Australian MPs to lobby US to drop Julian Assange prosecution
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
And Monique Ryan is already on thin ice -- can't help but wonder what the people of Kooyong think about her spending her time on this.
She's a federal representative, not a state representative. I hope you apply such 'non-local' arguments to all federal representatives equally.
Watching the smear machine rev up against her, the moment she got traction, has been quite the spectacle.
I think Assange should be pardoned but it is a choice between Assange doing time and the continued US support for Ukraine, I'd choose Ukraine. It seems stupid that it has to be such a choice, but here we are.
Can you unpack that?
[0]https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswa...
Both those things sound good to me, though applying it universally to all ages would be preferred. And I wouldn't characterize it as 'arbitrary' necessarily- I think that if you let everyone vote without any pre-requisites at all your democratic process inevitably becomes a carnival sideshow, a shallow popularity contest where the win condition is to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Some baseline level of knowledge in the constituency would be a big improvement, even if we still have the unavoidable problem of 'who determines the pre-requisites' to grapple with.
Disclaimer: I know practically nothing about Vivek or any of his other positions, and this is obviously just a partisan talking point for him. But that doesn't mean the core problem being identified doesn't exist
[0]https://woodrow.org/news/how-well-americans-know-constitutio...
[1]https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/americans-know-more...
In practice I don't think 85% of Americans would be unqualified based on those stats, those numbers would improve dramatically if the incentive were there (IE. know these things or don't vote).
>If you give people the obligations of living in a democracy (paying taxes, subjecting themselves to its laws, signing up for the draft, etc.) without actually letting them participate in that democracy, then it's not a democracy anymore.
I see your point but I don't consider democracy to be a binary condition, it exists in degrees- IE. voting directly for policies vs. electing representatives to do so, etc. If one were barred from democratic participation on a permanent basis for reasons they have no control over, IE. Race/Sex, then yes democratic principles have been violated. But if all they have to do is learn some basic facts about the history of the institution they are participating in, I don't see that as 'not letting' them vote. It's more 'if you really care about voting you'll do some basic due diligence first'.
Or they don't have the time or wherewithal to study for a test for whatever reason. This is the problem with trying to apply a standard to 300 million people - if 0.5% of people are the corner cases, there are 1.5 million corner cases. There are actually 14 million households in the US without internet access.[0]
> I don't see that as 'not letting' them vote. It's more 'if you really care about voting you'll do some basic due diligence first
The fact is that in order to implement this, you would have to turn away people who show up to the polls having fulfilled their end of the social contract (paying taxes, following laws, etc.). You lose the consent of the governed. And even that ignores the question of who would write and grade the test in the first place - the US has a sordid history of literacy tests being used to intentionally exclude certain groups from the franchise, and you'd have to find someone (definitely not Vivek) who could be trusted to do that job. Having the best of intentions doesn't matter when the choice of which questions to include/excluded can swing elections and disenfranchise millions.
[0]https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/internet-access-st...
Then they certainly don't have the time or wherewithal to vote as an informed constituent. They'll base their vote on an ad they saw on the TV, or blind party affiliation. What else can they do if they don't know the most basic facts about the institution they're participating in?
>The fact is that in order to implement this, you would have to turn away people who show up to the polls having fulfilled their end of the social contract (paying taxes, following laws, etc.).
In that case I would consider adding 'have basic knowledge of the democratic processes you participate in' to the social contract. It's no more onerous of a requirement than paying taxes IMO
And your point on 'who writes/grades the test' is a very valid one, as you say there is a history of using such measures for political repression. You'd have to be very careful and vigilant about setting it up in a fair and bipartisan manner, which unfortunately I have little hope for. I'm more attracted to the principle of the measure than how it'd likely play out in reality.
I would agree that this is a prima facie good idea. I would say that it would be a prima facie good idea for all ages.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voi...
But hey, feel free to continue arguing for policies which historically were only implemented to suppress minorities. I'm sure it'll all go well this time.
We fought an entire war where that was one of a very long list of cited grievances, and even then it was about regional representation in the legislature, not broad franchise within the represented region.
However, poll tests have their own sordid history after that point in this country, and limiting them by age doesn’t change the fundamental problem that they had before, in that they have always been a method for government to fail a population and then disenfranchise them, justifying it on the basis of (the natural consequences of) that failure.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/voting-literacy-test this shows the kind of bullshit tests that would be created if Ramaswamy gets his way
One big problem is that a good implementation/grading of "civics" test is so subjective that it could easily become a political-weapon to disenfranchise voters depending on who writes or grades the tests. Heck, you can already see it starting: The reason those politicians want to give free-pass to anyone over 25 is because their voting-base skews older, and they want any disenfranchisement to fall more-heavily against the other party. [0][1]
Similarly, "literacy tests" were horribly abused within US history, despite in theory being something that should be much easier to make a fair test for.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/20/t...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voting-patte...
having seen interviews of trump supporters, I think it would be a good idea to require a civics test for everyone. There are way too many people with a tenuous grasp of reality that vote.
then again, "qualification tests" have been used historically to silence marginalized voices so its one of those damned either way situations.
The point is simple, if we need you to chose you need to know which choices you have. It is not more but less democratic if you chose randomly.
Anecdotally, my school had a 1-semester Specific History Of This State that all freshmen had to take and probably forgot, plus an seemingly-inordinate amount of time spent on the exact dates and locations of Civil War battles.
Instead, imagine if some of that time/instruction was set aside for practical civics, including tricks like wrecking amendments [0] or weaknesses of plurality voting like the spoiler effect. [1]
I agree that all politicians should need to pass a civics test, but I disagree that it should be a law. Instead, they should be laughed out of the country -- but not as a law.
* He wants to institute a test and ban people from voting under the age of 25 who don't pass the test. This favors the institution who creates the test over the individual. His policy position here is to take away voting rights and empower institutions. [0]
* He is anti-choice for abortion. Generally this is seen as an anti-individualist stance as it favors institutional religious authority over individual choice. He favors state bans and says he would not implement a federal ban. [1]
* He opposes secularism saying:
> "When you abandon religion, you don’t lose the need for God. You just start worshiping new gods instead. The left embraces secular religions: wokeism, Covidism, climateism. The right flocks to Christ-like human saviors, only to be disappointed every time. It’s happening yet again. [..] The need to believe in something higher is a feature of the human condition, a thing that distinguishes us from animals. We’re better off recognizing it." [2]
Now he is welcome to his opinion, but this opinion speaks to how he thinks. That people need something over them, that if you don't don't give them some sort of false idol, they invent their own. This is Plato's Noble lie [3] and fundamentally anti-individualist. That the meaning of someone's life only matters if it comes from an authority.
I call this conservative atheism, that the actual existence of God is immaterial, what is important is the belief in some great chain of being, with authorities above individuals. I have more respect for conservatives who actually believe in a God (or Gods) than atheist conservatives who see the propagation of a lie about a sky-tyrant as required for their political program. It's the intellectual dishonesty of a cult leader.
While many people who are described as Woke would be scandalized to be called an individualist, at its core the conservative opposition to Wokism is comes an opposition to individualism and individualism is the basis of liberty.
[0] : https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/24/vivek-ram...
[1] : https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/2024-presidential-ca...
[2] : https://web.archive.org/web/20230905152654/https://twitter.c...
I am an agnostic, I subscribe to no religious authority, and I oppose abortion because it violates the child's individual freedom to experience life.
I do agree that individualism is important to liberty, but I can't connect your dots.
Wokism is collectivism, as you seem to recognize. But how is his message of being anti-woke also collectivism? I don't get that leap.
Most of what the anti-woke hate about wokism, is wokisms argument that individuals should be allowed to define their own identity. For instance pronouns: antiwokism wants to have society at large decide what someone's pronouns are and are upset that people they describe as "woke" want to allow individuals to define their own gender identity. Or consider the case of gay marriage, the argument against it that you can't let individuals decide how to understand their own relationships or else it undermines the collective authority of society over individuals.
That some people believe in the concept of 'gender identity' and define it for themselves is not a problem in itself. Essentially, this is covered under freedom of religion, a widely accepted human right.
The problem is that many of those who hold such beliefs want everyone else to use 'gender identity' in lieu of sex, and lobby for law and policy to be changed so this is enforced.
A man who declares himself to have a 'female gender identity' will typically want this declaration to grant him access to female-only spaces. Naturally, this is opposed by anyone who wants women's spaces to remain male-free.
As this has such widespread impact and is effectively a top-down reorganization of society that disadvantages women in favor of a subset of men, it's become a hot-button political issue for this reason, particularly amongst feminists.
You objection is that that individual is defining how the collective treats the individual. You would rather than individual must play by the rules of the collective.
The collective in this case is women, and the individuals are those men who desire to be women, or call themselves women. These men are attempting, for their own gratification, to undermine the well-established collective rights of women, particularly regarding female-only spaces.
So yes, I would much rather these men abide by the rules of the collective, and stop trying to impose themselves on women's spaces, and refrain from forcing everyone to accept their belief that they are women simply because they say they are.
Consider a more general case than gender, as the gender debate has been so poisoned by right wing attempts to turn it into a wedge issue it is difficult to discuss without a bigger discussion of sex, gender, society and biology.
Let's say someone's legal name is Robert. They deeply dislike the name Robert and prefer to be called Bob.
Should they legally be allowed to change their name to Bob? Is the authority of the label Robert on their birth certificate greater than the authority of an individual to name themselves?
Taking this out of the realm of law and into the more murky area of social dynamics. Lets say Bob asks people in their workplace to call them Bob, but everyone in their workplace calls Bob, Robert instead. In doing so they are not being respectful of an individual. While all groups are made of individuals, the question here is should the individual be able to determine the name they are called or should a collective group decide it for them? I would take Bob's side and say that his coworkers are being shitty.
There are some interesting cases here. Fighter pilots don't get to choose their call signs. Instead they are given by the other pilots and often refers to something they messed up. The authority of the call sign comes from group consensus not individual wishes.
I don't personally care much what people want to be called, and would of course be happy to call Robert Bob if that is what he wanted. But that's because I'm a reasonable person and that's a reasonable request. If Robert changed his mind every week about what he wanted to be called, people would stop respecting his wishes because he'd be placing an unreasonable burden on them by doing so. If he decided his new name was 56 characters long and impossible to spell, or some unpronounceable symbol, again, people might reject his wish because it would place an unreasonable burden on them.
Perhaps more apropos for Hacker News, many websites don't let you change your username because it's a primary key, or because that's how other users identify you, or for whatever other reasons. They may also ban things like emoji in name fields, or even in some incompetent cases not work if your name is Null. Are these violations of my human rights? Well, no, not really.
So whilst I don't wish to get into trans issues here, the claim that identity is a purely personal choice is clearly backwards. Your identity is how other people identify you, by definition, so it requires their consent to have a specific identity. You can ask them nicely but it's ultimately their choice.
Individualism doesn't make sense without groups. The last human on earth doesn't need individualism, individualism is only a helpful idea when both and group and an individual have a claim to something and the group can force its will on the individual.
Individualism is not about who is able makes the choice, as you point out with identity the group has always has ability to call Bob, Robert. Rather the question is should the large group do such a thing.
Why doesn't the larger group not simply enforce it's will on the smaller individual? Individualism , which is core to notions of gay rights and trans rights, answers that question with the statement that there is inherent value in respecting the choices of an individual especially when it comes to that individual's identity and self-expression.
As Americans have a lot of freedom to choose which state they live in, I don't see how this can possibly be described as "anti-choice". Being anti-choice would mean implementing a federal ban.
Abortion bans aren't about religious authority or "anti-individualism", even though most religions are against abortion. They exist because at some point the foetus transitions to become a person who themselves must have basic rights defended by the government and (possibly religious) morality. At that point the choice is by definition not an individual choice because it controls the baby's life, and the baby is an individual.
That's why it's totally normal for even very secular countries to have abortion bans in place after a certain number of weeks.
> This is Plato's Noble lie [3] and fundamentally anti-individualist.
You are misrepresenting his point very badly here and it feels deliberate. Ramaswamy isn't saying he opposes secularism. He isn't even passing opinion on the phenomenon in question. The statements you quoted are phrased as neutral observation. He's arguing that this outcome appears to be inevitable regardless of what he or anyone else personally wants.
His point is that although we tell ourselves we live in a secular age now, there is a lot of surprisingly religious looking behavior re-appearing in supposedly non-religious contexts. He ponders why this is, and concludes that the widespread nature of religion in the past may not have been a mere phase of history but perhaps a basic need of most humans (but not all), and now the old religions are fading they're being replaced by new ones.
It's a viewpoint that's becoming more common, he certainly isn't the first to express this idea. And you don't need to be religious yourself to make the same observation.
I wouldn't trust him to follow through.
Even if you're willing to leak secrets, you have first to find yourself in the position to have access to the secrets. As a leaker, it's extremely unlikely that Snowden will ever find himself in that situation a second time. You know this, and yet you pretend that you're making a point.
A court may we able to argue that you knowingly distributed information that you were not authorised to see and in doing so was malicious.
I agree with you, I'm just thinking of the optics.
Which crime do you believe Julian Assange has committed?
Allegedly Assange agreed to crack password-hashes for Manning, supplying the resulting fresh passwords to Manning to use. [0]
While I'm sure the US government is out to make an example of Assange, I don't see how anyone can argue the above allegation falls under regular ethical journalism. Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?"
[0] https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-brea...
Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. First, it's not totally clear that Assange agrees to crack the password, though he does remark that he had the capability to do so. He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password.
> Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?"
And then imagine the newspaper editor not actually supplying the lockpicks or grappling-hook and never speaking of it again.
Assange said he "passed it into our lm guy", which is an implicit--but clear!--signal that he will help with the technical problem, along with being a kind of small assistance all on its own.
> Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. [...] He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password.
That part doesn't matter, since Assange is accused of conspiracy to X. That one word is very important, it means a chat-log showing him agreeing to assist with the X is sufficient grounds to charge him with that related crime.
Analogy: You message me explaining you need to crack data on a CAN bus in order to steal a luxury car, and I agree to analyze your collected data and find the secret key needed to disable the security systems.
Those chat-logs would still be enough to charge me (and you) with conspiracy to commit grand theft auto: It doesn't matter if I never touched the car myself, and it doesn't matter if I failed at extracting a secret key, the important thing is we each acted and collaborated towards a crime.
You would, for your involvement with the car theft-- you're knowingly participating in a crime and provided material support. Assange didn't follow up on his own agreement.
Even in the famous "cannibal cop" case-- whether or not the cop was actually going to kidnap anyone, he did look up "victims" on the state computer. It was no longer "talk" once he took a step toward making it happen.
Hold up, I think you're confusing "all" with "any". The conspiracy is launched if any conspirator takes an additional act to further it. Simply appearing later in the script doesn't mean an actor isn't part of the play.
So we must ask what co-conspirator Manning was doing. Even if we assume in Assange's favor that nothing prior to this exchange matters, I have a very hard time believing that after 2010-03-08T16:11:40 Manning just totally quit trying to access that computer or other resources. (Plus whatever Assange's "LM guy" might be doing with the data.)
> [In the car-theft analogy] You would [be charged] for your involvement with the car theft--you're knowingly participating in a crime and provided material support. Assange didn't follow up on his own agreement.
I would be charged, but not for that reason.
Like I said before about the car example, I could still fail to extract the secret key and/or have no chance to deliver any material support. However if you do any further actions like surveilling the owner's movements or tapping more data, I'm still in legal jeopardy because the law does not require every single conspirator to have done an additional act.
____
To use another analogy with clearer timing: On Monday Bob calls Alice, and Alice agrees to drive a getaway car for a Friday bank-robbery. There's nothing for Alice to actually do or prepare yet, because she already has a car and knows the area. On Tuesday Bob is arrested trying to acquire some guns. Did Alice deliver on her promise? No. Can Alice be charged with conspiracy to rob the bank? Yes.
In any case, Assange has already been punished more than enough. It's time to let him go.
*facepalm*
That statement is false, and you haven't shared any shred of argument to explain why you think it sounds truthy.
1. Assange isn't being charged with "reporting on leaked classified material" because doing that is not a crime! [0][1]
2. Assange is being charged with things that--as I've repeatedly just explained--are crimes that all those other reporters would not be anywhere even close to committing.
___
[0] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/505/new-york-ti...
[1] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/575/bartnicki-v...
They could afford a little humanity and release Julian Assange.
They see 'humanity' as a weakness. Like decency, and honesty.
What's astounding is that neither Democrat elites or their donors seem to give a flying. Lil Russian accusations here, lil smear there, and suddenly he's not a journalist or a whistleblower any more.
The barrel has rotted.
People need to own up to ignoring this human rights violation.
I think the punishment should depend on what was leaked. If the contents were a clear injustice, then there should be no negative consequences for the leaker. But they must still stand up for their decision in court. What is certainly not acceptable is trying to flee from consequences. This should merit a punishment, which is what happened here.
I'm neither arguing for or against Julian, I'm just saying that "have unbiased judge" requires an unbiased/uninfluenced judge.
I can't choose an excerpt - but it's a quick read: https://theintercept.com/2020/01/02/chelsea-manning-torture-...
So would you for example agree to be extradited to Russia for saying there's a war with Ukraine? Or to China for mentioning the Uyghur genocide? It's a secret after all.
Also, just being able to threaten journalists with court in general would have a chilling effect - especially in a place like the US where it costs so much money.
By the way, the first and sealed indictment of Assange was not for leaking secrets. Make of that what you will.
I'm actually opposed to extradition, but in favour of a trial and potential punishment outside the US.
No: Real journalists do not do the things Assange is indicted for.
[Allegedly] Manning asked for help cracking password hashes, and Assange agreed to provide Manning fresh passwords to log in as other users.
That isn't "journalism", and it doesn't become protected/regular/normal journalism even if the prosecution is overzealous in other ways.
If the Liberal/National Parties are reelected it's because of Labor's incompetence and playing with American-themed identity politics instead of actually addressing concerns within the country.
The purpose of the Marriage Amendment Bill 2004 (‘the Bill’) is to give effect to the Government’s commitment to protect the institution of marriage by ensuring that marriage means a union of a man and a woman and that same sex relationships cannot be equated with marriage.
The central point of the bill was to formalise the intended constitutional intention and, if there are to be any changes, that this decision should be one carried out by parliament and not by courts.
Personally, when I see authoritarian nations like Russia criminalize dissent, I don't consider it a model to emulate. But it seems many in the West disagree, they think we are falling behind in the repression department and need to catch up ASAP.
I don't support giving known Russian agents, who have acted in ways that are clearly designed to further Russian political goals (which right now consists of murdering people in Ukraine) exemptions from the law.
If Assange didn't help Manning dig deeper as alleged, there was no crime. If he did assist, he committed a crime. It's entirely disconnected from publishing documents you happened to come across, which according to New York Times Co. vs United States is not a crime.
Do you see how there's a difference between actively taking a role in attacking state computer systems versus just publishing documents? They're two very different acts.
A journalist equips someone to break into some company building, rifling through their records to show the public they're poisoning the river. The person doing the search gets caught and are arrested after they find what they were looking for. The journalist publishes their findings. The person who was caught had their phone linking them to the journalist equipping them. The journalist is charged with conspiracy of breaking and entering and trespassing. See how writing the article isn't the thing being tried here?
That’s such an incredibly weak argument. Russia and China engage in whataboutism all the time. Why is this the case to listen to them?
And I think the more valid concern there anyways is the 'race to the bottom' part, not necessarily the 'moral equivalence' part
News story today about Germany refusing to extradite a criminal (alleged) to the UK because the conditions in UK prisons are so bad due to governmental neglect. Kind of hard for the UK to talk about human rights in other countries when it can't even run a prison.
The story about Germany is very different which is they are expressing a concrete concern about a specific situation, not trying to equate one situation to other unrelated situations. There’s also the fact that the UK and Germany are largely allies with similar principles of government and human rights. And of course UK can talk about human rights if it’s explaining how it’s improving it’s prisons or talking about human rights unrelated to prisons.
None of this is true for Russia and China which equate trying to prosecute potentially illegal behavior on the part of Assange (potentially as a Russian asset) to jailing people who expose embarrassing secrets for members of the government or report information not favorable to the government’s perspective. The closest the US comes to that in recent memory that I can think of is what happened with Valarie Plame and her husband (although neither was a journalist nor did they go to jail).
Either hacking up journalists is ok or it isn't. HN has a really tough time with this one.
Yes, it did and does. If you agree not to divulge a military secret as a condition of gaining access to it (for example, as part of the terms of your employment with the government), then you can be prosecuted for reneging on your promise. But if you are a journalist who learns the info secondhand, you never agreed to anything and freedom of expression sanctions your actions.
There's a big difference between someone uploading a collection of secret files to a website you run and actively communicating with someone trying to get them to commit crimes on your behalf, or knowingly helping others commit crimes.
I'm not arguing Assange did or did not do those things, I don't know. I'm just saying if he did those things, he did commit a crime separate from just publishing documents the government would prefer the public to not see (which according to New York Times Co. vs United States it is not a crime).
Hell, the person who actually did the hacking and extracting the classified documents only served 7 years of prison time. Are you seriously comparing butchering someone to serving 7 years of prison time after an investigation and public trial?
I don't understand how you seem to have a really tough time with that.
A better comparison would be the Snowden treatment. The grounding of Evo Morales' plane suggests we'll violate national sovereignty if you really embarrass the intel community.
Would the intel community like to wire up Assanges reproductive organs to a high voltage source? Idk, they've done it to others for much less. But that's the price of freedom right
Try again.