Not to wander too far off topic, but it also frustrates me when I encounter people who somehow rate Edward Snowden behind (in favorability) figures like Julian Assange.
Edit: To clarify my own frustration, I see Snowden as more of a true whistleblower, and Assange as more of a fame-seeking middleman willing to promise or withhold information based on his own self-interest.
the Assange thing also reeks of US/UK joint government interference.
Its totally possible that he’s a massive rapist, and its a great cover to be a known enemy to governments with your journalistic endeavours.
But its terribly convenient for the US government that the circumstances landed where they did, and it was even told to us that it would land this way and those saying it were branded as conspiracy theorists.
One might consider that Snowden went in knowing exactly what was possible, came prepared was completely “clean”, additionally he has not had a particularly difficult living situation. Yet even he is able to get massacred by certain sections of the media. Assange is living in (self-imposed, sure) exile and doesnt have the luxury of maintaining a lifestyle that promotes mental well-being, and the media are very quick to jump on his transgressions and blow them to insane proportions. Please keep that in mind when talking about him.
This is the first time I've ever seen anyone defining "being in prison" as "self-imposed exile".
Assange has been in an English prison for 4 years now. The only thing for which he was actually convicted (skipping bail during extradition proceedings) accounts for only 1 of those.
People who are awaiting trail or extradition are typically held during that process if they're considered a flight risk, which I think that's been shown to be a real risk since he was convicted for that.
My information is a few years out of date but I've been assured that at least he is only being extradited to Sweden for wild sex crimes and not the United States! Now let me check the Wikipedia arti... oh, turns out he is being extradited to the United States. A lot of people didn't see that coming (never really understood why not, but that is people for you).
The situation is in this awkward position where there was an obvious conspiracy to get Assange and making predictions on the assumption of a conspiracy has had great predictive power. The only change is it is isn't a conspiracy any more because everything is playing out publicly in British courts.
So while Assange is certainly being subjected to a lot of usual processes, the usual processes are being turned on him because he embarrassed the US government by bringing its activities to light. I have no doubt that is illegal. If I was a government, I too would want to criminalise people trying to hold me accountable. The issue is that punishing people for encouraging transparency is an inescapably political act.
And Assange is on the right side of history on this one. It is easy to see him as a footnote in every textbook one day as "and this was the moment when people started to find out what was going on".
In fact, people said at the time that it was ridiculous to believe that the Sweden case (where charges were never laid, and the whole case was dropped due to lack of evidence, picked up by another prosecutor, run with for several years with all sorts of procedural irregularities, and then dropped again for lack of evidence before the statute of limitations expired) might just be a ruse to make it easier to extradite him to the States.
Because people very strongly said this was only about accusations of sex crimes and the US would never lay charges for publishing - because that would mean what the New York Times does is illegal, we were told.
It's insane to see the level of malice directed at Passage and say anything being done to him is justified. I can only see the mottled opinion of him here as the effect of successful smearing.
I do not remember him being alleged to be a massive rapist. Certainly, one charge of any kind of rape should be enough to have him brought to the jurisdiction where the charge is made.
The person who approached Swedish police never claimed rape. She was worried that he may have had HIV and didn't use a condom and wanted to know if she had any legal recourse to force him to undergo an HIV test. Her testimony was changed after the fact by Swedish police without her knowledge or consent.
> Its totally possible that he’s a massive rapist, and its a great cover to be a known enemy to governments with your journalistic endeavours.
> But its terribly convenient for the US government that the circumstances landed where they did, and it was even told to us that it would land this way and those saying it were branded as conspiracy theorists.
I wonder if its both. He could be a massive rapist who would have gone unnoticed without us gov involvement. I imagine if you want to discredit someone it is much easier to find their real sins than to make something up wholesale.
Of course if that's true it still doesn't really matter how it was dragged to the light, he would still be a dirt bag.
Assange is incoherent. Why would Sweden frame him for a rape that he didn't commit?
Why would the USA need to get him extradited through Sweden if the UK can extradite him to the USA directly without any sort of fake criminal charges?
Also why the hell did he go to the Ecuadorian embassy without an exit plan?
He has spent more than 10 years in prison and self-imprisonment. And for what?
That helicopter combat footage? Is that it? Sure - it doesn't look good, but...that's Tuesday for the Russians in Ukraine.
>Why would the USA need to get him extradited through Sweden if the UK can extradite him to the USA directly without any sort of fake criminal charges?
Currently the extradition of Assange has been refused on humanitarian grounds, as the US can't guarantee that they won't stick him in an ultramax facility and/or drive him to suicide. It's still facing appeal, but it's entirely possible the UK refuses to extradite.
I believe historically Sweden has been more willing to ignore such concerns when dealing with the US, which is why there would have been an incentive to fake charges that could get him moved to Swedish custody.
> It's still facing appeal, but it's entirely possible the UK refuses to extradite.
Extradition has actually been approved by all relevant UK authorities, after formal reassurance from the US about his treatment. Assange is appealing that decision, arguing then-Home Secretary Priti Patel was an id-- could not seriously accept some meaningless words that they can renege a minute after getting him.
Meanwhile, the Australian government is trying to vaguely save face by making some noise, probably to extract some extra money from Biden to just shut up.
The US has even said if convicted he can serve in Australia. Australia could probably release or pardon him if they wanted to. I don't understand why people are so against him seeing a court room.
Because he's a journalist who's being unjustly pursued for revealing the US government's dirty secrets. Secrets such as: American helicopter pilots gunned down two Reuters journalists in Iraq, and then killed a random civilian who came across and tried to rescue one of the wounded journalists. The pilots shot up a van with kids in the process (thank God the kids survived, though they lost their father), and then joked and laughed about it. The military covered it up.
The US is trying to set the precedent that if you air our dirty laundry, we can go after you, wherever you are in the world. Not in the US? No problem. Not an American? No problem.
You are right that this is probably not the worst thing they did. I’m absolutely sure the US armed forces are a highly sought playground for psychopaths and people with sadistic tendencies. Furthermore military tends to attract people with a predisposition for authoritarian and/or facist mindset. We saw the snapshots of unspeakable torture - made by people that were so entertained by the atrocities that they just had to make commemorative pictures of it.
But collateral damage is something else: if I blow up a house with a terrorist leader in it, weil the debris kill a bystander? It happens in every war and it’s the main reason why a ‘just war’ still can’t be fought without tainting conscience.
> the main reason why a ‘just war’ still can’t be fought without tainting conscience.
Not to mention a completely unnecessary war sold using lies, and launched in violation of international law (not in self-defense, no UN Security Council authorization).
it's a little more nuanced than that, but for starters Assange already held the right to apply to serve any sentence in Australia.
What is crucial to understand is that prisoner transfers (IE; to Australia in this case) are eligible only after all appeals have been exhausted. For the case to reach the US supreme court it could easily take a decade, even two. What the US has proposed is a formula to keep Assange in prison effectively for the rest of his life, and in a US prison.
Ross Ulbricht - the infamous Silk Road guy:
1. Arrested in 2013.
2. Sentenced in 2015.
3. First unsuccessful appeal in 2017.
4. The case reached the Supreme Court and was denied in 2018.
So - 5 years. Fewer than Assange spent in the embassy.
The US government also said that there were WMDs in Iraq. I don't understand why anyone would believe anything they say in a case like that of Assange, where the "national interest" concerns override any other consideration.
At the time, the UK couldn't just arrest him at the behest of the US, for exposing state crimes such as torture and extra-judicial killing. He was a popular and respected figure, so public opinion wouldn't allow it. The rape charges served to smear his reputation and erode public support. Now they can do what they want with him.
> if the UK can extradite him to the USA directly without any sort of fake criminal charges?
My understanding is that Assange:
1) Isn't a US citizen
2) Had never set foot within the United States
3) Committed no acts that could be construed (even to idiots) as violating US law
It makes it a little difficult to genuinely extradite. More than likely there was a plan to use extraordinary rendition once he was off UK soil, but before he had arrived in Sweden.
Given what happened in Sweden when he was kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy and the UK arrested him for extradition to the US, I believe the Swedish accusations were made, and the prosecutions were done, in good faith.
Assange's argument against going to Sweden should've logically also applied to the UK, where he physically was while trying to make the argument to avoid extradition to Sweden, as demonstrated by the UK not even bothering to inform the Swedish authorities when they finally did arrest Assange.
>Given what happened in Sweden when he was kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy and the UK arrested him for extradition to the US, I believe the Swedish accusations were made, and the prosecutions were done, in good faith.
Just picking a nit here, but IIRC Assange was not arrested by UK authorities to be extradited to the US (that's just a "bonus" for the US), but because he broke UK law by "jumping bail,"[0] which is a crime in the UK.
There are a raft of other details/issues around Assange and his Swedish/British/Ecuadorian odyssey, and those have been endlessly discusssed/litigated in the press.
I won't address those issues, as I don't think it would add productively to this discussion.
Assange did violate the terms of his bail in the UK and was convicted and sentenced accordingly, regardless of other issues.
> Just picking a nit here, but IIRC Assange was not arrested by UK authorities to be extradited to the US
Ok, fair. My recollection was that they did both at about the same time, though subsequent focus on the (clearly motivated) US extradition rather overshadow the Swedish issues (which don't look politically motivated to me; though obviously that's what they want me to think :P).
That the UK didn't bother to tell Sweden is even more egregious given what you say.
I hope you are aware of the multi-pronged smear campaign against Assange. The US government hired Palantir and HB Gary to infiltrate WikiLeaks and cause rifts, and put out negative press about him. This is just what leaked, let alone their entire strategy.
Even if he were guilty of some information crime, the level of persecution against him by the US government is way overboard and not in proportion to the supposed offense.
But it is clear to me and many others that what he was doing was journalism, even if you don't like his message and methods. He should be protected at all costs.
Assange is just a reporter/press. Someone gives him information and he publishes it. He didn't crack or break or copy or steal any of the information he published.
> let's focus on the crimes they both uncovered. please.
Well, since you phrase it that way, sure:
* Snowden uncovered mass-surveillance programs and intelligence agencies lying to congress.
* Manning uncovered Iraq War records, such as a helicopter attacking civilians.
* Assange uncovered... What? What pieces of information do you specifically credit to Assange which puts him in the same position as those first two whistleblowers?
According to The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL, Assange exposed the corruption of the US State Department. This is apart from his exposing the war crimes committed by the US military in Iraq [1].
"Cable gate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale." [0]
Why are you taking credit from Chelsea Manning and giving it to Julian Assange?
Maybe I wasn't explicit enough: Assange is categorically not a whistleblower, but rather a publicist at best, figurehead at worst. Other people did the important uncovering, putting themselves in far more legal jeopardy.
> "putting themselves in far more legal jeopardy."
I have to disagree. The US govt and its national security state have done a pretty good job of persecuting Manning, Assange and Snowden alike albeit in differing ways.
1. Manning is already free.
2. Snowden fled to Russia
3. Assange hasn't even been to the USA yet and he imprisoned himself for almost a decade in that embassy.
Snowden did not flee to Russia. He was on his way to Berlin with a stop in Moscow, but before he was able to board the plane (if I remember correctly even before his plane landed in Moscow) the US revoked his passport so he couldn’t get on the plane to Berlin. It was not his choice to be stranded there.
At this point why bother? He was in Russia 7 years when he finally applied and got a passport, his (now) wife was pregnant, it was the height of COVID.
Russia has also shown that they're not interfering with him as long as he doesn't speak about anything Russia is doing.
Contrast that with his destination countries that he originally wanted to go to, all of which are also of course "enemies of the US" (which is the only reason he's safe there), one of which has been strongarmed by the US directly (Bolivian prime minister forced to land and be searched, breaking international law[0]) and one of which has already permitted one of it's refugees to be captured on sovereign soil.
I should also add that a lot of countries would not grant asylum to a person who is in what they would consider a safe country. I know for instance it's a point of much contention in the UK that an asylum seeker must stop in the first safe country.
Additionally, since Putin's "special military action" (invasion of another sovereign country) there actually are a lot of restrictions for Russian citizens travelling, both outbound and inbound. -- and even if you manage to wave away all of that: he isn't in a better position anywhere else and he still has to travel over US Allied countries to get there.
That's a completely different topic, separated by 7 years.
Back to what you said:
> those stories about him "being stranded" are bullshit
He really really was stranded. He had no passport, and the only place he could go without one would send him directly to prison without even a right to raise his defence of "public good" in his trial.
So unless you're saying "he wasn't stranded, he could choose to go to prison forever", that's not really true.
And as we later found out, the US would force even diplomatic planes to land and be searched for Snowden.
Sweden was playing US lapdog with Assange, so presumably would be the case for Finland too, even if not NATO at the time.
Assange didn't "imprison himself." He had asylum, because the world's most powerful state was out to get him. It has even come out that the Trump administration seriously considered kidnapping or assassinating Assange. As it turns out, Assange's fears of being handed over to the US were 100% justified.
He went into that embassy without an exit plan. What did he expect to happen? That everyone is going to forget about him if he sits there long enough or what?
And he will be handed over to the USA sooner or later. The UK has already approved the extradition.
If I follow your comments, the journalists and random passer-by who were killed by gleeful American helicopter pilots in Baghdad are just collateral damage, and Assange is to blame for his own predicament and should just let the US have its way with him (maybe locking him up for life, or maybe taking pity, as the President wishes). Apparently, all is fine and this is how it should be.
Your question makes no sense. Assange is the one who published Manning's leaks. That's precisely why the US is trying to put him behind bars for 175 years.
Edit: To clarify my own frustration, I see Snowden as more of a true whistleblower, and Assange as more of a fame-seeking middleman willing to promise or withhold information based on his own self-interest.