A whole paragraph dedicated to how anonymous internet commenters could be fake spin delivery vehicles, then the suggestion that Assange has been charged with "a relatively minor criminal offence", completely eliding a bunch of politically-motivated now-dismissed sexual assault charges that were the actual impetus for him to hide in a foreign embassy for years.
It'd be one thing if he was hiding from a "5 year max" charge of "assistance in attempting to crack a password hash to gain unauthorized access to military computers", but despite your comment clearly implying that this was the case, it's not.
I'm not going to accuse you of being a political actor, but what a weird coincidence.
> "completely eliding a bunch of politically-motivated now-dismissed sexual assault charges that were the actual impetus for him to hide in a foreign embassy for years"
Isn't this the total opposite of what Assange and his supporters were saying? He was claiming that we wasn't avoiding the sexual offence EAW, but hiding in the embassy because of the US indictment, to which the Swedish allegations were (he claimed) somehow connected.
The evidence revealed during the US case has basically shown that the Obama DOJ in fact had decided against prosecuting him, so at the time this UK->Sweden->USA scheme could never have happened because there wasn't, at that point, a US indictment (ignoring that fact it made no sense when he could have always simply gone UK->USA).
Yep. The Assange story that he was totally willing to answer to the rape charges but had to flee to a country that wouldn't extradite him to the US for something else isn't really helped by him being extradited by the "safe" country for charges filed years later after a change of government. I'm not convinced of the merits of the DOJ case against Assange either technically or politically, but its notable how many other people publicly known to have been involved in the dissemination of the Collateral Murder video have continued to do investigative journalism without having charges of any sort filed against them, never mind two separate Wikileaks supporters accusing them of sex offences ...
Julian Assange getting away with his sexual assault of a woman due to his politics is very reminiscent of how Donald Trump avoids blame for his sexual crimes through the lens of politics. Very smart tool to ensure you can never be guilty of anything and your supporters will deny any wrongdoing as politically motivated. It's no surprise that Assanage and Trumps people communicated and coordinated, as these devious tactics sure look familiar.
Reminds me of Assange's "Seth Rich" gamble, how he supercharged a heinous conspiracy theory on behalf of fake news purely to earn political approval and gain loyalty from folks who, like you, will not do their homework to validate the claims they make.
>It'd be one thing if he was hiding from the charge "assistance in attempting to crack a password hash to gain unauthorized access to military computers", but despite your comment clearly implying that this was the case, it's not.
Julian's sexual assault crimes have nothing to do with the United States or his extradition here, as the original charges were espionage related. It's a red herring for you to bring it up, and I think either evidence of ignorance (you thought the US was extraditing him for his sexual crimes in Sweden ...?) or malfeasance (you know it was espionage, but you brought this up to muddy the waters intentionally).
>I'm not going to accuse you of being a political actor, but what a weird coincidence.
It's always cute when people try to repeat your lines back to you as a weak "gotcha" but completely fail. You're not going to make that accusation because I'm obviously not.
I will accuse you of being a victim of fake news and implicit supporter of sexual violence though.
>Julian's sexual assault crimes have nothing to do with the United States or his extradition here, as the original charges were espionage related [...] I think either evidence of ignorance (you thought the US was extraditing him for his sexual crimes in Sweden ...?) or malfeasance (you know it was espionage, but you brought this up to muddy the waters intentionally).
No, that's not true. It's easily shown that Assange's first charges were laid in Sweden in November 2010 [0]. He was granted political asylum in Ecuador's British embassy precisely because it was so clear that the charges weren't about sexual assault but rather about his involvement in leaking things. The Yanks were still investigating him at this time [1][2], and didn't lay charges until years afterwards [3], in 2018.
Since you've accused me of being a victim of fake news, I assume you've got the Real Truth hidden away. You've got actual reasons to claim the things you've claimed, which AFAICT are just lies, right? You're not just muddying the waters intentionally?
> Julian Assange getting away with his sexual assault of a woman due to his politics
This is far from an accurate representation of the events. You seem consistently misinformed on key points. Perhaps you should do some more research before spreading that misinformation further.
> Julian's sexual assault crimes have nothing to do with the United States or his extradition here, as the original charges were espionage related. It's a red herring for you to bring it up,
You are the one who brought it up. Assange faces up to 5 years for the "assistance in attempting to crack a password hash" and up to 170 years for the crimes he is being charged with under the espionage act.
> I'm not going to accuse you of being a political actor,
Then don't bring it up, it doesn't add to the discussion.
> he is charged with a relatively minor criminal offense stemming from his assistance in attempting to crack a password hash to gain unauthorized access to military computers
That was only the first charge he was indicted on.
> Imagine hiding from a 5 year max sentence for 10 years.
Assange currently faces up to 170 years in prison.
He was hiding from a one of the worlds largest perpetrators of targeted assassination, one which we know has debated assassinating him at its highest levels.
> As for Reality, she really could not have transitioned in Russia and China regardless of prison, that was the point you missed.
You seem to be confused. Reality Winner did not change genders and was not working for the military when she leaked documents to the Intercept.
> I do think that the idea of classification and state secrets have merit
Just because there is merit to the idea doesn't mean that everything that gets classified deserves that classification, nor does it mean that the government doesn't use that classification infrastructure to hide things that the American public needs to know about. The prosecution of Assange absolutely represents an unacceptable expansion of the USA'a ability to suppress such information.
