Comment by 19eightyfour | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 19eightyfour | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know why people still support Assange so clearly. It was interesting to me that people on /r/The_Donald love Assange so much. Before this documentary, I posted there criticising Wikileaks and it was totally hated on. I find that weird because the idea that Assange is unreliable and fake, was the kind of somewhat-counter-main-narrative idea that I thought people of T_D would appreciate. They seem to see him as some sort of hero. I wanted to point out that he seems to me to have once been good, but then he squandered by trading whatever his mission originally was, with some bullshit idea of being a martyr to serve his ego. I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened. I mean, I know his existence is useful to the IC and various interests, but I personally just find him disgusting. And I genuinely had some belief in what Wikileaks could have stood for. But I don't really see it as that now. To me, Wikileaks and Assange totally sold out. Sorry to offend anyone who feels very differently. This is just my opinion on it.

It seem political when people criticize Assange political refuge to a embassy. There need to be some insight to show why it is not political. It also need to explain from a historical (ie scientifically) why the actions are not rational.

I personally have collected enough reason to be very skeptical against such criticism. The first Swedish prosecutor dropped the case. When it was restarted by a second prosecutor, several uninvolved lawyers looked into the case on behalf on news agencies and conclude that the case had zero chance of going anywhere. When compared to rape cases in Sweden that get dropped, get not-guilty in court, and the small number that get a guilty verdict, you either need to have physical evidence of violence/drugs where a medical expert use their experience to claim rape, a video recording, witnesses that strongly (and seems more common than not to fail here) to show that the victim was incapacitated when going to sleep, or a confession. In contrast to most cases all the details for Assange case has been leaked and it has shown none of those critical components for a successful case. In addition we get some more warning clocks ringing when the European arrest warrant made a record for the lowest number of potential year in prison. A second record was achieved by the the amount of money spent in regard to the number of potential year in prison.

It could be a unicorn, a one of the kind where all the stars align to a guilty verdict, but the case smells political. The rational behavior when the legal system turn political is to run and hide.

It became a much bigger deal once he fled first Sweden, and then British jurisdiction. That set up it as a test of the powers of the legal systems of those countries.

If you allow someone to escape prosecution simply by raising the costs/creating inconvenience, you all but guarantee others to try to do the same, and/or to lose faith in the equality of justice.

Regarding the common conspiracy theories: always remember that he was arrested, then freed on bail, in both countries. If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago.

> If they had wanted to extradite him to Guantanamo, they would've done it long ago.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

> always remember that he was arrested, then freed on bail, in both countries

That's not how I remember it, but given that it has been a long time (2010), I accept that my memory could fail me here, so I tried to google it.

Assange was questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation. He left Sweden about a month after the start of the investigations. The sources are a bit fuzzy then, Wikipedia writes: He left Sweden on 27 September 2010. According to one source his departure was with the permission of the Swedish authorities. Another source claims that the Swedish authorities notified Assange's lawyer of his imminent arrest on that same day.

So he was neither arrested in Sweden nor freed on bail in Sweden.

I am totally willing to believe that it was a setup by the CIA or some allied intelligence service.

That said, once he was stuck in the embassy, he left himself vulnerable to being manipulated by the Russians and now it seems he is acting as a Russian agent.

I think the us badly botched its handling of Wikileaks, Snowden and manning and allowed Putin to use them to his advantage.

>it seems he is acting as a Russian agent.

That's certainly what the CIA want us to believe.

> once he was stuck in the embassy, he left himself vulnerable to being manipulated by the Russians

Err, how? Does Ecuador have good relations with Russia or something?

The Russian deal has a fairly good explanation. Clinton made some very direct threats and attacks towards Assange in media after the diplomatic leaks, resulting in a personal vendetta between the two. All that talk about treating him as an enemy combatant, drone attacks, assassinations and so on has made it personal. In that context, if Russia gave him political ammunition then I am not very surprised that he used it.

He is no more a neutral party when talking about Clinton than Clinton would be talking about Assange. Any data brought by one party against the other need to be read in that context.

> He is no more a neutral party when talking about Clinton than Clinton would be talking about Assange.

This may or may not be true, but it does not matter since the approach WL takes is to release materials in full without editorial discretion/bias.

> This may or may not be true, but it does not matter since the approach WL takes is to release materials in full without editorial discretion/bias.

Where's your proof of this? The DNC leaks certainly had a lot of missing emails that may have served to provide context for conversations that were used as "evidence" of misdoings.

> The DNC leaks certainly had a lot of missing emails that may have served to provide context for conversations that were used as "evidence" of misdoings.

Where is your proof of this? I'm not being flippant. You take an unsubstantiated claim and argue against it with an unsubstantiated claim.

Note however, that the unsubstantiated claim that Wikileaks releases all materials without editing or redaction is extremely well-vetted, and the belief that they do redact is, so far as I know, only held by you.

I'm not aware of a single missing email.

If someone had come forward with an email and offered it as evidence that WL had withheld even a single one, I would view WL much differently.

Instead, WL took the trouble to DKIM verify as many as possible. Afaik none of the embarrassing or politically potent emails failed DKIM verification and nobody offered any evidence that emails in a chain were removed from the archive. Even claims of tampering were dropped after the DKIM verification was installed.

> That said, once he was stuck in the embassy, he left himself vulnerable to being manipulated by the Russians and now it seems he is acting as a Russian agent.

I wrote something along those lines a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13513523

I have little reason to doubt that Assange and Wikileaks as Russian agents. However, I'm willing to defer to Gruqg and his chain of deduction: Wikileaks was always destined to be become the unwitting propaganda horn of a foreign power.

If this case has no chance of going anywhere, then why run? A prosecutor acting based on political motives isn't uncommon, though unfortunate. But to actually convict Assange with so little evidence would require subverting the criminal justice system, tampering with witnesses, judges and the jury, which is far more egregious and unlikely. I don't have much faith in the ethics of prosecutors, but the judicial system I consider far less susceptible to political interference.

> If this case has no chance of going anywhere, then why run?

I think it's common knowledge that he cited concerns about extradition to the US as the reason for leaving Sweden.

For context, this was just a few years after The Pirate Bay bust. TPB operated for a while claiming that they are breaking no Swedish law and seemed resistant to takedown attempts until suddenly the police raided them and they were arrested and sentenced. It wasn't uncommon to see claims that Swedish government sold out to Uncle Sam at the time.

Except he was in the UK for almost 2 years fighting the extradition to Sweden. The whole time he was saying the Swedish extradition was "actually an attempt to get me into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite me to the US" as if the UK is any less likely to cooperate with the US. If the US wanted him they could have asked for extradition from the UK during those 2 years.

IIRC: as a citizen it was somehow harder to extradite him from UK than from Sweden.

As far as I know he’s not a UK citizen, but an Australian citizen. But maybe being from the commonwealth counts as special?

> I can't respect someone who talks about curing the world of ignorance, and having the courage to tell the truth, but then cowers for 7 years in a embassy because he's too afraid to stand up and tell the truth, whatever it was, about what happened.

It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think.

> It was more about not wanting to rot in US prison, I think.

That seems a perfectly rational decision to me.

Except that a) the US weren't interested (ironically, they may be now) and b) he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever.

People were dropping out of Wikileaks 10 years ago because of Assange's behaviour. Seems like Poitras is just the latest in a long line of people who are attracted to the principles of Wikileaks, but turned off by the reality.

he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy, where there was no chance of rendition whatsoever.

Sources? Because this is the exact opposite of what I read: that Swedish investigators had repeatedly refused to interview him there.

Edit: I googled and I'm still convinced I'm right: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+dont+swedish+police+inte...

Edit2: unless someone can show sources moomins answer I'll say it is wrong and dangerously wrong in that it spreads a lie.

I still can't understand why no-one has bother to either downvote it or provide sources for it.

I don't necessarily like Assange but lets not lie to create more trouble for him.

He was interviewed in the embassy by Swedish prosecutors[1][2][3][4].

1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/julian-assange-poli...

2 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-sweden-assange-idU...

3 http://www.smh.com.au/world/swedish-prosecutor-ingrid-isgren...

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...

You're correct. Sorry, I misremembered.

So - unless anyone has more trustworthy sources - Assange has offered his testimony for years as long as they would meet him in the embassy and Sweden has refused.

Actually, he did a show interview in the embassy, where the prosecutors weren't allowed to ask direct questions.

>he repeatedly refused to meet Swedish investigators at the embassy

It was them who repeatedly refused to meet him. He offered to meet them repeatedly.

The US wasn't interested? With Manning in jail? He's not a US citizen. For him, US prison would be a lucky outcome. Rendition and torture would be a realistic fear.

I do, on the other hand, wonder why he'd consider Sweden a greater risk than the UK.

Well, us patriots would have found some reason to despise him anyway.. so why not get a room with a view?

I've observed that Trump and his supporters live in a childishly simple world where anything and anyone who says "good" or supportive things is hailed and anyone who criticizes or questions Trump is derided and held in contempt, irrespective of any actual factual basis.

This is inarguably true.

Very interesting observation. Thanks for sharing.

Isn't this just politics?

Here is an example: After the DNC scandal against Sanders with DWS resigning I posted an article by Greenwald on this in /r/politics. It was downvoted with such reasons as 'Greenwald is an un-patriotic [homophobic slur] who is afraid to enter the US because he doesn't want to face responsibility for his actions against the US.'

Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour. Meaning, at some point of heated debate, those with no feelings involved take a step back, and find a middleground solution, a compromise with which both sides can live. And usually that boring compromise is accepted by the majority of the people.

The problem starts when the majority of the people are cut off from economic growth and participation. They can sense the world moving own, without needing them and rebell against that (for good reason- i presume that alot of HN readers would form similar rebelions, if the big Four would discard them all .

>Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

This isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Any compromise needs a supermajority of citizens in support of a majority of elected officials. With the two party system, often compromising can lead to an election loss even if the majority of voters were in favor of the end bill.

Sigh. It's a representative democracy and a republic. The terms aren't incompatible.

Just because the dichotomy was James Madison's hobby horse and he scribbled it down in Federalist No. 10, doesn't mean that it is gospel. The US has been referred to as a representative democracy since its founding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

This doesn't change anything I said beyond the first sentence. They described what should happen under a "democracy" and since our democratic system is unarguably a republic, things don't work that way.

Sorry I hit some strange political nerve. I remember the internet being full of the "ugh, were not a democracy" posts too, but I also swore some oath to the republic every day for a decade.

I think what he's trying to say is that a representative democracy with single-member districts (rather than any sort of party lists) and first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system, is inherently biased against political compromises and towards partisan polarization.

> with single-member districts (rather than any sort of party lists)

Single-member, FPTP districts are the issue (or, rather, the lack of proportionality and meaningful choice that comes with that is the issue); the absence of party lists, OTOH, is irrelevant. There are solutions to the issues posed by single-member, FPTP districts that retain candidate-centered elections and do not use party lists. (STV in multimember—but not necessarily at-large—districts is one of them.)

How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)? STV doesn't fix it - while it makes third party votes viable, it still means that third parties are going to win far fewer districts than the overall proportion of their vote across all districts.

> How do you get proportional representation with single-member districts without involving party lists somehow (as in e.g. MMP)?

It's hard if you keep single-member districts, though there are possibilitie: (e.g., assign seats to parties based on share first-preference votes across all districts, with all the same handling of minimum thresholds, etc, you would apply in party list proportional, and then elect specific candidates from the by-district elections as follows:

- If a parties total number of allocated seats is equal to the number of candidates they have remaining in districts where no candidate has been elected, elect all of those candidates.

- Otherwise, elect the candidate from the party whose currently-elected # of candidates is the smallest fraction of their allocated seats (breaking ties in favor of the largest absolute deficit) who has the greatest share of the vote in the district in which they competed.

- Repeat until all allocated seats are filled.

Voilà: all the partisan proportionality of party-list proportional, with candidates elected from single-member districts, with candidate centered voting, and no party lists.

I think practically STV or a similar system in small multimember districts (about 5 members per district) is probably a better balance of proportionality and individual candidate accountability (and results in more people having a candidate that is both local and politically acceptable than most other systems), and STV of course can scale to any level of proportionality at the expense of greater number of candidates and larger districts.

Party lists provide an easy route to partisan proportionality but eliminate direct accountability to the general electorate of individual representatives. Ideally, I think, you want both proportionality and individual accountability to the general electorate.

I think direct accountability is overrated. Not to say that it shouldn't be there, but I don't think it's important enough that the electoral system should be fixated on it as the primary goal. For example, in US today, despite single-member districts (which put it as the cornerstone), party politics dominate in practice.

I think MMP is a reasonable compromise system between direct accountability and regional representation on one hand, and proportional representation of national politics on the other - each district still gets a direct representative (or several; I'm not opposed to multimember districts in general), but party lists are used to keep the overall balance of power in line with the national vote.

The risk with the system that you describe is that it can still skew results substantially. For example, a party that consistently gets just under 20% of the vote across all districts would end up with no seats at all, although 20% is a significant proportion of the population, and in fairness is entitled to appropriate representation. This can be improved by adding more members per district, but then the legislature becomes unwieldy - in fact I would dare say it would be unwieldy even at 5 members per district in US, since it would push the number of representatives over 2000. Increasing district sizes proportionally would mitigate that, but it also decreases the connection between the elected representative and the people in their district, and thus also accountability.

> This isn't a democracy, it's a republic

Please stop spreading this false dichotomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

"""In American English, the definition of a republic can also refer specifically to a government in which elected individuals represent the citizen body, known elsewhere as a representative democracy (a democratic republic),[4] and exercise power according to the rule of law (a constitutional republic)."""

It is not a democracy in the form their example illustrated, it is a democratic republic. I didn't think that statement would be controversial as it is true for what I assumed was the definition of democracy used.

>Actually no - politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

We actually agree on that. My point was that it is my observation politics in general suffers from the above problem, not just Trump supporters.

> politics in democratic systems should transcend this immature behaviour.

Yes it should. But in highly politicized subreddits, left or right, it doesn't.

This is an emergent property of the human brain: pitch forks and flaming torches etc.

You realize that the other side is the same right?

Er... no they're not. Watch Bill Maher whinge about protests against him from other progressives sometimes. He'd love to live in a world where progressives behaved like that, he'd be a hero.

Donald Trump is completely irrelevant to my support of Assange.

Like many of his critics, you are making a lot of ad hominem attacks on Assange rather than focusing on his massive contributions to democracy and journalism.

And you are excusing his reprehensible personal behavior because of those contributions. Contributions that could be made by Wikileaks staffers without his presence.

I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to... but whatever it is it is being used as a distraction from the issues revealed by WL. Chances are even without Assange involved there would be attempts by many governments to discredit those operating WL.

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