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WikiLeaks Calls for Pardons From President Obama -- Or President Trump (wikileaks.org)
"President Obama has a political moment to pardon Manning & Snowden," WikiLeaks tweeted on Friday, adding "If not, he hands a Trump presidency the freedom to take his prize." And a new online petition is also calling for a pardon of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying Assange is "a hero and must be honoured as such," attracting over 10,000 supporters in just a few days. An anonymous reader writes:
Monday WikiLeaks also announced, "irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the real victor is the U.S. public which is better informed as a result of our work." Addressing complaints that they specifically targeted Hillary Clinton's campaign, the group said "To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump's campaign, or Jill Stein's campaign, or Gary Johnson's campaign or any of the other candidates that fulfills our stated editorial criteria." But they also objected to the way their supporters were portrayed during the U.S. election, arguing that Trump and others "were painted with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications -- because none exists."
Thursday a WikiLeaks representative expressed surprise that, despite the end of the U.S. election, Julian Assange's internet connection in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London has not yet been restored.
Thursday a WikiLeaks representative expressed surprise that, despite the end of the U.S. election, Julian Assange's internet connection in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London has not yet been restored.
Clinton lost by a whisker. Clinton is Obama's friend. Wikileaks spread dirt on Clinton. Now you want Obama to give you a warm handshake and a kiss on the cheek?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
When is this weasel Assange going to release info on his dictator benefactor Putin?
Answer: never. Zero credibility.
I don't believe Manning qualifies as a whistle blower. (S)he just exposed a boatload of confidential documents with no clear purpose behind the action.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
This is just meaningless, self-serving posturing on WikiLeaks' part.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
An organization which knowingly and deliberately worked with a foreign government to affect the U.S. presidential election now wants people to listen to them and pardon people who have affected U.S. national security?
Talk about a pair of balls.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
He is, Putin's
Table-ized A.I.
How is the US supposed to pardon him, when he is wanted by the Swedes for questioning?
Clinton lost by a whisker. Clinton is Obama's friend. Wikileaks spread dirt on Clinton. Now you want Obama to give you a warm handshake and a kiss on the cheek?
Trump won over Clinton 290 to 228, which is most definitely *not* a whisker.
If you want to complain that Clinton would have won by different rules, you also have to allow that Trump would have campaigned differently under the different rules.
For example, with full popular voting Trump would have campaigned more vigorously in California and New York, to garner more of the proportional popular vote in those states.
He would have had a different campaign, and won under the different rules as well.
The wikileaks twitter feed has this item:
Remember how you let Obama "legalize":
It's all Trump's in 69 days
This gives me a lot of hope for our future.
Something we really didn't have under Obama (despite it being his tagline).
The badly written summary makes it clear that the pardon is requested for Manning and Snowden, and for some reason tries to include an unrelated mention of Assange, probably so they can have more links to click.
He is also wanted now by the British for bail offences and quite probably contempt of court...
A pardon would make him safe from all crimes committed anywhere before the pardon in the US including extradition for those crimes. In effect there would be no legal way to get him out of the US.
No sir I dont like it.
Yep. And Bernie just has to flip a few Super Delegates before July!
The rules were set and Clinton happened to be on the side of being screwed by them.
The rules were set and Clinton happened to be on the side of being screwed by them.
Concluding Clinton was somehow screwed because the popular vote was in her favor is a non-sequitur in the current system. Winning the electoral college is how you get elected. If popular vote carried the day, the candidates would have campaigned much differently and Republicans in California/Democrats in Utah would have actually bothered to go to the poll. If people don't like the current system then change it but it isn't insightful at all to draw the wrong conclusions after the fact.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
How is the US supposed to pardon him, when he is wanted by the Swedes for questioning?
I know a lot of people don't RTFA, but... It's a tweet, it's only 111 characters! And even if that's too hard for you, you didn't even make it to the end of the first sentence of the summary.
By the way I like dolphins. I just thought I'd share this since it is entirely as relevant to the discussion as your post was, but someone seems to be giving away free mod points, and dolphins are much cooler and more intelligent than Assange.
The three men need to be pardoned. They are American heroes who put the right of the people to know above all else. If one does not "know" then one's vote has no meaning or value.
It does more than seek to imprison, it does imprison people for opposing the party-in-power's narrative. Mark Basseley Youssef and Dinesh D'Sousa.
Neither of these individuals was imprisoned for "opposing the party-in-power's narrative." It was for violating laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I've been thinking about this in the context of global warming. While the Obama Administration did see increased use of renewables, in the end he actually did very little to curb fossil fuels. Yes, the coal-fired power plants are being idled, but that has a lot more to do with market forces (cheaper shale oil, for instance) than with any grand policy to keep goal in the ground. Trump is not going to make coal somehow viable again. As to the Paris Accord, well, I have my doubts that any major government will put that much effort into it. Canada is going to institute a carbon tax, but it starts at such a small amount that it isn't likely to significantly impact fossil fuel production and use. In the end, I doubt there will be any great impact on fossil fuel use, and the march of renewables will go on, if too slow to prevent some of the nastier aspects. I suspect that the graph of emissions after four years will look the same as if Clinton were in charge.
Trump basically promised a lot of people a lot of things he can't really deliver, or he doesn't dare deliver. Look at Obamacare, over the last two or three days it has become clear that while there will likely be changes, and heck they may even repeal it on paper, the ACA will survive in one form or another, because as angry as people are at cost increases, no one save the hardest core Libertarian types actually wants to go back.
Yes, pushing the Supreme Court further towards the Right is troubling, but it's not like Scalia and Roberts could prevent some of the very rulings that have the social conservatives all riled up. And unless Trump and the GOP brass are complete idiots, they know damned well that Trump didn't win because a bunch of social conservatives, Evangelicals, and the like put him there. They would have voted for him no matter what. So anything that pushes too far towards the social conservative spectrum and lights up the culture wars again would almost certainly damage the Republicans.
No, underneath all the bluster and bravado, I'm really beginning to feel that Trump is no revolutionary at all, and that his shtick is just that, some fancy colors on a price sticker, but the sticker still reads the same price.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You got it backward: US presidents get a Nobel prize *before* doing anything worthy of a Nobel prize.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"If not, he hands a Trump presidency the freedom to take his prize."
So, the narrative of pardoning a couple of heroes who exposed big corruption in our government is now a matter of which president gets the glory? Politics as usual.
Assange needs a pardon - after all he only exists because mainstream media has given up on the whole "investigative journalism" thing to keep government honest. He doesn't steal secrets, he just publishes leaks. It's ridiculous to blame the messenger. But Snowden and Manning - not going to happen. While I know Snowden says he's a whistleblower and to some extent this is true - there is blowing the whistle and there is chucking a stick of dynamite in a gunpowder factory. I doubt he'll ever be pardoned if only for the fact that politicians will never willingly sacrifice a handy scapegoat.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh wait, you're beong serious? Eeesh... don't turn to TV for your news, it's not good for you.
Fascinating how people think these days that publicly disgracing themselves is somehow acceptable or reflects well on them. It does explain a lot about the dismal state the human race is in though: Too many cave-men, like this one here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1) manning belongs in prison. He was a traitor by releasing more information than was needed to stop what he objected to.
2) Snowden deserves a medal for reporting on the spying on America by individuals, and then multiple bullets for having given out all sorts of legal stuff that the NSA did.
3) it is not our place to 'parden' assange or wikileaks. Even now, America has no rights to him. The nation that wants him is sweden. And I doubt that they will let a 2x rapists go free.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is over. The US population has disgraced itself in the eyes of the world. (And that they voted Trump into office is just the icing on the cake, the main problem is having two completely unacceptable candidates in the first place...)
That also means the "American Century" is finally over as well. Good.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The US hasn't actually charged Assange with anything. Obama can't pardon someone for crimes that don't exist; he also can't pardon someone on behalf of another country (Sweden).
The US population has disgraced itself in the eyes of the world.
The world is made up of many different people, billions of them, with many different viewpoints. To try to distill that down to some tangible entity and say we are disgraced in its eyes is a colossal fallacy.
That also means the "American Century" is finally over as well. Good.
I hope the so-called American Century is over too. We have some of our own problems to take care of and I believe Trump is the man for the job.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
A president can pardon someone, even if currently no charges have been filed. For example, Ford pardoned Nixon for any and all actions he undertook as President.
Trump can easily pardon Assange from any prosecution by the U.S. gov't for all actions committed by Assange between 1972 to 2016.
That would no effect on whatever Sweden wants Assange for. However keep in mind that Assange only went into hiding at Ecuadorian embassy because he feared Sweden would extradite him to the USA and that he'd end up being tortured at Guantanamo. With a Trump pardon, Assange could (and should) go to Sweden to defend himself against Swedish charges. I hear Swedish prisons are actually really decent places, as far as prisons go. And their justice system pretty fair.
He's called for Snowden to be killed as a traitor, so I'm thinking he *probably* won't pardon the guy. Just a hunch though.
He didn't learn that, that was an unevidenced claim he made to a British court when he was fighting extradition to Sweden. When the British courts rejected his conspiracy theory and deemed Sweden's request valid, that's when he hightailed to the Ecuadorian embassy.
It should be notes that not only does Sweden want him for allegedly sexual offenses, he is also wanted by the UK, and that even if Sweden dropped its investigation, he would almost certainly have to face a British court again.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I could see Snowden getting a pardon at some point but a plea deal that avoids jail time would be more likely especially before Trump takes office.
Well, at least this time it is pretty clear who the idiots responsible for the coming catastrophe are. It is you and people like you. Of course you will try to weasel your way out being responsible afterwards, as people like you usually do. "How could we have known" and "He promised things will get better", and the like.
I'm not even going to dignify this rant with a response. Hopefully the cognitive dissonance won't be terminal as you're enjoyinjg the prosperity of the next eight years.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Rod Blagojevich has done way to much time all ready.
Translation: Waaaaa waaaa, the election didn't go our way so let's have a cry-in and pretend we don't have only ourselves to blame, waaaa waaaa.
I've held Assange in contempt for a lot longer than the 2016 dumpster fire election. The guy is a self-aggrandizing twit who pretends to stand for something principled. He doesn't. He stands for his own ego, and the intelligent among us -- liberal or conservative -- generally have no problem seeing him for exactly what he is.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Hey, I like dolphins too, you insensitive clod!
Snowden has a fuckton of Western blood on his hands
[Citation Needed]
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Assange is a hero to the free world
He's not. But you are quite welcome to believe whatever you want.
You hold him in contempt?
Yep.
You're a fucking retarded monkey is what you are.
And you're an anonymous coward, which is arguably worse. I don't have any qualms about what I'm typing here being part of the semi-permanent record. You apparently do, because you probably know, in your heart of hearts, that what you're saying will not be viewed favorably through the lens of history. That speaks volumes, I think.
You should hold yourself in contempt.
That's an interesting perspective, but I dare say you haven't really made much of a case for why I should do so.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
No. A pardon implies guilt but doesn't require a conviction. President Ford gave Nixon a pardon with no convictions- not even an impeachment.
Immunity is the essential effect of a pardon without a conviction but there are no strings attached which could be in an immunity deal.
The info wasn't that damaging, but that, plus Comey's October statement plus Gary Johnson - remove those three and Clinton is President in solid fashion.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You know perfectly well what the purpose was: to expose the gross criminality and corruption of the USG. What else is funny, are the authoritarians saying whisteblowers need to be in jail because they broke the laaaaw, but DGAF about the lawbreaking revealed by said whisteblowers.
You are making a lot of wrong presumptions here.
It may surprise you to learn, but some of us were concerned about the electoral college BEFORE this election. Some of us were also concerned about an issue that flies under your radar. Don't be ashamed though, lots of people ignore it. It is mind-blowing.
I'm not sure how to respond to this other than to assume you are very young and that you think your generation is the first to ever discover the issues with the Electoral College. Thanks for the delightfully unintentional irony of reminding me how ignorantly condescending people on the internet can be though.
your attempts to befog the issue with your own hand-waving dismissals are not insightful, they are willful stubbornness to perpetuate a lasting problem.
You are begging the question. How is the electoral college a problem? Because the popular vote doesn't elect the candidate? That's how it's designed. We don't need 4 metropolitan areas deciding the election for 300-plus million people.
Now personally, I would have preferred it be by a few million more, but if this little nudge is enough to open the door, I'll ride it.
They said the same thing in 2000. We'll see how it goes this time. My prediction is that the electoral college will remain exactly as it is long after we're both gone.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Don't think for a minute that the Russians have your best interests at heart -- because they don't. They want to see us beaten and humiliated, just as the neocons beat and humiliated Russia after 1989 -- and YOU'RE enabling it.
Is this addressed to Donald Trump?
A stellar example of greed combined with stupidity.
Awww... you never actually had anything substantive to say, you just wanted some attention all along. Why didn't you say so? Here's your attention: eat shit and die.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Clinton is Obama's friend.
Stop right there, reports are Obama hates Clinton (and vice versa). I imagine that's especially true now since Obama has basically stolen the presidency from Clinton, who cannot run again...
In fact the relationship between Obama and Clinton is such it makes it MORE likely to me he will pardon the WikiLeaks people, especially if duty forces him o pardon Clinton. (which I expect)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your translator is broken.
Now that Trump won the election, Assange is no longer needed. Notice how the stream of "revelations" suddenly dried up. He has nothing more to offer, and he probably knows too much.
Now he's a liability. Everyone wants him gone - Trump camp, Clinton camp, the Russians, you name it.
He may expect to be paid back handsomely, but if you ever watched any movies, you know what happens to his character. I suspect he will be disposed off quietly (which, given the kind of crapweasel he proven himself to be, is not going to make many people sad) IMHO
It's bitztream, the autism-hating Slashdot troll!
I'd kind of be in favor of a pardon for Assange, just because it would deprive him of the reason he allegedly doesn't want to face the charges currently against him.
The problem with the popular vote argument is that its just trivia. Neither candidate was going for the popular, both were going for the electoral. Both allocated time and money for the electoral. If the popular had been the goal then they would have allocated time and money very differently and we would have a very different popular vote as a result.
Its like the losing side in a football game saying we moved the ball more yards. Yes, but such yardage wasn't the goal. If such yardage had been how a game was to be decided then both teams would have played very differently and the resulting yardage would have been very different.
Its not really the electoral college itself. Its the states adopting winner take all allocations of delegates. So the problem is really at the state level not the federal level. Unless of course you believe the small states should get a modest boost of influence to avoid being bullied by the large states. Yes, a modest boost. The electoral college delegates are based on how many House of Representative members a state gets, which is based on population, plus two electoral delegates for the two Senators the state gets. That's it. Each state gets two electors beyond what they normally get for population. Its only a big deal for the absolutely tiniest of states. Again, the real problem is not this electoral college scheme, its the winner take all schemes adopted at the state level.
Pardon, investigation, conviction, and guilt are all separate things, even if ideally speaking only the guilty should be investigated or convicted or for whatever reason pardoned (eg when morality and legality don't match).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If he had any loyalty and personal integrity at all, he'd go home and get his day in court.
He already made that offer, but America declined to give him his day in court. If he likes he can come home to get his day in a secret court where he's not allowed to defend himself.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"I'm really beginning to feel that Trump is no revolutionary at all" Just beginning? Really? Holy. shit.
Reminds me that in the final debate last election, both Romney and Obama were bragging about how much oil they were going to drill up
Ultimately no one is willing to make the sacrifices required to cut CO2 output: the only hope is new technology (cheap electric cars, yay!) or that the reality doesn't go anywhere near the disasters predicted. And it will probably be a combination of both.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just had it checked out and it's working perfectly.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Trump said that the election was rigged and probably a farce. We should take those comments at face value.
Unless you are suggesting he is a liar.
He thought it was rigged. If so, it was rigged against him and he still won. Not so hard when the opposition candidate is a shitshow like Hillary.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
"I'm really beginning to feel that Trump is no revolutionary at all" Just beginning? Really? Holy. shit.
I know, right? I admittedly held out some faint hopes up until his victory in the primary. So maybe he still had to suck up a little to the Republican establishment to stand a chance... fine fine, I get that. But he didn't wink at us at all, he didn't exhibit any perception or intelligence or guile, he just kept up his same stream of consciousness babble as the alliances based on either cronyism (loyalty rewards) or efforts to sooth the Republican establishment/base began to pile up. In a way I do sort of pity the former Bernie supporters who voted for him out of desperation, but holy shit were they not paying attention.
He thought it was rigged.
More: he said it was rigged.
If so, it was rigged against him and he still won.
The result is invalid either way, because we don't know off the bat how the rigging impacted the result.
The best course of action is a thorough investigation and, if Trumps allegations are true, a new election held. If he lied, he can be indicted or impeached and removed from office.
While it's technically accurate, it's somewhat misleading. Given that Sanders' first marriage was in 1964, which was when Khrushchev ran the country, one would have thought that they were being serenaded by Semichastny (the head of the KGB at the time). In fact, Sanders was in the Soviet Union in 1988 after his 2nd marriage and visited there on official business, even though he funnily called it a honeymoon: that changes things a lot b'cos this was Gorbachev's glastnostized Soviet Union, not the Krushchev/Brezhnev era one
Spotted the wumao.
I have no need to explain anything. None of your claims about Clinton had anything to do with my argument about these two individuals being punished for breaking the law, not for "opposing the party-in-power's narrative."
You, on the other hand, have a great deal of explaining to do. You make a number of unsubstantiated claims about Clinton with no evidence to back them up. It is your job, not mine, to provide evidence. But for what it's worth, I do know that the claim about Clinton paying agitators to attend Trump rallies has been debunked as a fake-news story. I suspect your other claims are just as bogus.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The best course of action is a thorough investigation and, if Trumps allegations are true, a new election held. If he lied, he can be indicted or impeached and removed from office.
lol
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Wait, shouldn't that be "US presidents get a Nobel prize *without ever* doing anything worthy of a Nobel prize"?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?