Tuesday, January 17, 2017

The Ball is in Your Court Now, Assange


Chelsea Manning has received clemency from Barack Obama. Now it's time for Julian Assange to turn himself in to American authorities.


"If Obama grants Manning clemency," the WikiLeaks tweet read, "Assange will agree to U.S. extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case." Assange was referencing the case where — well, it's not exactly clear what case he's referring to. The Department of Justice has been investigating Assange and Wikileaks since 2010, but there's no evidence of charges having been filed.

Assange is currently living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to evade extradition to Sweden for sexual assault charges, so the U.S. isn't Assange's biggest problem. But in the U.S., Assange could face other challenges, like potential espionage charges for aiding a variety of U.S. government whistleblowers over the past decade.

..
Assange tweeted, without commenting on his offer: "Thank you to everyone who campaigned for Chelsea Manning's clemency. Your courage & determination made the impossible possible."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad Killary didn't win. She would've saved him the bother by droning the Ecuadorian Embassy.

It's laughable that liberal partisan hacks want to punish Assange for 'hacking the US election' – or whatever they call it.

The lion share of the 9 million voters who voted for Obama in 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016 didn't care about WikiLeaks the establishment media buried. They voted for Trump because he opposed free-trade: it's the economy, assholes!

Owen Gray said...

This will be a test of Assange's integrity.

Scotian said...

Anonymous:

No, actually it was the nonstop emails drumbeat giving the appearance of impropriety without ever actually finding anything of substance and then Russia's hacks, Assange being Putin's bitch/Baghdad Bob, and then Comey delivering the coup de grace 11 days from the election day. So no, it wasn't the economy stupid, although it likely played a role, but the deceive role is clearly the fake emailz scandal that was all the rage for the US media and GOP and the lack of serious examination of Trumps very real conflicts of interest both economically and national security wise. That is leaving aside his questionable stability and judgment issues, which are a whole other series of books in themselves.

Assange didn't "hack" the election in the traditional sense of the word, but he was a major useful conduit for those who did hack the DNC and other major Dem organizations and senior people (curiously enough they never got into HRC's private server, gee, could it be it had BETTER security) within the Dem party and Clinton political infrastructure. There is also now reason to believe the GOP was also hacked, but curiously enough their info was not released at all throughout the entire election, but that is just a great big coincidence, not deliberate choice right? *rolls eyes*

This election was not hacked so much as massively corrupted by major players both without and within between Russia, Assange, and Comey/FBI. It was corrupted with intent and intent to benefit one side and destroy the other, and it worked, barely, but it worked. Given how hard it is to that massively influence an American federal/Presidential election, especially in the closing days, that is no small feat. It also underscores that your claim, it was always about the economy, is not the decisive declarative you made it out to be.

HRC was winning by the end of the three debates, and winning strongly, she had all the mo, and team Trump was flailing with no message, no energy. It took the FBI and Comey, using the saturated ground of the emails created by the GOP Congress, the US media/NYT (they have always been Clinton scandal feeders from the earliest days of Whitewater, with as much substance then as now in the end), and Russia/Assange soaking and saturating that ground for many months. That is what made Comey's last minute interjection so incredibly effective in reversing such a powerful trend.

So no, it wasn't the economy that was the decisive issue, not even close.

BTW, really, you think HRC would drone attack an embassy in London just for Assange? Just how deluded are you?