Australian MP's - Democracy Threatened By Treatment Of Assange

Discussion in 'Latest US & World News' started by Jeannette, Feb 22, 2020.

  1. Reasonablerob

    Reasonablerob Well-Known Member

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    I take your point although he has betrayed.
     
  2. Reasonablerob

    Reasonablerob Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, such as WHAT exactly?
     
  3. Reasonablerob

    Reasonablerob Well-Known Member

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    Let me guess, you think you're one of the enlightened few and everyone else is brainwashed?
     
  4. zer0lis

    zer0lis Well-Known Member

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    It was more meant to refrain yourself from posting complete garbage and propaganda regarding some topics, not a personal attack. I should not have done this.

    Russians helped the people of eastern Europe or the Orthodox ones one few occasions when their interests aligned. Most of the time it was genocide.

    "The designations Rusyn and Carpatho-Rusyn were banned in the Soviet Union by the end of World War II in June 1945.[22] Ruthenians who identified under the Rusyn ethnonym and considered themselves to be a national and linguistic group separate from Ukrainians and Belarusians[16] were relegated to the Carpathian diaspora and formally functioned among the large immigrant communities in the United States.[22] A cross-European revival took place only with the collapse of communist rule in 1989.[22] This has resulted in political conflict and accusations of intrigue against Rusyn activists, including criminal charges.
    After World War II, following the practice in the Soviet Union, Ruthenian ethnicity was disallowed. This Soviet policy maintained that the Ruthenians and their language were part of the Ukrainian ethnic group and language. At the same time, the Greek Catholic church was banned and replaced with the Eastern Orthodox church under the Russian Patriarch, in an atmosphere which repressed all religions."
     
  5. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do you think the freedom of the press is (or should be) unconditional? Can someone access any data by any means and simply call themselves a journalist to absolve themselves of any guilt?
     
  6. Kal'Stang

    Kal'Stang Well-Known Member

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    Betrayed implies he had some sort of obligation to, in this case, the US. What sort of obligation does he have to the US? He has no love for it. He's never lived here afaik. He's not family. He's not friends. He has about as much obligation to the US as as a crop farmer in China does as far as I can tell.
     
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  7. Kal'Stang

    Kal'Stang Well-Known Member

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    If they do not slander or libel or personally steal documents or hack computers or hire someone to do those things then...yes. Freedom of the Press should be unconditional. The Press is supposed to be the 4th Estate. They're supposed to report on what the government does. They're meant to keep The People informed as much as possible so that the government stays as honest as possible. If that means that they accept documents or electronic documents from someone concerned about our government that are classified and disseminate them to the Public, then they should be allowed to do so with no repercussions.
     
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  8. Hotdogr

    Hotdogr Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Anyone who publishes anything is protected under the 1A as a member of the free press. Your posting to this forum establishes your membership to the free press.
     
  9. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You can’t libel a government so unconditional freedom would include freedom to lie about what they’re reporting with no legal comeback (after all, the media does that all the time). Also, why are they not allowed to hack or steal documents if they’re meant to have unconditional freedom to publish?

    That’s a condition too. If their freedom is unconditional, they’re not limited to reporting on government. If they get access to your personal data by any means, they’re free to publish it in any form they want? More to the point, I could get access to your personal data and be free to publish it if I just call myself a journalist.

    Again, there are conditions there, essentially a public interest test. The complaint here is that Assange and Wikileaks published swathes of data that contained nothing of concern or public interest, though some of which happened to be damaging to certain governments and officials. If that is fair game literally all data is fair game.
     
  10. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    May I expand on your question?

    Do you think the government's necessary power to classify important information should be unconditional?

    Should it be unconditional in wars brought under fraud? Should government secrets never be exposed?
     
  11. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No. My point is really that unconditional anything is generally a bad idea. Obviously there is a difficult balance to manage, given that we can’t determine if something should be secret unless we know what it is, so there is an unavoidable element of blind trust in the authorities handling the secrets and an element of blind trust in those whose job it is to monitor them, which includes actual journalists to an extent.

    A key independent monitor is the courts though, which is why when something like this happens, with a dispute over data that was released, the courts are the correct place for the rights and wrongs of the situation to be determined. Of course, if you can't trust your court system, Assange would be the least of your problems. :cool:
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2020
  12. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    I agree that unconditional anything is a bad idea.

    In this case of Julian Assange, there are many problems. Firstly, the US committed military aggression against Iraq, and that means it has no legal or moral foundation for its actions.

    Secondly, the web of lies spun in the media are just lies. He raped nobody, and he complied with the requests of the Swedish authorities.

    And so, he was doing in the digital world what journalists have done for many years. Just as Seymour Hersh exposed the crimes of My Lai, Assange (and Manning) exposed the crimes of Iraq. Remember Abu Ghraib, and recall that WikiLeaks had nothing to do with that.
     
  13. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'd rather err on the side of caution and liberty, unless there's an overwhelmingly clear and compelling argument otherwise.

    You think it's just fine that government can decide the press can be punished for reporting government abuses to the people?
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2020
  14. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The military aggression of the US in Iraq is totally irrelevant to any legal case against Assange. Most of the US government material Manning took and Wikileaks published had nothing to do with Iraq. I say again, if they'd limited their released to direct evidence of alleged war-crimes or wrong-doing, they probably wouldn't be in this mess now.

    The alleged rape in Sweden is irrelevant too (though he didn't comply with all of the requests by the Swedish authorities because it was when they won his initial extradition case that he jumped bail and tried to flee to Ecuador).

    Assange didn't engage in journalism. Assange, via Wikileaks, dumped raw data on their website. Other people used some of that data for journalism (good, bad and indifferent).

    Regardless of our opinion, this is still something for legitimate courts of law to decide.
     
  15. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So it isn't unconditional. We can debate where the line should be drawn but as long as there is a line anywhere, someone has to make the formal determination on whether any given act crosses it or not. That is why this needs to go to court.

    The government alone can't decide that, the wider legislature could (though shouldn't IMO and would likely suffer at the ballot box as a consequence). The government can bring a case to court, much like a private citizen can with libel and then it's up to the judiciary to determine the validity of the case under the law and what the outcome would be.
     
  16. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    You see collateral murder as irrelevant, while I see it as most relevant. You see international laws against torture and military aggression as irrelevant, while I see them as most relevant.

    You see the false narrative promoted regarding rape that did not happen as irrelevant, I see them as extremely relevant.

    I think you're kidding yourself Joe. You may be honest in your dealings with other persons, but you do not seem honest with yourself.
     
  17. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The danger there is interpreting guarantees in the Constitution into irrelevance. Once you can say "Well it says this, but this doesn't apply in this, this, and this case", that Constitution is no longer really a rock solid safeguard.
    I've noticed in the past with other issues that once a compromise is made, it sets a precedent and opens up the door for additional compromise, normalizing the curtailment of freedom.

    And "compromise" is an appropriate word here, because we talk about for instance security systems being compromised. "Compromise" means the barrier protecting the inside and keeping the bad stuff out has been breached and is no longer properly functioning in the way it was designed for.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2020
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  18. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Irrelevant to the case against Assange, not least because you’ve entirely ignored the fact that the vast proportion of the data Assange obtained from Manning and Wikileaks dumped had absolutely nothing to do with any actual or alleged illegality.

    If you’re focused exclusively on defending Assange, you’re not doing anything about those much more important questions either. It’s perfectly possible (likely IMO) that there are wrongs on all accounts but I don’t see the justification in playing them off against each other.
     
  19. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You’re just re-describing the problem we’ve already identified here, not offering any solutions. The only two options are unconditionally, where anyone who claims to be a journalists is immune to any and all law (which I hope we can agree would be wrong) or we draw a line somewhere. There is no perfect answer to this question and there are always going to be risks regardless of which way we go. Trying to pretend those risks can be magically eliminated is actually more dangerous than acknowledging them so we can take practical steps to minimise the issues.
     
  20. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    You are a typical American in that you are horribly misinformed, very well indoctrinated, regarding the facts of the Assange story.
     
  21. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, I'm typically British in that I take great offence at being called American. :)
     
  22. Reasonablerob

    Reasonablerob Well-Known Member

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    But of course YOU know better and are enlightened and unindoctrinated?
     
  23. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    Obviously we are all different. Some are more athletic than others, some are better at certain skills and worse at other skills. Some are more perceptive than others.

    Some are more susceptible to propaganda than others, and some are able to recognize propaganda while others are not. Some prefer to think with the crowd, others prefer to think and act independently.

    Life goes on.
     
  24. Jeannette

    Jeannette Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Russians never committed genocide and you know it. The Soviet Union was not Russia, nor was it ever Russia.. It was an atheist political system that didn't believe in nation/states, and it was formulated by Karl Marx who was a German Jew and a product of the Western 'enlightenment'. Lenin and the Bolsheviks used propaganda and other deceptions to overthrow the Tsar during WWI, and the fighting between the communists and Christians went on for more than a decade.

    Lenin and Trotsky believed that once their political system took over Russia, they could extend their internationalist and atheist dominion all over the world. The means they used, and the end result they wanted, is similar to the liberal new world order of the Washington's ideologues today.

    The martyrdom of Christians in Russia exceeded that of the first centuries and the fighting went on for at least a decade. Over 20 million Christians in Russia were killed by the Bolsheviks, and tens of thousands of churches were burned - many with people still inside. As for the so called Orthodox Patriarch in Moscow, he was never considered part of the Church but rather a stooge of the Soviets - so why are you even mentioning him?
     
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  25. Jeannette

    Jeannette Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here's a few of Assange's quotes at court:

    “the problem is I cannot participate, I cannot privately communicate with my lawyers.”

    "The other side must have something like 100 contact hours each day,"

    "There is already enough spying on my lawyers as it is. There are a number of unnamed embassy officials here. There are two microphones in here. What’s the point of asking if I can concentrate, if I can’t participate?"

    "I'm as much a participant in these proceedings as I am at Wimbledon,"

    And here are quotes from Assange's defense team:

    "the prosecution’s case is full of lies, lies and more lies”.

    "Assange's detention illegal under English, European and International law."

    “(Assange) no threat to anyone,”

    “He is a gentle man of an intellectual nature. There’s no reason for him not to sit with us.”

    "US mulled poisoning and kidnapping of publisher (Assange)"
     
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