Julian Assange's health in 'dangerous' condition, say doctors | Hacker News Reader

Julian Assange's health in 'dangerous' condition, say doctors

theguardian.com

22 pointseplanit26 comments

It seems Assange's enemies win, whether he's in the embassy or in custody of some state hostile to him. He's becoming harder and harder to trust given the mental stress he must be under. It's not very difficult to imagine him being persuaded to support some agenda, as long as it's hostile to his enemies, while before all this, he at least had a fairly believable aura of indiscriminating antiauthoritarianism.

> ... while before all this, he at least had a fairly believable aura of indiscriminating antiauthoritarianism.

He had a claim of indiscriminate antiauthoritarianism. I never really believed it, though - he always seemed to be releasing information that was targeted at specific axes he wanted to grind. (It's possible that he was just releasing what he got, indiscriminately, but I never got that impression.)

What is the need for making one’s mind up on these things? It’s tough to explain or justify much of how Assange has chosen to live his life in merely common terms.

He really seems like his own worst enemy, not in the least because his claims are at odds with his behavior. I also don’t really buy that he’s avoiding Swedish justice out of fear that the Americans will get him. That seems especially unlikely with Trump in office, given that they seem more or less aligned.

He just seems to be an egotist and a bit of a scumbag, who says one thing and does another.

There is no longer any Swedish justice after him. Case was closed because he couldn’t be reached.

And his assertion on Friday that Sweden had cleared his name for a crime he has denied was disputed by Sweden’s chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny.
Sweden was dropping the inquiry, Ms. Ny said, because she simply saw no way forward and “we don’t make any statement of guilty or not.”

Should Mr. Assange enter Sweden before August 2020, when the statute of limitations expires for the last remaining allegation, of minor rape, she said, the investigation could be reopened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/world/europe/julian-assan...

It's only the US and british governments which are after him currently. Publishing annoying state secrets doesn't go well with them.

The British government are after him because, after he was allowed to enter the country and having gone through due process, his European arrest warrant was upheld and he absconded. That has nothing to do with state secrets and, so far, the US haven't asked for him to be extradicted.

As the US has the concept of a closed warrant,it's not currently possible to know if he's wanted by them. It's not exactly inconceivable.

> it is our professional opinion that his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare.”

Human right to healthcare!!

It's amazing (and saddening) how jarring that phrase sounds to American ears. One day maybe it will be believed here.

Insert well-worn debate about positive vs. negative rights here.

The American view of human rights is that your fundamental rights are endowed by your creator, and not given to you by man. In other words, no person is needed to provide a right to you. So, for example, free speech is yours - nobody needs to give it to you.

For healthcare, if you were to have a right to it, then someone would have to be there to provide it. Logically, at some point, a person could be forced (presumably by a government) to provide it to you. This is contradicting the principle set above (and you are therefore violating THAT person's rights).

So when Americans are criticized for not considering the internet or healthcare or other things as a "right", that is the reason.

You don't have to agree with it, but the fundamental rights upon which the country was founded come from this principle.

> The American view of human rights is that your fundamental rights are endowed by your creator, and not given to you by man. In other words, no person is needed to provide a right to you.

I'm not arguing that you are necessarily wrong, but I am arguing that your point and the actual execution of our government are contradictory.

Notable contradictions to the above, the 2nd, 18th & 21st amendments. Let's go with the 2nd since is wonderfully controversial. Via the above definition and a loose modern interpretation of modern state of the law: People have the right to own guns. The government doesn't have the right to stop it.

But relying on the quoted above, and if we're discussing rights given via a creator, and not rights given by another man, there is no constitutional right to be able to buy a gun. A person can own a gun, and create a guy and form a militia of gun owners, but the government is well within it's rights to ban the sale of all guns in the country without any violation of the 2nd.

Now we're all reasonable people here, and know that's not the contemporary interpretation. And no-one (certainly least me) is arguing that it should be. But what it does point out that that we can't use the concept of "rights given by a creator" as a necessary criteria for supporting or judging contemporary interpretation of rights and law. Not that it hasn't happened.

So again I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that it's a contradictory argument against healthcare. If we say we cut out healthcare for that reason, then we also have to also cut out everything that has the same lacking reason.

As far as I can tell, you're making this up. You have a nice concise definition, but the idea that the "American" definition of human rights is constrained to things that no one has to provide for you is absurd. You have the right to an attorney. God doesn't make attorneys.

In this case, no one is being forced to provide health care.

There are doctors who want to provide healthcare and it is being denied in the same way a violation of free speech would be, by force.

No human rights are violated by allowing Assange to receive required care from consenting doctors, but the consequences created by people/governments with no interest in his well-being are violating his rights by limiting/denying the choices he should have available to him.

So how do we exacerbate the downfall of this way of thinking? If, generally (as you suggest), folks who believe in a 'creator' are to blame for perpetuating it, then I'm very excited by a number of recent studies that the belief in a creator is on the decline among young folks here in the US.

Don't you have the right to healthcare in the US? You have to pay for it, but you have to pay for food too, and that is a right. And if you can't pay for it afaik they can't refuse you emergency service.

In fairness, I think 2 of the 3 clinicians involved are American.

And before you get excited about the wonders of Europe, I'm pretty sure our rights in this regard are the same as those in the US i.e. covered by Article 25.

However, what you don't have, and nor do we, is the right to access to healthcare without being arrested for a crime for which there's an outstanding warrant. The right to immunity to arrest, is somewhat more debatable even in Europe.

So, Eric Rudolph (terrorist bomber of the Atlanta Olympics, among other places he set bombs) hiding out in the woods, if he needs medical care for snake bite or something (the snake died) should get a "Don't arrest me, I'm just coming in for medical care" pass?

I'm not seeing it.

Assange's supporters continue to play disingenuous word games with "imprisoned" and "confined". Assange is not being imprisoned. He can leave the embassy and exercise his right to medical care any time he likes. What he doesn't have is the "right to not be arrested", because nobody has that right.

Edit: reworded slightly

Diplomats have that right.

And he is not a diplomat, nor does he have any recognized diplomatic immunity, so the point is moot.

What? No, it's not. He was responding to the claim that "nobody has that right" with a clear example showing it's false...

Which means that Analemma_ overstated the point slightly.

But the actual point wasn't whether anybody had that right. The actual point was, Assange does not have that right. He is in self-imposed exile to avoid arrest. The consequences of that are the consequences of his own choices.

How you feel about the situation is kind of a litmus test. Either you see Assange as running from a rape charge (and running from it so determinedly that it indicates a high likelihood of guilt), or you see him as running from a determined effort to persecute him by stooges of the evil US government. Whichever one you believe determines how you feel about his inability to leave and get health care. Either you see it as "you made your bed, now lie in it", or you see it as one more aspect of The Man hounding him.

Which is being pedantic purely for the sake of pedantry.

He should probably go seek medical attention, then, as he has been free to do this entire time. He's not being held prisoner, his confinement is entirely voluntary.

And if he were to wander out and catch an uber, he could probably escape and evade capture.

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