Only in the sense of a Solzhenitsyn nightmare. There are breathing, ideologically-bent individuals pushing this. Who are they, and how do we hound them like they have hounded him.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29509343.
What if instead they are ego fragile and angry at Assange for daring to challenge the unchallengeable order?
Or what if this is a case of banal evil?
I’m not suggesting any of qualities exist in the persons who are implicated in the question of “who.”
I do want to use this opportunity to point out that if you expect to find some quality in someone else you will find it, if it is truly there or even if it really isn’t. This is motivated reasoning and if not handled appropriately then it can backfire in very serious ways.
I hope this doesn’t come off as insulting. @the_optimist I’m not a saint, I’m not perfect. My only hope, selfishly, is to surface desirable qualities (open to truth vs motivated reasoning) and hope my friends and family will echo the desirable qualities back when I inevitably stray.
I'm starting to accept that lies grease the gears of society somewhat, that we can't always live up to the ideals we propagandize about. Sometimes tricking people is the best way to get them to behave.
But I also think that the leaks themselves and the response to them show how far out of bounds our government is with its lies and liberties. The undermining of our diplomatic position began with our diplomacy, our military action. You can argue Assange released "too much", but that doesn't forgive the reaction.
I expect a government with some integrity would admit mistakes and do some house cleaning to regain the lost trust. Maybe I'm not following well enough, and there was some of that? But it seems to me like they went straight to trying to punish Assange with dirty tricks; no real admissions of guilt or plans to improve. That speaks to a pervasive lack of integrity, and so has undermined confidence in the fairness of these legal proceedings.
> they went straight to trying to punish Assange with dirty tricks… no plans to improve
I take “they” to mean the US, right?
> That speaks to a pervasive lack of integrity, and so has undermined confidence in the fairness of these legal proceedings.
The US’ “dirty tricks” somehow implicate the UK court system and the integrity of their judges? This is the exact illogical step I was referring to from the last thread. If you do not understand that the Americans are in a UK court, asking another sovereign power to let them have him, you should not be commenting on it at all. Even if you made the argument that the UK’s government employed dirty tricks too, you would be ignoring the fact that their democracy has an incredibly rigid separation between executive and judicial power. Your understanding has lumped together the American executive government with the UK judiciary, which would be a stunning display of ignorance were we not on the Orange Website, where it is just the usual amount of ignorance.
For starters, there are the majority of Americans who believe he should be extradited. (In second place, those who don’t care.)
One would presume that Americans want possible crimes against them to be tried in their courts, but the purpose of an extradition hearing is to determine whether what the other country wants is acceptable.
When someone lives inside one of several walled properties, hiding is unnecessary.
Offtopic: doxxing is evil. Don't do it.
Devil's advocate: Doxxing isn't any more or less evil than investigative journalism or hiring a PI.