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  1. #71
    Senior Member Silver Poster
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    There seems to be some doubts about this story, but from the way he walks, it's possible Manafort has all the emails up his ass. Probably a prison shiv and a cell phone too. There is news Manafort has been lying AGAIN, and is about to loose his plea deal, which would only leave a Presidential Pardon between Manafort and a very long prison sentence. Is it me or does this whole thing seem like a crap shoot? Method in Madness, or just plain madness??


    PS, it seems to be getting cold down here. Trump has sucked the soul out of everything.


    World Class Asshole

  2. #72
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    The re-arrest of Julian Assange in London raises intriguing dilemmas for the British, the Swedes and the USA. Assange was originally arrested in the UK at Sweden's request because he failed to present himself to the Swedish police to answer allegations of rape and sexual assault. He then violated the terms of his bail in the UK by walking into the Ecuadorian Embassy to claim political asylum, but as in reality he was escaping a criminal investigation into rape and sexual assault rather than fleeing political persecution, Ecuador ought to have told him to get lost, but seem to have thought it would benefit theim politicallly to support Assange. With a change of government in Ecuador and increasing frustration with the manner in which Assange has conducted himself, they decided to rescind the citizenship they gave him, something they can do legally because Assange was issued with a new Australian passport in September 2018 so has not been made a stateless citizen.

    The dilemma is threefold:

    1) can Sweden re-open the investigations into the allegations of rape and sexual assault? If this is the case, Assange could be returned to Sweden thus for the UK returning this case its status quo ante, and handing the problem back to Sweden.

    Sweden has laws that protect human rights, this means that if the US applied to extradite Assange for trial in the US on computer hacking, Sweden could refuse because the USA -in this specific case, Virginia- retains the death penalty, while the US condones the use of torture on prisoners in custody even if they have not been charged with a crime -and Assange has been indicted on a Federal crime. Moreover, as the President has violated the Constitution of the USA by repudiating the right of Congress to determine what proportion of money allocated in the budget he can spend, and how and where, and in the view of some that none of the tribunals held in Guantanamo Bay meet basic standards of legal representation, there is no guarantee Assange will be subject to the rule of law.

    2), As with Sweden, so for the British, and based on the agument above, one would hope that after serving an appropriate sentence for his crime if Sweden does not seek his extradition, Assange could be deported to Australia. The UK has twice refused to extradite people charged with computer hacking in the USA, though both were British citizens.

    3) For the US, the dilemma exists for the President, because the Republican candidate praised Wikileaks 100 times during the campaign, and benefited from the hacked emails which it is alleged the Russians passed to Wikileaks that attacked the American candidate in the Presidential election, Hillary Clinton. That the man who benefited now says he knows nothing about Wikileaks is standard 'ridiculous bullshit' -to use his own language-. Did Aaron Banks, the British insurance millionaire who joined up with Nigel Farage to support their Leave campaign in the UK's EU Referendum in 2016, in one of his five meetings with the Russian ambassador in London, receive a USB stick with the hacked email data that he gave to Nigel Farage, and did Farage give this to Assange when he went to see him in the dead of night in the Ecuadorian Embassy? Farage as far as I know has not yet commented on Assange's arrest.

    Thus the dilemma is that while Assange has been indicted on a charge of illegal computer hacking, passing a crucial password to 'Bradley' Manning (as she then was, now Chelsea) that resulted in the publication of a vast tranche of classified material mostly relating to the war in Iraq, Assange could be of interest to those in Congress who wish to pursue the allegation that the links between the Russian government and the Republican campaign were closer than those which may or may not be described in the Mueller Report. So a lot may depend on what is in the full report, and whether or not a man extradited to the US on one charge, can be investigated or questioned on another.

    It may be that in spite of the indictment in Virginia, the US will not seek Assange's extradition, but that may depend on whether or not Virginia now has the new generation of tame Republican judges who use the law to protect the President rather than the Constitution and the rule of law which is why they have been appointed.

    Or maybe Assange, whose physical and mental health cannot be as good as it was when he chose to dodge the law, will not survive another prison sentence, which is what his self-imposed isolation in the Ecuadorian Embassy amounted to. Either way, the man is finished as an activist, just as the staggering amount of government data Wikileaks has released has for the most part lain dormant and unread -did anyone actually read all 30,000 of Hillary Clinton's emails? And, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Wikileaks relased data from Belarus that threatened the lives of anti-government activists there, so when Assange is elevated to the status of 'hero' in regard to 'free speech' it might be worth pausing to consider what his politics actually are -is he an anarchist, a libertarian?


    Last edited by Stavros; 04-12-2019 at 09:56 AM.

  3. #73
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    Assange looks like he's aged 20 years since his confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy and may be facing some rough justice in the US. Still, it's hard to feel too sorry for him. He contributed to his current predicament by abusing the hospitality of his hosts, which was arrogant and stupid. Also, while Wikileaks may have started out fearlessly exposing official secrets, it seems to have ended up selectively leaking material that happened to serve Assange's political agendas.


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  4. #74
    Silver Poster yodajazz's Avatar
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    Quote Originally Posted by filghy2 View Post
    Assange looks like he's aged 20 years since his confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy and may be facing some rough justice in the US. Still, it's hard to feel too sorry for him. He contributed to his current predicament by abusing the hospitality of his hosts, which was arrogant and stupid. Also, while Wikileaks may have started out fearlessly exposing official secrets, it seems to have ended up selectively leaking material that happened to serve Assange's political agendas.
    Yes, I thought that his exposure of the military operation was a good thing for the american public to see. I remember one in particular which showed the military in Iraq, shooting up a family vehicle with young children inside. In my view. the public needs to better understand the seriousness of war, and how it affects others. We have always had war-hawks, saying we need to invade this country or that. An we seldom take that into account. And they falsely claim, that anger towards the US, is only about religion. So i see the military leaks, as providing information to the general public.

    However, the 2016 election was entirely different, with its aim to hurt one political party over the other. And the election was pretty close, with just a few thousand votes would have changed the Electoral vote in at least two big states, I would much rather see him held accountable for this, than the military stuff.



  5. #75
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    Quote Originally Posted by yodajazz View Post
    Yes, I thought that his exposure of the military operation was a good thing for the american public to see. I remember one in particular which showed the military in Iraq, shooting up a family vehicle with young children inside. In my view. the public needs to better understand the seriousness of war, and how it affects others. We have always had war-hawks, saying we need to invade this country or that. An we seldom take that into account. And they falsely claim, that anger towards the US, is only about religion. So i see the military leaks, as providing information to the general public.
    The question to ask, is -could the Iraq material have been published in response to a Freedom of Information request?



  6. #76
    Silver Poster yodajazz's Avatar
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    Default Re: Julian Assange Explains WikiLeaks Disclosure...

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    The question to ask, is -could the Iraq material have been published in response to a Freedom of Information request?
    I doubt it. Seems like they could have blocked it, under national security. They could argue that reveal military operations, would put US soldiers at greater risk. But I still say, that it was good for the public to know. i believe that our US military industrial complex, needed a new enemy, who they could say, 'is trying to take over the world'. Thus, radical Islam conveniently took that place. The public needs t understand, US military operations can create new enemies, as well as taking enemies out.



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