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Let your next career move come to you.

Julian Assange - enough already!

So he's been given a reprieve - which may be temporary.

But seriously, why the fook are they continuing to persecute him?  He's inconvenient, but it's not a crime to be a weirdo with a messianic complex. 

Soliciting a deeply dysfunctional junior soldier to disclose information in the interests of journalism might have harmed Uncle Sam but it does not make him the Aldrich Ames of the new millennium.

Just let the khunt go.  He might be an unpleasant individual but that's not relevant.   This circus has done its dash.

 

Or maybe they'd be even more upset that their safety was placed in the custody of a junior soldier with known mental health issues?

Or maybe that nothing Assange did was even alleged to be a crime until 10 years after he did it?  Or that the US had given assurances to the Swedes that it would not seek extradition, and then did exactly that the very second the Swedish charges were dropped?

Might be cold comfort to a bereaved Afghan (if there were any), but one bad turn doesn't beget another.  Especially after 12 years.

Dont give much of a fook about Assange. But the first thin a Worf govt would do would be to ban all extradition to the US. Their system is Medieaval.

Why the fook did we let him come here. Cant we deport him back to Sweden.

Unlike Begum he's a citizen of a country willing to take him back.

He could board a nonstop flight from Heathrow to Perth and cease to be His Majesty's Government's problem in 15 hours.

Did anyone keep that thread that was a parody of his stay in the Ecuadorian (?) embassy?

“JULIAN HAVE YOU USED THE LAST OF THE fookING MILK AGAIN?”

Coffee the Americans may have been careless but Assange dumped the whole lot straight online without any review or editing so was clearly not bothered about the harm he might cause to innocent people as long as it looked vaguely bad for the US.

He's a aunt.  But what he did wasn't a crime when he did it. Not just that, but they'd given public assurances they wouldn't try to extradite him.   Doesn't that matter?

The US just looks ridiculous trying to get him.

funny how selective he was for his leaks, politically speaking.  DNC & RNC hacked on the same day by the same people, only the DNC stuff made it to Wikileaks, just in time for an election.

If it wasn't a crime, then he has nothing to worry about at trial.  He can argue under the constitution and case law that he's a journalist.  

Either way, I don't care, I'm sick of the dude.

Or that the US had given assurances to the Swedes that it would not seek extradition, and then did exactly that the very second the Swedish charges were dropped?

Is that the Sweden he breached bail to avoid going back to to face multiple charges of sexual assault?  Charges that were only dropped because of the passage of time due to him hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy to escape justice?  This is your poor misunderstood innocent hero is it?

Coffee, it was a crime at the time which is why he's being charged.  He has been accused of a crime - 18 crimes.  He was indicted by two grand juries.    As a lawyer, you would appreciate that he needs to answer those charges.  

Honestly, the US will look ridiculous if it backs down.  The message it sends is that if you commit a crime against the United States then act like a fanny for over a decade then you can get off.  Go ahead - hack us and leak our classified information.

No.  It doesn't work like that.  

He obtained and dumped a shitload of classified information.  He's not a journalist.  He didn't review it to tell a story, highlight an issue, protect his story and innocent people.  He just dumped it.  He did not just do it once.  He has demonstrated he's a threat to US national security, and has actively undermined the United States.

He's not a whistleblower.  He didn't go through the information and forward on what was pertinent to journalists or others who could report on the issues.  He just dumped it.  He did not give a f*ck what was in those wires, and whose lives were put in danger.

Personally, I hope he dies in prison - and I really don't care if that's a UK or US prison.

the made-up sex charges designed to get him into a place where he could be extradited to the US Zto face its kangaroo courts were a new low

in any right thinking world he’d be a hero

If you read the detail of the two rapes and Assange’s comments about them (“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism” etc) it is plain that in both cases Assange thought consensual sex where he non-consensually removes the condom is not rape, and was astonished to be prosecuted for it.  (I also believe the second victim’s account that he raped her when she was sleeping, but accept that some unbiased people would perceive reasonable doubt).  

The honeytrap nonsense has never been backed by any evidence and contradicts everything we know about the victims and about how honeytraps work. 

Laz does have a track record on here of demeaning women, so his casual waving away of Arsanage’s horrible behaviour towards women  in Sweden is simply par for the course.

Wot Coffee, Worf and Woke say. The evidence in Sweden was not strong and the circumstances of his relationship with these two women does raise questions. The US is medieval, their plea bargaining and length of sentences. Light being shined on their foreign policy does not put them in a good light. The US have been dishonest throughout these proceedings. At one point a Judge did refuse to extradite. It should have been left there. The prosecution should not have appealed that decision bearing in mind the above and length of time in custody in UK.  

I don't have a problem with a long sentence for him in the US as he is complicit in a great many murders.

I thought the US recently offered him a plea deal for time already served with no extradition?  Doesn't sound terribly medieval and less than he deserves.

I don’t think there was a plea deal in those terms. The  US may have been asked to consider that but I don’t think it has been accepted yet and may or may not accept it.  

That is not a plea deal Sails. It means that the DOJ  are considering it not that there is a deal. They consider every approach but it doesn’t mean they will grant. I also accept not every US prosecutor or court is medieval. 

He probably is now but his hand is weaker.  The US may not agree it.  I will look at judgment regarding assurances requested. If the US meet them and the court accept them he will be going.  

Yeah I mean the US hates big political trials, right?

Assange is not complicit in any murders fgs. You’re in the company of intelligent people here, behave with the drums of war jack nicholson in A Few Good Men shite. The murder of local sources and assistants is the responsibility of the US and the way it wages dirty war without regard for local lives, roping in or bribing local collaborators without proper care for their safety or any kind of exit plan. If you want to lay blame for that, go knock on the door at Langley or the Pentagon. The people who maintain the dark holes into which free information shines lights.

I can of course understand why the US wants to go after Assange, bully suppress and perhaps even eliminate him. It plays to their mythos of National Securiry and meets the military-political complex’s constant need for a bogeyman. But give over.

Trump will go after Assange, of course he will. Firstly the people who are likely to provide information to an Assange figure are overwhelmingly likely to be Trump-haters  Secobdly, his core appeal is to the kind of YEE HAW!!! *shoote pistols in air* GO TEAM ‘MURICA idiot who thinks Assange is a threat, or wants to because it gives them something to think about beyond what opioid-addled failures in life they are.

was Assange physically in the US when he published the relevant material?

If not then that should definitively answer the question as to their right to prosecute him, in the negative.

Yes he's definitely not an accessory for providing the Taliban with a handy address book of collaborators.  If he'd taken a few days to simply edit the material and redact part of it I might have a little more sympathy but he was entirely reckless with the lives of hundreds of people.

Whatever you think of him and what he's done/allegedly done, the punishment already served is clearly now grossly disproportionate. More than a decade either trapped in an embassy or in a high security prison and for what . Any trial in America would 100% be political and amount to little more than a kangaroo court at this stage 

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