I find it hard to believe the media would be silent if similar revelations came to light about anyone else.
I agree with Media Lens:
> in a sane world, Stundin’s revelations about a key Assange witness – that Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution – would have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more. The silence is quite extraordinary; and disturbing.
You are implying this is a major story… it isn’t. If Assange were actually standing trial, that’s interesting. Hearing more random court proceedings of a very bizarre 10 year fiasco is not.
Everybody is a critic of what the MSM is covering. They cover what is interesting. It isn’t a giant conspiracy to explain their behavior.
> Yes in an American court, they are the ones charging him with these crimes.
Yes, the USA is charging him. It would be very odd for extradition hearings on US federal charges to be heard in a US court, and, in fact, these are not. Assange is not on trial, and the process he is currently undergoing in is not in an American court, though there are charges pending that he would face in a US court if that process completes as the US prefers.
I can see you arguing that that's not important, but falsely denying the assertion that its not in a US court is...I mean, what's even the point?
Assange is set to face trial in a US court, and that is the only reason he is facing extradition.
> I can see you arguing that that's not important, but falsely denying the assertion that its not in a US court is...I mean, what's even the point?
I am arguing that it is important and view the extradition hearing as part of his larger US trial. His trial for skipping bail in the UK is long over, the only trial left is the US one.
> I am arguing that it is important and view the extradition hearing as part of his larger US trial.
The extradition hearing is factually not part of his US trial.
> the only trial left is the US one.
The US charges are the only ones that he is currently known to be facing a potential future trial for, sure. But “potential future” and “actual current” are not the same thing.
The first step of the trial was for charges to be filed. The next part was using those charges to request his extradition. At this point you could say the extradition hearing is not a part of his trial, but it is only happening because of the trial and the US is the reason he is in prison currently.
I'd write this off as weird pedantry but you're accusing me of lying for some reason.
This entire conversation would be much more productive if you did more than just say I'm wrong or lying.
All of this seems like parts of the pretrial layed out by the US constitutional criminal procedure. I guess you could distinguish trial from pretrial, but if that was your point you really could have just stated that right away.
It doesn't matter whether it's the "first" step or an "early" step. It doesn't matter if the entire process is being summed up as "trial", even though parts of the process are not technically part of the trail.
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It poisons the ecosystem here, and it discredits your view. The latter is especially pernicious if your view happens to be the right one, because then you're also discrediting the truth, which harms everybody (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Edit: yikes, you've been breaking the site guidelines a ton lately. When accounts are primarily using HN for ideological or political battle, we ban them; also when they're mostly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments; and you've been doing both of these things. That's not cool. We've also had to warn you several times about this in the past. I don't want to ban you because you've posted good and relevant comments in the past, but if you don't stop this pattern, we're definitely going to have to. Please stop this pattern.
Assange was an interesting story with him trapped in the embassy and his cat pooping but now it consists of more mundane legal proceedings. One is a made for TV spy thriller. The other is discussion of paperwork.
>>> Edward Snowden said: "This is the end of the case against Julian Assange."
>> What does Snowden know? He's not a lawyer of any sort.
> He is broadly considered a generic authority based on his long, deep thinking and publications about leaks and legal consequences.
Maybe so, but I wouldn't hire him as my lawyer or rely on his judgements about when a legal case will fail.
It's the difference between thinking about the consequences of a technology and building/operating that technology. For instance, someone might be an expert on the pernicious social effects of Facebook, but would flame out if they actually worked as a developer there. Snowden more than likely doesn't have the technical knowledge of the British legal system for him to reliably tell the difference between a major and minor development, let alone make trustworthy prediction about the future outcome of the whole thing.
Please don't cross into personal attack. Disingenuous is a fancy way of saying liar, which implies intent to deceive. That's not a legit move in forum discussions where you can't know the other person's intent. Please make your substantive points without that.
>> the NYT website shows they wrote about this indictment June 12th. It's no secret.
> "These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article published on 26 June in Stundin."
> Has the NYT covered them?
I think the point is that the Assange story isn't that important or interesting anymore, so they don't breathlessly cover every development like some corners of the internet want to (and sometimes interpret the lack of breathless coverage as some kind of conspiracy).
Do you realize that it's not hyperbole to say press freedom in the United States hinges on this case? American journalists have always been protected from prosecution for publishing factual information. If Assange is convicted, he will be the first. That would fundamentally change freedom of the press in the US.
Assange isn't a US citizen. He's not charged with publishing the information but soliciting and attempting to assist in the exfiltration of the information.
What Manning did was illegal whether you agree with her motivations or not. Soliciting someone with clearance to leak information and assisting them in the process is also illegal. It doesn't matter if Assange's assistance was effective or not.
If all Assange did was publish information Manning brought to him, there would likely be no charges and they'd be easily dismissed otherwise. He'd have been clearly acting in the role as a journalist. But that's not what happened.
Assange wants to be considered a journalist (with its protections) while at the same time playing spymaster and hacker.
Sorry but you're not correct. Here's [0] the law he's being charged of violating. You'll notice that intent is the crux of the disclosure subsections he's being charged under. He's being charged with publishing the information he received with the intent to do harm to the US. That's what the prosecution will argue and his defense for those charges will be entirely about intent.
Independently intent would be a difficult thing to prove but his public actions and the conspiracy charges with will be used to establish intent. Like I said, he wants to claim all of the protections of journalism while he's acting as a spymaster.
I don't really think it's possible to claim (objectively) any of Assange's actions with Wikileaks could be considered journalism. Besides not really practicing anything that might be considered journalism he also exercised a lot of editorial control in what Wikileaks didn't or wouldn't publish.
You previously claimed he's charged with "soliciting and attempting to assist in the exfiltration of the information", "not with publishing". I fail to see how arguing intent invalidates one without the other. I copied and pasted the charges from the indictment, which can be found at the bottom of the page I linked.
It's okay when CIA convinces some non-US citizen to become an agent and provide secrets from their government. All governments do this. Somehow it's different in Assange's case because he is not government entity.
> It's okay when CIA convinces some non-US citizen to become an agent and provide secrets from their government. All governments do this. Somehow it's different in Assange's case because he is not government entity.
It's pretty standard to be friendly to people who spy for you, and hostile to those who spy against you. If the FBI catches a Russian spy who doesn't have diplomatic cover, that person is going to get prosecuted (and if they do have cover they'll become persona non grata and expelled); ditto if the Russians catch an American spy.
Replying to myself because the two replies apparently missed the distinction between the entity doing the "coercion" (Assange/CIA) and the entity doing the spying (the agent, or Manning in this case). Nobody prosecutes the CIA/GRU/PRC for coercing others to spy.
> Nobody prosecutes the CIA/GRU/PRC for coercing others to spy.
Except for expulsion of diplomats, arrests of agents, sanctions against government officials, indictments for officials and agents, and of course war.
Besides all of those things that happen all the time nobody prosecutes spy agencies. eyeroll
Assange is a self-styled spymaster that's not actually very good at the job. Spies that go around advertising their spying and bragging about conspiracies of which they are a part are not good spies.
All governments do that but those agents are persecuted when they're caught by the targeted government. If the spymaster is also caught they'll also be persecuted under the target country's laws unless they have some sort of diplomatic cover from their own government.
> Do you realize that it's not hyperbole to say press freedom in the United States hinges on this case?
If that were actually the case, I'd expect the kind of breathless coverage from the rest of the press that Assange's fans are clamoring for. So it's either...
1. there's a conspiracy afoot, and the press (as a whole) is deliberately coordinating amongst themselves to suppress this significant development, because they're all in the pocket of... etc., etc.;
2. the mainstream press are all dumbasses who don't know the difference between their head and a hole in the ground; or...
3. it is hyperbole to say press freedom in the United States hinges on this case.
My bet is with the latter. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the far safer bet.
Personally, I've long since stopped expecting breathless coverage of important events from a press that collectively prefers covering who Miley Cyrus most recently flashed her crotch to. You'll need to go beyond CNN, MSNBC, or FOX.
“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment. It establishes a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets. And it is equally dangerous for U.S. journalists who uncover the secrets of other nations. If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same.”
"Don’t let the misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity."
"The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom. The Trump DOJ is exploiting animosity toward Assange to launch a thinly disguised effort to criminalize core functions of investigative journalism."
That's not about this news story.
"These dramatic revelations emerged in an extensive article published on 26 June in Stundin."
Has the NYT covered them?
Here's an NYT search showing everything they published with the term "Assange" in the last month: https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&endDate=2021070...