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From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Obama ends pursuit of Julian Assange
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:47:36 -0000 (UTC)
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Just heard on the news that the United States government has entered
into a plea deal with Julian Assange. Assange is allowed to plead guilty
to one count of violating the Espionage Act, that vile law written on
behalf of the Wilson administration by Congress to silence critics of
WW1 and America's involvement in that horrid European war, that has been
used by subsequent administrations in all sorts of creative ways to
silence critics of America's war policies and just generally to
intimidate people into silence.

Even though the Supreme Court's discredited opinion in Schenck is no
longer law of the land, the Espionage Act has never been found to be
unconstitutional.

For reasons I'll never understand, the Obama administration was
particularly harsh against government whistleblowers, always finding
ways around whistleblower protection laws by prosecuting all leaks as
theft of government property.

Bradley Manning, who actually leaked the material to Assange, had his
criminal charges resolved years ago, but Assange's were never resolved.

In this matter, rather than leaving the shame of this as a historical
embarassment and discredit to Obama, Trump did Obama's dirty work and
actually filed criminal charges against Assange.

The deal is "time served", which Assange had served in UK custody.

In odd symbolism as Assange won't set foot in the Washington DC, the
arrangement has been made to allow Assange to enter his plea before a
federal magistrate in Saipan and then from there, proceed to Australia.
This is totally meaningless as there are no issues with extradition to
the United States from Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, which
is not an independent nation. But it's as close to Australia as Assange
can get in territory with United States jurisdiction, so it makes him
feel better or something.

He's still an arrogant prick, and those "removal of condom" charges with
all those women in Sweden he had sex with but who didn't want to get
pregnant with his child, were truly criminal acts. He was accused of
re-initiating sex without a condom after she'd fallen asleep having had
consensual sex with him, truly a rape charge.

Yes, by publishing everything Manning leaked, Assange had put lives in
danger, but no one believes Obama cared about that. It was strictly
about embarassment.

Americans have freedom to publish anything they like, except information
embarassing to the government, despite the guarantee of this specific
liberty as an enumerated right in the First Amendment. It's against
the law to publish, even if our enemies already have the information,
even if the information is known publicly, even if the information were
classified for no other reason than conspiracy to cover up wrongdoing. The
unconstitutional Espionage Act lives to put future whistleblowers in
prison another day.

https://apnews.com/article/assange-justice-department-plea-wikileaks-saipan-australia-00eb380879ff636cc9b916f82f82ed40