Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Or with most other folks in the UK, from what I have read and heard. It seems a lot of people there are quite angry about it. And rightly so, IMO.

But do you really think that could influence the outcome of Assange's extradition hearing? If so, how?

Yes.

I'll leave the reasoning as an exercise for the reader for the time being.

Please try playing Devil's advocate and argue Old Nick's case here. It's good for your intellectual development. Know thine enemy and all that.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

Yes.

I'll leave the reasoning as an exercise for the reader for the time being.

Please try playing Devil's advocate and argue Old Nick's case here. It's good for your intellectual development. Know thine enemy and all that.

An extradition hearing is a legal proceeding. The death of Harry Dunn is unrelated to the merits of the US extradition request for Julian Assange. I doubt it would even be allowed to be raised in court during the extradition hearing. So if the extradition request for Julian Assange were to be denied because of it, I would say that the denial would quite literally be an extralegal farce.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

An extradition hearing is a legal proceeding. The death of Harry Dunn is unrelated to the merits of the US extradition request for Julian Assange. I doubt it would even be allowed to be raised in court during the extradition hearing. So if the extradition request for Julian Assange were to be denied because of it, I would say that the denial would quite literally be an extralegal farce.

C, or C+ at the very best.

Remember that you are supposed to be arguing why it is relevant.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

C, or C+ at the very best.

Remember that you are supposed to be arguing why it is relevant.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. From a legal standpoint, it simply isn't relevant.

The only way to make it relevant is by utterly politicizing the extradition proceeding, turning it into, as I said before, an extralegal farce.

[Prime95]

Originally Posted by xilman

Yes, in exactly the same way that the UK has the right to press charges against Americans suspected of causing death while driving.

Not related.

The auto accident occurred on UK soil, the UK government has every right to press charges.

Dr. S. seems to be arguing that the US government has the right to press charges against a Swedish citizen on Ecuadorian soil for the crime of receiving information from Russians.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Prime95

<snip>
The auto accident occurred on UK soil, the UK government has every right to press charges.

That's assuming the (alleged) perpetrator's diplomatic immunity is indeed no longer an issue.

Dr. S. seems to be arguing that the US government has the right to press charges against a Swedish citizen on Ecuadorian soil for the crime of receiving information from Russians.

If you'd bothered to read the actual charges against Assange (I posted a link to the indictment here) you would see that his citizenship (Australian, not Swedish BTW, and Ecuadorian while he was in their embassy) and location are irrelevant to the charges against him. The original computer intrusion charge is included as Count 18 of the superseding indictment. The other 17 charges are espionage charges.

Assange's political asylum was revoked and his Ecuadorian citizenship was suspended when the Ecuadorians chucked him out of their embassy in London. As far as I can tell, he never obtained the diplomatic immunity the Ecuadorians tried to grant him, because the UK wouldn't stand for it.

All the charges hinge on the allegation that Assange didn't merely receive the information illegally obtained by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, but solicited and actively participated in illegally obtaining classified information.

IMO proving that he "directed" Manning's activities as alleged in the indictment will be a challenge. Manning has willingly gone to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about Assange. Perhaps if the Feds can bring Manning into court (assuming they get the chance to try the case against Assange) and have him refuse to testify, that might convince a jury that he is indeed under Assange's control.

[kladner]

Manning has willingly gone to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about Assange. Perhaps if the Feds can bring Manning into court (assuming they get the chance to try the case against Assange) and have him refuse to testify, that might convince a jury that he is indeed under Assange's control.

You don't give credence to a person's gender identity. Presumptuous much?

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Just as your unevidenced opinion that the Swedish charges against Assange were "trumped up" is utterly immaterial.

"Unevidenced" - except by, well, the reality of the case, you mean? I repeat this Craig Murray article that there never was a Swedish arrest warrant, even several years after Assange made himself available for questioning by the Swedish prosecution authorities - just not on Swedish soil:

If the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange were genuine and not simply a ruse to arrest him for extradition to the United States, where is the arrest warrant now from Sweden and what are the charges?

Only the more minor allegation has passed the statute of limitations deadline. The major allegation, equivalent to rape, is still well within limits. Sweden has had seven years to complete the investigation and prepare the case. It is over two years since they interviewed Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. They have had years and years to collect all the evidence and prepare the charges.

So where, Swedish prosecutors, are your charges? Where is your arrest warrant?

Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden. He was merely “wanted for questioning”, a fact the MSM repeatedly failed to make clear. It is now undeniably plain that there was never the slightest intention of charging him with anything in Sweden. All those Blairite MPs who seek to dodge the glaring issue of freedom of the media to publish whistleblower material revealing government crimes, by hiding behind trumped-up sexual allegations, are left looking pretty stupid.

...and Sweden has dropped the remaining charges since Murray's April piece appeared, though note they briefly "reopened the case" in May, conveniently around the same time the UK-arrest-and-extradition circus media PR campaign was ramping up. The whole thing is so bizarre that it *only* makes sense in a "legal pretext" way. Further, as Murray notes, "the person making the accusation had previously been expelled from Cuba as working for the CIA" ... you want ideologically blinkered, I suggest you look in the mirror.

IMO you have to be hopelessly ideologically blinkered to claim there's no evidence that Assange received from Russian hackers large quantities of material stolen from DNC servers while he was running staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Oh, wait, the Ecuadorians hired a bunch of spooks to monitor the place, so all the evidence of what happened there during Assange's stay can simply be dismissed out of hand...

You keep referring to these alleged mountains of evidence - where are they? I've seen only allegations from US/UK spookdom, all of which have ignored the reality that cyberattribution is very hard, and from obviously bought-and-paid-for "analysts" like those at the Crowdstrike. So please present your evidence that:

1. The DNC materials were stolen by outside actors, not leaked by insiders;
2. Assange received said materials from Russian hackers;
3. The materials were false, or not of legitimate interest to the American electorate.

Note that merely repeating "he has been charged with" is not evidence ... it is the alleged evidence underpinning the US government charges that is of interest. Further note that even were items 1 and 2 proven beyond reasonable doubt, item 3 would need to be established to negate the 1st amendment & whistleblower aspects of the released materials. And item 3 is where all your arguments fall apart, which is why you have studiously avoided discussing this aspect of the case, despite the fact that it is the most crucial one. Please do address it.

RT was even making programs from there. It also seems the Russians worked on a plan to extract him from the embassy and spirit him off to Russia. Of course, they would only consider such a thing for altruistic reasons. They eventually abandoned the idea as too risky, though.

At the same time you demand stringent evidentiary standards from others, you certainly like to use phrases like "it seems" and avoid any supporting links yourself. Your evidence for Boris & Natasha's evil scheme to snatch arch-criminal Assange from the embassy consists of? And even had such a snatch-n-grab been in the works, it would've been construable as being in support of international law, as the UN has long ruled Assange's confinement in the embassy and lack of freedom to leave the UK as arbitrary detention:

The UN working group on arbitrary detention (WGAD) said it was deeply concerned by the “disproportionate sentence” imposed on Assange for violating the terms of his bail, which it described as a “minor violation”.

The group has twice previously called for Assange to be freed, after it judged his confinement to the Ecuadorian embassy by the threat of arrest should he leave amounted to arbitrary detention.

“The working group regrets that the government has not complied with its opinion and has now furthered the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr Assange,” it said in a statement on Friday.

“It is worth recalling that the detention and the subsequent bail of Mr Assange in the UK were connected to preliminary investigations initiated in 2010 by a prosecutor in Sweden. It is equally worth noting that that prosecutor did not press any charges against Mr Assange and that in 2017, after interviewing him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, she discontinued investigations and brought an end to the case.

It is quite clear from the above that the UK authorities had no right whatsoever to restrict JS'a freedom of movement after 2017. That fact makes his subsequent arrest and detention (in supermax, no less) illegal under both international and UK law.

[Prime95]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

If you'd bothered to read the actual charges against Assange.

Upon re-reading your original post, I'll accept your correction. I see two intertwined arguments from you about Assange: 1) The U.S. has the right to charge Assange, and 2) Assange is a dirtbag (though I do not agree that accepting Russian info makes him a dirtbag).

Although not clear, your comments on the Russian DNC info could be from your dirtbag train of thought. Your references to "charges" and "evidence" led me to believe your argument was from your U.S. legal case train of thought:

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Just as your unevidenced opinion that the Swedish charges against Assange were "trumped up" is utterly immaterial.

IMO you have to be hopelessly ideologically blinkered to claim there's no evidence that Assange received from Russian hackers large quantities of material stolen from DNC servers while he was running staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

What I do not understand is why your (or anyone else's) opinion on Assange as a person has any relevance in a discussion on the U.S. case against him. Perhaps, you were just countering an argument from someone that Assange is a hero and should not be charged. I do not have the inclination to go back and read it all again.

BTW, I agree that the first U.S. charge was a legitimate prosecutable offense, albeit quite thin. From what I know, If I were on the jury he would be exonerated. IMO, prosecutors were told to bring charges no matter what -- this was the best charge they could come up with.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Prime95

<snip>
What I do not understand is why your (or anyone else's) opinion on Assange as a person has any relevance in a discussion on the U.S. case against him. Perhaps, you were just countering an argument from someone that Assange is a hero and should not be charged.

It's the latter. His personality might work against him if his case is brought to trial, though. If jurors think he's a dirtbag, it certainly won't help his case.

If being a 24-carat jerk was a crime, Assange would have been executed long ago. So would a lot of other people. But giving the State the authority to determine that someone's personality alone merits taking their life would IMO not be a good idea.

About the extradition hearing being influenced by the Harry Dunn case...

I heard a former federal prosecutor from the Watergate days (Richard Ben-Veniste if memory serves) interviewed many years later. He said that, for weeks after VP Spiro Agnew was forced out of office, he couldn't buy a conviction. Juries were nullifying wholesale, even in rock-solid cases, and "some very bad people walked."

Why were jurors doing this? Because they were absolutely infuriated by the fact that Agnew had been able to cop a plea and walk when he was forced out of office.

You see, before Spiro Agnew was VP, he was Governor of Maryland. And he was corrupt. According the the "exposition of evidence" from the prosecutors, he took bribes and kickbacks from when he was Baltimore County Executive to when he was VP, sometimes in envelopes of cash handed to him in the Oval Office. Federal prosecutors investigated him for extortion and bribery. And, to cap it off, he didn't pay income tax on his ill-gotten gains. They threatened him with indictments. He tried to claim a sitting VP couldn't be indicted. That didn't work. So, faced with the prospect of indictment, trial, and a long prison term, he and his lawyers worked out a very lenient deal. He pleaded nolo contendere to a single charge of tax evasion. The extortion and bribery charges were never prosecuted. He was only fined $10,000 and given 3 years of unsupervised probation. (He eventually paid $172,000.00 in taxes, penalties, and interest to the IRS and Maryland tax authorities, and was disbarred.)

So I can certainly understand the folks running the extradition hearing for Assange feeling like sticking a thumb in Uncle Sam's eye by denying the extradition of Assange, because of the Harry Dunn case.

However, one of the reasons we have legal systems is to avoid things like that actually happening. You can't do much about jurors being swayed by emotion (apart from trying not to impanel biased jurors), but if the folks running the courts decide it's all politics and to hell with the law, we're all in trouble.

I doubt the previous admin told the DOJ to bring charges "no matter what." The thinking was probably that, in soliciting and participating in the stealing of classified information, Assange had crossed the line. But they shied away from filing espionage charges. With the current Admin, the thinking might well have been along the lines of "making an example" of Assange. Piling on 17 additional espionage charges may lead to trouble at the extradition hearing. I don't know whether the motives for bringing charges are a consideration, but if the espionage charges are seen as being essentially political in nature, the request could be in trouble. I don't think the solidity of the case against Assange is a consideration. That's a matter for a jury to decide.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

"Unevidenced" - except by, well, the reality of the case, you mean? I repeat this Craig Murray article that there never was a Swedish arrest warrant
<snip>

Would this be the nonexistent warrant issued September 27, 2010; the nonexistent bench warrant issued November 18, 2010, and unsuccessfully appealed by Assange through the Swedish courts; or the nonexistent European arrest warrant that was the legal basis for Sweden's extradition request, which was unsuccessfully appealed through the British courts?

I would also point out that your claim there were no charges is logically inconsistent with your claim of "trumped up" charges.