[CDN_PATRIOT]

You are awesome.



-J.

[Thanos]

Not really. Just angry. And skeptical to the core, especially of the other alleged skeptics who claim that they and only they are in possession of what is true beyond all dispute. Because when you dispute them or call them out on their bullshit they get genuinely nasty in the same way that only someone legitimately guilty gets.

Like I don't blithely put Snowden & Assange in the same company as Trump for some kind of a laugh. IMO both of them have the exact same toxic and dangerous narcissism coursing in the veins as the former POSPOTUS does. Endless bitching about "never gonna get a fair trial"? How different is that from Trump in his quest to suppress all the White House documents relating to the activities of he & his staff and of the GQP congress-creatures in the lead-up to the Jan 6 insurrection? These creeps like Snowden, or Trump, don't actually believe they won't get a fair trial. What they want, as shown by their endless attempts to defame the trial system, is to find a court somewhere that will only find them innocent, no matter how obvious their crimes are.

Too bad for all of them that the court systems in most countries, like the US & Britain, don't operate the way they're portrayed in movies & on TV shows. They'll get their beefs & opinions & stances on the record. But they won't get to use the trial as a soap-box. And that's why they're doing what they do. Assange, for example, has already had several trials in Britain. He's just in a tizzy, along with his fans, that the trials didn't give him the results he wanted. That happened because the courts deal in actual facts & judge actual facts, and don't hand out passes to get off scot-free from their illegal actions just because they've made up some demented & anarchistic belief system in their heads that somehow render them morally & ethically pure. There's no more obvious sign of a dangerous narcissist than that, that anything they do is so morally good that they simply can't be held to account for any act they've committed. And that they're so good that the legal system itself must be evil for even questioning them at all.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

Assange has had multiple trials in the UK. He hasn't been "disappeared" yet. If anything he's the beneficiary of endless money dedicated to his legal defense and to the endless adoration that celebrities receive. If he's a political prisoner then he's about the most comfortable one who's ever lived.

And all trials since 2006 have been on one subject, whether he should be extradited to the US. What they aren't looking at was whether he did anything illegal. The indictment against him originally was 'conspiracy to commit computer intrusion', something that you don't do when publishing things on your own website, and it not extraditable. Then a magical charge of 'obtaining secret documents' popped up. Something the New York Times and Washington Post received, but somehow it's OK that they have them, because Obama didn't think that charge would stick against a journalist. Thank you First Amendment.

All this is on line, if you cared to look.

Thanos Thanos:

So why is it anyway that both Assange & Snowden get the media & fan treatment that they're about to be rubbed out the second they exit sanctuary? There's no reason to believe that in the slightest, any more than there was with this absolute ongoing stupidity that Ghislaine Maxwell was/is under some sort of mortal threat of being assassinated "to keep the truth from coming out". This is sheer idiocy of the most wretched fan-boy type, based on the complete non-reality that entered the collective unconscious thanks to tripe ranging from Oliver Stone's JFK to the goddamn X-Files. Yes, everything is an absolute conspiracy designed to eliminate those whistleblowers and truth-tellers. The court & legal systems are just a farce, designed by The Man to keep us all down.

CIA officials under Trump discussed assassinating Julian Assange – report

Some US Spies Are Saying They Would Love To Kill Edward Snowden

$1:

“I was very much a person the most powerful government in the world wanted to go away. They did not care whether I went away to prison. They did not care whether I went away into the ground. They just wanted me gone,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng- ... ent-record

Being found guilty under the Espionage Act, Snowden would face the death penalty. Complete actual reality. And under the Espionage Act of 1917:

$1:

Although Snowden’s revelations exposed a disturbing expansion of surveillance powers by the National Security Agency, the Espionage Act does not allow the public interest in the information disclosed to be considered as a defense or in mitigation of penalty, and does not require proof of harm or intent to harm.

https://www.justiceinitiative.org/voice ... st-defense

$1:

But its all-encompassing character has stood the test of time. Section 793 of the law makes it an offence to take, retain or transfer knowledge "with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation".

The law does not stipulate whether the information involved would have to be classified, as that word was not in usage at the time the act was passed. More importantly from Snowden's point of view, it says nothing about exemptions for leaks claiming to be in the public interest.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ ... en-defence


Again, all of this is online, if you cared to read. Trials under The Espionage Act are indeed a farce, almost Cardassian in nature. Why charge an innocent person?

Thanos Thanos:

How in the hell can so many of you people go through your daily life believing this sort of crap? Isn't is too much of a mental & emotional burden to be this absolutely paranoid, insisting over and over and over again that the most unlikely things to happen are absolutely going to happen because Big Power & Big Money wants it that way? Being on the internet with this constant drip-drip-drip water torture is bad enough for the skeptic who only has to watch it unfold - it must be a living hell for those, ranging from the 9/11 goofs to the Assange/Snowden stans to the QAnons who genuinely believe they're the most pathetic victims of time of tyranny & oppression.

Please. I thought the US government was spying on us all long before Snowden. He just ripped off the bandage and showed us it was far worse than we ever knew. There is nothing paranoid in seeing the world for what it really is. And putting 9/11 conspiracy tards and Qanons in the same boat as the people who see what is actually published in the news and object to how these men are treated is beneath you. Equating kooks to people who think whistleblowers are the highest form of patriots is just another method to try to bring about an emotional response.

Thanos Thanos:

Maybe it's even simpler than that. The Assange & Snowden superfans just can't accept that their chosen saints are actually guilty of breaking the law and therefore the only resort they have left is to impugn & defame the free & fair court system until in the minds of the online no-minds there's no difference at all between a British court or a US federal court and the sort of show trials that would occur in places like the Soviet Union or Mao's China. Yes, as someone like Donald Trump would surely agree 100% with you, if you don't get the result you want at a trial it is absolute incontrovertible proof that we're living in an Orwellian tyranny.

And you guys wonder why I've given up hope for pretty much the entire human race.

Funny, I don't see what laws Assange broke, and Snowden admitted all along that what he was doing was illegal. But both of them opened our eyes to what is really being done in the name of citizens, under the umbrella of 'security'.

I'm actually surprised that you have such vitriol for Assange, given your dislike for Iraq War II, and how he exposed much of the bullshit that was happening.

When you finish those shows and can discuss facts, then we can have a more detailed discussion.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

Endless bitching about "never gonna get a fair trial"? How different is that from Trump in his quest to suppress all the White House documents relating to the activities of he & his staff and of the GQP congress-creatures in the lead-up to the Jan 6 insurrection?

Look up the Espionage Act of 1917. See what kind of trials it allows.

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/ ... ed-leakers

$1:

The judge in the Kim case ruled last month that prosecutors did not have to prove that the released information could actually be potentially damaging to the US or to the "advantage of a foreign nation" – only that the defendant was aware that it could be.

That lowered standard of proof was imported into the Manning trial. It prevented the soldier's defence team presenting evidence to the trial that the actual damage of the WikiLeaks disclosures was minimal.

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy and technology project, said that this would set up a major impediment to fair hearings in leak cases, as it essentially barred any discussion of whistleblower protections in Espionage Act trials. That would make it impossible for the justice system to distinguish between genuinely harmful leaks and those that were essential for a healthy democracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ ... -liberties

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

Nope. Wikileaks going silent for the entire Trump admin, even when Assange had at least two years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as the guest of the then hostile-to-the-US Ecuadorian government speaks volumes. What happened to him was that his pipeline of stolen intelligence he received from his Russian benefactors/controllers was shut off after Trump beat Clinton because there's no way Moscow was going to allow anything to be released that could damage their buddy in Mar-A-Lago. They didn't need Assange anymore so they cut him adrift.

I don't really know enough about Assange's alleged crimes to speak one way or another, but I do know that one of the reasons the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum and allowed British police to come into their embassy and arrest him had to do with his being a complete nightmare to live with. He constantly threw tantrums, let his bathroom become a cesspool, let his cat crap wherever it wanted, didn't put any effort into learning Spanish despite staying in what is basically Ecuadorian soil for two years, occupied half of the four rooms in the embassy mission, and overall became a thorough pain in the ass for the embassy staff trying to do actual work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ ... s-it-know/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ecua ... are-of-cat

His behaviour, namely that of a whiny, ungrateful and parastic sponge who grossly abused the generosity of his Ecuadorian hosts, probably more than justified their kicking him out. Seriously, intruding on someone's hospitality like this and refusing to even follow their basic rules really, really pisses me off. The Ecuadorian government would be more than justified in sending him a bill for how much he probably cost Ecuadorian taxpayers hosting him.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

His behaviour, namely that of a whiny, ungrateful and parastic sponge who grossly abused the generosity of his Ecuadorian hosts, probably more than justified their kicking him out. Seriously, intruding on someone's hospitality like this and refusing to even follow their basic rules really, really pisses me off. The Ecuadorian government would be more than justified in sending him a bill for how much he probably cost Ecuadorian taxpayers hosting him.

I'd rep you if I could. This statement is spot on, and captures the disgusting sense of entitlement that Assange and people like him exhibit.

Hope he enjoys prison. Let's see how his entitlement works in the can.

-J.

[DrCaleb]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

His behaviour, namely that of a whiny, ungrateful and parastic sponge who grossly abused the generosity of his Ecuadorian hosts, probably more than justified their kicking him out. Seriously, intruding on someone's hospitality like this and refusing to even follow their basic rules really, really pisses me off. The Ecuadorian government would be more than justified in sending him a bill for how much he probably cost Ecuadorian taxpayers hosting him.

I'd rep you if I could. This statement is spot on, and captures the disgusting sense of entitlement that Assange and people like him exhibit.

Hope he enjoys prison. Let's see how his entitlement works in the can.

-J.

Just because you don't like him though, doesn't mean he shouldn't enjoy the protections we give to journalists, when he acts like a journalist. That was the purpose behind Wikileaks, to make things being held secret by one party that affects everybody into the light by publishing them in the open. He might be an asshole, but that doesn't make him a coward.

And no one has managed to show anything he deserves prison time for.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

His fate is sealed, and I shall shed no tears. Just another entitled whiner going down.

-J.

[DrCaleb]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

His fate is sealed, and I shall shed no tears. Just another entitled whiner going down.

-J.

Which is why I posted that video of Maria Ressa getting the Nobel Prize for her work in Journalism, because her El Presedente, when he's not killing reporters, he too doesn't like what she has to say. So they make up charges in order to imprison her. I mean, they make up actual laws that apply retroactively to make something her paper did, illegal. Like typos. Then they charge and imprison her for it, even if she didn't write the article, or publish the correction. I'm not even kidding. She just got out of 2 years in jail because her paper published a correction.

Since no one can tell me what Assange did that is illegal, I would hope you'd see this applies to him as well.

I think it was in 2009 that the G8 meeting was in Ontario. Do you know what they served at the banquet? No. Nor do I, because the Harper government made that menu 'classified'. And the government doesn't hire anyone to go through that stuff after the fact and declassify it. Now if a reporter finds out what was on that menu, and publishes it, should they be put in jail?

No. Journalists need to be able to hold the government account, and unless they are under a non-disclosure agreement, they have no requirement to keep that information classified. If they weren't allowed to under the law, the government could just classify everything, and we would not know what is being done in our name with the authority we give them.

Hate him all you want, but law applies to people we hate just the same.

[Thanos]

If being in possession of stolen documents isn't at a minimum theft, and at worst blatant espionage, then the words have no meaning. The guy "merely" storing all the stolen TV sets in his garage is as much of a criminal as the other guy who robbed the warehouse. Assange is as much of a participant in a criminal conspiracy just from receiving the documents, which is enough to warrant the charges.

I have to tap out on this one. I can't deal rationally anymore with libertarian/anarchist internet-culture crap, it's just too difficult to wander through the minefields. All I can say is that anyone interested in a basic summary of what Assange and Wikileaks have done and are all about should just go read the summaries on Wikipedia. There's enough basic information there, including Assange's collaborations with Russia and the Trump 2016 campaign, to show that he's not a journalist of any sort. He's a political operative with his own agenda of spreading chaos, and also in all likelihood a Russian intelligence asset. The ridiculous cult-like hagiography that these internet types always seem to receive should really be received only by the likes of goofs like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk - they're assholes too but for the most part they're not dangerous criminals.

Assange though? Keep in mind that Assange was enraged at the Panama Papers leaks, simply for revealing an over-concentration of Russian billionaires, gangsters, and Putin associates stashing their stolen money overseas, because in his view it was "unfair to Russia". Don't even want to think of the mental hoops that have to jumped through in order to turn someone like that into the "good guy", not with that kind of blatant bias & favouritism towards Moscow & the criminal Russian oligarchs constantly on full display.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

If being in possession of stolen documents isn't at a minimum theft, and at worst blatant espionage, then the words have no meaning.

You are conflating the act of stealing the secrets with disclosing the secrets. He stole nothing. Manning went to jail for stealing them. Disclosing them is not illegal unless Assange signed an NDA or the official secrets act.

Thanos Thanos:

The guy "merely" storing all the stolen TV sets in his garage is as much of a criminal as the other guy who robbed the warehouse. Assange is as much of a participant in a criminal conspiracy just from receiving the documents, which is enough to warrant the charges.

Again, 'stealing' an MP3 is not the same as stealing a car. No one is deprived of their MP3, only a copy is made. The US still has all their secrets. We just have copies.

And there is nothing saying a foreign national can't receive and disclose classified US information. If there were, why aren't the newspapers like Deuche Welle who published it also facing extradition? And since when do you believe governments when they say they have absolute proof of Nigerian Yellowcake?

Thanos Thanos:

I have to tap out on this one. I can't deal rationally anymore with libertarian/anarchist internet-culture crap, it's just too difficult to wander through the minefields. All I can say is that anyone interested in a basic summary of what Assange and Wikileaks have done and are all about should just go read the summaries on Wikipedia.

I quite agree. Sorry to see you go though.

Thanos Thanos:

There's enough basic information there, including Assange's collaborations with Russia and the Trump 2016 campaign, to show that he's not a journalist of any sort. He's a political operative with his own agenda of spreading chaos, and also in all likelihood a Russian intelligence asset.

Except, he's still not being extradited for being an asshole. He's being extradited for exposing the dark underbelly of the Pentagon would rather no one ever saw. Which is Journalism at it's peak.

[Scape]

How do you think investigative journalism on the powerful is done? Just curious. I don't know about you but being in a Ecuadorian embassy for years isn't the ritz, its a prison. And what he did was journalism. He didn't create a single leak he facilitated them. These embarrassing truths need to be out in the public eye and I haven't seen an argument yet that stands up to that basic fact.

[Thanos]

Whatever. I guess that Assange is a journalist in the same way Walter Duranty once was, what with his hard-hitting and prize-winning exposes of what Stalin was up to in Ukraine in the early 1930's. More concise and revelatory uncovering of those sorts of things are certainly needed in this world. All the facts, all the time.....

[CDN_PATRIOT]

Putting Julian Assange in the same sentence as the word journalism constitutes the oxymoron of all oxymorons, and cheapens any real journalist out there.



-J.

[herbie]

He's not a journalist, he's a whistle blower. All wikileaks ever intended to be.
And the US gov't is so embarrassed being exposed with shit on it's hands, they'll carry this facade on until the end.