Julian Assange free?

Sure ... almost every war is a crime, except defensive war against an aggressor ... and war crimes occur in every war. I also do not deny that the VC and the NVA have done serious crimes and massacres ... however, over the years I have had to learn that Americans in particular like to point the finger at others and their crimes, but also like their own crimes to ignore, hide, forget or even deny to be true.

 

If that is the case then how come the Napalm Girl so often appears in Viet War films,
but to my knowledge not a single video of the Hue massacre?
Read this last week - three Japanese surrender, hands up, to the Americans. But the
middle Jap soldier bent over, and on his back was a machine gun strapped. The other
two open fire, killing their American wannabe-captors. You can imagine how Americans
felt about capturing Japanese after this.
To me one of the great crimes of that war was the fire bombing of Tokyo.

 

You know the movie "Full Metal Jacket"? The massacre in Hue was also part of it!
And the massacre was also often enough reported in US and international media too, as well in many documentations about Vietnam War. I know no serious documentation which hided it etc.
The general problem then and still today is that America's credibility was ruined because of the countless lies of the US in this war. And nobody believed the South Vietnamese regime and its dictator any more than they did the North Vietnamese regime.

As for WWII in the Pacific ... you are aware that the Japanese Empire never signed the Geneva Convention in question ... apart from the completely different culture of Japan, which for example results in a war that any surrendering is as shameful as child abuse?
We can now discuss endless whether this justified this and all the other crimes of the Japanese like handling of the POW etc. or not, or whether the USA must also adhere to the Geneva Convention in such a case or not ... we will not achieve a final result in the discussion, even if I largely agree with you that they were Japanese crimes, as well that the air raid on Tokyo with estimated 100,000 killed civilians in one bombing was a crime.

Unfortunately, national origin and propaganda often play a role in such discussions, not objectivity and facts. The Germans, for example, were accused of the air raids on Warsaw in 1939 and on Rotterdam in 1940 as war crimes. Just ... on closer inspection, they weren't war crimes. Warsaw was defended as a fortress with about 100,000 Polish soldiers defendening the city and was therefore a legitimate target for air raids ... in Rotterdam there was heavy fighting too and then there was bad luck, because when the bombing was called off and to be stopped due to the willingness of the Dutch to capitulate, the bombers could no longer by radio be reached to stop etc. Also the first air raid on London was an accident by bad navigation at night and not deliberately targeting civilians.
This is by no means now no glossing over the indisputable Nazi crimes ... but in reality some things were different from how it is / was presented.
And this depends also to the allies too at least, as well in all wars at least.

 

Trump does not have an ounce of honor or dignity in his entire body. If he did, as Tulsi and so many others have urged him, he would pardon Assange, Snowden and Manning.

 

The courts in most of the world serve protect a corrupt ruling class.

 

The courts then are not working as they should in a democracy.

 

No, they are working more like one would see in an oligarchy. It looks like an oligarchy because it is an oligarchy.

 

Kangaroo justice ends in anarchy.

NBC Chicago, Mass Exoneration Milestone: Judge Tosses More Convictions in Chicago Cop Scandal, NBC News, December 15, 2020.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/mass-exoneration-milestone-for-cook-county/2395486/

 

You use a thousand words to say nothing. Vietnam and the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia from the Communist Khmer Rouge. Vietnam was the "good guy". Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are independent nations thanks to the Vietnamese liberating the region from the French Imperialism. The Vietnamese were the good guys .... so where is your claim of Vietnamese imperialism? Nowhere.

Here is John Pilger with Julian Assange in London. Is he "comfortable with the symbolism"?

Jane Fonda wasn't a Communist. The U.S. was an illegal occupation in Vietnam and all she wanted was to stop the war and bring the American boys home. She was a huge influence and helped to end the war.

You must be the least knowledgeable member of this forum.

 

I don't understand what you are saying.

Tell me more.

 

Maybe he planned on pardoning them at a later date but is now butt-hurt over the election and doesn't give a ****.

 

What democracy? The fake WMD's in Irak, Bush Baby Junior's refusal to have the "shoe tosser" pardoned, and the UN's failure to bring Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to trial should have convinced the world that democracy does not exist.

 

You're right, but recall that in April 2012, under the leadership of Francis Boyle, law professor in Illinois, and in accordance with international protocol, Bush & Co were tried and convicted in absentia of war crimes by a court in Malaysia.

Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia (foreignpolicyjournal.com)

 

Yes, I have been aware of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld being classified as WAR CRIMINALS in both Malaysia and in Switzerland but this is the first time I've seen any of the details. I have now tried to access the UN's Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects with no luck and it appears to be "Restricted" or "Strictly Confidential". Have you tried to find the registry with their names listed? It would be great to find it, copy it, and paste it whenever needed.

 

I left a big quote from Craig Murray. They were expecting he would be released on Wed. He can put it better than me

cont'd at link
The Assange Verdict: What Happens Now – Consortiumnews

I think the important point is not just that she usually tells people if she is not going to give them bail but that she made the point that the Supreme Court had never gone against a ruling made on medical grounds which was the reason she said she did not think he had a reason to abscond and so it looked like he would get bail. By the Wednesday she had completely changed and one of her reasons for refusing bail was that he might abscond. It does look like she may have been spoken to.

I can't remember where I read it but it was one of the medical assessments where they said he suffered from Aspergers. I found it interesting. I have not known what his political position was and of course most of the people who I am aware of who support him are left wing. I did not know until a couple of days ago that he had actually moved to the right. Political views are very much drawn from your values and because of that they do not usually change all that much unless someone has been pretending they think one way to fit in somewhere. That got me wondering why he had moved to the right and I thought possibly people he was speaking to regularly or possibly just because his mental health was suffering. I know I did read that he belonged to some weird commune as a kid. I don't know if having Aspergers has anything to do with it but he defo should not be going for the rest of his life to a US jail if that is the case and he should be let out of this one pronto.

 

I seem to remember that the Judges husband was in the military and had some connection to something Julian had uncovered. People were trying to get her removed because of vested interests but I think she just stayed.

You are right though about most of the west being run now by Oligarchs. I had been impressed by English Law in that it refused to go with Politicians like May in saying councils could not be involved in BDS because according to the courts that is a political decision and we are a democracy so in that they did act as they should. They also acted as they should when Johnson was trying to shut Parliament down. I have found this very dissappointing of the English Courts.

How Julian has been treated has to be a sign of the UK as well as the US moving towards authoritarianism and losing its freedom. Began with Thatcher and removing most Unions. Went on to people believing that their vote would do nothing so no point in voting and now Governments can do pretty much what they want because people have neither the time, nor the knowledge nor the interest to know what is happening!

 

Sadly I don't think most people even care enough for that. The Leader of the Labour Party had basically all the papers saying lies and distortions of the truth about him. Britain is certainly not a democracy but people just do not know. They think a vote every 5 years means they are.

 

There can be no question that she has a bug in her ear.

Tell you the truth ... I have some experience with Asperger's sufferers and I have always felt that Assange displays some mild characteristics of it. This is what makes me hesitant to say he's arrogant. He has a shyness about him as though he's not certain if those around him are in agreement or if he's expressing himself well. Asperger's makes it hard for them to know what is the normal way to behave so they do what they can to "imitate" the behaviour of others. They know what they want to say but they are unsure of how to say it. It's a sort of introverted quality that they try their best to mask or overcome. I sense it in Julian.

 

South Vietnam was an ally of the US, the same as Thailand is.
The USA never sent troops into Nth Viet, and I grew up being
told endlessly, Trump style, 'there are no North Vietnamese
soldiers in Sth Vietnam.' Only there were, and in the final invasion,
in violation of the peace treaty, these soldiers emerged from Cambodia.

Yes, Fonda isn't a Communist - but she helped the Communist cause.
Bit like saying you aren't Nazi but you pose in front of picture of Hitler.
After 1975, in a genuine domino effect, Nth Viet controlled the whole of
Indo China - with client Communist states in Laos and Cambodia. Only
the 'Cambodian Communist Party' broke ranks. Nth Viet made no issue
of the massacres in Cambodia (they were doing a bit of it themselves)
until Pol Pot began attacking Vietnam.

Ever notice, in these post 1975 wars, there were NO PROTESTERS
in USA or Europe - this was the second Cambodia war, invasion of Sth
Viet, and the first and second Chinese war. More died in these than in the
whole of the so-called 'Vietnam war.'

The North Viet were the good guys - they removed all journalists from
the South before they cleaned up. What was that figure? Something like
one hundred thousand murdered in 1975-1976?

 

Thanks, I learned something from your post.

 

I realize that you know nothing.

 

Yeah, just a bunch of facts.

ps America understood early on that the Viet Communist Party had seized control of the
nationalist movement in Vietnam. It's basically what Lenin told them to do in
his book 'What is to be done."
It wasn't until the mid sixties before most South Viets figured this out for themselves.
This is why there was no uprising in the South during the Tet offensive.
There was a saying after 1975 in the South, concerning their 'liberators', "Don't
listen to what they say, watch what they do." That sums up Communism.

 

Why is the Vietnam war being discussed in a thread on Julian Assange?

 

I think it comes down to the mentality of the hard left.
The use of 'facts' versus 'truth' has a lot to say about Assange and others like John Pilger.

 

and I think it comes from you and from you always bringing threads off topic. See Rule 5