Beckel has always been a hack; I’ve known him as Cal Thomas’s partner in a series of tag-team columns in which he always ends up conceding. And now he’s a Fox News Democrat, with all that implies.
But this is just beyond the pale. Watch Beckel and his Fox News colleagues call for the blood of Julian Assange. It’s disgusting and uncivilized.
"A dead man can’t leak stuff," Beckel said. "This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so…there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch."
Why isn’t he for the death penalty? He’s for simply shooting the guy outside the rule of law!
I think there’s a reason I never watch Fox News.
He may be a “Democrat,” but he’s certainly not a liberal.
Yes a traitor. To the US. Of which he is not a citizen.
…sigh….
You know, I’ve made the mistake several times now of convincing myself that FOX News couldn’t possibly be as bad as the comedian-pundits are making it out to be, that I really should at least try to watch some of the actual shows and see for myself.
Every time… Ugh. I’ll never understand how anyone capable of rational thought could possibly listen to these people ‘straight’. And they supposedly have how many regular viewers? Aarrrh…
Isn’t calling for the death of a person in public illegal?
Even if Assange were a US citizen and thus legally capable of committing treason against the US, what he has done is not treason. The Founders were very careful to define “treason” in the Constitution for exactly that reason. Article III, Section 3 in its entirety:
Blowing the whistle on government corruption, lies and hypocricy is not treason.
@Ibis3 #4 – Only if such a call poses an immediate and direct threat to human life. Unfortunately, case law on this is pretty clear.
Some Americans sure are fucked up. This dude thinks that an Australian can commit treason against America, and that calling for illegal killing is somehow an okay thing to do. The concept of rule of law goes right out the window as soon as he get pissed off. What a slime bucket. Has anybody seen a moral compass lying around? This dude has lost his, if he ever had one.
Disgraceful, but not new – it’s from July 2010.
A politically motivated call for a murder. Stochastic terrorism in action.
he has broken every law of the United States.
My god, has he been jaywalking, too? THE NERVE!!
*blink*
What… the fuck.
What the fuck?
Four bags of shit in suits, pontificating about shooting someone, hands under their chins as if there were brains in their heads.
What a fucking travesty.
Apologies in advance for beating on this dead horse but if a muslim dude has said exactly the same thing, the wingnutters would be all over him exclaiming that this is evidence of the islamic savagery and what not!
That’s hardly a dead horse, pramod. Beat on!
What the fucking fuck? Since when did the definition of “treason” become “foreign citizen who does something the US government doesn’t like?” Because apparently there’s a huge number of traitors out there.
Wait a second. We finally have an explanation for Iraq. We went there to illegally shoot some traitors.
Why “unfortunately”? A law prohibiting this kind of speech would prohibit speech calling for, for instance, violent overthrow of the government, or any other abstract calls for violence, all of which is protected speech. As it should be, in my opinion.
As noted upthread, it is amusing to hear some wingnut in the US pontificate about Assange committing ‘treason’ against America when he isn’t a US citizen…
… Or rather it would be, if some of them weren’t in earnest. Sure, most of these gits aren’t even aware that Assange is Australian and simply assume that he is American, but others are quite aware of his nationality, and are quite comfortable with the idea of expanding the concept of ‘treason’ against the US to the point where any person, whether an American citizen or not, anywhere in the world who says things that the US religious Right don’t like would be subject to American laws on treason and thus to the death penalty.
And they wonder when people acuse the US of having a neo-colonial attiude…
Another point from the video that struck me was that Beckle and at least one other panel member both talked about avoiding any extradition process in order to send some kind of special forces hit squad to assassinate Assange on UK sovereign territory, the implication being that it would either be done without the knowledge or consent of the British government, or that any protestations from the UK would be ignored. The assassination by exposure to Polonium 210 of Alexander Litvinenko was mentioned as some kind of example.
I think it safe to say that any such action would not exactly go down very well over on this side of the pond. Mitt Romney mocking the Olympic preparations is one thing; murder sanctioned by a foreign power, and enacted by that power’s military or intelligence personnel, is quite another.
It is hardly the way to treat one’s allies – if you wish to retain their support in any case. Such action, of it came to light, would make it politically untenable for any UK government to allow British armed forces to remain in support of US troops in any current conflict, nor for Britain to provide any significant military or logistic support to the US for years or even decades to come, and it would certainly make many of America’s other allies somewhat nervous of being too closely associated with the US, to say the least.
Now, while the UK’s actual combat capacity is insignificant set against that of the US, and from a strictly military point of view the Americans don’t really need us or their other allies at all, in terms of the political viability of taking action without appearing to be sliding back into the bad old days of oblivious Bush-era unilateralism, such an outcome would be disasterous for the US.
Still, I don’t suppose that such considerations factor much into the nationalistic chest-beating sessions that were then (and doubtless still are now) going on over at Faux News.
“I don’t believe in the death penalty, but extra judicial murder sounds awfully swell.” Where did they find this dbag?
@researchtobedone: not only jaywalking, it means he has crossed the Minnesota state line with a duck on his head!
Those morons “think” exposing crimes *is* a crime. Why does it not surprise that they don’t know Assange can’t be guilty of treason?
@David Marjanović #11 – Yup. The precedents I’m familiar with were set back in the late 80s and early 90s, as the anti-abortion movement was picking up steam. Leaders of the movement were openly calling for the murder of abortion providers and their extremist rhetoric landed them in court. By and large, the courts held that hateful speech, even if calling for the death of an individual or group, is protected.
The exception is when such speeech represents a direct threat — someone sends a threatening letter, telephone call or email stating an intent to kill him or have the person murdered — or the speech has a reasonable chance of presenting an immediate threat — inciting a mob to go to someone’s house or place of business with the intent of letting the mob do violence.
Fox News: Where morality goes to die.
Julian Assange IS a scumbag who deserves immense dislike, but the WikiLeaks stuff isn’t why.
What I really want to ask is why Assange is avoiding the charges he’s facing in Sweden. If he’s truly innocent of the rape charges, then what does he have to fear from going on trial there? I mean is there REALLY any guarantee that Sweden would co-operate with the United States in regards to extraditing him?
By all means, the stuff said against him in the video is ridiculous, but if there’s any truth to the notion that he’s a misogynistic fuckbag who rapes women, then he needs to grow a pair and face the charges he’s accused of in Sweden already.
As if having a pair was a prerequisite for responsibility….
I have not followed this very closely but if I was Assange and with just my own understanding of how things happen I would not go to Sweden either I would just not trust anyone and stay where I was. He has I believe offered to answer the charges from where he is but they have refused so he stays where he is. Dose anyone really think that if he is ever out in the open he will not end up in a U.S. jail?
I will not often watch the fox clips posted here I can only take so much
jonmilne —
I don’t know the truth, but the Assange rape case isn’t quite that clear. Certainly, if he is guilty of rape or coercion, he is a scumbag and has some serious mental problems. And even if he isn’t guilty of rape, he seems to have been swimming in murky waters, too murky for someone aspiring to be the good guy.
However, there is some credibility to his version of the situation too. First, the alleged victims themselves have dropped their claims. There seems to be no DNA evidence after all, although previously the Swedish police claimed so. Also, Assange was interrogated in Sweden when the incident happened, and consequently set free. Later, he has been willing to be interrogated again by Swedish officials, on the condition that he’s not demanded to return to Sweden, but interrogated in England or via Skype.
And whether true on not, Sweden does have a reputation for being ”in USA’s pocket” and for shipping people to CIA whenever requested. I’m a Scandinavian myself, and I have no doubt that the officials of our small Nordic countries would obediently bend over the minute the big boys of the mighty USA put some pressure on them. Why wouldn’t they, because Wikileaks has embarrassed the Swedish government, too.
If I were innocent but accused of a crime by a foreign country, even a traffic violation, I would certainly be very reluctant to return there. And in the light of such explicit death threats, I find it understandable that Assange doesn’t trust that justice will be done.
Jonmilne, #23:
There isn’t a guarantee that they would not, which is reason enough to be scared. And Sweden already has a history of cooperating with the US on such matters. Meanwhile Assange has said, his lawyers have said, the Ecuadorian government that granted him asylum has said, that he would still go to Sweden if a solid guarantee were given.
This is actually what the situation in the Ecuadorian embassy is all about now.
The video that PZ posted is two years old. There have been others who said similar things. People in the US congress have said Wikileaks is guilty of espionage and terrorism and have made clear that they want Assange prosecuted. All of this has contributed to the current situation around Assange.
“Thanks for the go-ahead to assassinate the traitor who ‘outed’ Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak. Too bad he already died a natural death.”
Not this again!
This is a good place to start examining just how scared Assange should be of onward extradition and why Sweden won’t give such guarantees.
As for the idea that Assange is a traitor – it isn’t clear that he could charged as such if he was a US citizen. It certainly isn’t clear what charge could be brought against him as it is.
The idea of executing him? That is appalling, but also enough to keep him from the US.
The idea of executing him? That is appalling, but also enough to keep him from the US.
I will laugh long and hard if Assanange actually USES this idiotic person’s idle threats as evidence in favor of needing assylum.
:)
I think it would be just perfect, even if just a stunt.
he should totally do that.
Source?
If we played politics his way, he wouldn’t like it at all. Imean, there’s plenty of rope and a lamp post somewhere with his name on it, if it came to that.
People [sic] like him must live like vampires. Not doing anything so fashionable as drinking blood in a sexy manner, but avoiding the light of day and never looking into a mirror. No doubt crosses don’t have any effect upon them, being symbols of hypocrisy and oppression.
good question; I can find nothing suggesting that the accusers have dropped their claims.
I DID find a story about the DNA claims though:
http://rt.com/news/assange-condom-no-dna-277/
I await a response from the lickspittle, lackadaisical, sycophantic Australian government to an American wacko calling for the assassination of an Australian citizen. I am not holding my breath though
I await the response from the lick-spittle, lackadaisical sycophantic Australian government to this American wacko’s call for the assassination of an Australian citizen. I am not holdong my breath though. I think we are more likely to hear a complaint from the Ecuadorian Embassy about the possibility of a US drone strike on its embassy in London. Naturally the Brits will say nothing. After all the conservatives in power still regard Australian’s as a bunch of convicts.
Looks like Lord Cornwallis was right when he called American revolutionaries a bunch of terrorists.
Fox news is scum, and it’s not surprising that the Democrat invited to it is also an axe-wielding throwback… but then, the democrats haven’t exactly held a strong stand on freedoms involved in this matter. We still have Manning behind bars, after all.
Not as much as him raping two women and acting like king of the world for it.
He was right when he said it too. That doesn’t mean they were wrong, but the Meriken revolutionaries actually did intimidate loyalists and british civil servants through fear of lethal retribution i.e. terrorism.
I swear, if this guy were to threaten me this way, I’d be on his doorstep the next day and demand he explain why I shouldn’t kill him right that second.
I await a response from the lickspittle, lackadaisical, sycophantic Australian government to an American wacko calling for the assassination of an Australian citizen. I am not holding my breath though
good thing you didn’t. I think this Beckel speech was from a couple years back.
I don’t recall any outrage from the OZ govt. at the time, either.
Not as much as him raping two women and acting like king of the world for it.
allegedly.
You would kill him for legally exercising his right of free speech?
look closer, tom.
that’s NOT what he said.
Bitches ain’t shit, I know. *Eyeroll*
Bitches ain’t shit, I know. *Eyeroll*
it’s an issue of what the courts call it, not supporting rapists.
but, keep going, convince me you’re an utter twit.
@ 41
I see what he said, I just wondered if he would kill him. As an aside, while Beckel’s speech is protected, the demand on the doorstep is almost certainly not protected speech.
Courts are obligated to neutrality, and to presuming innocence. You are not, unless you’re a juror.
Rutee,
You couldn’t have misunderstood Ichthyic more if you had tried. In any case, there are no formal charges against Assange of any sort from anywhere, as far as I can make out.
In my view, this is a political witch hunt. I’m not claiming that Assange is faultless. It is not necessary for him to be faultless to warrant protection from the powers that be.
Ichthyic
yeah – nothing made the news here at all about it AFAIK. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’d like to think that’s because everyone here knows to ignore everything that comes out of “Fox !News”.
If it had of happened more recently, ABC’s ‘Planet America’ might of picked up on it.
Is he trying to quibble over the precise charge that will be brought? Because that’s really stupid to do.
I’ll readily concede that for a rape trial to be pursued with vigor lends the indication that there is a political motivation. Why should I care, exactly?
Is he trying to quibble over the precise charge that will be brought? Because that’s really stupid to do.
FFS, you’ve already hung the man I see.
I had no idea the trial already took place and you were on the jury.
my apologies.
So I was right the first time, then? Dunno why you complained.
Seriously now, do you actually need someone to tell you all the ways in which rape trials are about dragging the victims through the mud to discredit the charges? There’s no other ground to say ‘alleged’ than to say ‘I don’t believe the victims’. What they described is rape. It isn’t always treated as the legal offense (‘Once consent is given, it can not be revoked under any circumstances and what is this conditional consent’ has made its way into legal opinions), but it is rape.
So I was right the first time, then?
no, I was.
Seriously now, do you actually need someone to tell you
nope.
I do not need to be lectured by those who decide for themselves who is, and who is not, guilty based on their perceptions and assumptions, instead of actual evidence.
fuck the fucking hell off.
you are indeed a twit.
alleged is just that, the accusers allege to have been raped. you read what you want into that, and THAT is your problem, not mine.
no lawyer in their right mind, prosecution OR defense, would pick you to be on a jury.
If you can’t see why that is, I feel sorry for you. You aren’t doing the cause against rape any good at all.
In other words, someone who will believe the victim.
No.
This is true regardless of the fact that I’m willing to hang Assange out to dry, and why does this matter, exactly? I’m not swedish yet.
Really? You’re really going to play the Skeptic Lawyer card?
Briefly: we do have evidence; pre-trial testimony is evidence. It is not out of bounds to believe that testimony —
— it is certainly not a “problem”.
I haven’t followed this closely either, but it seems strange that rape charges suddenly appeared when the U.S. made Assange Public Enemy N°1.
Furthermore, what are the exact charges the U.S. has made or intends to make against Assange? Treason certainly cannot be one of them.
What happened to Ellsberg and Russo for the Pentagon Papers? Nothing! Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said:
“Newspapers, as our editorial said this morning, we’re really a part of history that should have been made available, considerably longer ago. I just didn’t feel there was any breach of national security, in the sense that we were giving secrets to the enemy.”
U.S. district court. Judge Murray Gurfein declined to issue such an injunction, memorably writing, “The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the government’s case by a 6-3 vote. Even if Assange were to be tried in the U.S., it is hard to see what he could be guilty of given court precedents.
@31.Nick Gotts (formerly KG)
I think the Aussie ABC TV Four Corners program episode on Julian Assange and this incident may well have said that or something like it. Was on a month or three ago and vaguely recall them saying something like that.
From what I gathered from there, the women originally were not planning to charge him with rape at all only asking if they could compel Assange to have an STD test. After lengthy questioning (& pressuring?) they perhaps suggested or were persuaded that what had happened was rape and then, maybe wanted to take that back afterwards on further reflection.
Sounds from that doco very much like the prosecution could have been bullying and manipulating the women into pressing charges the women didn’t actually want to see pressed. Maybe.
If possibly unreliable memory serves.
Ultimately, the only people that know what happened are the two women and Julian Assange himself.
I suspect if Assange falls into US custody – or maybe even only Swedish custody where US agents can get at him, he’ll (be made to) suffer a convenient “heart attack” or suchlike and be quietly, not-too clearly assassinated.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG) —
The absence of the DNA evidence has been widely reported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority
http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=795622
However, my claim that the (alleged?) victims dropped their charges seems to be false. My memory served me incorrectly. I may have mixed up the facts because the Swedish prosecution dropped the charges at one point and the Chief prosecutor declared there is no reason to suspect a rape. Later on the case was however reopened by higher authorities.
I apologize for the false claim. But I do consider the case complicated and find plausible that an anti-establishment figure like Assange may have been framed in order to shut down Wikileaks.
So, I will await further information before making my own insignificant judgement and until that, refrain from calling Assange a scumbag.
Assange is a egotistical jerk who is also editor of Wikileaks. The two facts may or may not have anything to do with each other. Personally I think he’s afraid to go to Sweden because he has a justifiable concern about spending years in prison for rape and other crimes. He’s using “the US will extradite me” claim as a smokescreen to keep from facing justice for non-Wikileaks related crimes.
coldthinker,
The absence of DNA from a condom seems to be new information (your wikipedia link dates it 16 September 2012), and also largely irrelevant, as Assange does not contest having intercourse with both complainants.
I haven’t seen any evidence that suggests framing. I have seen Assange making bizarre claims such as:
There’s also things like the following, which he removed from his webpage but which is accessible via the Wayback machine:
Again, there are testimonies from former colleagues about his domineering attitude to women (and for that matter, to men and cats):
But yeah, maybe it’s all a CIA plot. Although why they would want him extradited to Sweden, when the UK has a notoriously one-sided extradition treaty with the US, under which an indictment in the USA is usually enough to secure extradition even of British citizens for actions carried out in the UK, is a little unclear. Cunning double-bluff, perhaps?
lol
And this is the guy who has called literally dozens of people on their “projection”.
Nick Gotts —
Ok, bizarre statements from Assange. They don’t seem like something a nice guy would say, and do diminish his credibility in my eyes.
Well, let’s play this spy game for a while. Apparently he’s known to be promiscuous, but has managed to play it safe in the UK. So there is no case against him there. But there is one in Sweden. Without this Swedish case, the authorities can do nothing to Assange. And now that there is something to hang him with, the British police are after him with considerable force, aren’t they? Of course all rapists should be captured and brought to justice, but doesn’t this huge operation to bring this particular alleged rapist to questioning seem a bit excess? And why would you assume the UK extradites anyone to USA more easily that Sweden? Big bullies like the US have much less trouble pressuring smaller countries like Sweden.
But this is just silly speculation. And anyway, my point wasn’t to prove Assange innocent. I have no way of knowing the truth either way. But on this thread he was called a rapist scumbag, which is a pretty serious accusation. I for one am going to suspend judgement until I know more.
It’s not like they rolled tanks up to the embassy. ‘this operation’ was the normal process of dealing with overseas criminals that Sweden knows where to find.
They don’t really have to bully the UK. The UK government sucks up to the US government on a regular basis, and the extradition treaty permits it already if the USA brings him up on charges.
You mean you know you have nothing and you’re still whinging about this because Assange couldn’t have done it? For Fuck’s Sake.
Nick Gotts wrote:
Of course, there has been no indictment in the US. The DOJ has spent two years trying to unearth a charge they could make stick but the best they seem to be able to come up with is a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. This makes it a crime to transmit “information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” This would be a very tough case to make, and they would probably also have to explain why they weren’t charging the New York Times and all the other newspapers that published the same material.
“We should capture this alleged rapist, like all rapists, and try bring him to justice.”
“Agreed. Should we try to bring the racist scumbag in? That’ll require extradition.”
“Gosh, that seems excessive. How about we ask him to voluntarily handcuff himself and walk himself down to the precinct? Oh, and please. ‘Rapist scumbag’ is not the preferred nomenclature. He has a name, you know.”
Rutee Katreya —
I got nothing, you got nothing. The only difference is I admit it and refrain from making a judgement, while you’re pretending to be a psychic who just knows what happened in Stockholm.
Where did I in any way even hint that Assange “couldn’t have done it”? Of course it’s quite possible he really is guilty. Nick Gotts made a reasonable argument on Assange’s character, and he had a point. But knowing that Assange is considered detrimental by many governments, I still find it plausible that this particular case may be a setup built on his character flaws and promiscuity. Your vulgarity and personal truthiness however brings very little to this conversation.
We don’t know, so we speculate. So sorry our little speculative exchange isn’t acceptable to you.
Because bitches ain’t shit, I know.
…and then go on to exonerate him because conspiracy.
Read: I believe the victim was honest.
What else is the point of this half-assed cloak and dagger shit, but to discredit the case.
Much like many find the presence of Elvis on what is colloquially referred to as ARea 51 plausible.
It isn’t. Rape trials have enough stupid bullshit without dealing with asshats who need to put tinfoil hats away.