A few brave enough to speak out for Assange
The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.pic.twitter.com/CxTUrOfkHt
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 11, 2019
In a few more months Jeremy Corbyn's opinion here would matter a great deal.
Maybe that's why Assange's prosecution is getting rushed through now.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said the UK government should not extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he faces a computer hacking charge.The Wikileaks co-founder was arrested for a separate charge at Ecuador's London embassy on Thursday, where he had been granted asylum since 2012.
Mr Corbyn said Assange should not be extradited "for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan".
...Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "this is all about Wikileaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public".
Tulsi is the only presidential candidate brave enough.
The purpose of arresting #JulianAssange is to send a message to the people, especially journalists, to be quiet and don’t get out of line. If we, the people, allow the government to control us through fear, we are no longer free, we are no longer America. pic.twitter.com/2sedynREP9
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) April 11, 2019
I hate to link to Tucker, but he sometimes tells the truth.
On the other side are these examples:
The most fierce defenders of Assange come from two seemingly disparate ends of the ideological spectrum.First are the fans of Donald Trump, who understand that the leaks of Hillary Clinton’s emails were a political neutron bomb that exploded under her campaign in the closing weeks, the ultimate oppo drop.
Joining them are the American Bernie Bros and the Glenn Greenwald demographic of America-can-do-no-good types who look at anything that weakens US influence in the world as a net positive. American political ideology is no longer a line, but a horseshoe, with the extremes looping toward one another in an asymptotic curve of edge-case crazy.
Others think it a long-overdue reckoning with justice for a man who had unleashed information anarchy upon the West, culminating in the destabilisation of American democracy.
In the end, the man who reportedly smeared feces on the walls of his lodgings, mistreated his kitten, and variously blamed the ills of the world on feminists and bespectacled Jewish writers was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy looking every inch like a powdered-sugar Saddam Hussein plucked straight from his spider hole.
...
According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration.We don’t yet know whether Romo’s allegation is true (Patiño denied it) or simply a pretext for booting a nuisance from state property. But Assange’s ties to Russian hackers and Russian intelligence organs are now beyond dispute.
Update: This might be the ultimate irony.
David Allen Green, a contributing editor to the Financial Times on law and policy, who has written extensively about Assange’s failed legal battle against extradition to Sweden, suggested on Friday that if Sweden does renew its extradition request, it could make Assange’s extradition to the United States less likely.Any request from Sweden, on behalf of a complainant who says that she has been waiting nine years for justice to be served, would probably be granted priority by an English court over the more recent request from the U.S., which wants Assange to stand trial for allegedly trying (and apparently failing) to help Manning crack a password to access classified documents.
If U.S. prosecutors tried to seek extradition following any legal proceedings in Sweden, Green observed, that could require the consent of courts in both Sweden and England, and could be challenged by Assange’s lawyers before the European Court of Human Rights. “Therefore any decision to extradite Assange onward to the United States would be subject to legal challenges in both Sweden and England, as well as at Strasbourg,” where the European Court of Human Rights sits.
Comments
Don't worry everybody, the pigs will find a new town crier
to keep the plebs scared and stupid.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Cenk finally gets one right
He gets a lot wrong, so it's nice that he finally got one right.
Green Party.
Did you know that Mark Roffalo is a big dailykos fan? Who would have thought??
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I have some vague notion that Ruffalo might
have been posting at dPOS a few years back.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
dPos- too funny! nt
dfarrah
You missed most mind-boggling interview with Tulsi on this.
https://youtu.be/J0J6mMfGDdc
MSNBC and Tweety had a very fair interview. My mind is still reeling!
chuck utzman
TULSI 2020
@chuckutzman that was pretty amazing.
that was pretty amazing.
Tulsi has my vote.
tweety actually wondering aloud about the
return of Elliot Abrams. man.
meanwhile, TG just slices and dices the institutions that have led us into worldwide permawar.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
And yet Sheepdog Sanders of
And yet Sheepdog Sanders of course hasn't said anything.
He is a useful tool for imperialist power.
Supported Russia-gate
Supported calling Maduro a dictator
Silence on Assange (utterly deafening)
I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable lie...
that explains all of that, and we'll be hearing it shortly.
Or we won't because the news has already shifted back to the border. Looks like Bernie got to run a QuarterBack kneel play as far as the MSM is concerned. I expect he will be 100% correct on the border issue, and all will be forgiven.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
let's hear from the Bernie fans.
help me understand why he remains silent.
Tulsi didn't need a lot of time to study this one, did she?
contrast with Sanders.
to think I gave money to that guy.
I believed in him.
how is anybody else to know what he's thinking?
first, snoopydawg wonders why people get defensive about "their" candidates. now, you directly challenge people to confabulate speculative defenses for "their" candidate.
this whole business is going to play out over a span of weeks and months, not a few days of hype, rage, rumor and speculation. when it's all done, perhaps Sanders will have proven weak and unwilling, or perhaps he'll have done otherwise. yeah, i admire Gabbard's statement, but no condemnation by any American politician is going to change a damned thing at the moment.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
People here seem to think his extradition is a done deal
It's not.
He'll probably be extradited, but it's not a done deal.
There's going to a lot of news and drama before that happens.
With a June court date, and then possible delaying
tactics, Corbyn could be PM before the US claims its "property"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I do?
Can you point me to where I said that?
sorry, it was dkmich. so many comments flying around that
i lost track of where and from whom that came.
in any case, i wasn't objecting, only pointing out that there is a really wide spectrum of expectation, and nobody's stance is going to satisfy everyone on it.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Tulsi doesn't have a real chance
That gives her more freedom to say whatever she wants to.
Bernie not only has a real shot, he has the inside track. So he's going to be more careful about issues. He's going to measure their political impact on his campaign, not just his moral stand.
I say after having given to both Tulsi and Bernie.
Dear gjohnsit,
I love you, I respect you, and I will continue to love and respect you, but I hope you will reconsider your thoughts about Sanders' voice right now. He is in an extremely powerful position because he strongly states what he believes no matter how outrageous he may seem to the oligarchy. The more he calls them out, the stronger he gets. The more he plays their game, the weaker he gets. When he appears not to know a lot about foreign policy, it probably means he doesn't know much about foreign policy, sadly.
The Party, the Democratic Party, is a shambles right now. They have no credibility, and he has already been through what they do to him when he plays their game. The more independent and truthful he is about the disaster that is neoliberal corruption, the stronger he will be in the polls.
I hear you
There is a lot of truth in that.
But there are some truths that people just aren't ready to hear.
Bernie needs votes of people that can only swallow the truth in measured doses.
The trick is knowing which truths to speak and which not to.
Enemies also matter because most people don't spend the time getting the truth. They just accept whatever they hear that sounds good. Bernie already has a lot of powerful enemies.
I still think the key to 2020 are the people who usually don't vote.
I hear you,
about what you say here.
You're so right. Not only is he up against a Mainstream Media 24-Hour Bullhorn of Lies, but the events as they have happened are so complicated. The language of lies is so nuanced and sophisticatedly misleading. It really does take enormous patience, clarity and skill to wade through the sequence of lies and to point out the truth. It's very difficult when you're being drowned out by hatred and fear. I hear you.
@gjohnsit you're right. It
you're right. It's like that old Clark Gable movie Strategic Air Command. It was about having the mental toughness to make the hard choices. You knew you were sending some to die but you had to because you had to win the war.
Bernie HAS to win this war. The less he veers off what got him this far the better.
These are the kind of hard choices.
The truth is, we aren't losing our free press. We aren't losing free speech. Those things are gone. They maybe never really were.
Not a fight he can make any difference in.
I agree, Linda Wood
Bernie's silence is very bad strategically IMHO. The arrest of Julian Assange gave Bernie the opportunity to create major distance between himself and Trump. All Bernie had to do is to frame Julian's arrest in terms of freedom of the press without having to go into the weeds about whether or not Julian Assange is a good person. I believe that not speaking out was a very poor move by Bernie and has more potential to hurt him, while speaking out only would have a plus side to it.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I don't know why
he remains silent.
I never gave money to him because he had plenty of money already.
Right now, I'm not sure at all how I will vote come 2020. I cannot see empowering the left more, when they have shown their true colors, isms, and hypocrisies.
dfarrah
He remains silent
because he's Dem Party Leadership. (IMO) Consider what Chuckie Schumer--the Senate 'top dog' who appointed him--had to say about Assange,
Frankly, I'm not convinced (yet) that he's not running mostly as an 'issues' candidate, again. BTW, that's what I thought in 2016; and, I believe that it may explain some of the passiveness/indifference he exhibited regarding the scr*wing he got from the DNC, Dem Party in 2016. Of course, that's conjecture on my part.
So far, I see Bernie concentrating on sticking to the same lanes he was determined to corral in 2016--college youth, and lefty activists--who he wants to deter from voting third party. Also, unless he changes his boilerplate rally speech, I'm not necessarily buying that he's that interested in attracting the white working class voters. Now, I might have to reconsider that position, depending upon how he handles the Fox News Channel Town Hall next week, which I assume may, or, likely will, include an appeal to that audience. Regardless, I very much look forward to listening to it.
For certain, I'm glad to see that Gabbard has spoken up about Assange's arrest, etc., but, for me, that's not enough. She'll have to run as an Independent, if I'm to seriously consider voting for her.
(Think the chances of that are very slim, but, since she's not spent decades in the D.C. Swamp, figure that she's the most likely candidate to consider doing so.)
Have a good one!
Mollie
I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
~~Gilda Radner, Comedienne
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
at what point should people say
"no thanks" ?
This is really my question to those who remain in the Bernie camp.
Russiagate, Maduro, now Assange.
What would it take to make them reconsider?
Are we going to give Bernie a pass?
That was done for Obama, and did not end well.
If Bernie won't stand on the right side, he is not my guy. Period.
Green Party is not scared to line up. Nor Tulsi, Greenwald, Hedges, Johnstone,Gravel. Even Cenk, for goodness sake.
Bernie should make some kind of statement.It does not have to be crazy-wild.
Just state the facts, put the remaining case in context.
But to say nothing is just wrong, imo.
That's the question
The answer depends on the individual and their values.
No candidate is going to be perfect. OTOH, lesser evilism has run it's course.
There is a balance that the individual must decide on.
Whenever they believe they
have had enough.
I understand the frustration. Bernie is inexplicable, or he has severe tunnel vision and is stuck on certain issues and only those issues (not excusing him, but I'm equally baffled).
dfarrah
Bernie is picking his fights
That's not to say that his silence doesn't matter. It's that he appears to have decided that you can't make enemies of the MIC and still win the presidency. Not when he already made enemies of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Wall Street.
He might be right.
It's understandable to hold that against him. But his decision is also understandable too.
For those who can't watch Tucker, this is what he said
snip
The Ecuadorian Gubmint chimed in that he was wiping feces on the walls. We had to invalidate his asylum. Really?
Friggin Ruskies are under your bed. Boo!
Oh my...
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Sigh.. you would think that adults would see through
the lie behind Ecuador saying that Julian painted his walls with his feces. Seriously who would believe that he would do that? For what gd reason ? He was mean to his cat.. he refused to bathe, he.... The New York Slimes wrote about that today and of course people are retweeting it. Sorry, but when you have to stoop to that level to smear someone that says a lot about the person who wrote it. Oh yeah there's more. He skate boarded all around the embassy and bumped into the walls and damaged them. He took people to off limit places at the embassy. Sure and guards just let him do that? I've seen lots of people saying exactly what was in the article. I hope Wikileaks sues them into bankruptcy.
Thanks for posting the transcript of Tucker.
When one person
is responsible for everything that's wrong, there is no choice.
Well, there might be a choice?
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Love that joke,
a golden oldie. We told it as "Death or Bungee".
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Man, that's the "light" version of the joke.
I heard it as:
"Do you choose Death ... or Oogie Boogie?"
"uhh ... uhh ... DEATH! I'LL TAKE DEATH!!"
"Very well, then. The sentence is Death ...by Oogie Boogie!"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I heard it as Ungabunga.
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
“Seriously who would believe that he would do that?“
The same morons who believed the story sbout the pee pee tapes maybe?
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Ha!
Yep. Why would anyone believe that Trump hired women to do that? But then that is why propaganda works huh?
Good to see you.
One that angered me the most was Trevor Noah
with The Daily Sh+t Show.
For starters pretend the person was unknown, had found asylum in an embassy from political persecution and been holed up there for seven years even though a UN report ruled he was being held "arbitrarily" aka illegally.
Note that for the last year he had been cut off from the internet, not allowed phone calls or even exposure to the outside world, no fresh air (mass murderers get to go outside), and under surveillance like no other person in the world in a tiny accommodation with listening devices literally everywhere just like cameras that were even in the restroom.
All this, and more should have nothing to do with whom it was happening but that it was happening at all.
Not to mention no visitors except lawyers and recent revelations show their consultation with Julian was recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=QFq38d3Q9qY
But about Trevor Noah, he laughed, joked as the video played about how Assange looked then pointed out where Assange's feet were in the picture then laughs about Assange being carried out "like a couch" people on each end.
REAL funny a guy that hasn't been outside in seven years is suddenly hauled out 'like a couch' to the light and outside world after living without medical help, in pain, deprivation and conditions considered as 'torture' and Noah wants to talk about skateboarding in the embassy (never verified) and Julian's cat who Julian gave away to a good home to prevent it from going to the 'pound', close to a year ago.
I couldn't listen to any more of this but was happy to see several thousand dislikes on it and a lot of angry responses from what appeared to be regular followers (I don't know why they haven't figured this hack already).
I'm not going to post a link to it f him but anyone can look at if the so choose, if you take blood pressure medicine I suggest you make sure you have it handy,particularly when you read comments asking about the cat's situation.
Trevor Noah is a piece of sh*t
I've written about him before.
I intentionally avoided his skit about Assange.
This!
That people didn't think Assange had a good reason to try to not get extradited here just blows my mind. So many said that he was free to walk out any time he wanted really ticked me off. Especially after seeing what happened to Chelsea Manning.
Trevor Noah and others who made jokes about his arrest are the good toadies for the establishment. Hopefully enough people that watch his show stop and his show gets cancelled. How horrible for anyone to laugh about this.
I did hear that there were videos of the conversations Assange had with his lawyers and visitors and that some people in Spain were trying to sell them. But the fact that Ecuador was video taping him is another black mark against diplomatic immunity.
I read that Moreno went against Ecuador's constitution by canceling Julian's immunity and that he might have a case against it being done. But that's going to depend on whether anyone cares about it anymore. Plus the judge that said Assange was a "narcissistic..." something will be remembered for his bias and unprofessional remarks. History will not be kind to those involved with this.
where are the pictures?
What was that comment I used to see so much somewhere...something like..."pictures or it didn't happen".
Yet people believe Obama “got” Osama bin Laden, without pictures
Let’s face it, the Obama administration was 8 years of “National security! We don’t need no stinkin’ proof! — or pictures — or evidence of any kind.”
OMG..Obama "got him"
The first time I saw that picture of the 'special important people' in the situation room I laughed out loud loudly. Wouldn't you think that the situation room would have more monitors and computer gadgets and be a bit bigger? It's like someone said they should photograph the event and just picked an empty room and said "this'll do" Every one had their serious face on and they were crammed together and... just no. Then they dumped him at sea? I'm sure his very important family was cool with that?
Lmao. I just saw that picture today on ToP.
I can believe he smeared
feces and harmed a kitten (note, I don't believe it; I believe the story is believable).
Doesn't the kind imprisonment he endured cause people to go crazy?
I was thinking, 'well, what did you expect, keeping him imprisoned like he was?'
And who knows what people at the embassy were doing to JA? Was anyone allowed to check on him?
I don't know about his living arrangements while he was in the embassy.
dfarrah
I don't believe it either
Even if it was true, it would be the sign of a mental health issue, which would bring up the question of "Why didn't you get him help?"
Irish nationalist prisoners used “dirty protest” and were
regarded as heroes all the more, among what was probably the majority of the Irish community and diaspora.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_protest
I haven't read the Independent in quite a while,
but their remarks were rather disappointing. You don't get to brand yourself "Independent" if you're going to slavishly redeploy the carefully constructed PR memes of the corporate media, e.g. "Bernie Bros".
As to the Atlantic, this:
is indefensible. Not only are they not beyond dispute, to my knowledge (which I admit is imperfect) no substantial evidence for them, authentic or otherwise, has ever been presented to the public.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
This is a damn shame
Establishment running roughshod over peoples rights, getting a pass from the press, and the propaganda (narrative) gets worse and worse and worser.
Full stop. Rebel. Speak up. We're tired of this shit and aren't going to take it anymore.
question everything
The msm seems in lockstep on this...
Great to see Corbyn and Tulsi say the right thing. Still waiting for Bernie and AOC.
The rest are just dogpiling on demonizing the enemy. That Atlantic shat is disgusting, before considering they know it to not be true. The Atlantic sucks, pure neolib propaganda.
I too have seen Tucker be on the right side of things more than once... stopped clock and all...
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
The charge against him is not publishing.
Which the Pentagon Papers case pretty much settled.
The charge is conspiring to penetrate a government computer by assisting in cracking the password.
If the New York Times obtained the Pentagon Papers by breaking and entering then cracking a safe, I think they would have been found guilty of that.
Of Course I don't know if the charge against him is true. If true, I guess he crossed a line. A journalist has to be at arms length when he suspects his informant is obtaining information illegally. On the third hand, I don't put it past the Deep State (or the Open State) to forge evidence.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Barring torture, they're going to have a hell of a time
proving it. They have only Manning's version of the events, which is:
A. Incomplete
B. Hearsay (She doesn't know whether her correspondent actually did try to crack the password, she only knows that he told her he was trying to crack it. There's a huge chunk of missing information about exactly what she gave him, and how he might have gone about trying to crack a password based on whatever she made available ...)
C. Missing the connection to Assange. Unless the state can prove he was "Ox", they're just SOL. In terms of precedent, they're in a very dubious legal world. Imagine for a moment that he really wasn't Ox: Under what jurisprudential principles could they, for example, compel him to provide the identity of whomever was? They only have the "right" to have him in custody because they are charging him with a crime. He's not a US resident, he's not a US citizen ... having extradited him to charge him, what basis do they have to, for example, hold him in contempt of court? How could they claim any jurisdiction over him at all?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
My thoughts exactly
But if Assange is tried under the espionage act he will not get a fair trial. The act is designed to not allow it. No real defense is allowed. Wasn't it Wilson who first came up with that idea or did he take advantage of it when he tried Eugene Debs? Debs was spreading the truth about WWI and it pissed Wilson off
Maybe the Govt says it has evidence so it must go to Court
then it takes place in the Kangaroo Court with a hundred per cent conviction record that John Kiriakou talks about and considering it will, just like all the rest,not be a 'public trial'.
The 'National Security' card/banner comes up and everything needs to remain secret in order for everyone to be protected, a 'need to know' situation and that includes most evidence but under this WW1 era espionage act law you have no defense under 'why' you did it, the only thing that counts is if you did it.
Don't say that information could've saved lives because a 'reason' for your act is not allowed as part of your defense.
That's the way it appears to me from what I've seen/read and anyone can offer any corrections on that law.
What can we do about it? I like this suggestion..( a very good show)
The idea proposed on RT' Crosstalk' show with "Joe Lauria, Ray McGovern, and Sara Flounders" where she says of course they are going after him for all the things he has exposed (then lists some) because they want to silence that news, that is their goal and therefore (paraphrasing) start putting out all the things that same information again, on a large scale. (This is a great show in the defense of Julian Assange)
Post 'collateral murder' and everything else 'they' want the general public to forget in as many places or forums possible, make the images and stories indelible, not erased by arguments about the legality of the information but about what happened.
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/456271-assange-custody-wkileaks-london/
The charges against Assange
In order to respond to your comment, I wanted to see exactly how the charge against Assange is worded. So I set out on the Internet to find and read it.
Do you know how difficult it is to find it online? I'm finding all sorts of stories by NPR, MSNBC, etc. "explaining" the charges. Some of the stories contain snippets of phrases that supposedly are in the charges. Some just paraphrase the charges.
They really don't want the American people to think for ourselves, do they? They just want us to accept whatever they spoonfeed us and go wherever they want us to go.
I finally was able to locate it usung DuckDuckGo. Here's the link:
Julian Assange indictment
The exact charge is "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion".
It appears that one of the foundational arguments they're setting up is that Assange is not a journalist and is thus not protected under the 1st Amendment and the New York Times SCOTUS decision.
The indictment doesn't say it using those words, but it keeps repeating over and over that "Assange had no security clearance. He had no right to see classified documents."
Those things are true, but they do not affect journalists' rights under the 1st Amendment. The editorial board of the New York Times did not have security clearances when they accepted and published the classified military documents leaked to them by Daniel Ellsberg. Heck, I bought and read the paperback version of the Pentagon Papers. I didn't have a security clearance.
Now you might say, "but that's not relevant to the conspiracy to hack charge." True, but then why does the indictment include it repeatedly, if it's irrelevant?
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Very good points.
They want to make it a national security case but know that will lose so they shadow box.
It depends on the jury. If he is convicted and I think he will be, then it depends on the judge. With luck it will be a minimum sentence or a suspended sentence.
Best outcome -> jury finds not guilty because of insufficient evidence. That will take a good lawyer. The other outcome will take an honest judge.
Sometimes a judge will dismiss for insufficient evidence but I think most prefer to send the case to the jury, especially if it is a hot potato.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I have no such confidence in the particular Court he'll see
John Kiriakou from personal experience in the same designated court explains the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZIMbHr2GNk&fbclid=IwAR3Od88owe6XIOaCTlj...
Given that the people making the charge
are inveterate liars, whereas Assange has never been proved to have told a lie (and nor has his organization), well...I think I'll let The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe talk for me:
"How do you know," [the Professor] asked, "that your sister’s story is not true?
"Oh, but—" began Susan, and then stopped.
Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said, "But Edmund said they had only been pretending. "
"That is a point," said the Professor, "which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration.
For instance—if you will excuse me for asking the question—does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?""That’s just the funny thing about it, sir," said Peter. "Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time."
"And what do you think, my dear?" said the Professor, turning to Susan.
"Well," said Susan, "in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true—all this about the wood and the Faun."
"That is more than I know," said the Professor, "and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good comparison! Does indeed illustrate the situation. n/t
I think it's time
to reprint Wikileaks greatest hits. Often and in big type. It's not about Assange no matter how much they want us to focus on his cat. It's about the rock he lifted to show what crawls around underneath, shunning the light of day.
Why didn't Romo also
Tell reporters that Assange kicked a puppy? He was mean to his kitten? What utter and simplistic bullshit.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
"Information anarchy"
That Economist quote
Translation:
The mainstream news media, talking to each other: OMG guys, we're losing control of the narrative!
Oh, the horror of the American public having access to source documents so they can think critically about it and make up their own minds. Whatever will the oligarchy do if we start thinking for ourselves?
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Quite so.
The "anarchy" to which they refer is in fact the very foundation of democracy. If the people don't know what the hell is really going on, how can they possibly judge the merits of the politicians they've put in charge of things?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The Economist, or, as I now think of it, Capitalist Pravda. n/t
Information anarchy?
Is that like, everybody gets to know the facts?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm still confused over
why people think any information anywhere is secure.
dfarrah
Andrew Napolitano supports Assange
https://www.foxnews.com/world/judge-andrew-napolitano-julian-assange-hero
Let me put it this way: the legal analyst regular on FOX & FRIENDS called Julian Assange a hero.
Interestingly enough, and not to put my tin foil hat on too tightly, I was reading the Wikipedia entry in Napolitano, and found this:
The citation links to an article by the Los Angeles Times that reported Napolitano's allegations and the subsequent suspension. At the time I thought this was a bunch of bunk, but now? Now I'm praying with both hands that it's true and that Wikileaks has the proof.
https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-napolitano-fox-news-...
Judge Nap has been
a consistent thorn in the side of Trump.
That said, I wish people here would get over their shock that Fox commenters actually have viewpoints that diverge from the mainstream media and report what the msm doesn't.
Fox really has some great analysts, and you do get to see opposing viewpoints.
What a great job the msm has done in smearing Fox news.
dfarrah
Well, they did a pretty good job of smearing themselves,
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Pardon my ignorance,
but in what way?
I know people on the left side hated Fox news and were always blasting it for being racist, inciting violence, and lots and lots of other bad things, and this has gone on for years (at least since 2003, when I got involved in politics).
But when I started watching it, I was genuinely stunned at these characterizations. I even caught a few snips of Bill O'Reilly, and he was not the horrid monster described by liberals either.
So, now I watch for myself instead of trusting the leftie/liberal take on things.
dfarrah
Anybody remember the Julian Assange show on RT in 2012?
Saw some bits back then. And it was amazing.
RT was showing some of his show, "The World Tomorrow," yesterday.
I've personally attended a couple of closed circuit live conversations around NYC with him, as well as an excellent panel discussion a couple of years ago that included his lawyers from Center for Constitutional Rights , Chris Hedges, Jeremy Scahill, and Amy Goodman.
He's a genuine modern hero whose Wikileaks has stamped this era forever as a new dynamic repository and clearing house for whistleblowers worldwide.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Great Comment
RT is a jewel. Ironic the quality of the programming and content as opposed to American media.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I just received an email from my tax preparer
that makes me wonder if I am wasting my life working every single day as a lawyer. For what it is worth, I am in the exact bracket that supports everyone else, and if I were young, I would be glad.
Ok. Focus on Julian, not on the cusp. (on the cusp is not ok!)
Julian is innocent until proven guilty, or we all accept a bullet in the head by a firing squad for a suspect. Dammit, that is the starting gate!
HE IS PRESUMED INNOCENT RIGHT NOW, AND UNTIL A JURY SAYS OTHERWISE.
Any politician sucking up $ from anywhere should just shut up. Either admit that on this day, he is innocent, or just shut up.
Any person running for any office who says they will forever uphold the Constitution should damn well start THERE with their tweets and their tv vids. They can twist and contort all they want, they can suck their balls up into their abdomens right now (Bernie! Your voice got lighter! How does this play with your campaign analysts?) but if we are supposed to elect them to govern according to the fucking Constitution, SAY IT,
cowards!
I edited out the word "fucking" about 9 times.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
One of my all time favorite moments in US politician
hypocritical doublespeak (approxiquote):
Edwin Meese, AG: "When a person is a suspect, that means they're guilty"
Edwin Meese, defendant: "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
This reminds me of something
that I experienced back in the '90s, when I was working as a lawyer in NOLA. I was talking with an FBI agent about a case he was working on, in which a business owner was being investigated for fraud. The FBI guy said to me, "We can't figure out why his employees are still working for him when they know the FBI is involved."
I replied, "Maybe they're thinking 'innocent until proven guilty'."
I've never forgotten his response: "Trust me, if the FBI is investigating someone, they're guilty."
Ironically, this conversation took place right after the bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, at the exact point in time the FBI was hounding that poor guy, Richard Jewell, who was the security guard who discovered the bomb. The Feebs decided he was the perp, and made his life a living hell for weeks.
Oops. Turned out the bomber wasn't Jewell, after all. It was Eric Rudolph. Oh well. Sorry, not sorry.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
there's a certain kind of professional arrogance that
pops up all over the place.
i was in a meeting once, with a multidisciplinary group sitting around discussing the "reproducibility crisis" in science, and in particular, the difficulty of reproducing even your own work. there was an academic economist at the table, who authoritatively stated that in his discipline, basic errors in computation and calculation simply did not get through the review process -- in fact, rarely even made it into the review process. this was literally only a few months after the big scandal where a grad student at MIT had been unable to reproduce the calculations of a couple of neo-whatevers -- calculations that had been cited on the floor of the US Congress in justification of some obnoxious anti-human policy. when he finally badgered the economists into sending him their spreadsheet (the calculations had all been done using Excel -- which is, from a software validation perspective, almost impossible to test), sure enough, he found an error in one of their formulas.
i've discussed in the past the problem for people who are particularly intelligent, or who enjoy a particular expertise: in their own experience, 99% of the time they're right, which makes it really, really hard for them to doubt their own conclusions.
and yes, i'm talking from personal experience.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Tuck paper
On errors in operational spreadsheets.
Not my area so I can’t vouch for the journal, but 70 cites is nothing to sneeze at.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
hey, thanks, that's actually of great professional interest
to me and my coworkers, i'm definitely going to take a look.
a couple of years before that was published (2009) I was working at a biotech that was for the first time trying to get one of its products FDA-approved for clinical use (rather than "RUO": Research Use Only). this coincided with the FDA's first serious push to incorporate software validation into the quality control processes needed to win approval for medical devices. our product relied on an in-house Excel spreadsheet for analyzing the output of the instrument. it was a challenge even figuring how to attack the problem of verification/validation of the spreadsheet.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I would imagine
that sort of arrogance is a little more widespread in science and academia and MSM than is generally acknowledged. I would call it arrogance and smugness driven by ideology and dogma. Their position just has to be true because it is, it's been proven, they assert, it's what that narrow area of science/academia has concluded to be true. Except when it isn't. Usually it takes many years, and many brave dissenters risking their careers, gathering enough evidence to finally make the old house of cards paradigm fall.
See, e.g., the recent demise of the vigorously guarded Clovis paradigm in archeology/anthropology. Many careers derailed by the OG defending its turf, until finally, after decades of indisputable evidence clearly undermining it, the old paradigm fell.
The 2010 Reinhart-Rogoff paper “Growth in a Time of Debt”
Economics experts advising government policy all over the world used it to make the case for austerity, fiscal discipline, all that sort of hard-line approach against budget deficits and government spending. Then a grad student discovered the spreadsheet underpinning the paper contained a basic error.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reinhart+rogoff+spreadsheet+error
thanks -- I got "MIT" wrong, it was UMass-Amherst.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Those economists are also in favor of getting rid of all cash
There is a public debt problem, but their solutions are always paid for by the working class who never benefited from the debt.
"Mistreated his kitten???"
Prove it.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Didn't he send the cat away
because he became concerned for its safety under the conditions he was forced to live in?
Or am I misremembering?
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
The cat was a Soviet agent!
A Marxist cat!
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
"MAO?"
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Chairman Meow ??
https://longlivethekitty.com/about-chairman-meow/
That is what I recall
hearing about the cat.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
One Overpowering News Outlet Still Makes All The Others Weep:
https://www.theonion.com/experts-warn-prosecuting-assange-creates-slippe...
https://www.theonion.com/cackling-julian-assange-disintegrates-into-line...
https://www.theonion.com/ecuadorian-embassy-runs-ad-seeking-no-drama-ten...
https://entertainment.theonion.com/nation-admits-they-only-care-about-fr...
https://www.theonion.com/media-condemns-julian-assange-for-reckless-expo...
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
And regarding the Mueller report:
"William Barr Agrees To Release Nonverbal, Abstract Visual Representation Of Mueller Report"
https://politics.theonion.com/william-barr-agrees-to-release-nonverbal-a...
The bottom line is
The US government wants to shut a journalist up, but they can't do it directly because of the 1st Amendment and the Supreme Court decisions, such as New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) involving the Pentagon Papers.
So they're trying to do it indirectly, by trumping up a "conspiracy to hack" charge.
And they're trying to get the American people to go along with it, by screeching about "Russia! Putin! National security! Classified documents! He hates America! And OMG he did mean things to his poor widdle kitty! That Bad Bad Man!!!"
They're trying to manipulate Americans emotionally to make us project our hate and fear onto Assange.
The psychological term for that is scape-goating. Focus our anger and fear onto Assange so we won't look at what we really need to be angry and afraid about.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
^^^ This comment ^^^
nails what is actually going on.
They are trying to use a back door to shut down any journalism based upon unofficial leaks. Assange is going to be made an example of so that no one else will try to do what Wikileaks has done. The end result will be just another way to enforce the propaganda that the American state is pumping out via the corporate mockingbird media and the final death knell of the First Amendment.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
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