Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder arrested in London

[OttoVonBismarck]

Interesting to note all of Assange's tedious nonsense resulted in a 12 year loss of liberty—5 years longer than Chelsea Manning received (and she was the primary perpetrator.)

I'm fairly unconvinced he played this very intelligently—his case was complicated enough Federal prosecutors would have been pretty likely to offer a plea deal had he just accepted extradition 12 years ago and fought his case here. And unlike Manning he also had some chance of actually beating the charges at trial.

[DGuller]

Interesting to note all of Assange's tedious nonsense resulted in a 12 year loss of liberty—5 years longer than Chelsea Manning received (and she was the primary perpetrator.)

I'm fairly unconvinced he played this very intelligently—his case was complicated enough Federal prosecutors would have been pretty likely to offer a plea deal had he just accepted extradition 12 years ago and fought his case here. And unlike Manning he also had some chance of actually beating the charges at trial.

It would've been a lot harder to be a Russian asset sinking Hillary from the prison, though.

[Sheilbh]

Slightly surprised to see so many senior Australian Labor politicians crowding in on his return home.

By all means apply pressure diplomatically and lobby for this - but can't help but feel that associating yourself with Assange may not be a wise idea in the long-run (especially given Australia's stance on, say, China, Russia, the Western alliance etc)...

[Valmy]

Feel like this was a win. He agreed to plead guilty and voluntarily locked himself up for years.

Anyway go back to Australia and stay there.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Slightly surprised to see so many senior Australian Labor politicians crowding in on his return home.

By all means apply pressure diplomatically and lobby for this - but can't help but feel that associating yourself with Assange may not be a wise idea in the long-run (especially given Australia's stance on, say, China, Russia, the Western alliance etc)...

He has a disturbingly strong following amongst the "America bad!" and anit-surveillance-state leftists, who seem to be willfully blind to anything he has done besides releasing information leaked out about things the US was doing but should not have been.  Same with Snowden.  Not sure how much that stance plays into Australian Labor's base, though.

[Valmy]

Slightly surprised to see so many senior Australian Labor politicians crowding in on his return home.

By all means apply pressure diplomatically and lobby for this - but can't help but feel that associating yourself with Assange may not be a wise idea in the long-run (especially given Australia's stance on, say, China, Russia, the Western alliance etc)...

He has a disturbingly strong following amongst the "America bad!" and anit-surveillance-state leftists, who seem to be willfully blind to anything he has done besides releasing information leaked out about things the US was doing but should not have been.  Same with Snowden.  Not sure how much that stance plays into Australian Labor's base, though.

I mean he does among the similarly minded right-wing people as well.