328
‘Julian Assange is free’: Wikileaks founder freed in deal with US
(www.aljazeera.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
328 points (95.8% liked)
World News
39033 readers
994 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Are you actually managing sources of classified Chinese documents? This breathless attempt to conflate espionage with having an opinion about another country is ridiculous.
And you keep saying espionage, invoking a word as if it's some special kind of crime exempt from the rule of law, and also immutable. China gets to define what espionage is under their laws. The U.S. did mangle it far beyond the common definition to pursue Assange.
Did they though? He cultivated a relation with a source in exchange for intelligence.
That's an expansive definition that also describes what a journalist does, which is what upset defenders of civil liberties about the prosecution of Assange. The usual connotation of the word espionage, however, is that it is done by an organization, against adversaries, for its own benefit. Assange was explicitly seeking information from whistleblowers to release to the world. Like a journalist.
But to my point, the CIA explicitly engages in espionage as its mission. So would President Xi be justified in sending his police to the environs of Langley to drag CIA employees out of their beds and before a court to stand trial in Beijing? I say no, because they're American citizens in the United States. Chinese law should not apply here in America.
Traditionally, courts need to have jurisdiction to hear a dispute, and it comes in multiple types: There's subject-matter jurisdiction; a municipal traffic court has subject matter jurisdiction over traffic infractions. It can't hear a murder case. Then, there's personal jurisdiction, meaning it has power to compel an appearance by a defendant, and impose penalties or assess damages. Personal jurisdiction usually comes from citizenship, or physical presence. State and federal courts have wide-ranging personal jurisdiction, but even then they have to "reach out and touch someone" with service of a summons to effect it. (Trial in-absentia is not allowed in the U.S. unless the defendant waives the right to appear.) Tangentially, the admiralty law system developed because of a lack of a country's courts' personal jurisdiction over foreign nationals, and suing property (the basis of civil forfeiture) came about due to sailors simply returning to their home countries, out of legal reach.
Thus, the idea of prosecuting a foreign national outside of the U.S., for actions undertaken outside of the U.S., in places where U.S. law shouldn't apply—essentially extending a U.S. court's personal jurisdiction to the whole planet—is deeply troubling. Even if it's just one category of crime, like espionage. If there's one exception, then there's no practical protection, since a country can define espionage in any way it wants to trigger the exception. Or not. It could just accuse somebody of espionage, evidence be damned. After all, that person would be hauled off to a foreign land before being able to mount a defense in court.
That is a tool of tyrants.
I'm not going to write an entire paper on the differences between journalists and spies to satisfy an Internet stranger. Organizations like the NYT act completely differently with their sources than Assange did. They release documents only after carefully checking for information that can put people in danger, and they never do something for the sole purpose of harming a country.
We know this law doesn't apply to journalists because they tried to use it against them during the Cold War and the courts told them it wouldn't fly. So all this hand wringing over civil rights is just concern trolling to defend someone who made themselves an enemy of the US by working with Russian intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections.
Edit to add - if you really want to claim our civil courts didn't have jurisdiction we could always have let the military handle it. We certainly wouldn't be watching him go home right now though.
That's fine, I'm not going to accept the authority of a stranger in Lemmy to define what is and what isn't journalism. It really just comes down to a disagreement whether we should strive for rule of law, or accept the law of the jungle, where might makes right.
Real journalists manage to do their jobs just fine in Western countries. Even the YouTubers. He clearly crossed the line.