[tptacek]

This is less a news story than a coat rack Greenwald uses to hang a bunch of loosely-related political arguments he wants to make:

* That Ecuador under Moreno is subservient to western powers, this according in part to Correa, who ran the previous Ecuadorian administration, which was widely considered one of the most corrupt in the western hemisphere (I have no idea if Moreno's was as well). OK? None of us are equipped to litigate the question of whether Ecuador is well-governed, and I doubt Greenwald is either.

* That the UK might (based on no evidence presented in this article) be wrangling to convict Assange under contempt statutes, because, I don't know, the UK is super corrupt and out to get Assange.

* That the US almost surely plans on prosecuting Assange because, despite the fact that US law makes it pretty difficult to prosecute Assange and despite the fact that it is extremely unlikely the UK or any EU country would extradite him, there are politicians in the US that really don't like him. OK? And?

The one morsel of "news" in this is the intimation that Moreno is about to revoke Assange's asylum. Of course, people paying attention have known this was coming for months. Greenwald has an unnamed source saying the details are being finalized now. Great.

The rest of this is basically a very... impassioned... op-ed piece. Infowars does this stuff better, or, at least, more entertainingly.

[rndgermandude]

> That the UK might (based on no evidence presented in this article) be wrangling to convict Assange under contempt statutes, because, I don't know, the UK is super corrupt and out to get Assange.

The UK police basically besieged the embassy for 8 years, spending literal millions of GBP to do so[1]. The prosecution already talked about "contempt of court"[2]. But yeah, it's all in Greenwald's and Assange's head.

As for "corruption" in the UK, Greenwald might be a bit biased[3]. If your partner is essentially taken into Sippenhaft to bully you, you might be too. And it's not like the UK even extradites it's own citizens to the US, so why would Assange have any reason to worry given he is not even an UK citizen?[4]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31159594

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/world/europe/julian-assan...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwal...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/nov/14/amber-rudd-appro...

[panarky]

Your comment is less an incisive analysis of the article than a coat rack to hang a bunch of loosely-related ad hominem attacks on the author along with unsubstantiated and unbelievable attempts to cast doubt on the article's thesis.

Namely that Assange is a political prisoner, likely to be transferred from eight years of effective imprisonment in the embassy to an actual prison, and to remain imprisoned for a long time, all without being charged of any serious crime.

[uxp]

While I agree in theory to your argument that Assange has been "Imprisoned" for ~8 years, the fact remains that, during time of the accusation of rape or assault in Sweden through today, he has maintained his innocence in the matter and if he had turned himself in he would have likely spent less time awaiting trial and proceeding through the trial than he did during his voluntary imprisonment in the embassy.

He turned an every day occurrence into a spectacle that gave him the perception of guilt.

Coupled with the fact that the indictment last week from Mueller's team all but implicates WikiLeaks as the distribution pawn for much of the 2016 election season's stolen emails, if he's so afraid of being extradited to the USA, why is he still poking at the US Government with sticks? If I don't get along with my neighbor, and my neighbor has the capability of ruining my life forever (whether that is justified or not is not the argument), I don't take every opportunity I have to take a shit on his lawn. Established journalistic publications like the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal take care when publishing classified materials that have been leaked to them by redacting irrelevant information and personal details. WikiLeaks seems to want to jump on that same bandwagon, but they aren't paying the fare by cleaning out information that is irrelevant to the story they want to push. There have been numerous instances of personal details like Social Security Numbers, Personal phone numbers, and street addresses being retained in the documents they release. By not paying the price to be a publisher of information in the public's best interests, it's not surprising that many in the Justice Department don't view what they do to be covered under the 1st Amendment and are not protected from certain laws.

[uiri]

A UK judge ruled last February[0] that the arrest warrant for Assange will remain active on grounds of his contempt of the court despite Sweden dropping the case. I don't think it is unreasonable to assert that Assange will wind up doing time in a UK prison for his contempt of their courts.

[0] https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/julian-assange-ruling/

[resters]

> That the US almost surely plans on prosecuting Assange because, despite the fact that US law makes it pretty difficult to prosecute Assange and despite the fact that it is extremely unlikely the UK or any EU country would extradite him, there are politicians in the US that really don't like him. OK? And?

He's making the point that the rule of law is very weak when it comes to the items in this bullet point.

In my view, Assange is a hero precisely because he's shown not just some classified information that has revealed many of our leaders to be highly corrupt, but because he's driven them to make fools of themselves in their vigor to destroy him.

Mike Pompeo will go down in history as one of the great villains of our age. His comments on Assange will be used to illustrate his abhorrent views. Those views aren't perceived by most people as abhorrent today for the same reason that the actors on cable news channels are widely respected and considered thought leaders. It's just easier that way.

[alexandercrohde]

Comparing to info-wars is either really ill-informed or an act of rhetoric. I see nothing in this piece even remotely on the level info-wars (e.g. claiming Sandy Hook was staged).

[duxup]

I think Ecuador was happy to host Assange for a while but genuinely found Assange's from of activism (just picking a phrase there, call it what you'd like) less tolerable as it went on.

[jumelles]

The Intercept has a lot of issues but Infowars is a whole other type of disgusting thing.

[amaccuish]

yes, because harassment due to alex jones is so very entertaining...

[oculusthrift]

Jesus christ... Yeah i’m sure he’s been in the embassy all this time because he definitely isn’t going to get arrested the second he leaves.

And as a south american journalist who focuses a lot on assange i definitely do think greenwald knows more about the ecuadorean government than you. And you’ve already admitted you aren’t equipped to litigate it.

[dosy]

Hey you just described Greenwald's whole song-and-dance rag. You got that guy pegged. Good job!

[stefan_]

I'm sorry to say, but Democrats really lost the election. Greenwald must be falling over from laughter in Brazil at the reception he gets based on purely partisan ignorance.

[tptacek]

I don't know who you're responding to, but it isn't me.

[dandare]

>because, I don't know, the UK is super corrupt and out to get Assange

The UK attacked another country on a false pretense causing, directly and indirectly, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Then turned a blind eye to the Iraqi (puppet?) government routinely torturing civilians including women and children - which was exposed by WikiLeaks by the way. I would say the UK government IS super corrupt.

[pvg]

None of us are equipped to litigate the question of whether Ecuador is well-governed

False. This can be trivially derived from Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo–Fraenkel_set_theory