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Comment by chadcmulligan | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the silence, as I've said on here before - how can an Australian citizen who published articles in Iceland, who was captured in the UK be extradited to the US for crimes under US law?

You look at the Australian journalist who was working in China as a journalist and was imprisoned for vague charges, and there's an outcry.

Look at the Australian citizen who was captured half a world away they're trying to drag to the US for crimes under US law that weren't committed in that country - is there a difference? It could be argued the case of Assange is even worse. Imagine if China decided Assange was guilty of crimes under Chinese law and reached out like this, the outrage would be palpable.

Even the deputy PM has recently came out and said Assange shouldn't be extradited - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/barnaby-joyce-opposes... and said similar things.

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To paraphrase the gangster saying “It’s easy to be a vocal proponent of human rights when it’s not your power that’s being threatened.”

That’s what I appreciate about the US system and the words of its founders - it’s basically set up assuming whoever gets power will eventually abuse it. It’s just human nature - we’re great at convincing ourselves we’re in the right.

You think China or the Taliban think they’re bad people? Of course not, everything they do is for the greater good.

So it’s not surprising when a group of journalists, when given the choice (for any number of reasons) chose the status quo and their position of power in it, versus their journalistic idealism.

That's not human nature, since there is no abstract human nature! Human beings are social animals, it's all about “social relation!” It's all about conditions of the real material world. The slavery, feudalism or capitalism are not an arbitrary choices of human beings, they are social relations changing with class struggle! Why no powerful person or group wants to enslave, literally enslave, others? because this way, they make more profit! It is all about profit in the capitalism.

I’d say the USSR and other non-capitalist systems completely blows up your theory. They were more than happy to violate human rights in the goal of “the greater good”. Communist systems are actually fantastic examples that it is human nature.

There is one small but fundamental problem with your example: USSR was a state capitalism and not a socialist "state". Lenin expected a socialist revolution in Germany while it failed. It failed and freikorps killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. For sure you cannot have a socialism in s backward country like Russia. Socialism, in Marxism-Leninism, as a science, is the dialectical negation of capitalism.

Ahh the “its not true communism” argument.

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