 8 years.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    The principle of specialty prevents a requesting state changing the charges after extradition, without re-requesting the extraditing state. I mean, the UK has no way of stopping it, but it would undermine the legal comity that the US needs to get future cases extradited. Murder, for example, is only extraditable from the UK to the US if binding commitments are made not to seek the death penalty. If the UK courts stopped trusting US commitments then that would be at serious risk. Incidentally, this would also have been a bar to onward extradition from Sweden to the US if that had gone ahead. I'm not saying they couldn't get consent for the UK for a superseding indictment, but it's certainly not as straightforward as dropping one they've prepared earlier and laughing manically.
    - trasz 5y ago
      One key element of UK<->US relations is that the US can do literally anything and the UK will quietly accept it. Good example is the Anne Sacoolas case, where an NSA operative killed someone in a traffic accident, driving on the wrong side of the road, then fled the country, claiming diplomatic immunity. She avoided any charges, and the US won't extradite her - despite her lying about the immunity and fleeing from the country - because US.
      - pmyteh 5y ago
        That's absolutely true on a political level. I'm not so sure that it would apply to breaches of judicial assurances. British judges are cranky, have a strong sense of the dignity of their office and role, and would personally face no consequences for poking the US authorities in the eye with a stick.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
The media has hardly covered the Assange case, has smeared Julian relentlessly, and usually baselessly, and now are ignoring this too. Seriously only a few journalists like Craig Murray even covered the court case.
- CallingCalliope 5y ago
  Assange was singled out after he wrote an essay describing an organisation such as WikiLeaks was needed in the political climate we inhabit, he had the foresight to see that Wikileaks was necessary and had the conviction talent and self sacrifice to bring it into being, that's when the knifes came out, and we all knew it, himself included. The rest of it is the circus, a means to an end and those who are getting caught up in details are being manipulated. Without Wikileaks the minds of humanity would have less degrees of freedom, I like Assange want more not less, we need the full 720, these obscured obtuse angles that are afforded to us are only useful for the powerful few. So you either want to be ruled in ignorance where the darkest shadows of men can loom over us without retribution, or you want to walk in the light. Truth lights the path to enlightenment and its a hard yes that that journey should be allowed for everyone, not just the few. I believe that path is the only way for humanity to live with itself when making the tough decisions that lie in the not too distant future. People are manipulated just as we manipulate computers, to have an output we need input, and those who view the world in these terms and have talent in these areas have use manipulation tactics to control society's inputs. I wont get into sides, there are power mad megalomaniacs everywhere you care to look, as I'm sure Assange is no angel, he is human like the rest of us, but I will talk about what I know, our western world has banned books orchestrated people and imprisioned speech when these power structures are threatened. As they did with Orwell, Miller, Huxley and now Assange.... the choice is simple, truth and hope or deceit and misery, because we will produce an output that directly correlates with our input. " Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselfs as others see us" Robbie Burns, This gift burns would realish for himself and all, not a curse for an enemy but a call for transparacncy which is the only way forward. I think the press,the journalists, very much see themselfs as we see them, which is powerless to the manipulation they are experiencing, and its funny that the institutions that he sacrificed himself for are the ones who have been silenced and told to bow, this is no accident, this is a sign to all, a show of power of their manipulation and control.
raxxorrax 5y ago
There is direct physical and historic evidence that intelligence work involves misrepresenting positions left and right while fabricating lies about political opponents. Why are you that concerned about something getting misrepresented? Your position sound extremely dishonest, because misrepresentation is the primary tool of those that accuse Assange of crimes.

simiones 5y ago

You should look into this a lot more. The core fact is that there are very little potentially valid reasons that Assange could be extradited - the prosecution is mostly grasping at straws, as he has done nothing wrong by UK laws. That is why ancillary witnesses like this Thoradsson become crucial: the prosecution needs to invent something that could be a good enough excuse to get him in the hands of the US "justice system" (for people like Assange or Snowden, it is obvious there would be no real justice in the US).

KaiserPro 5y ago
> he has done nothing wrong by UK laws Two points here. He has skipped bail, which is most definitely illegal. Why he skipped bail is a different issue, but it cannot be denied that he has skipped bail. Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction. Also I've never understood the whole Sweden is a stepping stone to the US. in my little understanding, I don't see why the US would seek to only issue an extradition order when he was in Sweden. They won't grant extradition to a place where there is a material risk of the death penalty (well, unless you're an asylum seeker, but that's a different issue.)
- Miner49er 5y ago
  Skipping bail in the UK isn't a justification for extraditing to the U.S.. Assange has beeen charged with a misdeamonor and with violating the Espionage Act, which has never before been used against a journalist. It's a huge attack on the 1st amendment. I personally also think it's unjust to extradite someone to a country without them actually have commiting crimes in that country (has Assange even been to the US)? It's like a US citizen being extradited to Saudia Arabia for watching porn on US soil.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    > It's like a US citizen being extradited to Saudia Arabia for watching porn on US soil. Its not the same. Regardless of your feelings on Assange, and regardless of your feelings on what the US had been doing in those cables, had this been a russian/chinese/british/french spy, they would have been treated far more aggressively. Again, this isn't a justification, or indeed an endorsement of either Assange, or the US & UK. but, it's clear by UK standards, Assange has a case to answer. The moral case is entirely different, on that I am not equipped to answer.
    - partomniscient 5y ago
      It's also clear that UK standards aren't very high. The US want their laws to apply beyond the US to non-US citizens. They can fuck off.
    - naasking 5y ago
      > Regardless of your feelings on Assange, and regardless of your feelings on what the US had been doing in those cables, had this been a russian/chinese/british/french spy, they would have been treated far more aggressively. Because actual espionage is working to undermine one government at the behest of another. That's not what journalists do, so the espionage charges against Assange are bullshit.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  > Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction. The issue isn't one of jurisdiction, it's whether his actions would have been illegal in the UK _if_ they occurred in the UK. If not, why would the UK extradite? He wasn't in the US at the time and wasn't under US jurisdiction.
ianhawes 5y ago
This is correct. The DOJ will unveil a “superseding indictment” once he is on our soil that will eliminate the testimony and charge him with more vague crimes like “wire fraud” and “conspiracy” that carry multi-year sentences. The require allegations of much more serious and harder to prove crimes in order to extradite him. He will be held for 3-5 years before his trial begins. The trial will last a month and he will be found guilty of at least 1 charge, enough to receive a sentence of 8 years.
- pmyteh 5y ago
  The principle of specialty prevents a requesting state changing the charges after extradition, without re-requesting the extraditing state. I mean, the UK has no way of stopping it, but it would undermine the legal comity that the US needs to get future cases extradited. Murder, for example, is only extraditable from the UK to the US if binding commitments are made not to seek the death penalty. If the UK courts stopped trusting US commitments then that would be at serious risk. Incidentally, this would also have been a bar to onward extradition from Sweden to the US if that had gone ahead. I'm not saying they couldn't get consent for the UK for a superseding indictment, but it's certainly not as straightforward as dropping one they've prepared earlier and laughing manically.
  - trasz 5y ago
    One key element of UK<->US relations is that the US can do literally anything and the UK will quietly accept it. Good example is the Anne Sacoolas case, where an NSA operative killed someone in a traffic accident, driving on the wrong side of the road, then fled the country, claiming diplomatic immunity. She avoided any charges, and the US won't extradite her - despite her lying about the immunity and fleeing from the country - because US.
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      That's absolutely true on a political level. I'm not so sure that it would apply to breaches of judicial assurances. British judges are cranky, have a strong sense of the dignity of their office and role, and would personally face no consequences for poking the US authorities in the eye with a stick.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

The media has hardly covered the Assange case, has smeared Julian relentlessly, and usually baselessly, and now are ignoring this too. Seriously only a few journalists like Craig Murray even covered the court case.

CallingCalliope 5y ago
Assange was singled out after he wrote an essay describing an organisation such as WikiLeaks was needed in the political climate we inhabit, he had the foresight to see that Wikileaks was necessary and had the conviction talent and self sacrifice to bring it into being, that's when the knifes came out, and we all knew it, himself included. The rest of it is the circus, a means to an end and those who are getting caught up in details are being manipulated. Without Wikileaks the minds of humanity would have less degrees of freedom, I like Assange want more not less, we need the full 720, these obscured obtuse angles that are afforded to us are only useful for the powerful few. So you either want to be ruled in ignorance where the darkest shadows of men can loom over us without retribution, or you want to walk in the light. Truth lights the path to enlightenment and its a hard yes that that journey should be allowed for everyone, not just the few. I believe that path is the only way for humanity to live with itself when making the tough decisions that lie in the not too distant future. People are manipulated just as we manipulate computers, to have an output we need input, and those who view the world in these terms and have talent in these areas have use manipulation tactics to control society's inputs. I wont get into sides, there are power mad megalomaniacs everywhere you care to look, as I'm sure Assange is no angel, he is human like the rest of us, but I will talk about what I know, our western world has banned books orchestrated people and imprisioned speech when these power structures are threatened. As they did with Orwell, Miller, Huxley and now Assange.... the choice is simple, truth and hope or deceit and misery, because we will produce an output that directly correlates with our input. " Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselfs as others see us" Robbie Burns, This gift burns would realish for himself and all, not a curse for an enemy but a call for transparacncy which is the only way forward. I think the press,the journalists, very much see themselfs as we see them, which is powerless to the manipulation they are experiencing, and its funny that the institutions that he sacrificed himself for are the ones who have been silenced and told to bow, this is no accident, this is a sign to all, a show of power of their manipulation and control.

raxxorrax 5y ago

There is direct physical and historic evidence that intelligence work involves misrepresenting positions left and right while fabricating lies about political opponents. Why are you that concerned about something getting misrepresented? Your position sound extremely dishonest, because misrepresentation is the primary tool of those that accuse Assange of crimes.