Julian Assange Launches Legal Challenge Against Trump Administration (theguardian.com) 244
SonicSpike shares a report from The Guardian: Julian Assange, the fugitive WikiLeaks founder whose diplomatic sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy appears increasingly precarious, is launching a legal challenge against the Trump administration. Lawyers for the Australian activist have filed an urgent application to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) aimed at forcing the hand of U.S. prosecutors, requiring them to "unseal" any secret charges against him. The legal move is an attempt to prevent Assange's extradition to the U.S. at a time that a new Ecuadorian government has been making his stay in the central London apartment increasingly inhospitable.
The 1,172-page submission by Assange's lawyers calls on the U.S. to unseal any secret charges against him and urges Ecuador to cease its "espionage activities" against him. Baltasar Garzon, the prominent Spanish judge who has pursued dictators, terrorists and drug barons, is the international coordinator of Assange's legal team. He has said the case involves "the right to access and impart information freely" that has been put in "jeopardy." The Trump administration is refusing to reveal details of charges against Assange despite the fact that sources in the U.S. Department of Justice have confirmed to the media that they exist under seal. The application alleges that U.S. prosecutors have begun approaching people in the U.S., Germany and Iceland and pressed them to testify against Assange in return for immunity from prosecution. Those approached, it is said, include people associated with WikiLeaks' joint publications with other media about U.S. diplomacy, Guantanamo Bay and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 1,172-page submission by Assange's lawyers calls on the U.S. to unseal any secret charges against him and urges Ecuador to cease its "espionage activities" against him. Baltasar Garzon, the prominent Spanish judge who has pursued dictators, terrorists and drug barons, is the international coordinator of Assange's legal team. He has said the case involves "the right to access and impart information freely" that has been put in "jeopardy." The Trump administration is refusing to reveal details of charges against Assange despite the fact that sources in the U.S. Department of Justice have confirmed to the media that they exist under seal. The application alleges that U.S. prosecutors have begun approaching people in the U.S., Germany and Iceland and pressed them to testify against Assange in return for immunity from prosecution. Those approached, it is said, include people associated with WikiLeaks' joint publications with other media about U.S. diplomacy, Guantanamo Bay and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Don't worry, Julian (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone on Slashdot has assured me repeatedly over the years that neither the UK nor Sweden has any intention of ever extraditing him to the U.S.
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Revenge against Hillary (Score:4, Insightful)
That was before interfering with US election process was on the table.
And before that, Hillary asked her staff for ways to kill him - and was taken serious enough that a couple of aides took it at face value and researched ways to do it.
So your statement could be expanded as:
That was before tanking Hillary's election because she threatened to kill him.
But of course he did that, and now America wants revenge.
And all of this, originally, over making public the "collateral murder" videos (and a bunch of other stuff). America talks big about whistleblowers, but when it comes right down to it, our government is just as petty and vindictive as any dictatorship.
Re:Revenge against Hillary (Score:5, Insightful)
I once heard a lawyer who put it best (and I'm heavily paraphrasing here): "Nobody ever thanks a whistleblower. At best they might have a movie made about them or have someone praise them in an op-ed. But even then, long after all the positive press has stopped, they've still lost their job and been permanently black-balled in their field. And there will always be people who will resent and hate them for what they did. They'll always be looking over their shoulders, looking for work in a world where no one wants to hire them, and probably wishing they had just kept their mouth shut. And that's the best case scenario. Worst case, they end up dead or in prison."
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I once heard a lawyer who put it best (and I'm heavily paraphrasing here): "Nobody ever thanks a whistleblower."
Assange is not a whistleblower from what I can tell. It seemed to be more about a cult of personality. He had to know he was being used, and possibly had some ideas about who by. I had a pretty good idea at the time how awful Trump was, but they somehow dug up enough bullshit that combined with a mediocre run by Hillary resulted in Putin's puppet winning.
It still boggles the mind how republicans have some defect where they can't see the frame up for what it was and is. For every 100 things you actually
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Re:Revenge against Hillary (Score:4, Informative)
Just like those Swedish women.
The Swedish women asked for only one thing - that he's not prosecuted for rape. The first Swedish prosecutor, who decided the case on the actual merits let him go.
Then the CIA stepped in, and the wishes of the Swedish women and justice were not a concern anymore.
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The Swedish women asked for only one thing - that he's not prosecuted for rape.
The great thing about past tense is it is always right when discussing something which changes.
"The Swedish women asked for only one thing - that he's IS prosecuted for rape." is a true statement as well considering they were instrumental in initiating the rape charge.
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You just misquoted what I wrote, and lied at the same time. Congratulations, citizen, for your lying.
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"The Swedish women asked for only one thing - that he's IS prosecuted for rape." is a true statement as well considering they were instrumental in initiating the rape charge.
That's a lie, and you are a liar. They explicitly wanted him to be forced to take an STD test, not prosecuted for rape. That was attempted at the discretion of the government, and over their explicit wishes. Whether he should be prosecuted for rape is orthogonal to the point of whether the women wanted him prosecuted for rape, so let's try to keep that to a separate thread, so that you're not a goalpost-moving liar as well.
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It really doesn't matter if the women wanted him prosecuted for rape or not. The Swedish law enforcement authorities wanted him prosecuted for rape and instead of facing the charges, Assange ran away. The obvious explanation for this is that he believes he is a rapist under Swedish law.
Re: Revenge against Hillary (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you should grow the fuck up and realize not everything falls into neat the fairy tale categories that you learned in your first or second year of school.
Gender vs sex (Score:3, Informative)
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The sooner people grow up and stop being scared of things being different from when they were children, we'll all be better off.
Re:Gender vs sex (Score:5, Informative)
*normal* people are either of two sex
Around 1.8% of people are born with some intersex characteristics. It's more common than red hair. By your standard people with red hair are abnormal.
the unfortunate plain truth
Is that there is no biological standard for male and female in humans. The International Olympic Committee has been trying to come up with one for a century, and has basically given up. Genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, all kinds of stuff. Wikipedia has an article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In the end they just decided to categorize people by their testosterone levels because testosterone is what affects performance. Not by sex, even though they call it men's and women's. It's more like performance categories in motor racing.
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Re:Gender vs sex (Score:4, Insightful)
Around 1.8% of people are born with some intersex characteristics. It's more common than red hair. By your standard people with red hair are abnormal.
People with red hair are abnormal by definition. The problem comes when we assign negativity to abnormality, which every person who clamors against the correct use of the word "abnormal" (including yourself) is contributing to, simply by acting as if the word should have a stigma.
the unfortunate plain truth
Is that there is no biological standard for male and female in humans.
You can look at what is most common, and say that anything outside this is abnormal, without considering it a problem to be corrected. The idea that everyone should be normal is toxic.
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By your standard people with red hair are abnormal.
We are. The daylight hurts us.
Again I mentionned intersex (Score:2)
Oh and people don't care about olypimcs (Score:2)
Re: Revenge against Hillary (Score:3)
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There are no design diagrams, but most of the people have normal vision, and the ones that not are at a disadvantage. Modern medicine helps them to restore the vision of those, whose vision is abnormal and removing or damaging your eye is not considered a reasonable medical request.
What is even stranger is that mutilating your genitals is considered a crime when done by some black people in Africa, but if the same is done by a doctor in the US, it is something entirely different. And circumcisions and sex c
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I very clear;y and specifically said biological sex because you dim bulbs have destroyed the meaning of the word gender. Since I will not debate your corruption of once well understood terms I intentionally used terms you can not refute.
Chelsea Manning is a guy. His biological sex is male. No amount of surgery, hormones or clothing can change his biological sex.
I am not squeamish. That is you projecting. I am capable of telling a penis from a vagina. I can also easily tell when someone is having severe psychological misfunction and needs psychological help, not surgery and hormones.
The suicide rate for post operation trans is off the charts. If being the other faux-gender was what they really needed and would fix all their problems why do they suicide at such a high rate? Way above any other group.
Hint: it is because they are fucking broken and their brokenness comes out as gender confusion but they are still broken afterwards and kill the selves because what they thought was a magic bullet turned out to be just a bullet. Bang. Dead trans.
You seem to care a lot about something that doesn't affect you in the slightest.
If some person born as a male wants to live and be treated as a female, how does that affect you in the least?
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And you didn't answer the question.
How does it affect you which gender someone wants to live as and be treated as?
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The suicide rate for post operation trans is off the charts. If being the other faux-gender was what they really needed and would fix all their problems why do they suicide at such a high rate?
Two reasons:
1) Mental issues like depression, that result from gender dysphoria. Those are not magically fixed by having the surgery.
2) The stress of living in society, post-op. It is hard, because it is hard for other people to understand why you would undergo gender reassignment surgery. Even people who know and love you can have a hard time dealing with it all. As a result, you'll be reminded every day that you aren't really who you wanted and tried to be. Not everyone will take something like tha
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Two reasons:
No, those are two reasons why converting to the other gender won't fix all their problems. And the fact that they still kill themselves at about the same rate whether they have gender reassignment surgery or not is a strong indication that it wasn't what they really needed. But both the people who have had the surgery and the people who perform the surgery have a strong vested interest in convincing them that it is what they need, so they keep doing it even though the statistics show that it isn't.
In societ
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Re:Don't worry, Julian (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. What this is really all about, the US government wants to declare it globally illegal to report the criminal activities of the US government in the rest of the world. So you as citizen witness the criminal activity of a foriegn power, the US government, in your country or in an country where you are at the time, if you report the crime to the authorities of that country, the US want to charge you with the crime of espionage, seriously. You see a CIA agent kill someone, report it and the US government wants to prosecute you and probably kill you in detention, you committed a crime against the US state by reporting the crimes of the US state, when they are the foreign power. A real shite stain, on freedom, democracy and justice, full blow fascism and a populace too cowardly to put a stop to it, even when they are publicly attacked, imagine men allowing the government to fondle their genitals in front of those, well, women's children, they ain't men no more, when they allow that to happen, an emasculated populace, sheeple, trained to be sheared.
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That sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory
The truth here is much simpler. Assange is playing to the Ecuador government (and, I suppose, international opinion) by arguing 'you should let me stay because the evil Trump administrations will treat me unfairly...."
It's a silly argument factually - sealed indictments are a common thing - but he has to play the hand he holds.
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No, it isn't. International law is a common understanding built around the principle "don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you", which keeps the small and weak players safe. It is a pity that the US has created the precedents and strengthened the notion that you try to push, but international law is its complete opposite.
And you're an idiot.
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International law is a fiction that strong countries impose on weak countries.
It is passed by no legislature, enforced by no one with law enforcement authority. Like sovereignty it only exists because there is someone with the ability to enforce it and the will to do so. At best it is an agreement, subject to abrogation when inconvenient enough, between the strong to protect the weak as long as their interests are do not threaten the interest of the strong.
It is mostly a modern invention and flows from the
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Does anyone ever think if there are farms of foreign twitter bots pushing dumbass maga teen videos, there might be people gaming sites like this one too?
Absolutely. Maybe even this one, although why bother? It's not like it's important anymore.
Or maybe the moderators all got lead poisoning, also possible.
That's not an either-or.
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The CIA was looking to character assassinate him by any means necessary. First they sent in a CIA plant (Daniel Domscheit-Berg) to undermine Wikileaks from the inside and to advance to the narrative that Assange was just a selfish narcissist. And then they set up a blatantly obvious honeypot operation in Sweden to implicate him as a rapist too. It's the same shit they pulled on Dominique Strauss-Kahn when he was foolish enough to challenge the supremacy [theguardian.com] of the U.S. dollar (and that they've pulled on many ot
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I'm not saying the CIA didn't have any involvement, but Assange clearly is a selfish narcissist, so it wouldn't really take much work to advance that narrative.
Has anyone put together a solid debunking of the idea that Anna Ardin was working on behalf of the US government? It would be really helpful to know if such a thing exist, thanks /.
And what a bizarre honeypot, send a couple of women that agree to have sex with him, with the only stipulation that he use a condom, which he somehow couldn't stick to.
Maybe Assange has a history of sneaky raw-doggin' it. Or maybe they were just looking for any pretext. Or maybe it's all just what it looks like up front, who knows? I need more information to decide.
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Also in the UK. Assange tried to get the European Arrest Warrant voided in the UK courts but the UK courts ruled that what Assange was alleged to have done would constitute rape under UK law and therefore the EAW should stand. At that point Assange legged it into the Ecuador embassy.
Had he been concerned about extradition to the USA, he would not have come to the UK at all or would have gone to the Ecuador embassy as soon as he got here instead of waiting until it became inevitable that he would have to go
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Assangniks are interesting types. According to the Guardian [theguardian.com] in 2011, AKA back when they liked Assange:
Montgomery
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Assangniks are interesting types. Back in 2011, when they still liked Assange, the Guardian [theguardian.com] reported:
"They were coerced, either by physical force or they were trapped into a situation where they had no choice," Montgomery [lawyer for the Swedish prosecution Authority] said. "AA says in her case the prelude to the offence was Mr Assange ripping her clothes off, breaking her necklace, her trying to get dressed again and then letting him undress her." He then had sex with her after pinning her arms and trying to force her legs apart to insert his unprotected penis, which she did not want, she said."
Either the Swedes lied in an official Court filing, or they actually have sworn testimony from AA that he tried to force her legs apart. And yet pointing that out is "trolling" according to three of you.
And it's not like this particular fact should change your opinion on whether he should be in jail. The CIA is not gonna set up a honey rap with a fake rape charge that does not include some truly terrible all
Trump proxy (Score:1)
IMHO, he's a Trump proxy. People would like to prosecute Trump, but him controlling the Dept of Justice, and being protected by Mitch McConnell makes that hard. So they want to prosecute Assange as a proxy.
He's a bit part player, if the Russians hadn't laundered the data through him, they'd have laundered it a different way.
The real person to blame here is Mitch McConnell.
Trump is an Elop figure clearly, he's supposed to dismember the US, hand it over to Putin friendly control, and receive $130 million for
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Assange just told the Swedes he's a Syrian refugee. So naturally they dropped rape charges.
Re: Don't worry, Julian (Score:2)
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DURR HURR GOP BAD LOLLLLZ
Best economy ever. Still pushing to enforce our laws and keep additional illegals out. Telling off our faux allies to start paying for their own defense instead of at the expense of American tax payers. Telling off the evil Chinese dictatorship instead of bowing like previous losers. Simply: putting America first. What a shock having a POTUS who would do that instead of declaring himself a citizen of the world.
Wait a minute, I'm talking to an NPC script, aren't I? *facepalm*
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The sexual activity in all cases allegedly began as consensual. Mr. Assange is one of the very few people in the world in such deep political conflict with notoriously criminal security agencies around the world that a conspiracy against him, with women paid, coerced, or politically convinced to testify against him, is feasible. I'd like to see more details about what the original police involved felt was the truth.
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If you mess with a countries governing institutions and get caught expect consequences. I am not suggesting giving anyone in any jurisdiction a pass here.
As for Russian hacking and your incredulity about how pervasive it is, do yourself a favor and read Muellers speaking indictment released months ago. Interesting reading, especially from a tech/geek perspective. The details of the allegations are highly detailed and highly specific and these people are not master hackers. https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]
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Yeah, kind of like the Iranian Revolution in 1979, huh? Consequences [wikipedia.org].
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Da Comrade!!!
Hopefully these allegations will one day reach a court and your comrades can confront their accusers, state their defence, and then we'll see how it all plays out.
Who else is afraid of facing their accusers? People hiding in embassies....
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Yeah, who is afraid of facing a kangaroo court with a predetermined sentence and why...
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I'm on /. and I never said such a thing.
I've been reporting Assange and WikiLeaks ever since they were a thing. Assange was a self-described "spokesperson," at first. He said he has nothing to do with the internal workings of WikiLeaks; that he was sim-ply rhe front man.
Later on, after he and WikiLeaks fell off the radar and money and attention waned, Assange claimed to be a "publishers," so he could hide behind those credentials.
The US has wanted Assange, day one. WikiLeaks is guilty of two things: 1.) po
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Bullshit.
The documents were/are the property of the US. They were stolen and sent to WikiLeaks. I followed the Mannng case all the way from his Lady Gaga CD, through a scared hacker, to WikiLeaks, for example.
The shit was stolen and given to WikiLeaks.
Without judging the merits, those are the facts.
Assange hung himself when he stopped pretending to being a spokesperson and then said he was a publisher.
WikiLeaks fucked up when they lost control of Assange.
In addition to lack of donations, WikiLeaks and Assan
That's the definition of whistle-blowing (Score:4, Insightful)
The covert passing of non-public information about misdeeds (whether legal or illegal, unethical, or just plain embarrassing) to a publishing party for widespread dissemination is exactly what WikiLeaks was founded for, the support of whistle-blowing. It plays a very important part in preserving freedom and democracy, as without it unethical governments descend into tyranny behind closed doors.
The fact that you don't like this just shows the intolerance that you have for freedom and ethics in government. Snowden demonstrated the importance of whistle-blowing, to immense world-wide acclaim. He legitimized it in the public eye, so trying to paint the role of WikiLeaks as something different to whistle-blowing is attempting to sweep back the tide. It's too late for that, the horse has found freedom and the barn door is wide open.
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Everyone on Slashdot has assured me repeatedly over the years that neither the UK nor Sweden has any intention of ever extraditing him to the U.S.
For many years the USA didn't have any intention of building a wall on a Mexican border either, nor cause a trade shitstorm with every country in the world. People's assurances didn't change. At the time the USA showed precisely zero intention to extradite anyone.
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The USA still doesn't have any intention of building a wall on the Mexican border, only the twat in the Whitehouse.
Anyway extradition doesn't work the way the GP seems to think. Neither the UK nor Sweden has any intention of extraditing Assange to the USA but that is because the USA hasn't requested extradition. However, if the USA asked the UK to extradite him, they almost certainly would, which makes me wonder why he came here in the first place, unless it was to avoid a rape trial.
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Not everyone. Just a few vocal idiots who are certain that their world view is correct and that everyone operates on the same principals of justice that they operate on.
The words infamy and perfidy have no meaning associated with them that these people can understand... because they themselves are not that underhanded. But yeah, they are fucking crazy and you are not.
Think he can kick Ecuador out of their embassy? (Score:2)
'Ecuador to cease its "espionage activities" against him'
Bitch, you're in their their embassy, as a guest. Yes they're going to know what you're doing in their F-ing embassy.
It will be funny after he's extradited and the US unseals the charges they have him nailed on - jaywalking. Put his butt in jail six years so far by holding their cards close to their chest.
Re:Think he can kick Ecuador out of their embassy? (Score:5, Informative)
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According to various google searches there are 40 left. A non-zero number of those cannot be sent home because their government would kill them, Congress/Trump won't let them come to the mainland, and nobody else will take them. Many of the rest have actually been convicted.
As for the rest, you do realize that if you're shooting at us, and you're not covered by military law, we can actually execute you with no legal proceedings whatsoever? And that if they'd never shot at various Westerners it would be like
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Actually the status of unlawful combatants is still a contested issue. One side holds that if you are not covered under Article Three of the Geneva Conventions, which covers lawful you should automatically be covered under Article Four, which covers civilians, or more technically persons who "at the given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals."
However it is assumed
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However it is assumed that such persons are not armed. It is a point of contention whether Article Four covers anyone who is an armed participant in a conflict but is not an agent of a recognized government.
How do you square that with nations (Well, nation) where firearm ownership is a constitutional right? Does that mean that anyone invading this country basically has carte blanche to put bullets into anyone they see? Because I might be an armed participant, and that's a really convenient excuse. Not that I expect to be invaded any time soon, but I do live on the California coast... so if it happens, it's probably happening here first :p
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However it is assumed that such persons are not armed. It is a point of contention whether Article Four covers anyone who is an armed participant in a conflict but is not an agent of a recognized government.
How do you square that with nations (Well, nation) where firearm ownership is a constitutional right? Does that mean that anyone invading this country basically has carte blanche to put bullets into anyone they see? Because I might be an armed participant, and that's a really convenient excuse. Not that I expect to be invaded any time soon, but I do live on the California coast... so if it happens, it's probably happening here first :p
The keyword in the post is participant. Since history has shown repeatedly that summary, retaliatory, or mass execution, while having the goal of pacifying an occupied territory, usually have the opposite effect of galvanizing resistance. So, if the invading party intends to occupy an area, the logical course of action would be to require local civilians to turn over any privately held weapons and subject those not complying with detention or, if caught in an offensive or subversive act while armed, subje
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If ZeroHedge says the sky is blue, it is almost certainly some other colour.
Re:Zerohedge = Daniel Ivandjiiski (Score:4, Insightful)
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rather he was an active conduit between hackers and Trump campaign in the Hacker to Assange to Corsi to Roger Stone chain
That's some stunning schizophrenically delusional conspiracy theorizing, right there!
Kudos to you sir! Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
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Very little, the disinformation comes from Mr. Putin and Russian taxpayers, and from gullible Americans at sources like Breitfart and Faux News.
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Poor Julian (Score:2, Insightful)
He probably thought that by helping Donald Trump win with well timed leaks, he'd be able to avoid US prosecution. Julian didn't realize Trump doesn't repay favors (or debts.)
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Julian didn't realize Trump doesn't repay favors (or debts.)
This would first require Trump to believe he needed any help winning in the first place. The man is too narcissistic to believe he ever did anything in his life besides pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
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Simpler explanation: he disliked Trump, but really hated Hilary. (As it turns out, that applied to a lot of the US voters too.)
He probably never expected Trump to win.
Re: Poor Julian (Score:1)
Over two years (the digging started well before inauguration), endless funds and rubber stamps, and Commissar Mooler hasn't found shit.
Yeah. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Trump. Maybe it had everything to do with the Dems running the most corrupt fuck since US Grant.
Don't worry, the secret charges will be... (Score:1)
Don't worry, the secret charges will be for breaking secret laws and will be tried in a secret court so that you will be full protected and have all of the recourse the Government chooses to allow you. Sounds just like Stalin, Hitler, Xi Jinping, and every other dictator out there.
How dare him wish to actually find out about the charges and evidence against him? Kind of like exercising his right of discovery is something he lost because the Government is afraid of the truth.
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Nonsense. It will be a fair process. He'll be allowed to have a secret lawyer who will not be allowed access to the secret evidence, and 5 whole minutes of post-sentence court time to defend himself. The U.S. legal system isn't BARBARIC, you know.
How things change (Score:2, Informative)
When he was leaking things that made Bush look bad you loved Julian Assange so hard that Benedict Cumberbatch played him in the movie.
""First Facebook and now Wikileaks as the Guardian reports that studio executives have picked up the screen rights to the forthcoming Julian Assange biography 'The Most Dangerous Man in the World' by award-winning Australian writer Andrew Fowler. The book details Assange's life from his childhood on Magnetic Island in Queensland, Australia, all the way through to his foundin
Re:How things change (Score:5, Insightful)
When he was leaking things that made Bush look bad you loved Julian Assange so hard that Benedict Cumberbatch played him in the movie.
And when he was leaking things that made Bush look bad the right wing hated Julian Assange so hard they had smoke coming out of their collective ears, now they love him because he fixed an election for Trump. People love and hate things based on whether these thing further or hinder their cause which shouldn't surprise anybody.
Re:How things change (Score:4, Interesting)
Go ahead, blame those dirty foreigners. It's sooo easy to throw it off on someone else. It feels magnificent to retroactively, automatically define your values as the most important ones and those of others as inconsequential and selfish. Make no mistake: Trump's presidential win was the fault of the Democratic Party. They chose a demonstrably corrupt, very rich, connected insider candidate over one - Bernie Sanders - shown by polling to have a better edge over all Republican candidates. It was a spectacular failure of the Clinton machine to consider the impoverished, postindustrial Midwest as a given despite decades of policy neglect. Hillary Clinton herself underestimated just how very unlikeable a person she is. Trump wasn't the best candidate but that's just how little people like Clinton and fear her Beltway aura. Leftists melted down across the Internet, exposing their biases and breathtakingly narrow comprehension of the universes inhabited by others.
By the way, everything Wikileaks has leaked has been true. 100% truthfulness record. Unlike, for example, the US mainstream media which deliberately vilified a bunch of schoolkids, violating their own "journalist ethics" and accepted standards and practices with glee. Assange just did what he's done his whole life: try to do as much damage to America as possible. Ironically spreading dissent by saying the election was fixed is playing right into Russia's hands. The election was legitimate, the outcome was legitimate. If ye claim otherwise you're literally furthering Putin's cause. At least get paid if you're going to do that...working for free is a sucker's job.
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now they love him because he fixed an election for Trump.
God damn! If I had only known it was so easy to control people, I could have been President by now. What the fuck people?! Why didn't anyone tell me how easy it is to control millions of people and force them to vote in a particular way?
Fuuuuuccccccck. I am so dumb. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that both parties are dumb too, so I have lots of company. They spent billions of dollars campaigning and such in an effort to sway the vote, and all it took was Julian Assange releasing some information
Re: How things change (Score:2)
Cumberbatch also played Cummings. Not a sympathetic figure. Actors do not like to play good or bad real people, they like to olay challenging showcasing roles.
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Along the same lines as the left eating it up when Obama mocked Mitt Romney for calling out Russia as a potential threat...fast forward a few years when Hillary was unable to pull out a win (again) and the Russians were back on the left's threat radar and the root of all evil (in spite of the clear flow of money and favors from Russia to the Clintons during Hillary's tenure at the State Department).
If it wasn't for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
Double standards? For decades the American right was in a state of utter paranoia over Russia, Then Russia fixed an election for Trump (which by the way is a strange way for Russia to express the cozy relationship they have with the Clintons according to you) and now the entire Republican Party is running around in t-shirts labelled: “I’d rather be a. Russian intelligence asset than a Democrat””. Seems to me that Trumpkins who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
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It's more likely that he was initially liked by less than half of the people for apparently condemning Bush. Then he also condemned Obama (or more specifically Clinton). At some point it became obvious he simply does not like the US, and particularly how the US operates, and now he has no friends on our right or our left. His agenda does seem very much like what a Putin or a Kim Jong Un or some other banana republic dictator might prefer.
The status quo he sought to upset (and quite possibly succeeded at) di
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Actually, I've loved him all along. Both Republican and Democratic leaders need a gadfly who speaks truth to power. Engaging in corrupt, slimy shit that politicians want to keep secret is one of the few bi-partisan activities that everyone participates in in D.C., and guys like Assange should be there to call them on it.
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Yep, Julian Assange changed, or perhaps new information came out.
The same way once you learned your wife was cheating on you, you got a divorce.
People, the world, decisions, they are not fixed in eternity but subject to alteration.
Is this news to you?
So it was the "southern strategy" and all the good people switched sides?
Uh, broski (Score:1)
play with the big boys... (Score:1, Troll)
I lost the last shred of any sympathy for him when it became obvious that he actively colluded with Russia to screw with US election integrity. So
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That's the bullshit narrative that Daniel Domscheit-Berg has peddled. And I guarantee you that's it's going to come out one day that he was a CIA plant. Mark my words.
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The question that needs to be asked here is how many secrets is our government really allowed to keep secret? You let them keep too many, they might start disappearing people for whatever reason they might think is necissary. Chicago PD runs a blacksite for christ sakes.
We're living in an age of parallel construction and we might as well question the juries being picked as well. The more secrets the government keeps the less trust the public has in the government and that in turn creates a viscious cycle
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He did what he always did his whole life - harm America to the best of his ability. Remember cheering for him when he made Bush look bad? Neutral my ass.
Wikileaks has a 100% record for the truth, unlike the US mainstream media. If your political party can't handle the truth, you have bigger problems. Hillary lost because she rigged the nomination (we know this from Wikileaks) she urged the press to support Trump (we also know from Wikileaks) and we also know the press obeyed (a lasting stain on their re
Re:play with the big boys... (Score:4, Informative)
"That he actively colluded with Russia to screw with US election [has] been pretty well documented."
Has it? Where?
I mean there are lots of people expressing their opinion or those of "anonymous sources". But that's not the same thing as being well documented.
Nowhere near.
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...
What I tell you three times is true. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
What you are seeing is evidence of that.
Facts don't matter when discussing Truth. Right? ;)
ungrateful Ahole (Score:3)
Legal Challange against Trump? (Score:3)
Get in line, Julian.
Losing it (Score:3)
Irony Irony Irony (Score:3)
Seriously, a boi that lives on collecting and publishing secret data and is the embodiment of espionage, suing for both of these things is simply delicious.
Sorry, boi, you lived by espionage - you of all people should cherish Equador's activity. I'm looking forward to your uncovered activities to be published - something you should approve of, amirite?
Meanwhile enjoy life in the embassy building.
Re:Wikileaks are a russian front (Score:5, Insightful)
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So the secret to beating Trump in 2020 is to just look even dumber and more incompetent, so that the Russians boost your campaign.
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They want Americans to turn on each other.
Sadly, it doesn't take much either.
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No you're missing the big picture.
You're operating on some kind of flawed vision of U.S. politics where partisanship did not exist in the past. The U.S. is no more divided now than it has ever been.
If your view of U.S. history goes no deeper than the highly filtered version taught in the public school system, then you are operating on flawed data. There was a time that things were so contentious in Congress that Preston Smith Brooks of South Carolina beat Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly to death on t
Always divided, nothing new here (Score:2)
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The Russians have been at this for a long time. [youtube.com] And for the most part have succeeded.
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You're missing the bigger picture. The Russians are not left or right. Their goal is instability in the US. That means making partisan differences worse. Getting the people to vote for governments that cannot function. Divide and conquer is the name of the game. In that respect they will 'support' any side if they know they can use it to stir up trouble. They want Americans to turn on each other.
While you are correct, I think it is much more reasonable to fear the CIA and friends. They are allowed to operate on US soil now and they have been. With a vengeance. The CIA is responsible for more fake news than Russia, Iran, North Korea, and all of the multinational corps combined. But the law that prevented the CIA from acting domestically was removed, with no fanfair. Nobody noticed or thought anything about it. Well, I am sure some noticed, but media-inspired line is: It was a non-event back in 2010
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