and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media, chances are pretty high that he will rot in a US prison for life or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The US is a terror state that uses torture and secret prisons. I hope that EU countries will stop extradition asap.
Would you stop taking HN threads further into political flamewar? This is not helpful. If you can't make your points without going over the top with fiery hyperbole, please don't post here.
I appreciate your positive contributions to this site, but we've had to warn you about breaking the guidelines so often that if you keep doing it we're going to ban you.
The US government has two contradictory personalities. A justice personality that is procedural and fair, and a military/spy personality that executes via drone and sets up Guantanamo.
Since the latter seems to think it owes no explanation to anyone of whatever it does (and moreover tries to use courts to hide its mistakes after the fact), who are you to say that it's above executing?
The fact that Assange is being extradited not snatched via rendition means he is going to face the US justice system. He is being charged in Eastern District Virginia with conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
If Assange just disappeared one day, then maybe worries that he is going to receive extrajudicial punishment or indefinite detention would be warranted.
The latter group would have no qualms about assassinating anywhere, but they want it known that the U.S. punished Assange, not simply throw him under a bus.
The Rosenbergs weren't extradited from a country which would require a formal guarantee that the death penalty would not be used, so are not a relevant precedent.
I bet the formal guarantee will be negotiable, especially when on the other end is the US. That's why UK has a special relationship after all. Assange would have been safer in Russia than UK for sure.
It's not an unprecedented thing. Mexico forced the US to agree not to seek the death penalty for Joaquín Guzmán ("El Chapo") before extraditing him, and the US has kept to that agreement.
The Rosenbergs were executed for treason, not just sharing some secret documents. They actively spied for an adversary of the United States, recruited other spies, and stole some of the United States' most powerful secrets.
The gravity of what Assange and Manning did doesn't compare to what the Rosenbergs did, which is why Manning didn't get a life sentence or death penalty, and why Assange won't either. Only way Assange ends up on the precipice of capital punishment is if he did far, far worse things than what has been revealed so far.
Rosenburgs were not convicted for treason, but espionage.
The judge convicting them worked along with the prosecutor on the bar to make sure that they got a clean cut, and more easily prosecutable charge of _espionage_ instead of original treason. But yes, his ultimate reason was his personal insecurity about seeing his fellow Jewish American giving the public even more reason to doubt the loyalty of Jewish Americans (given how all things were at the time...)
Excerpt from wiki.
> Kaufman is best remembered as the judge who presided over the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and imposed their controversial death sentences. Roy Cohn, one of the prosecutors in the case, claimed in his autobiography that his influence led to Kaufman's being appointed to the case, and that Kaufman had imposed the death penalty on Cohn's personal advice. This claim has not been verified, although it has been shown that after Kaufman learned that the FBI and Justice Department opposed death penalties in the case, he asked the prosecution to withhold its recommendation before issuing his death sentence. In his summing up Judge Irving Kaufman was considered by many to have been highly subjective: "Judge Kaufman tied the crimes the Rosenbergs were being accused of to their ideas and the fact that they were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. He stated that they had given the atomic bomb to the Russians, which had triggered Communist aggression in Korea resulting in over 50,000 American casualties. He added that, because of their treason, the Soviet Union was threatening America with an atomic attack and this made it necessary for the United States to spend enormous amounts of money to build underground bomb shelters." [5] Kaufman said that he had gone to synagogue to pray before issuing his death sentence; this enraged Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who later wrote to judge Learned Hand, "I despise a judge who feels God told him to impose a death sentence," and also told Hand that he was "mean enough" to stay on the court long enough to prevent Kaufman from having a chance to take Frankfurter's place in the so-called "Jewish seat" on the Court.[4][6]
You're right, the actual charges they were convicted of were espionage. Still, the point I'm making is that Assange's actions are nowhere near what the Rosenbergs did. Unless we see some superseding indictments of worse stuff.
Interesting historical perspective on how/why the death sentence was sent down, I didn't know that part about the judge.
In the US they don't need to use the death penalty, they can just put him in certain prison situations where he will be killed. The US has a massively corrupt prison system.
There are many well known US members of congress and senate who promised to bring him to death. That was one of Assange lawyers arguments, until they all started dying suddenly.
The relevant US law with the death penalty is the Espionage Act from 1917, Section 704. It prohibits anyone from obtaining national defense–related information and making national defense–related information available to a foreign government.
Due to this the UK is disallow to extradite him, because that are the exact allegations prominent US politicians and lawmakers accuse him of.
They almost certainly can't send him to Gitmo, if he's been extradited on formal charges. That puts him in the hands of the regular legal system. What makes Gitmo a special case is that it's an end-run around both American and international law... prisoners there aren't in the American legal system and subject to awkward rights like habeus corpus and fair trial, but likewise aren't prisoners of war and subject to the Geneva Convention (which calls for freeing enemy soldiers as quickly as possible unless they are being charged with war crimes for an international tribunal, which is highly unusual).
This is why Gitmo is a shame on our national honor, but it also means Assange won't be going there.
is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements[1] between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)?
I think if he does a little bit of time for jumping UK bail then the second he walks out from a UK prison the CIA will be all over abducting his ass. And he'll never be heard off again. I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone the guy?"* She and her ilk was considered a lot more moderate compared to the criminals in DC right now.
[1] edit: never mind I found it: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-wont-send-ter... - seems that prosecutors would have to play their cards right and just promise to give him life in prison instead. Spending the rest of his life in solitary isn't really much of a consolation.
> is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)?
Extradition is based on criminal law, even if the offense is terrorism; and, yes, it's a matter of human rights law without exception. (That is not to say they might not do a covert rendition rather than an extradition with death on the table, but the fact that the formal process of extradition is being used means, with a high degree of certainty, that it will not go forward absent a formal guarantee that capital punishment is off the table.)
> I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone the guy?"* She and her ilk was considered a lot more moderate compared to the criminals in DC right now.
Perhaps in some general sense, but certainly not on the specific issue of WikiLeaks and Assange.
But that wasn't a extradition from the UK case. They were captured in Syria and not the UK. What the home secretary said to the US was (paraphrased) "We will not seek that they get extradited to be trialled in the UK for their crimes". Basically, "you caught them, they are yours".
The part about extraditing someone from the UK (and the rest of the EU iirc) must come with written assurances that the person will not be given the death penality is written into UK Law. To go against that would need either a change in the law or have the Home Secretary face legal repercussions of breaking the law whist acting as Home Secretary.
They would have to be 100% sure that the other country would abide by the terms. But lets say the US promised but then broke that promise once they were on US soil, then it would have wider effects on the extradition treaty with that country let alone any other relationship with that country. Would it be worth it to the US to burn the ability to extradite other people in the future for just one case?
And that is even if they are seeking such a punishment. As it stands right now, Assange is "only" charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion which carries a max of 5 years in prison.
Assange's legal team will make sure that other charges that may be added to the case in the future can not be given the death penality if his extradition does go though (Just because he has been arrested doesn't mean Assange doesn't have any rights to fight the extradition request.) see the case of Gary McKinnon who was facing 70 years but didn't get extradited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon (Though in that case, it basically came down to he was seeing so much time in the US prison, he has ASD and depression that it was highly likely that he would of ended his own life then spend it in a US jail that it was deemed it would be against his human rights and the extradition dropped.).
>"and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media"
The "public mood"? Seriously? That's a pretty ridiculous phrase. There is no "public mood" in the US about Julian Assange. In fact outside of today's news cycle he's barely been mentioned. Wikileaks itself has been mentioned mostly as part of Mueller investigation stories but there's not been much about Assange personally in years.
First, Assange is certainly not a Russian asset. If, the Russian's would not had to face their publishing disasters they had with MacronGate and Gulliver 2. With Assange as their asset it would have been actually successful.
Second, Russia is an european nation. With a corrupt and criminal leadership, yes, but not as frightening as the corrupt and criminal leadership in the US with actual offensive strategies and media dominance. Russia only interferes with its direct neighbors for centuries. The US interferes everywhere else. With aircraft carriers. Russia has no aircraft carriers. For selfdefense submarines are enough.
Europe always tries to be friends with both, esp. since they rely on them for their exports (us) and gas (russia). Many russian assets happily live either in Vienna, Monaco or London.
The russian narrative "workers rules" was quite successful over the fascist narrative "industry rules". There are legitimate friends of both factions.
Have you considered that Assange's supporters don't think he is pro-fascist or that he hates the US? Why don't you try justifying those points instead of just calling everyone here pro-fascist like it's so obvious?
The truth doesn't require them to believe in it. Their support for Russian Military intellience operations including Wikileaks is support for an authoritaritarian war against Europe and US with the goal of overthrowing our liberal democracies.
I understand that the anarcho-hacker types hate all governments and have been tricked through cheap propaganda into thinking Wikileaks is a non-nation-state actor that is on their side of radical-whatever, but the fact is is that Wikileaks is military intelligence and supporting it is supporting that military, regardless of your personal opinion.
I accept the downvotes proudly because standing up for liberal democracies in the west against these outrageous agit-prop attacks has become extremely unpopular.
One wonders if the Wikileaks lovers live in a country like Russia and experience authoritarianism first hand, or if they simply have been indoctrinated to hate liberal western democracies.
Take for example say a British citizen who falls for ISIS propaganda and goes to Syria to join a terrorist organization. They swear that the U.S. and U.K. are evil and that their radicalization is the result of their honest opinion and search for truth. Do we label them as terrorists because of their views and actions, or do we say "well you THOUGHT you were doing good, so no harm no foul!"
Interesting that you did not post this critical comment on the parent I replied to, who began the ideological and nationalistic battle.
I would hazard a guess that you agree with his ideology and euro-nationalism and disagree with mine, so when he BEGAN this discussion, you had nothing to say, but when I defend the liberal democracies of the west against attack and invasion, THEN it becomes a problem.
Just an interesting observation as to WHICH ideology you chose to chastise (the one replying) and which you did not (the genesis of the discussion).
People often say that when they break the site guidelines and we scold them, unless we carefully balance the scales of scolding, and even then sometimes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635096). It's impossible to balance them perfectly in any case, because the threads are too big for us to read them all.
If you're genuinely concerned about this, you won't have trouble finding plenty of scoldings of commenters you disagree with by looking through https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang and https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb. We don't much care about people's political alignments when they break the site guidelines. People think we are, but this is mostly a function of their own political alignment, especially when they feel passionately about it.
From our perspective the important thing to understand is that someone else breaking the site guidelines (or just being wrong) doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. This isn't a personal point or a political one. It applies to all of us.
> The truth doesn't require them to believe in it.
Then why are you posting here? Just so you can sit on your high horse knowing that you're right and everyone else is wrong? Or are you actually trying to inform your peers about something that's important to you? Because you are doing a pretty bad job of the latter with your tactless accusatory posts which contain no substantive arguments.
>The end result is that it is becoming harder to trust any statement, not really what we want either.
This is a tactic in itself. I can't find the details behind it, but the act of so much misinformation at once that helps drowned out more factual news while simultaneously making it so that you don't believe what you're reading. It's not a new tactic, but it's well used.
Ironically, it's a famous Russian propaganda tactic that is in heavy use in Russian propaganda and the subsequently nearly identical Wikileaks propaganda that follows. This tactic played heavily with Russia's troll farms on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. It also played heavily in Wikileaks propaganda on twitter and other platforms.
For me to be accused of the exact evil that Wikileaks uses to manipulate its readers is very ironic, but this kind of dishonest "projection" of accusing the other side of committing your own crimes is precisely the standard operating procedure for far-right propaganda.
Since Assange will probably be claiming the journalist exemption I’m not sure why he should be treated differently than William Randolph Hearst’s crew or Judith Miller at the NYT if you want something more current.
Newspapers have been weapons of war. It's not whether it's a "mere" website or not, but rather how widely its publications are spread and how credulous people are of them.
In the case of Wikileaks, it directly influenced the most consequential presidential election since FDR.
I'm neither right nor left and maintain that both camps are equally deluded. I don't hate the US - I want the US to succeed! Very much so!
But it's not going to succeed by telling Americans that all is fine and they are doing a great job not considering the mess that they create in the world (since decades). I am obviously upset about the US but it's not out of hate but because of disappointment. They have always acted like a role model for how "freedom and individuality" is the corner stone of a happy society - some might say they "pressed their liberal views onto the world". I am very much bought into that ideology so it stinks and hurts even more so when I get to watch their actual hypocrisy play out as it does right now. It's like being in a relationship with a toxic souse that says one thing and makes you believe in the overall message and then stabs you in the back.
I like watching Friends, How I met your mother, and other US cultural things and feel a stronger bond to their culture than to my own home country (which whatever they produce now is an poor American knock-off). So calling me an American hating fascist or right-winger is a bit too quick I think.
Stop killing Muslims, and stop putting your poor and minorities into prisons, educate your stupid and give them health insurance, and we'll be best friends again. Hopefully then _together_ (!) we can tackle real problems such as climate change. Sounds a lot more rewarding than going for war to make a few puppet masters richer.
I'm not sure why you keep calling me names and suggesting that I'm a white nationalist. I've married somebody of not my color from the other side of the world, lived among their culture, my kids are mixed, I he lived in different countries ever since I was old enough to leave the country. I hang out with refugee and volunteer for the homeless.
If you misread me this much then I can only assume you're quite isolated in your own bubble and I can only imagine how you behave towards those not sharing your views (neighbours, friends, colleagues, family). Pretty obvious display of how the West is like right now. Scary really.
I suggest you travel the world a little but not by just making pictures but totally remove yourself from all the media exposure and political talk. It has helped me a great deal. Also I suggest reading some Chris Hedges or maybe listening to Noam Chomski?
