Assange Hearing Day 8
craigmurray.org.uk
craigmurray.org.uk
That's some statistics ...
> Lewis then asked Timm if he had seen the actual evidence that supports the indictment. Timm replied only some of it, in particular the Java script of the messages allegedly between Assange and Manning.
Just throw a few bits of data into a large codeset
Sounds like they were conspiring via a web-based client and the prosecution is going to read the functions to the jury ;-)
If that were the reason for this whole thing than its kindergartner level of spite.
I've seen similar, in all walks of life. Politicians and civil servants are by no means immune to pettiness. Especially when setting an example might spare them work and money in the future.
Its no wonder when you have to interact with politicians on a day to day basis that the cultures should mirror each other.
I would much prefer Microsoft Civil Servant sp4 or an IBM Civil Servant AI powered by Big Blue.
Depressing to see such low-quality nonsense on HackerNews.
It's like being rear-ended, and when you claim on your insurance, the other party says you cost them money. Except you didn't - they where to blame.
This idea that defending his right to a fair hearing implies seeing him as a "messiah" or even as a nice person, is deeply disturbing.
Dodging jurisprudence, that's rich. His Swedish accusers were not even investigated for blatant evidence tampering.
If a normal person would face this kind of BS (not allowed to talk to lawyers in court, trumped up and dubious extradition charges), the then there is no justice.
You seem to be one of those people that still has not come to the realization that the whole system of western government has become inherently illegitimate in and of itself through its own actions and words. It leaves people like you still saying things akin to "well, the dictator did pass a law that he can apply to anything he wakes up one morning not liking" and it placates you, as the "laws" are meant to, by implying a sense of authority through process.
What should have really happened in a sane and healthy society and civilization, is that 1) the things the people that did commit crimes by stealing and handing over classified information, should never have had to do that because the system would have harshly punished the perpetrators of the violations they exposed with execution and, 2) it would have led to the prosecution of the people who were responsible for the information and systems that allowed the release of the information that was deemed classified, again, with execution.
But instead, we have a clearly broken and systematically rotten system that is violently persecuting and prosecuting the messenger, because they did not like that they were exposed as the evil people perpetrating evil they were and that their incompetence also led to that being revealed. What this is all about really, is vengeance for exposure, for embarrassment, for disclosure that the many little dictatorial emperors don't have any clothes on and are just LARPing with way too much undeserved and unearned money and power.
The only risk for British politicians is getting caught with their pants down messing this up (either way). A judge basically needs to sign off on the obvious political desire to please the Trump administration with this. For that to happen, there's a bunch of legal boxes to be ticked and the whole thing plays out in public, which is ever so embarrassing when there are some obvious moral and legal challenges to be made. Hence the glee in this article and the drama with lawyers and prosecutors having their day in court. This thing is obviously toxic at this point. But regardless, the legal precedent is such that they can probably make this happen provided the political will is there.
So, the only question is whether that political will is still real.
As of November, the political landscape in the US may change and I fully expect the legal proceedings to drag out at least that long thus providing both parties a way to get out of what will no doubt be a PR mess on both sides if it actually ever comes to an extradition. That basically largely just hangs on whether Trump is still there or not.
If Trump wins, the PR mess is just business as usual on the US side and it will barely register against the near constant state of media outrage. On the British side, they get some kudos for being nice which will no doubt help with their post-brexit trade negotiations.
If on the other hand Biden wins, I expect he'll be interested in repairing the damage of the past few years in terms of foreign relations and not getting associated with this stinking mess he just inherited and appeasing relations with the more liberal factions in his party.
Likewise, Trump might actually be wanting to pick his fights carefully if he should win. He already casually hinted at dropping the whole thing once or twice and it wouldn't surprise me if he opts for dropping this right after the election regardless of whether he wins them because after that it no longer serves him any political purpose whereas dropping this in some grand way would make him seem like a wise stateman. Win or lose, he'd have more to gain from shooting for that than some dragged out drama for the next years.
The easiest way to do that would basically be the US giving up on extradition after which the UK can grudgingly release Assange without further loss of face and put him on a plane to wherever. End of story. Assange on trial in the US is not a good outcome for anyone at this point.
I don't see Biden doing anything that inflammatory to the intelligence agencies or any arm of government for that matter (he just doesn't pick those kinds of public fights, that's not his style, whereas Trump seems to be very willing to try and screw anyone who he perceives has wronged him) and I don't see Trump doing anything that hard line republicans might disagree with so long as there's an election in the future so it's likely December or never.
Edit: And I'd be very willing to debate why I think this with any of the apparently many people who think this is so wrong.
The truths that Wikileaks have published, can change the world - for the better. We have to prosecute the war criminals.
The leaks will continue. British establishment, or otherwise.
And then the UK proceeded to torture him themselves (torture are the words "The Lancet" used [1], they cannot reasonably be dismissed as cranks) ... Illegally, by UK laws, and refuse to be held accountable for that in their own courts. Not that the judge even tries to demand reasonable treatment for Julian Assange from the prosecutor.
UK laws are very clear on what should happen in this case: because of the government's treatment of Assange the case should be thrown out, because obviously the government has acted illegally against him on MANY occasions, they don't even give him his rights INSIDE THE COURTROOM (to talk to his lawyer privately and however much he wants without interference). The government DOES NOT have the right to sue somebody for anything once they have tortured him. Once they have lied about the case, they lose the right to sue. Once they refuse medical aid to a prisoner, they lose the right to sue. They have spied on his communication with his lawyer, again grounds for dismissal. They are obviously not feeding him right, which again would normally disqualify the government's case. Or at the very least, warrants a delay in the case with him decently taken care of until he is once again strong and fit enough to stand trial. Note that this is completely independent of the merit of the case itself: the QC in any normal case like this would never be allowed to make their case without fixing these issues first. Some of these reasons for dismissal the judge has seen happen right in front of him with his own eyes.
Then there is the fact that the UK government does not have evidence against Assange on this crime (because he violated US law, not UK law), furthermore I do not see how it could -legally- obtain any such evidence.
And yet this farce continues. The judge systematically refuses to face issues of fairness of the case and is obviously intimidated by the government.
This shows one thing very clearly : the United Kingdom's government (the "executive") has ZERO intention of following through on their commitment to either follow their own laws, respect human rights and has no qualms whatsoever to threaten their own branches of government, when they want to violate laws.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
> It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.
> No, I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history.
> We know this because Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators today.
> That Assange is the darling of terrorists is nothing short of reprehensible.
> No, Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong.
> Assange is a narcissist who has created nothing of value. He relies on the dirty work of others to make himself famous. He is a fraud—a coward hiding behind a screen.
> First, it is high time we called out those who grant a platform to these leakers and so-called transparency activists. We know the danger that Assange and his not-so-merry band of brothers pose to democracies around the world. Ignorance or misplaced idealism is no longer an acceptable excuse for lionizing these demons.
> Third, we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.
But if you listen to the UK prosecutor, Assange is just being prosecuted because some low-level prosecutor in the US decided, on their own initiative, to build a case against him. The fact that high-level officials in the US government have been openly calling for an example to be made of Assange is supposed to be irrelevant.
The UK should have dismissed this extradition request out-of-hand when it was first made, given the obvious political motivations behind it. The US-UK extradition treaty makes it very clear that extradition is not allowed in such cases.
1. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2017...
Words, statutes, and legal language are meaningless theater if all we do is lampshade or cast them aside when they are inconvenient or the first time they are found to be politically inconvenient or unpopular.
I weep for Justice. She's out in a dark alley somewhere in a dumpster while political expedience seems to win in the limelight lately.
Nixon probably said the same thing of Ellsberg.
In this case it's "Assange is working for Russian Intelligence against the interests of the US let's get him for a specific crime he committed towards that end".
You can of course disagree with the Russian asset part of the statement, but I don't think that qualifies as "politically motivated" in the kind of sense it would (or should) bother an extradition hearing.
When governments go after people for publishing embarrassing truths, that's political. Everyone knows why the US government wants Assange behind bars. The CIA Director / Secretary of State made it abundantly clear in his speech that the US intends to go after Assange in order to send a message that the 1st Amendment is no barrier to prosecuting journalists for what they publish. The UK prosecutor is playing dumb.
"At this point he was grinning very strangely indeed, looking up at the judge, leaning back with one arm wide across his chair back, in some sort of peculiar alpha male gesture."
Similar to a roald dahl book.
The article states that "[T]he US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time." The US has gone out of the way to prevent the NordStream 2 pipeline, and directly after Navalny was flown to Germany, several high-ranking German politicians (including Merkel), have began publicly to question whether NordStream 2 should be reconsidered, in the light of Navalny, see [1].
May I gently request that you exercise more care when representing Murray's views? Please reconsider the HN guidelines for comments [2], reproduced here for your convenience: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Can you point me towards credible answers to some / all the questions raised in [1] please?
[1] https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/03/pure-ten-poi...
if any being the important part. My mind is open to the point that my brain is on the desk?
I don't doubt for one second that the intelligence services have cleaned up the story a little but it just looks like conjecture e.g. Craig Murray knows nothing about the roof of the house.
His doubts as to their identities look really convenient, given that "someone" tried to give him DNC emails in the past.
Edit: here is a bellingcat vs. murray catfight over the identities of the Russians
https://mobile.twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1047597999105...
His characterizations paint the prosecution as ridiculous characters and their case as laughable at best, which may not reflect reality as much one would hope.
So what he is describing might be very unlike what the judges are experiencing, and if they end up giving the extradition of Assange's the go-ahead, a lot of people are going to be very surprised.
Edit: This rollercoaster of upvotes and downvotes on a post that just reminds people to not blindly trust someone who tells them what they want to hear is interesting in itself.
See for example this from one of Murray's earlier posts:
> Yesterday Baraitser again followed her usual path of refusing every single defence motion, following pre-written rulings (whether written or merely copied out by herself I know not), even when the prosecution did not object. You will recall that at the first week of extradition hearing proper, she insisted that Julian be kept in a glass cage, although counsel for the US government made no objection to his sitting in the body of the court, and she refused to intervene to stop his strip searching, handcuffing and the removal of his court papers, even though the US government joined the defence in querying her claim she had no power to do this (for which she was later roundly rebuked by the International Bar Association). - https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/beyond-words...
Suppose they are.
Suppose it's just Murray's reporting that isn't evenhanded.
Which is my point.
From the point of view of someone who is strongly biased a neutral position would look very much like an adversarial one.
I'm not implying Murray is wrong, but I am saying we should not take things as he's describing them for granted either.
Murray is clearly on Assange's side, but that doesn't mean his observations of the judge's behaviour aren't accurate. As far as I know, no one's refuted what he described in the passage I quoted above.
Also, it's not just Murray. Here's the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) ("the global voice of the legal profession" according to the site):
> IBAHRI Co-Chair, the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, commented: ‘The IBAHRI is concerned that the mistreatment of Julian Assange constitutes breaches of his right to a fair trial and protections enshrined in the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the UK is party. It is deeply shocking that as a mature democracy in which the rule of law and the rights of individuals are preserved, the UK Government has been silent and has taken no action to terminate such gross and disproportionate conduct by Crown officials. As well, we are surprised that the presiding judge has reportedly said and done nothing to rebuke the officials and their superiors for such conduct in the case of an accused whose offence is not one of personal violence. Many countries in the world look to Britain as an example in such matters. On this occasion, the example is shocking and excessive. It is reminiscent of the Abu Grahib Prison Scandal which can happen when prison officials are not trained in the basic human rights of detainees and the Nelson Mandela Rules.’ - https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=c05...
Would you argue the International Bar Association isn't being evenhanded here?
However being silent is not the same as condoning and I am unsure about what powers the judge wields here.
I would also not even dare suggest a judge may be biased until I have read a verdict. Note how the International Bar Association's Press Release, being carefully worded, doesn't say so either. Though probably they would never except maybe once in a hundred years, them being lawyers.
The main thing I am unsure about, and where I don't share Murray's conviction, is the strength of the prosecutions legal argument.
If the UK court system feels misrepresented by one guy, how about opening proceedings up to broader coverage? It would seem they really do not want that. So I tend to take Murray's words with a grain of salt, at least for the human interactions and the scene-setting. But so far, his description is consistent with every bit of coverage that I have read elsewhere. The rest of the coverage is just much more matter-of-fact and often misses crucial things and nuances.
For example, the description "judge refuses motion to adjourn", which is what I read in other media, if anything at all, is correct as a summary for the Monday proceedings, but it is also woefully incomplete.
Edit: I'm sorry about the rollercoaster. I first rage-downvoted. Then I figured it would be better to respond. Now I upvoted because in phrasing my reply I realized this is actually one of the main scandals about this trial, and should be discussed more.