How much does the US pay the UK to hold Assange prisoner?

I suspect you would have done the very same thing had you been in his shoes.

 

I'm not accused of rape, and hiding from the authorities

 

I've highlighted your last statement and am not surprised! It takes someone with courage and a sense of right and wrong. Obviously, you've got neither.
The USA has committed the worst crimes against humanity during and since the Second WW.

 

I am a strong advocate for Assange. Peoples views are so often not broad enough when speaking about him. Does he like the attention? Sure. Did he leak classified documents? Sure. Do I think those documents should have been released? Yes. I am tired of our governments establishment crying when they get caught red handed doing very bad things. Assange and WikiLeaks are not a threat to our national security. Nor was Snowden. They are. Via incompetence. Proven. And Arrogance Proven.

Is he a rapist? Naw. It's very weak and might have gotten him charged here in the US surely not indicted and sure as heck not convicted.

Julian Assange has done all of us great public service regardless his motivations. Keep giving me emails that can be data encryption verified IE non fakable until they wack ya brother.

 

Assange can rot there for all that I care.

In fact, Assange is lucky that someone hasn't stormed the embassy and taken him out. Yet.

 

Then WHY this?
Arresting Julian Assange is a priority, says US attorney general Jeff Sessions
Donald Trump lavished praise on the anti-secrecy website during the presidential election campaign – “I love WikiLeaks,” he once told a rally – but his administration has struck a different tone.
Republican politicians expressed fury at the time, accusing Assange of treason, and Trump himself told an interviewer: “I think it’s disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something.”

Watch video and read all here:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...iority-says-us-attorney-general-jeff-sessions

 

I'm happy to see, America isn't lost yet... YOU are still there holding up its shrinking honor!

 

Exposing US government war crimes is "treason" but committing war crimes is necessary "collateral damage" in the never ending fight to shove "freedom" and "democracy" down the throats of every country that doesn't kowtow to the US government. What ignorant moron buys this horse manure? Oh yeah, millions of gullible American "patriots".

 

Yes oh brave arm chair warrior ... go on wtf are you waiting for.... expose some truths or is posting about your so called bravery anonymously on a forum all you can do

 

So it is! One needs to get outside in order to look inside.



Here I found an interesting website, worth reading...
http://thechristmasconspiracy.com/TheBigLie.htm

 

This basically supports what I said. There will always be political blather around sensitive issues like leaks and sensitive intelligence and when a senior politician is asked a deliberately leading question on the topic, they’re always going to run a line like this one.

And I’ve never doubted there has long been people within the US justice system trying to find a legal way to punish WikiLeaks and Assange for publishing their leaks. I just think Assange and his supporters have an over-inflated image of his significance. He isn’t in the “Most Wanted” list and isn’t of any interest to 99% of the US intelligence agencies and they’re not going to risk negative publicity and international ire of grabbing him illicitly as is being imagined. If he stepped out of the embassy today, he isn’t going to get a black bag over his head and wake up in a concrete cell. He may well face an extradition request from the US to where-ever he ends up but that’d be perfectly legitimate in itself, even if he wasn’t guilty of anything. Again, he isn’t above the law.

 

Yes, there is NO requirement for the party seeking extradition to provide evidence of guilt. This is, imo, a heinous perversion of the law that strips away the normal legal safeguards an individual once had.

If he ended up in Ecuador, there is no question that an extradition request would be immediately escorted to its deserving place; the trash can.

His supporters, of which I am one, take exception not just to Assange the person, but to Assange the journalist. Arresting and extraditing a journalist who has published material from whistleblowers has, until quite recently, had a long history of public support here in the UK and also internationally. Even once in the US.

 

Spoken like a true brainwashed toady of the political establishment.

 

That’s a wider question that just Assange (and possibly worthy of it’s own thread);

An extradition request doesn’t require evidence of guilt but it does require evidence of a reasonable case, a similar bar to what prosecutors need to meet to bring a case to count in the first place. To provide evidence of guilt, the extraditing country would either need to try the suspect in their absence (which would have similar issues) or the extradition case would effectively be a full trial (legally complex and expensive).

In practice, you seem to looking to make extradition impossible in any circumstances, which might work in Assange’s case but would clearly be inappropriate in many others involving clearer and less political offences.

Journalists have some specific protections under a number of laws, which are very important, but they’re not unconditional. It doesn’t imply a blanket ban of prosecutions of journalists as a result of their work though it remains available as a basis for defence or mitigation.

I also think there is a relevant distinction with WikiLeaks in that it promotes simply releasing almost any and all raw data rather than only reporting on the relevant elements. It wasn’t really engaged in journalism itself at all, only providing a repository for other publishers. It’s only more recently that, with the benefit of its higher profile, it’s moved in to more reporting and political commentary, though still in a very limited manner. After all, plenty of other journalists have published material from whistleblowers without facing any of the same issues (even those who have worked directly with WikiLeaks).

 

9/11 is glaringly missing from that blog unless this is supposed to be the reference "all the buildings destroyed by terrorists".

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Joseph Goebbels

 

Tell that to Seth Rich... Well maybe via a psychic medium.

 

The entire above statement is correct.. Or should be.

Now I personally believe as you do the above that is in bold. Our major media disagrees. Since President Trump was elected they have gone to far. Particularly MSNBC. They had a contributor on their show calling for revolution and the hosts didn't challenge him at all. Openly gave him a platform to promote treason, sedition or whatever you wanna call it.

They feel entitled to do so under the freedoms granted to them as the 4th Estate.

Pure insanity.

Assange and Snowden leak truths and are hunted? Pfft.

 

I dispute your claim that Wikileaks isn't a publisher. By definition it is. However, I would agree to it being a small, albeit international, publisher that does not have the same capability as the NYT's, WaPo etc. But that is a consideration of available finances rather than intent, I think. And small indepedents is the way our world is shaking out at the moment.

Wikileaks has achieved prominence because it now does the the job the mainstream media used to do, but ceased doing. From where I sit today, I see leading media outlets and government acting as twins in crime. I'm far from happy with that; for example the 4th Amendment evaporates with that kind of "cooperation" and "understanding". This opens the door to tyranny and a government of oligarchical interests and not of the people by the people for the people. Basically it has s***canned the founding principles of the USA.

Wikileaks biggest leak to date is almost certainly the Vault 7 leaks that had to have come from a source inside the CIA. That source has not been identified to date. Bravo! When looked at in some detail it is evident that whoever the leaker was they were acting in what they considered to be the best interests of the citizens of the US by revealing the truly massive nature of the surveillance state.

It is telling that he/she or they took this material to Assange and not to any of the leading news outlets around the world. The question is why choose Assange and not those major newspapers? My guess would be that the leaker carefully followed the way all the media folded and cooperated with the government over the Edward Snowden leak - where only a relatively small number of files were published and the rest destroyed and suppressed.

The foregoing are some of the reasons why I continue to support Assange and Wikileaks. Basically, I fear that without independent journalists with an immediate entree to the news cycle - which Assange has (Pulitzer prize winner, Seymour Hersh, can't get published in his native land these days) - we the public would be living with the mushrooms 24/7.

And the fact is I don't trust any government enough to think they'll do the right thing. On the contrary, I trust them to do the wrong thing. And I trust the mainstream media even less these days; I've watched them deteriorate and fold over the decades. Their toady attitudes has simply proven their lack of reliability, independence and credentialed their gofer nature.

 

As a matter of passing interest regarding the FBI's Most Wanted list, Osama bin Laden was only on that list for the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. He wasn't wanted by the Feds for 9/11 - the worst terrorist atrocity that has ever visited the US.

Curiouser and curiouser cried Alice...

 

It's not just the US and UK that want this dude's head. There are about 20 other countries affected by Assange. If it's not the US that takes him out, gonna be some other country he screwed over

 

Assange is a double edged sword IMO ... If you consider what's being brought to light about agencies not just skirting oversight, but breaking the rules they've written to police themselves? Assange I think is a necessary evil, worthy of forebearance. He does publish the truth ... as unpleasant as it might be.

 

Maybe so, but there are tons of nations that are gonna take a swing at him when he leaves his hiding place

 

I didn't say it isn't a publisher, I said it doesn't really engage in journalism. I've published documents but I'm not a journalist. Wikileaks operates differently to actual journalistic media (mainstream or alternative) and while I don't think that means legal protections for journalists shouldn't apply to them at all, the differences need to be considered. I'm not unreservedly anti-WikiLeaks. I think what they do has potential to be very positive but, as is often the case, it has equal potential to be very negative and they have the responsibility to properly manage that (cue Spiderman quote ). In many cases they seem to have done that (though the inevitable if ironic secrecy surrounding them means we can never really know) but I don't believe they're immune to poor judgement or making mistakes.

I don't think they should be treated interchangeably like that. My opinion of WikiLeaks the organisation is very different to my opinion of Assange the man.

Has there ever been such a thing really? Everyone has biases, associations and reliance. We need a plurality of journalist to balance out biases and prevent single influences but anyone claiming to be entirely independent is lying to either us or themselves. Wikileaks isn't entirely independent - it will unconditionally support Assange regardless of what he says or does.

I've never understood that line. Governments are just collections of people. There's no reason to implicitly trust them any more or less than anyone else, including publishers of large-scale leaked data.

 

They seek power over others. That makes them less trustworthy than others.