Why Is Assange Helping Trump?

Woow... Bob, aren't you have a twisted mind or what... . boy.. Good have mercy on you. You are talking as if you would just came from a different planet man! It is one thing to express your own opinion, but blabbering nonsensical incohesive thesis, totally opposite to what's unfolding in the front of your Own fat nose it is plain out ignorant to say the least.
Just because of people like you, uninformed useful idiots, this country is sliding vertically down to level of Venezuela-like chaos and utopia. How can you possibly have a blind eye on unprecedented level of corruption on display being committed by Democratic Party and Clinton machine?

Is not that Assange is helping Clinton, but he has nothing of significant importance on Trump to release that people wouldn't already know.

Advice to you: give yourself a favor, and study some more the
facts, not what leftist propaganda machine is making up.

Uh oh...bob just vomited another cut and paste

I hope somebody is paying you for all the effort you put into this fruitless endeavor. If you want people to read this stuff, cut it down to a paragraph or better yet, go for a calming walk around the neighborhood and say "hi" to a friend. Candlelight8

Assange is trying to stay relevant so he's willing to let Wikileaks be used as an outlet for these files. Clinton is a big name so dropping a batch of emails periodically keeps him in the news.

Old Bobby can't stop puking his guts out..

Don't know if I agree with that. First of all I would question why Freedland hasn't published this in The Guardian where he is a regular columnist. I think he's telling his audience what they want to hear.

Has he any proof that Wikileaks has sat on leaks that damage Trump or that they've been given the leaks in the first place? How hands on can Assange be locked up in the Ecuadorean embassy?

It's clear that Putin is behind all off this, he's the one using Wikipedia for his own ends. Wikileaks are doing what they've always done, publish and be damned, and I've not seen any evidence to the contrary.

It's about time this whole sorry saga is ended, Assange should stand trial in Sweden, but in order to do that both America and Sweden need to offer cast iron assurances that he won't be spirited off to America once the trial and any sentence has been served. The treatment of Manning and Snowden show America is not to be trusted when it comes to the treatment of whistleblowers.

Ya can't leak what ya ain't got.

Who's paying you and goooooey to monitor and comment on all my useless postings?

Why post only pickings from an article? Because thats what you and goooooey do.

this



all of it

Assange is not a compelling person. I think he's a exceptionally cold sort of solipsist. He would have better served himself hiring a good lawyer and answering the sex charges he's facing.

Pretty much he's in jail as it is and has resolved things to no better point legally than when he went into the Embassy.

I think that Wikileaks has degenerated into a pale wraith of itself as has Anonymous.

Hell, we pretty much agree with each other on this. Wikileaks would have survived better with Assange not locked up in the Ecuadoran Embassy and if he would have settled his charges in Sweden.

Wikileaks has been almost subordinated to Assange and his problems.

Agreed. None of that means he should suffer extraordinary rendition and end up in Gitmo.

I don't like Assange, but Wikileaks did highlight war crimes and abuses of power.

My view of Manning and Snowdon are a little more nuanced. Manning faced justice to explain her whistle-blowing. Unfortunately 'military justice' is in the same league with 'military music' or 'military intelligence' as an oxymoron.

Snowdon should have face justice hear, too. Fortunately for him he would have faced civilian courts or Congress. His story would have been more about what he exposed and how it came to pass as opposed to his running away and ending up in Moscow.

Snowden didn't help himself and Manning was treated badly by being under jurisdiction of the UCMJ.

At a time when the US has quietly almost emptied Gitmo in such a way the RW has been able to save face, the last thing in the world either the RW or Administration would want would be Assange in Gitmo or publicly rendered to to a 'black' prison site.

I think Assange's currency is plenty low enough so that he would raise more interest in jeopardy from the US than if he were freely walking the streets.

I wish that Wikileaks today was the Wikileaks of even eight years ago.

A third view:

WikiHillary for President
[Thomas L. Friedman]

Thomas L. Friedman OCT. 19, 2016

Thank God for WikiLeaks.

I confess, I was starting to wonder about what the real Hillary Clinton — the one you never get to see behind closed doors — really stood for. But now that, thanks to WikiLeaks, I’ve had a chance to peruse her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, I am more convinced than ever she can be the president America needs today.

Seriously, those speeches are great! They show someone with a vision, a pragmatic approach to getting things done and a healthy instinct for balancing the need to strengthen our social safety nets with unleashing America’s business class to create the growth required to sustain social programs.

So thank you, Vladimir Putin, for revealing how Hillary really hopes to govern. I just wish more of that Hillary were campaigning right now and building a mandate for what she really believes.

WikiHillary? I’m with her.

Why? Let’s start with what WikiLeaks says she said at Brazil’s Banco Itaú event in May 2013: “I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade ... and we have to resist protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade.”

She also said, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

That’s music to my ears. A hemisphere where nations are trading with one another, and where more people can collaborate and interact for work, study, tourism and commerce, is a region that is likely to be growing more prosperous with fewer conflicts, especially if more of that growth is based on clean energy.

Compare our hemisphere, or the European Union, or the Asian trading nations with, say, the Middle East — where the flow of trade, tourism, knowledge and labor among nations has long been restricted — and the case for Hillary’s vision becomes obvious.

The way Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have made trade and globalization dirty words is ridiculous. Globalization and trade have helped to bring more people out of poverty in the last 50 years than at any other time in history.
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Do we need to make adjustments so the minority of the U.S. population that is hurt by freer trade and movements of labor is compensated and better protected? You bet we do. That’s called fixing a problem — not throwing out a whole system that we know from a long historical record contributes on balance to economic growth, competitiveness and more open societies.

In a speech to a Morgan Stanley group on April 18, 2013, WikiHillary praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which included reforming the tax code to increase investment and entrepreneurship and raising certain taxes and trimming some spending and entitlements to make them more sustainable.

The ultimate shape of that grand bargain could take many forms, she said, but Hillary stressed behind closed doors: “Simpson-Bowles … put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula.”

She is right. We’ll never get out of this economic rut, and protect future generations, unless the business and social sectors, Democrats and Republicans, all give and get something — and that’s exactly where WikiHillary was coming from.

In an October 2013 speech for Goldman Sachs, Clinton seemed to suggest the need to review the regulations imposed on banks by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Her idea was not to get rid of all of the rules but rather to make sure they were not imposing needless burdens that limited lending to small businesses and start-ups.

As Clinton put it, “More thought has to be given to the process and transactions and regulations so that we don’t kill or maim what works, but we concentrate on the most effective way of moving forward with the brainpower and the financial power that exists here.” Again, exactly right.

You can also find WikiHillary, or her aides, musing about a “carbon tax” and whether or not to come out in favor of it, as Sanders did. She chose not to now, probably to avoid being saddled by Republicans with calling for a new tax in the general election campaign, but I am confident she’d make pricing carbon part of her climate policy.

When I read WikiHillary, I hear a smart, pragmatic, center-left politician who will be inclined to work with both the business community and Republicans to keep America tilted toward trade expansion, entrepreneurship and global integration, while redoubling efforts to cushion workers from the downsides of these policies.

I’m just sorry that campaign Hillary felt she could not speak like WikiHillary to build a proper mandate for President Hillary. She would have gained respect for daring to speak the truth to her own constituency — and demonstrating leadership — not lost votes.

Nonetheless, thanks to WikiLeaks, I am reassured that she has the right balance of instincts on the issues I care about most. So, again, thank you, Putin, for exposing that Hillary. She could make a pretty good president for these times.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 19, 2016, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: WikiHillary for President. Today's Paper|Subscribe

I understand full well why you do it... you are not articulate enough to speak in your own voice. Additionally. You are not a critical thinker.

So why won't the US give an undertaking not to try have him extradited from Sweden? That's all that needs to be done. Until it is done, Assange 's situation will be a running sore that only harms America's reputation.

Because the US wouldn't know what to do with him if they got him. They get to keep him self imprisoned by not promising anything.

It'd be be pretty difficult to prosecute or even extradite Assange for anything that happened in the US without his having his hand on it or also indicting his agents and prosecuting them with him, after first establishing the interconnection between them.

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/1003054/does_the_us_have_a_case_against_julian_assange/

Does the US have a case against Julian Assange?


If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America's legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

Citing fears of prosecution in the United States, Assange remained holed up at Ecuador's embassy in London on Saturday, defying a British police order to turn himself in for extradition to Sweden.

Assange faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden but has refused to set foot there, saying he runs the risk of extradition to the United States, which he insists is intent on charging him with espionage or other serious crimes for releasing troves of once-secret files to the public.

Assange's lawyers and supporters say his concerns are justified and not driven by paranoia.

They cite tough statements from senior US officials, interrogations of Assange's colleagues and a grand jury investigation that has reportedly questioned associates of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing hundreds of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

"The grand jury is a serious business," said Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer advising Assange. referring to the discussions to determine whether a criminal indictment will be issued.

Some with links to Assange have reportedly faced questioning when trying to travel outside the United States and federal authorities at one point demanded Twitter open the accounts of WikiLeaks figures.

"They're all over this case," Ratner told AFP.

The US Justice Department will not comment on the grand jury probe and says it has no role in the extradition proceedings in London. But spokesman Dean Boyd said: "There continues to be an investigation into the WikiLeaks matter."

Some US lawmakers and commentators have called for Assange to be charged with espionage or for conspiracy to obtain secret documents, arguing that he intended to sabotage America's foreign policy and endangered lives by revealing the identities of informants.

Charging Assange under the Espionage Act -- a vaguely worded World War I-era law -- would be a difficult challenge, as it requires the government to show the accused intended to harm the US government or aid a foreign power, analysts said.

Without knowing the evidence held by US investigators, it's difficult to predict how the government will pursue Assange's case, said Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor.

"It's a very open question as to whether you could try him for espionage," said Stimson, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation think-tank who oversaw detainee policies at the Pentagon under ex-president George W. Bush.

A better option for prosecutors may be "to see whether or not they could charge him with something like conspiracy to disclose classified documents," he said.
A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds a poster reading "I'm Julian" as he demonstrates outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 23, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political asylum. If Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America's legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

But such an approach would be breaking new legal ground, experts said.

Unlike Manning, charged with handing over a massive cache of secret State Department cables and military intelligence logs to WikiLeaks, Assange is not a US government employee obliged to withhold classified documents.

The United States has "never really successfully prosecuted a non-government official for taking documents that were classified," Ratner said.

His defense attorneys portray him as a publisher, who merely came into possession of sensitive information. But US investigators would likely try to paint Assange as a plotter who helped Manning spill secrets, with the aim of tarnishing Washington.

Assange's supporters can take comfort from a recent case against two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of passing on classified information to Israel, the first time civilians were charged under the Espionage Act.

After a long legal battle, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges in 2009.

The seminal case that proved the limits of government authority over publishing secrets came in 1971 over the Pentagon Papers, when President Richard Nixon tried to stop The New York Times from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War.

The bid failed, with the courts citing the free speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case, said Assange's website raises questions about the limits of freedom of expression, including the publishing of names of Afghans cooperating with the US government.

Some of Assange's public comments have seemed to suggest a desire to undermine US foreign policy, comments that could backfire on him in court, Abrams said.

"WikiLeaks has a First Amendment argument, and it is a serious First Amendment argument, if it is ever charged," Abrams said on C-Span television in 2010.

"At the same time, the government has a genuine and serious national security argument to be made with respect to the behavior, often the misbehavior, of WikiLeaks."

It was pretty difficult getting hold of Abu Omar too, at least legally.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/25/former-cia-agent-sabrina-de-sousa-extradition-italy-abu-omar-kidnapping

Would you buy a used car without a bill of sale, warranty or guaranteed returns policy, and just take the word of the salesman that it won't conk out half a mile down the road?



And how successful has that been? Wikileaks is still functioning and Assange is a constant reminder of America's abuse of power.