Slashdot Mirror
In Response to Open Letter, France Rejects Asylum For Julian Assange
Several outlets report that Julian Assange has requested, but been denied, political asylum in France, by means of an open letter published by Le Monde.
From The Globe and Mail's coverage, linked above: Less than an hour after his letter was published by Le Monde's website, Hollande's office issued a statement saying the asylum request was rejected.
"France has received the letter from Mr. Assange. An in-depth review shows that in view of the legal and material elements of Mr Assange's situation, France cannot grant his request," the statement said.
"The situation of Mr. Assange does not present any immediate danger. He is also the target of a European arrest warrant," it noted.
Assange wrote in the letter that his youngest child is French, and so is the child’s mother. "I haven't been able to see them in five years, since the political persecution against me started," he said. Worth noting: Assange's legal team says that Assange's letter has been mischaracterized, and that it is in fact not a request for asylum per se; instead, they assert, the letter merely expresses Assange's "willingness 'to be hosted in France if and only if an initiative was taken by the competent authorities.'"
"France has received the letter from Mr. Assange. An in-depth review shows that in view of the legal and material elements of Mr Assange's situation, France cannot grant his request," the statement said.
"The situation of Mr. Assange does not present any immediate danger. He is also the target of a European arrest warrant," it noted.
Assange wrote in the letter that his youngest child is French, and so is the child’s mother. "I haven't been able to see them in five years, since the political persecution against me started," he said. Worth noting: Assange's legal team says that Assange's letter has been mischaracterized, and that it is in fact not a request for asylum per se; instead, they assert, the letter merely expresses Assange's "willingness 'to be hosted in France if and only if an initiative was taken by the competent authorities.'"
What does Assange's personnality, and your opinion of it, matter ? That's Ad Hominem put to the extreme. What about his work ?
I don't dive into a chef's private life before eating their food; I've no idea about musicians' procilivities and motivations, some of the writers I like are disgusting anti-role-models or pity-worthy dysfunctional wrecks. Ditto directors, actors, even friends... and let's not talk about politicians.
In the end it doesn't matter: the work is more important than who's doing it. Incomparably more. Your character assassination is fully besides the point.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
That makes for rather "odd" timing, don't you think? Just days after Wikileaks leaks pilfered documents revealing NSA spying in France Assange makes an open appeal to be "invited" to France, and throws in everything but the kitchen sink in the appeal?
... In his letter to Hollande, Assange said that the mother of his youngest child is French. He said he is restricted to a space of 5.5 square meters (60 square feet), lacking access to “fresh air, sun as well as any possibility to go to a hospital,” and noted that police say round-the-clock surveillance of him has cost $17.6 million."
"only France now has the ability to offer me the necessary protection against, and exclusively against, the political persecution that I am currently the object of". Such an offer of protection would be a "humanitarian and symbolic gesture" and send a message of encouragement "to journalists and whistleblowers around the world".
It seems that the attempted quid pro quo failed. SInce there are no doubt many French people in solidarity with Wikileaks that have access to secrets I suppose France should brace itself for retaliation by Wikileaks. That could be a much more dangerous game for Assange than what he has played with the Americans. The French state is known to play rough when it feels it is needed in ways that the Americans are very unlikely to match.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's the man, not his work, who is seeking asylum.
Actually, even as far as the work itself is concerned, since Assange selects what information he presents, there is a degree of judgment and choice involved. If Assange is prone to making choices based on personal interests rather than objective truth, then even the value of his work is questionable. That is why considerations about the person ("ad hominem") are relevant not just to his asylum request, but also to his work.
The only thing that shocks me so far is that Sweden has a statute of limitations that doesn't take into account that the accused is running from the law. Its one thing to timeout on things when you have no idea who you're looking for ... but they know who and where he is.
The primary purpose of a criminal justice system is to keep society functioning peacefully. If a fugitive can hide with freedom for long enough that the statutory time limits expire, then he has demonstrated his ability to function in society. From a philosophical point of view, he has provided solid evidence of his rehabilitation, whether he needed it or not. A trial and further punishment would serve only vengeance, not justice. Similarly, even if the police know where a fugitive is hiding, the cause of justice is still being served. By the time the limits expire, Assange will effectively have served a minimum-security prison sentence. In theory, his unenforced incarceration will be a reminder to him in the future to follow the law.
As far as the law is concerned, someone in Mr. Assange's situation has already tried himself, found himself guilty, and isolated himself from society at large just as a prison sentence would. At this point, the only arguments are ideological: whether the state would give him a fair trial, possibly allowing him to be more free than he currently is. By staying in the embassy, he prevents the trial from taking place. That's why statists (who tend to see trials as being mostly fair) see it as a sign of guilt, and anti-statists (who expect the trial to be pessimal) see his retreat as a last-resort way to escape persecution.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Getting enraged by other people is what BitZtream does best.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Why would you assume that they're succumbing to US Pressure?
This is fucking France, which spent most of the Cold War technically out of NATO, and didn't come back until it was safe in '09. They actively supported Rwanda's genocidal government because they thought the English-speaking rebels were lying about the genocide, to the point of sending troops to try to protect the fleeing government troops. Their response to PRISM was to condemn it as 'espionage' the very fucking day their biggest paper announced they'd been doing the same damn thing to their citizens for years.
They support Assange and Snowden in public, solely because idiots like you will mistakenly assume this means they actually support Assange and Snowden. In private they will do their best to get those guys fucked over, because if those guys are fucked over they can't do interesting things like tell Le Monde about the DGSE. Which is why, despite their PR as privacy advocates, neither guy has actually asked for Asylum. It's not a surprise they were one of the countries that got Morales' plane stopped, and that of the four involved they were the only one that had clout with the other three (Portugal, Spain and Italy were all in the midst of EU-recovery programs at the time, and guess whose the most important economy in the Euro not named Germany?).
So they have a long history of fucking privacy activists over, and then letting the US take the blame.
What about his work ?
Well he's shown that he is willing to lie in his work also. Editing videos to remove information that doesn't fit his desired portrayal of events, absolutely distorting the true context of events.
The UK now has a case against him, and a very strong one. He fled bail, and that is a crime. That crime is still ongoing since he's still fleeing said bail. So they can arrest and charge him for that. Doesn't matter if the original matter is log dropped, he is still on the hook for this.
That's the thing with court dates, bail, and all that jazz: Even if the case against you was going to be dismissed, if you skip bail you are now guilty of another crime. You have agreed to appear in court and a failure to do so is against the law.
The UK had no beef in this originally, they were just acting on an EU arrest warrant. Sweden said "We want this guy," the UK looked at the warrant and said "looks valid per the treaty" and thus arrested him. They had no interest or ability to decide on the validity of the charges, only if the request required them to act per treaty. It did so he was arrested, and then released on bail.
He challenged the extradition all the way up to the high UK court, but the courts found it was a valid request that the UK had to honour. Nothing to do with his guilt, just that the request was a valid one and they were bound by treaty to hand him over. Had he gone to Sweden then, that would have been the end of the UK's involvement. His bail would be returned and the UK would have no further interest in what happened.
However he fled rather than handing himself over. So at that point, he became a fugitive in the UK. They now have a case against him. It is totally separate from the original case, it is simply a case of skipping bail.
Likely they'll want to act on it too, since he's been flaunting it in their face for years.
The French political elite are stuck. French cryptography was linked to US and UK methods and hardware from the early 1970's on.
If France wants to keep its top staff at the NSA/GCHQ standard to enjoy total network collection France will have to take into account how the US and UK will respond.
France should have fully understood what it was doing politically when it had its early 1970's French (~JIC) meeting with the GCHQ.
What was the French SDECE worked very well with the UK over the what would have been the UK Zircon sigint satellite projects and options for sharing resulting material with the French. The UK French deal and later sharing was more about making France dependent on US and UK access than helping France share with the UK.
Generations of French crypto officials have now worked with and under UK and US advisors and now like the US/UK systems France is using globally.
France was very happy to help with UK with all aspects and details of its weapons sales during the Falklands war.
The US did not help New Zealand re the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
France cannot easily undo its linked hardware, access and software that the US and UK now offer.
It seems the French political elite understand what the French security services have been doing for decades and what France can do or will not have access to. France also seems more aware of just how deep the US is to French crypto and networks.
France should have understood the lessons from the 1950's when the US and UK had near total access to all French communications at all levels.
How or why the French left their secure networks so open to the US after the 1950-60's is a mystery. Decades later the upgraded French networks are still open to the US and UK??
French political policy has to always reflect on obligations back to the UK and UK for that collect it all sharing access.
The only long term option for France politically is to secure its own codes "again" and spend big on better quality French sigint for France globally.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's the man, not his work, who is seeking asylum.
But it is his work that is important, regardless of this. Nay, not even his work, the work of the dozens to hundreds of brave souls who fight the slavers and face death constantly so that you may live under the freedom they provide. Something that bears mentioning regardless of the topic.
Actually, even as far as the work itself is concerned, since Assange selects what information he presents, there is a degree of judgment and choice involved. If Assange is prone to making choices based on personal interests rather than objective truth, then even the value of his work is questionable. That is why considerations about the person ("ad hominem") are relevant not just to his asylum request, but also to his work.
Hahaha. You jest right? You complain that one man may be cherry picking what secret documents he reveals, when he has revealed thousands or more... While the other side lies, cheats, steals, fabricates, leaks and murders to deploy their overwhelming propaganda.
We live in a world where the entire mainstream media are controlled by the intelligence services, even as paid assets at the very top. Where stories are censored in multi-continent wide blackouts. Where they are crafted to fit the interests of the rulers of the world. Where a whitehouse and pentagon leak secret material on a weekly basis when it's of interest to them. Where they don't even have to leak secret info if they don't want to because just BullShitting to the media will get your words repeated as truth, with no fact-checking.
Among all of this, you object to one man working against them? I think you woke up and tried to put one pant leg on a flea and the other on an elephant.
Liberty.
But it is his work that is important, regardless of this. Nay, not even his work, the work of the dozens to hundreds of brave souls who fight the slavers and face death constantly so that you may live under the freedom they provide. Something that bears mentioning regardless of the topic.
And what does that have to do with the price of eggs in China?
His work and the things his work stands for goes on without him. His work on Wikileaks does not give him a free pass to do whatever the fuck he wants.
Speaking of stopping Morales's plane, that was actually Assange's doing. Largest "SWATting" prank in world history.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
It's not an "IF" as to whether Assange cherry picks things for political reasons. He does. There are lots of things he's deliberately kept back with threats to release if certain things happen that he doesn't want (unredacted cables, files against NewsCorp, etc). The most famous was his "insurance file" which was to be released "should anything happen to him", which was left vague enough that it wasn't clear whether he was talking about "being killed" or simply "being sent to Sweden" (the statement being made during his fight to avoid surrender to Sweden). The scummiest blackmail on his part, IMHO, was his threatening to release unredacted documents that could get various aid/human rights organizations' employees killed if said organizations didn't provide him money (most famously his $700k shakedown of Amnesty International).
He refers to the leaks in Wikileaks' possession as his "property", and made all Wikileaks staffers sign an onerous NDA imposing ridiculous fines if they do anything to reduce the monetary value of said property, such as by leaking it.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
TFA isn't about his work, it's about: "In Response to Open Letter, France Rejects Asylum For Julian Assange".
I didn't "complain", I corrected you. You stated that Assange's personal agenda didn't matter to his work at all. I pointed out that it very much does.
Which is, of course, false. AA has accused Assange of lesser sexual crimes, and SW has accused him of rape. There are no counts of rape against Assange concerning AA on the EAW, only three lesser counts (2x molestation and 1x unlawful sexual coersion). There is one count of rape on the EAW (count #4) concerning SW, in line with what the women have accused him of and also in line with what the Svea Court of Appeals has found probable cause for. Both women sought and retained legal representatives who have pushed the case forward for them (initially, both of them retained Claes Borgström, who was the one whose appeal got the closed portion of the investigation re-opened. More recently AA fired Claes because she thought he wasn't doing a good enough of a job with the case and was more focused on self aggrandizement; her new legal representative since started a new push to get Assange handed over to Sweden).
There's a lot more detail on these topics and more here.
The Assange-echo-chamber meme "Neither of the women involved have ever accused Assange of rape" is based on a simple distortion of a key element. SW (the one who the rape charge is concerned) didn't want to have to file charges - she only wanted to force Assange to take a STD test. She didn't want the thing to turn into a giant media circus that basically ruined her life and forced her into hiding from angry Assange fans. But there's a difference between not wanting to file charges and not accusing Assange of rape. She did accuse Assange of rape - first in conversations with her friends while coming to grips with what happened, and then went to the police station, where they told the officer on duty that they wanted advice on how to report a rape (see the statement by Linda Wassgren, the on-duty officer on the 20th). They were then interviewed separately where she described being raped, and after the interview she took a rape kit and sought a legal advocate (getting, ultimately, Claes). Since the leak of the Memoria file (a scummy act on Assange's side, I should add, as it's full of identifying personal details about his accusers and their families that have been used to harrass them - and we know it came from Assange's side because the cover page has a note to Assange's attorney telling him that it's confidential and must not be released), there have been a number of other followup interviews and investigations, and at no point have any objections from AA or SW been recorded. There is absolutely nothing in the record supporting a claim "Neither of the women involved have ever accused Assange of rape". SW has pretty much had to disappear after the event; AA went into hiding for a while but has since resumed taking part in some of the old forums that she used to; last fall she mentioned the case for the first time since the one brief statement she had given to the press after going to the police, mentioning offhand in an unrelated thread that a couple years ago she was the victim of a sex crime and that the perpetrator still hasn't been brought to justice, but rather she's still attacked by his fans for daring to report it. She didn't mention Assange by name, but it's obvious who she was referring to.
Most people who are raped don't want to file charges. They don't want the viscious attacks that come with it and want to shove the event in the past and not have to keep reliving it. A hundred times over when the accused is someone famous who has a lot of loyal fans. But claiming "not wanting to file charges" means "wasn't raped" is a massive distortion.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Given the awfully broad "rape" law in Sweden, I don't mind.
The bizarre thing is that without the ongoing investigation it would probably be easier for Assange to get asylum in Sweden. Sweden expressly forbids ministers of government from having any direct involvement over administrative authorities. If he applied his case would in theory be handled under the exact same process as everyone else regardless the political situation. The Swedish prime minister would not be able to accept or reject anything, it would only be up to the responsible administrative authority to decide based only on current legislation.
Speaking of stopping Morales's plane, that was actually Assange's doing. Largest "SWATting" prank in world history.
So just to be clear, when they forced his plane down, which would have been illegal even if he did have Snowden on board (because he wouldn't have done that without using proper measures to extend his immunity) that was something Assange did? I don't recall him forcing anyone to violate any laws. It seems to me what he does is tell us when other people have already violated laws. Maybe you could explain how he issued an order to illegally ground a plane, and why it was followed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sure Julian Assange knew the request would not be granted and it's probably a simple maneuver to remember us which side France is on.
Since 2009 France is officially a full NATO member and a couple years later, it showed full allegiance and with the US it attacked Libya, a sovereign country. If we hold this to the same standards as the invasion of Iraq then that was a particularly abject and monstrous crime, which also makes France directly responsible for the rise of Islamic State.
In France, foreign policy affairs are typically directed by the president, who is totally unaccountable once elected (a republican monarch). There's never any debate about foreign policy, esp. in the media. The president styles himself as left-wing, though that is contested. But I haven't heard anything on the left about NATO and the wars, though it seems to me there's that obvious elephant in the room, that France is fully allied to the US, UK, Saudi etc. which implies embracing the neocons goals and methods.
More directly to the point I will say that Hollande and Fabius are comparable to Bush, Cheney, Tony Blair etc. and that the neocons cabbal is the gravest threat from the West since the nazis. Denouncing the US threat is fine (it's one of the few most dangerous countries on Earth) but it does not make intellectual sense to stop at the US or UK border and fail to consider that France is in. We need some great (democratic) purge that throws pro-war officials out of office. France need not embrace a dangerous ideology that worships death and destruction of States, presenting them with a convert-or-die deal (join the Empire or we'll destroy you) or pushing Arabs to kill one another to increase weapons sales.
I think it is Assange's Ego which is keeping him locked away. Not big brother who is SOOO INTERESTED in getting him.
For the most part America Assange isn't the bad guy, just a jerk to happens to hate America. Manning was the person that the US really wanted, Manning was the one who stole classified data and gave it Assange.
The crime they are trying to get him for in neutral Sweden is for rape. Why would any government give asylum to an individual who is hiding from a crime that is more or less universally not tolerated. He thinks the FBI, CIA, MI5, KGB.... are all after him. Because of his involvement he may be under watch, but in the grand scheme of things he is such a small fry that it isn't really worth such effort.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There's always been this weird dynamic on Slashdot where if someone has done something good or useful, or is perceived as "one of us," you get this absolute defense of every single action of that person, no matter how objectionable. A lot of it seems to be based on perceiving oneself in that person, and I suspect wanting to defend them from criticisms they themselves have received in real life.
Examples: Steve Jobs was a cruel narcissist, but he "had to be" to turn Apple into what it is. Linus Torvalds has on occasion treated people nastily, but that's something to be absolutely admired and never criticized. Hans Reiser was being persecuted because he was a geek. Terry Childs was the epitome of integrity for locking out his supervisors. Julian Assange isn't a self-obsessed narcissist, he's the noble target of an international conspiracy to besmirch his good name.
Here's my view:
Julian Assange did a lot of good through wikileaks, and should be praised for that.
He's also on a personal level an objectionable human being and that should not be excused or explained away.
If he is accused of committing a crime in Sweden, he should fight those charges in Sweden.
Whether he's innocent or not of those charges, he's probably not innocent of violating bail, and should be charged with that as well.
The first point I made above is completely consistent with all the ones that follow. people who were I think a lot of it is a sort of
Sure, not sharing your messianic opinion of Assange and wanting him to be judged like a normal person is capitulating...
Not even that> Assange asked for asylum (and now, like the fox with the sour grapes, suddenly he never wanted it), and France sees no reason to give him asylum. Firstly, because he is not in France. You have to be in France or in a French embassy to get asylum in France. Second, because they don't find any reason to grant him asylum. No fear for his life, no fear of an unfair court trial.
Why would any government give asylum to an individual who is hiding from a crime that is more or less universally not tolerated.
You never know, France is known for offering asylum to convicted multiple muderers.