Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

I think it is important to look at this with the lens of objectivity:

Accusations that Assange is actively being not just harassed but outright tortured to the point where he "might not survive the proceedings" in jail...

... to claims that "members of the US Government" were there and "controlling procedures"

and claims that the judge had been instructed what to say:

> possibly she had not properly memorised what Lewis had been instructing her to agree with

Apropos of anything else:

> Baraitser took her cue from Lewis and stated categorically that the date for the extradition hearing, 25 February, could not be changed.

> Lewis received his American instructions and agreed that the defence might have two months to prepare their evidence (they had said they needed an absolute minimum of three) but the February hearing date may not be moved.

As far as I can tell the hearing date is over four months away.

These are all very large claims and should be considered within the spectrum of someone who is as equally friendly towards Assange as he claims the state is against him.

>objectivity

+

>considered within the spectrum

What is your purpose here? To defend the actions of the UK court, which is clearly being corrupted by following direction from US agents?

Or to open the door for the, very definite Assange-haters, to have a way around the argument that Assange is not getting a fair trial, that this case is a total farce, and that anyone who stands up to the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex is 'an enemy of the West'?

One example:

Very article linked in the original post talks about concerns for Assange's health, saying he has been in the medical ward in jail.

Yet apparently it's not at all possible that he is on medications to help with his mental state (which would explain - though in this case note that I would entirely agree that the use of such medication would interfere with his "ability to understand" - his demeanor as being 'flat' and 'slow' and 'confused'), and instead apparently a foregone conclusion to assume that he is being physically and mentally subjected to "extreme torture".

> anyone who stands up to the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex is 'an enemy of the West'?

Please. You'd be very much mistaken to think I have -any- sympathy for the "military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex", as even a cursory reading of my comments on issues of health insurance in the US, or military interventions would show.

Believe it or not, it is possible to think that Assange has committed multiple crimes for less than noble reasons in amongst the good he has done, without being an agent for the state, deep or otherwise.

Innocent until proven guilty.

But in the meantime: medicated into oblivion so he can't adequately defend himself.

"Concern for his mental health" is just an excuse for "medically lobotomized".

> Innocent until proven guilty

And for that to hold, you have to let him be tried. Justice isn't automatic.

But people (maybe not you) seem far too quick to start muddying up the due process. It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that.

From here, it seems perfectly plausible that he actively helped Manning leak. If the US have evidence to that end, they have a case. Can we just let that case be heard and stop assuming that every actor here is a Bond villain?

> It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that.

It depends what they find him guilty of and what the sentence is. It is unacceptable to have someone on trial for openly telling the truth about what a foreign country is doing.

He went into the Ecuadorian embassy saying that the Swedish case against him was basically trumped up and that he was going to be extradited to the United States. His justification for staying in the embassy on the basis that he would be extradited to the US if he walked out. His excuses were dismissed by critics as unconvincing. He is now out of the embassy and, surprisingly, appears to be going through an extradition process to the US.

The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a process crime than doing anything material. Australians in Europe cannot be reasonably held subject to US laws related to classified documents. And how materially he helped Manning is a very open question. Maybe the US government is going to have something convincing but the odds are great it is some word game that they are going to try and nail him with.

> Can we just let that case be heard and stop assuming that every actor here is a Bond villain?

If the US government is going to treat Assange the way they treat other non-US-citizens they don't like then by the time the case is heard it will be too late.

> The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a process crime than doing anything material.

Allegedly actively assisting a US military member to a) crack other military passwords, and b) work with them on covering said attempts is a mere "flimsy pretext, [not] material"?

Maybe you feel that is worth thousands to millions of dollars spent hunting down a man for 10 years. I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality and it is highly likely that something else would have been fabricated if they didn't have that as an excuse.

From memory he didn't even succeed on the password front. The 'crime' here is an incidental non-issue compared to why the US has been hounding him.

> I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality

Wait, elsewhere, and repeatedly, it's been noted just how intelligent Assange is, and (hence) how out of character the disheveled, slow person who appeared in court is. And I have zero doubt - he has repeatedly showed in interviews that for whatever potential personality flaws he may have, or personal opinion of him, he is, indeed, very well educated, intelligent, and smart.

So this? Fails the smell test. Fails the reasonable person test.

Someone as intelligent that - you believe it is "doubt[ful]" that he would be aware that aiding an active US military personnel in cracking passwords for accounts on classified systems, and encouraging them to use/try other credentials for covering tracks on the access of classified documents and their removal from external systems... it's doubtful that he would realize that that was possibly going to be viewed as a serious crime by the US?

I don't buy _that_ for a moment - throughout those chat logs there is multiple references to covering tracks, to covering bases on how to act, react, what to say or do when questioned, etc. - that is not someone who is blissfully unaware of the crime which they are (allegedly) committing, or aiding and abetting.

Telling someone to Google a publicly available tool is hardly assisting in any criminal way

And if he stopped resisting, he'd have the opportunity to test that view in a court.

As we have seen, "stop resisting" is a sure-fire way to have yourself turned into a chemical zombie by the state that's supposed to be protecting you.

I doubt very much that the 'rational approach' of giving oneself up to the very people whose crimes you've been revealing is going to be a productive way to continue the effort of revealing crimes against humanity.

> As we have seen

We have? Where?

In mmjaa's fevered imagination. To him, Assange's reported lack of clarity in court is proof that the state is chemically lobotomizing him. Actual evidence has not so far been presented.

"mmjaa is insane" - ah, there we go, the standard response for anyone challenged by the thought that, perhaps, they're not living in as free a society as they think - especially when all it takes to get someone chemically lobotomized, is to challenge their sanity.

Lets come back to this in a few months when there will be evidence of Assanges' torture by the UK on behalf of its masters in the USA, presented to the relevant authorities.

Remember this: Medicating people with psychotropic drugs designed to radically alter their minds, against their will, is a crime against humanity.

I am not saying you're insane. I'm saying you are jumping to conclusions without evidence, that is, that you are making stuff up. So I keep asking for evidence that supports your conclusions, and your response is "there might be evidence in a few months". That's... not very convincing.

It has been widely reported that Bellmarsh medicates its political prisoners. It has also been reported by everyone who sees him that Assange is medicated.

Where? They're either really good at censoring Google, or you're talking out your hat.

Maybe Big G's in on it too.

Pro-Assange accounts are indeed being censored:

https://classconscious.org/2019/06/29/protest-at-twitter-hq-...

There is a media block (the UK can do that quite simply) on any reporting about Assange's health and conditions in Bellmarsh:

https://www.opednews.com/articles/Media-Block-on-Assange-s-T...

There is a definite campaign to torture/brainwash Assange while he is in Bellmarsh, as discovered by a UN investigator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_94lj_bosc&t=3s

Your link about treatment "while he is in Bellmarsh" actually relates to the psychological trauma from locking himself inside the Ecuadorian embassy.

The rest is unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

Every western political dissident since 1950 has been subject to mind-altering chemical lobotomies for 'the sake of their mental health'. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the way dissidents are treated in the West can observe this for themselves. It is the norm to heavily medicate dissidents and those who proffer undesirable viewpoints against the powers that be - "he must be insane" is the standard repose for those having their crimes revealed.

All you have to do, is pay attention. Julian even predicted it would happen to him personally and warned us.

Look at the David Shayler case, for example. He was in the Bellmarsh brainwashing pipeline before Assange, and the same thing is happening to Julian.

Well it seems there's always something else. He's a journalist. He's committed a political crime and that rules out extradition. He's being targeted by a state entity so this isn't fair. The only crime he may have committed is only a minor felony. He probably didn't know that it was a minor felony. Sweden weren't going to treat him fairly. She was a CIA plant. Uruguay didn't treat him fairly. The US won't treat him fairly. They'll torture and execute him.

All I've seen is a man dodging the law, over and over and over again, exploiting means and influence that most people could only dream of, while those friends point out the toll this self-inflicted purgatory is having on him as another form of "this isn't fair!" excuse.

It's all tosh. Negotiate your extradition, get to court, get this sorted. The time he takes to get there is all on him.

You've identified 9 good reasons there.

There probably weren't any CIA plants involved and the US is unlikely to execute him.

The US will medicate him until he is chemically lobotomized and no longer a threat to their war-fighting operations, which are paramount to all other exercises in civil discourse, such as civil rights, human rights, not killing innocent people at scale, etc.

And if that is indeed what is happening:

> in this case note that I would entirely agree that the use of such medication would interfere with his "ability to understand"

> medicated into oblivion so he can't adequately defend himself.

They wouldn't need to medicate him so that he can't defend himself.

This was a case management hearing. He wasn't ever going to get an opportunity to defend himself as that's not what it's for. He's not even required to attend.

True, it's possible. You can also be a complete tool.

As I've been saying constantly, what you can believe is more important than who you can believe (Murray has big problems with this himself, unfortunately). That Assange is being abused is one of the facts you have to concede if you've looked at the case at all - even if you distrust all involved parties.

Wow, so he's either being tortured or medicated to the point he has difficulty saying his own name and date of birth. Clearly there's no problem with their medicating and this is clearly normal UK prison conditions.

> To defend the actions of the UK court, which is clearly being corrupted by following direction from US agents?

Clearly corrupted if the article is accurate. FireBeyond questioned the accuracy. You assume the accuracy of the article, and question FireBeyond's motives. But the question still stands: Is the article accurate? Can you provide any confirmation that it is? Are there any independent accounts of the hearing? (I don't regard the article as an independent account; the author stated that he is a close friend of Assange.)

If you have reason to think the article is correct, I will listen. If not, though, then FireBeyond's comment is very relevant, and your response is totally beside the point.

Given the long history of atrocious crimes against humanity being committed by the US and its Coalition allies, it is logical to conclude that Assange has been chemically lobotomized in order to reduce the threat he poses to war-fighting operations.

If you want an independent view of Assange's mental health and wellbeing, you're going to have to wait. He is being held in Bellmarsh so that nobody can actually verify anything - not even his lawyers, and that IS THE POINT ENTIRELY - thus giving the CIA and its UK lackeys every opportunity to have their way with Assange, without anyone knowing anything until its well and truly, too late.

If you want 'independent verification' before you're willing to believe the state would do this to its enemies, maybe you should look at the long history of other enemies of the state being chemically lobotimized once they are held in secret conditions under the control of agents of the very military-industrial complex institutions whose crimes against humanity are being revealed.

BY DESIGN: there is no public oversight and there won't be until they have finished their lobotomy operation.

This is a serious situation which requires citizens such as yourself to have the courage to confront the details: the West has been torturing and disappearing its dissidents for decades. Go find out for yourself how bad it is.

I do not deny that such things have happened. But by your logic, every time a light bulb burns out in Tierra del Fuego, it's logical to conclude that it's a CIA conspiracy, because of the long history of CIA intervention in Latin America. That is, while such things have happened, far more things have happened that were not the result of the US government's nefariousness.

What I wanted was an independent account of the hearing. I know Assange is locked up and isn't able to give interviews. But his friend was able to attend the hearing, so reporters should have been able to, also. Where are their reports?

And, in particular, the US is requesting extradition, so of course US agents are in court requesting stuff from the judge. I'd like to hear from an unbiased reporter whether what happened at the hearing was normal, or whether it really was US agents improperly controlling the court.

As I said, this article is so clearly biased that I cannot accept its judgment on this question. Where are the mainstream news accounts?

> If you want 'independent verification' before you're willing to believe the state would do this to its enemies, maybe you should look at the long history of other enemies of the state being chemically lobotimized once they are held in secret conditions under the control of agents of the very military-industrial complex institutions whose crimes against humanity are being revealed.

You're making the claim. Cite some sources (preferably creditable ones).

>What I wanted was an independent account of the hearing. ... Where are their reports?

Indeed, the silence is deafening. Why do you think nobody else in Western media would be reporting on their observations of Assange during this hearing?

The reason is, this whole legal process is a farce. Assange has been chemically lobotomized, and will not get a fair trial - because he is now in the hands of the very people whose crimes against humanity he was dedicated to exposing.

Nevertheless, there will be more leaks, and there will be more actions taken against warmongers and criminals who think they are invincible. There is a big package of justice coming their way...

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