Jullian Assange has been arrested following removal of asylum by the Ecuadorian Government

Let me clarify, an individual does not need a court of law to determine a person’s innocence or guilt; the independent mind has the ability to judge things and come to rational conclusions on its own. However, before the state can apply sanctions and penalties, it is legally and morally required to prove its justification for such actions in a court a law.

Assange, meet your accusers in court, including the young lady in Sweden.

As an aside, it is very enlightening to me that those who demanded that Elián González be sent back to that communist hell-hole Cuba, are same miscreants demanding that Assange be not be forced to come to America.

This isn’t about justice, it’s about the hatred of capitalist America and the love of collective altruism.

 

I think he should face his accusers, absolutely.
Why wont he? Guamtanimo maybe? No jury there that I know of.
More likely cowardice has a role.

However, in my later years now, I'm sceptical we the general public know all the details.

My guess is there is a lot more Assange knows and just might have some justification why he has gone the lengths he has to avoid the route of responsibility.

 

What would be your guesses as to why none of the people seen committing war crimes have been arrested and why there was a deliberate hateful propaganda campaign carried out against Assange through your papers who originally thought well of him.

 

I think what he is hiding is the fact that he’s a punk pretending to be brave by poking a hornets nest with a very long stick while standing behind a barricade of protection.

 

Yes, the UK, Sweden and Australia had their opportunities to do the right thing when they had the chance, but they passed, criminal idiots they are.

 

Exposing the crimes of government is not a crime. Or rather, only in the world imagined by Orwell is it a crime.

Exposing the crimes of government is grounds for a commendation. It is the ultimate civic duty.

 

I think there ARE 12 honest souls in the country, but the system does its very best to make sure they are not seated on a jury. You can thank the Sparf decision for that. 156US51

 

You do not know that he helped her get it. The obama admin apparently could not prove that in court. In so far as the accusation that he asked manning for more, that is what journalist do. No crime there. And of right now he looks like a genuine journalist, and this is how real journalists are supposed to look, instead of a lap dog for the gov't they are supposed to bust out when the people who work in our name, and whom we pay act out of line.

 

If you want to see what it sounds like when a possible mouthpiece for our national security state at NPR meets a real journalist, Greenwald, listen to this. Notice how the guy working for NPR begins his interview of Greenwald. And just how the NPR journalist appears to be a literal dimwit, as he tries to put forth propaganda. And Greenwald's reaction. BTW, NPR had taken this interview down so no one could hear it after its broadcast but apparently greenwald's complaints got it back up so you can hear it here...

 

The defense has a right to a number of peremptory challenges. The defense can ask the judge, based on certain criteria, to excuse the juror. Essentially, the defense picks those who will judge their defendant.

With this in mind, the trial will be his to win or lose. Indeed, his defense ought to be a walk in the park for any defense lawyer, except probably for Avenatti--who couldn't get himself off in "a house of ill-repute".

If Assange is who he says he is, a libertarian hero defending our rights from the abuses of the state, he has nothing to fear in America.

 

Plaintiff and prosecutor also get to dismiss jurors, both for cause and peremptorily, both sides (and the judge) question jurors to see if their experience, background, outlook or anything else may cause them to favor or have a bias against the defendant.

The judge would want to keep off the jury people who knew about Assange, Wikileaks and Manning or the leaked material at issue, who served in the armed forces, are biased against foreigners or the transgendered. The prosecution would want these sort of people on the jury, but not if they approved of Assange, Wikileaks and Manning or supported the disclosure of the leaked material at issue. Obviously counsel for Assange would prefer jurors who admired Assange, Wikileaks and Manning, knew of and supported the publication of the leaked material at issue, had not served in the armed forces, and were not biased against foreigners or the transgendered. So the attorneys will ask the jurors if they have ever heard the name of the Australian Assange or the transgendered Manning ever heard of Wikileaks, knew about the leaked material at issue, and they'll excuse folks according to the interests of the government or Assange. The peremptories just excuse specific jurors, probably based on whatever responses or questions the jurors made during the voir dire.

 

Agreed. And as it should be. Each side does their best to get jurors who will listen to their arguments. If Assange is who he says he is, he will have no problem having his defense team finding 12 honest jurors and to present his case. It will be the most watched trial since OJ.

 

You are a hopelessly romantic idealist. I doubt you bothered to read Sparf and what it has delivered 120 years later.

 

And you're good--a compliment and a challenge.

 

A quick glance, and fast evaluation. The case is about murder conspiracies and how confessions affect the members of the conspiracy. If confessed by one with others present, use it. If confessed by one, but no other conspirators present, can only be used against the confessor. Right?

 

Perhaps, but the essential and important part was that the prosecution had no obligation to tell the jury of its power to nullify, and the defense was forbidden to tell the jury of its power to nullify.

Inform yourself: https://fija.org/

 

Full video




When this first came out on another forum someone put it up arguing there was no problem with it, that the US did things like this all the time. That might be part of the problem.

Members of the European Parliament have given Assange an award

http://uk.watsupeurope.com/news/eu-...-defenders-of-the-right-to-information-award/

From this forum one might get the impression that this is just an American issue and that it is important to no one else. This is not so.

https://newmatilda.com/2019/02/19/psychology-getting-julian-assange-part-1-whats-torture-got/

How come most of the US is whooping it up that Assange has been arrested when about ten years ago he was held in such high esteem by many. This may have something to do with it.

This is from a Pilger speech in which he is exceedingly critical of both the Guardian and the Australia Government but here he is tallking about what changed the attitude of many US citizens

https://newmatilda.com/2019/02/19/psychology-getting-julian-assange-part-1-whats-torture-got/

I'd say they were quite successful. You can read the rest at the link and/or listen to Pilger's speech which is excellent.

 

You have a valid concern, though I'm not sure jurors should be told they can vote any way they wish. But I also think it is unethical for the state to instruct the jury that they can only find on basis of law. An honest juror must apply the principles of his conscience, his reason, to the state's case, the defendant's case, the facts of the case, and the entire context the act took place in. To blindly follow the law just because it is the law, is treason to reason.

However, I find it hard to imagine that most jurors don't know that. I don't believe that public education has totally eradicated the independent mind, though it sure as hell tries. I trust the independent character of Americans to deliver a just verdict. Assange will get a fair trial in America.

 

Where is it written a person has a right to information? Under what moral system does that principle exist? Wouldn't that right depend upon who owns or possesses the information?

 

Democracy, that system we worked out earlier you do not agree with. It will be up to your country to decide how they are going to go. Bye the way I was noticing Sanders was getting cheers and cheers from a fox audience simply for telling them the truth.

 

Starjet a "hopelessly romantic idealist"??

In the context of your (private) discussion about the finer points of the jury system, perhaps; but in reality only in the sense that ISIS theologians are "hopelessly romantic idealists ", with their dream of recreating the glories of the international caliphate of the 10th century, based on the purity of the 'inerrant, living, eternal Word of One True God' (ie, the Koran).

Significantly, like ISIS, Starjet has proclaimed his belief in 'total war', to deal with those not capable of realising his conception of individual liberty based on 'pure reason' (in ISIS' case, the Koran is pure reason).

[btw, as an outsider to the legal profession, I'm often dismayed by the tendency of judges to read the letter rather than the spirit of the law, eg notoriously Citizens United, when in fact reason tells us money should not be involved in elections at all].

Now, we know politics makes strange bedfellows; it seems Assange himself is a Libertarian dedicated to exposing the corruption of governments, though obviously from Starjet's point of view, Assange has made the mistake of identifying the US military-security complex itself as (an organ) of said corrupt governance.

We need to understand Starjet's Libertarianism.

Some possibilities;

1. a reaction to the oppression of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings, or
2. to the abolition of private property rights in communism, or
3. more insidiously, the desire to gain unlimited (unregulated) personal access to resources (wealth) via local and international commerce, regardless of the ability of others to achieve same ("greed is good").

Whatever the case, Libertarianism is based on the delusion that individual liberty, not counter-balanced by rule of law, is compatible with well-ordered communities, whether local, national or international.

The problem is: delusion is identified with reason.

 

Libertarianism supports rule of law, the issue is just what types of law.
Sometimes the delusion is that certain laws will create a difference towards creating well-ordered communities.

 

A note on the Koran: it contains much wisdom of a "beautiful" type (in the sense that Keats expressed it :"truth is beauty, and beauty, truth").

Ditto for the Old Testament.

(As for the New Testament, I can't find egregious examples of bronze age and dark age barbarity that mar the OT and Koran, respectively).
But one day we all be free to enter any church, temple, mosque, synagogue to contemplate the Divine, no questions asked...

 

Quite so, rule of law is an ongoing project subject to improvement ,(change made more difficult sometimes by Conservatives who do have a tendency to regard constitutions, eg, as 'holy writ').

Is it your position that law compatible with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is delusional?

 

FINALLY a really decent report on the facts of the matter.