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Julian Assange Loses Extradition Appeal
judgecorp writes "Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has lost his appeal in the British High Court against extradition to Sweden on charges of rape. His team has 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court — but would have to show a 'wider issue of public importance' to justify such an appeal. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has suspended publication because it says a 'banking blockade' has cut off its sources of funding."
Assange has, unfortunately, been very bad for wikileaks. I think a lot of people support the idea of wikileaks, but his involvement and his serving as the public face of the group has been a huge problem for the organization. If wikileaks survives (which seems unlikely right now) it will be despite him, not because of him.
Julian, for the good of the cause you've championed, please step down from wikileaks.
If he'd pulled this trick during the cold war, he would have had a mysterious "car accident" in the country late at night with lots of empty bottles and a young male prostitute in the car with him. That .45 caliber wound to his head would have obviously been from the steering wheel, of course.
Now they just set him up on a phony charge for not requesting sexual relations via the Swedish government-approved triplicate form. What's next, claiming he killed someone with secondhand smoke, or arresting him for going over his personal carbon cap?
He wasn't trying to escape justice. He hasn't even been charged yet, he's argued all along that the Swedish prosecution could question him in the UK and then if there's a case for him to be charged they could go ahead and do that and try and extradite him based on the charges.
What he's trying to avoid is being extradited to Sweden without charge, and then being passed on to America. Particularly when in Sweden the case has already become too politicised because even their PM has basically pre-judged him in TV interviews.
Your assumption is simply that he'll get a fair trial in Sweden, but as with the TPB trial which was overseen and the outcome determined by a judge who was a member of a content industry political lobbying organisation, who was good friends with the content industry lawyers in the prosecution and was pushed forward at the behest of American pressure as demonstrated by leaked cables we know that Sweden isn't capable of ensuring that this will be the case.
This isn't a job well done by any measure but I'm not suprised, we in the UK are as much a puppet state of the US as Sweden is. When we can't even protect our own people like Gary McKinnon from extradition to the US even now, with a coalition government in which both leaders previously stated they were against his extradition though it's far from certain he wont be extradited still then frankly, Assange, a foreign citizen, had no hope- that much has been clear all along.
If Sweden just questioned him here in person, or via video link, and then charged him I'd be far more supportive of this, but extradition for a case with massive politicisation in the country trying to extradite when they haven't yet even been willing to produce solid enough evidence to charge him hence based entirely on an accusation? Fuck no, that's not justice.
Would you like to be extradited to a country like China because of nothing more than some random person there claiming you raped them when you went there on holiday despite a complete lack of evidence and no charge being put forward by Chinese authorities? Sure the US isn't China, well, for most people, but for someone like Assange whom the US makes exceptions to it's supposed love of liberty, justice, and free speech, it really is that draconian a situation.
He was also told, and agreed to, make himself available for future questioning if necessary. When it became necessary, he decided to refuse to return for questioning, a warrant was issued, and he began fighting extradition.
Yes, because by then it was apparent that a frame job was in progress. Do you know that one of the two original accusers has already tried to back out?
In other news, I would like you to consider the following question: What do you suppose would happen to the world if, tomorrow, we invented a foolproof way to stop all whistleblowing?
Don't hate Mr. Assange because he has the courage to do what you do not. Be thankful that there is somebody out there who is willing to shine the light into dark castles.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE