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Julian Assange To Be Extradited To Sweden
An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost his challenge against extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault. The 39-year-old Australian computer expert, who has infuriated the US government by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables on his website, is wanted in relation to claims made by two WikiLeaks volunteers last August."
Wikileaks popularized leaks, as Napster did p2p. Legal or not to authorities, the people have approved and adopted it, and it cannot be squashed so easily, short of a legal massacre. There is no going back, the genie is out of the bottle, the cat out of the bag, change is here, either side with progress and change, or with the establishment and status quo. Assange being prosecuted and imprisoned will encourage people, release him and the same will happen.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
It's all about buying time for the United States to attempt to push the SHIELD bill through Congress. Right now, Assange is an Australian Citizen who has committed no crime in the United States or in the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth of Nations. While in Sweden, Assange will be incarcerated or on bail while he awaits and undergoes trial, a process which could take years. This means that Assange will not be able to leave Sweden for a country which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States while undergoing trial in Sweden: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition#Extradition_treaties_or_agreements for a list of them. This would give the United States time either pass the bill, or find *something* they can stick on Assange. (While Assange is no mobster, remember that they got Capone on tax evasion. The powers that be don't always care about *how* you become guilty, just that you are.)
I'm sure they would have preferred to keep him in the UK - they are the provincial spear carrier of the United States, to use Chomsky's words -, but he committed no crime there, and they are trying to make this look as "legal" as possible. The last thing they want to do is make a huge scene over this, or make a martyr out of Assange through "unjust law" (although that still may happen) and spawn copycats. Thus the die down in press on Assange since his first denial of bond; until now of course.
Don't be surprised if the next thing you see on FOX News is Glenn Beck extolling the virtues of the SHIELD Act, while on CNN you have a "balanced debate" about "national security" and the "continuing need" for "tighter safeguards against terrorism".
Possibly the U.S. government is angry about that, too. They just can't say it aloud.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You do know that the US has a similar extradition treaty with the UK? If the US really wanted him they could just go after him in Britain.
After the fiasco of the Enron three being extradited to Texas and charged for crimes done in the UK against a UK bank then sentenced to jail over something that isn't even a crime in the UK, it is not likely to happen again. It is also worth noting that it is a staggeringly unfair, one-way extradition policy set up by a previous government and is likely to be repealed if challenged, especially in another political farce, double-dipped with political corruption like this whole Assange business is.
In 50 years, when all the documents are declassified showing the scummy shit going on behind the scenes on this, I'll be sure and send them along.
But for now, you just keep believing it's a coincidence that a guy who hadn't had a single criminal offense in 39 years (aside from some minor hacking stuff) suddenly turned into a rapist a few weeks after embarrassing the most powerful government in the world. You keep believing that it was just chance that two women willing to press charges against him for unrelated crimes both met him within 24 hours of each other. You keep believing that Daniel Domscheit-Berg isn't a plant who's part of a larger effort to discredit Assange by any means necessary, or that these bullshit charges aren't a part of that effort either. You keep believing that some of us didn't see this discrediting campaign coming even as Assange was stepping off that plane in Sweden.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You're assuming of course that Sweden will follow the letter of the law.
It's perfectly possible Sweden will just ignore it's obligations and ship him to the US anyway. Why? Because a nice lucrative deal for their corporations in the US will be worth far more to them than a bit of fall out in Europe which will result in perhaps a few bullish exchanges, and then will be quickly forgotten.
That's really all the US has to offer Sweden- something to make it worthwhile for them, and as Sweden is such a small country, it's not too hard to do something that'll make a big impact. A $20bn trade deal might not be enough to sway countries like the UK or Germany into dodging their international obligations, but to Sweden it would've been enough to completely negate their annual economic contraction during the recent financial turmoil and then given them some growth on top.
Two-thirds of the US population lives in the "border zone". I guess it's reasonable for 200 million Americans to be subject to warrantless searches. http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/fact-sheet-us-constitution-free-zone
When a country has decided to abandon (when expedient) the legal principles which give its legitimacy, all kinds of instability ensues.
I'm not surprised that people are left to speculate on what the US might do, because the US has recently and clearly demonstrated itself to be capable of gross and persistent violations of human rights (water boarding is torture) of due process (extraordinary rendition) and of deception, equivocation and spinning like a big old ferris wheel to justify these transgressions.
You can't really blame OP for fearing the worst when it comes to the USA's behaviour in these matters.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt