Wait, if you don’t know who they are then how do you know they are “breathing, ideologically bent individuals” right before asking who they are?
What if instead they are ego fragile and angry at Assange for daring to challenge the unchallengeable order?
Or what if this is a case of banal evil?
I’m not suggesting any of qualities exist in the persons who are implicated in the question of “who.”
I do want to use this opportunity to point out that if you expect to find some quality in someone else you will find it, if it is truly there or even if it really isn’t. This is motivated reasoning and if not handled appropriately then it can backfire in very serious ways.
I hope this doesn’t come off as insulting. @the_optimist I’m not a saint, I’m not perfect. My only hope, selfishly, is to surface desirable qualities (open to truth vs motivated reasoning) and hope my friends and family will echo the desirable qualities back when I inevitably stray.
This is what the HN thread looked like last time. People were claiming the judge was corrupt, colluding with the Americans, and/or was herself deciding issues in a pre-determined way when she didn’t accept the “political crimes” argument from his defence after her very thorough analysis of the treaty. It was pretty awful, and that was a judgment that denied his extradition! The truth is the issues in this case are simply out of the realm of understanding of most people. There’s not much you can do.
The legal aspects may be hard to understand, and we may not precisely understand the underlying motivations of either Assange or the government, but the general dynamic is not hard to figure out. Assange spat in the face of the giant, and the law is now only an obstacle for the punishment they want to dole out. My country is throwing its weight around like a petulant bully.
I'm starting to accept that lies grease the gears of society somewhat, that we can't always live up to the ideals we propagandize about. Sometimes tricking people is the best way to get them to behave.
But I also think that the leaks themselves and the response to them show how far out of bounds our government is with its lies and liberties. The undermining of our diplomatic position began with our diplomacy, our military action. You can argue Assange released "too much", but that doesn't forgive the reaction.
I expect a government with some integrity would admit mistakes and do some house cleaning to regain the lost trust. Maybe I'm not following well enough, and there was some of that? But it seems to me like they went straight to trying to punish Assange with dirty tricks; no real admissions of guilt or plans to improve. That speaks to a pervasive lack of integrity, and so has undermined confidence in the fairness of these legal proceedings.
I don’t think you will see any real discussion on those points until it goes to trial. The case here barely touched on those things at all, and if that’s the entire frame you have, then you are missing that extradition is a matter of international relations over anything else. You’re talking about the US as “the government” but Assange and US are before the UK courts.
> they went straight to trying to punish Assange with dirty tricks… no plans to improve
I take “they” to mean the US, right?
> That speaks to a pervasive lack of integrity, and so has undermined confidence in the fairness of these legal proceedings.
The US’ “dirty tricks” somehow implicate the UK court system and the integrity of their judges? This is the exact illogical step I was referring to from the last thread. If you do not understand that the Americans are in a UK court, asking another sovereign power to let them have him, you should not be commenting on it at all. Even if you made the argument that the UK’s government employed dirty tricks too, you would be ignoring the fact that their democracy has an incredibly rigid separation between executive and judicial power. Your understanding has lumped together the American executive government with the UK judiciary, which would be a stunning display of ignorance were we not on the Orange Website, where it is just the usual amount of ignorance.
I'm ignorant of a lot of detail here (though not that the US is arguing to the UK for extradition) but let me explain: I'm lumping the US and UK together only to the extent that I think their intelligence services work together on things (they do) and their power/influence is kind of super-legal; it crosses borders and ignores laws. Dirty tricks would include having apparently fake rape charges made against him, also in a country that wasn't the US. When I said "these legal proceedings" I did mean everything, across jurisdictions, up to the point where the US gets their way and prosecutes him. I'm not saying the UK judge is complicit, but the outcome may still not be beyond influence.
What if instead they are ego fragile and angry at Assange for daring to challenge the unchallengeable order?
Or what if this is a case of banal evil?
I’m not suggesting any of qualities exist in the persons who are implicated in the question of “who.”
I do want to use this opportunity to point out that if you expect to find some quality in someone else you will find it, if it is truly there or even if it really isn’t. This is motivated reasoning and if not handled appropriately then it can backfire in very serious ways.
I hope this doesn’t come off as insulting. @the_optimist I’m not a saint, I’m not perfect. My only hope, selfishly, is to surface desirable qualities (open to truth vs motivated reasoning) and hope my friends and family will echo the desirable qualities back when I inevitably stray.