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Assange Requests Asylum In Ecuador
david.emery writes "Julian Assange, his appeals in the United Kingdom having run out, today went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to request asylum from his pending extradition to Sweden to face questioning for 'unlawful coercion and sexual misconduct including rape.'"
I am not entirely sure what the UK government would do if Ecuador granted asylum in this case. It would certainly be harmful to diplomatic relations if the UK refused to honor the asylum i.e. refused to allow Assange to enter the Ecuadorian embassy or travel to Ecuador. Maybe the UK government is willing to pay that prive to send Assange to Sweden; I am not sure what is worth more, Assange being questioned by Swedish police or diplomatic relations with Ecuador. I suspect the latter; the UK has little to lose from sending Assange to Ecuador, and if the Swedes and Ecuadorians have a diplomatic fallout over it, the UK can at least stay in the clear.
Palm trees and 8
Yes, some of us are really that naive.
Sweden is very liberal about the protection of women and what should constitute sexual abuse. He was a big name, and he broke the law to the point he used his influence to do things that would get other men arrested too. And then instead of answering the charges, he fled the country. Over something that might get him $1000 in fines and told not to come back to the country.
In most countries, what he did would be considered douchebaggery of the highest proportions. In Sweden, they find it criminal...even if it is pretty much a slap on the wrist. When a big name does it, they need to make an example...and the example is he pays a fine much smaller than he has wasted in lawyers so far and goes home. He could have taken care of this months ago, but he wanted to stay in the public eye and pretend that he was oppressed. I wish I could fuck one woman, convince her to drop me off at another woman's home. Fuck her without a condom after telling her I was wearing one, and then go back to the first and pull my condom off halfway through and brag about it...while having half the world look at me as if I'm a political prisoner for doing so...and probably fuck another dozen women in the process.
Gotta hand it to him...he knows how to play others. Are you so naive to think that a man so skilled at manipulation isn't manipulating you?
(BTW I think the US would LOVE to have him in custody, but we all know that he committed no crimes in the US. Treason is not a crime if you aren't a citizen...regardless of what Republicans would like to have you believe)
Way to drink the kool-aid. That or you are astro turfing.
He's not even being charged by the women involved anymore. The women suddenly wanted to charge him AFTER they were approached by a swedish prosecutor. They later attempted to drop the charges, were told they couldn't, eventually succeeded in dropping the charges, only to have the charges somehow re-instituted by a swedish prosecutor with known high up US ties under pressure from the swedish government.
This is all as reported by the SWEDISH Press. Stop fucking astro-turfing to attempt to cover this shit up. This is the most blatant abuse of power by the US over its allies I've ever seen.
If he's not in some safe place, he's toast. People died because of his actions and he's a marked man. He won't last long out on his own.
It will look like an accident or suicide, but it will happen.
From what I understand, the term 'rape' is very broad in this country. To the point, people that have been actually raped elsewhere would feel violated.
The idea that one can be 'raped' after the fact of consensual sex doesn't make sense to me, but it isn't my culture. I'll use logic to show you how they feel about this (or at least how I think they understand this). Rape is any unwanted sexual activity. Would they have wanted to have sex with the man either woman knew that he was lying about being monogamous? It sounds like they both would say no. Would they want to have unprotected sex with someone that wasn't monogamous? Far bigger no. The fact that he had unprotected sex AND lied about who all he was sleeping with caused these women to reassess their willingness to have sex with him. If they had known the truth, they wouldn't have been cool with it.
Have you ever dated someone that you realized was a horrible person and lied about everything AFTER the fact? I have. Do I consider myself raped because of this? No. If I would have known everything about this person, I might not have had sex with her. At the time I was having sex with her, I really liked it and I told all my friends how cool she was. Apparently in some countries, you can change your mind about this and then consider it a form of rape.
Apparently, again from what I understand, this is considered a very low form of rape and is punishable by a fine and nothing more.
I don't know. I do feel that if you are a guest in another country, you follow the laws even if they are stupid -- or that you don't know about them.
That said, I agree with what Wikileaks has done...and I just wish it didn't have Assange as the head. Maybe they couldn't have done what they did without a douchebag like Assange in charge. I don't know. The biggest thing I believe is that I have faith in the Swedish gov't for this, and think that he should go back and answers the 'charges' (in quotes because he hasn't legally been charged yet).
And maybe a little part of me wants to see if the US would get him in custody because I think this would make the Occupy Wallstreet protests seem tame in comparison. I don't think we would...too much political ramifications for it...but if we did, I think it would be nearly unanimous that the youth and anyone that is even slightly liberal would rise up and do something about it. So maybe I'm hoping that this happens just to see actual real political change...not a black liberal that is in practice more conservative than Reagan, vs. a white conservative complaining about how unconstitutional it is to provide health care to everyone in a way that mirrors his own laws and policies in his own state 10 years before that he authored himself.
He was given permission to leave Sweden. So he did. Then something weird and as yet unexplained happened and another prosecutor decided he was guilty of something without including the two women the original questioning had been about.
I've never heard of this "have to be in Sweden to be questioned by a prosecutor" before. Presumably neither Assange nor his lawyers have as well. The prosecutor was asked several times to come to London during the last 450+ days of house arrest but refused without saying why.
If a prosecutor is enough of a "judicial authority" (not in this country they aren't) to authorise a EAW then the Swedish embassy is Swedish enough to be a venue for questioning.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Julian Assange has not been charged with any crime in Sweden. There is a request for extradition to question him in relation to allegations of having sex without wearing a condom, which is in itself dubious as extraditions have in the past only been granted for convicted criminals. To extradite someone for questioning is a world first. And top pretend that a country like the USA has nothing to do with it is naive to say the least. The USA uses financial and political pressure to force countries that cannot invade to strip down and bend over. They even kill people arbitrarily without due process! If I were Julian Assange, I would have been running long ago.
I'm in New Zealand where the US FBI is getting the NZ Government to charge the owner of MegaUpload 'Kim DotcCom' on their behalf. There is nothing wrong with this, it is part of NZs responsibilities. However, the FBI have been duplicating the MegaUpload harddrives while in New Zealand despite not being permitted to.
In short, the FBI broke New Zealand law. Maybe the US would respect Ecuadorean law if Assange were there, maybe they wouldn't. The USA does more good things than people give them credit for, and I personally am pretty pro-US, but the evidence is the US flouts international laws and norms when it suits them.
If I were Assange then seeking asylum is possibly not a bad thing (issuing an Interpol warrant for the charges he faced is pretty extreme - it shows the lengths that the Powers That Be will go to in order to silence this whistle-blower [he didn't report anything false, just made duplicity publicly known]).