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Ecuador To Grant Assange Political Asylum
NSN A392-99-964-5927 writes with news that Ecaudor will grant Julian Assange's request for political asylum. An Ecuador official told The Guardian that the country's president, who earlier indicated his decision would arrive after the Olympic Games, will approve the request Assange made in June.
"Government sources in Quito confirmed that despite the outstanding legal issues Correa would grant Assange asylum – a move which would annoy Britain, the US and Sweden. They added that the offer was made to Assange several months ago, well before he sought refuge in the embassy, and following confidential negotiations with senior London embassy staff. The official with knowledge of the discussions said the embassy had discussed Assange's asylum request. The British government, however, 'discouraged the idea,' the offical said. The Swedish government was also 'not very collaborative,' the official said. The official added: 'We see Assange's request as a humanitarian issue. The contact between the Ecuadorean government and WikiLeaks goes back to May 2011, when we became the first country to see the leaked US embassy cables completely declassified ... It is clear that when Julian entered the embassy there was already some sort of deal. We see in his work a parallel with our struggle for national sovereignty and the democratisation of international relations.'"
Good for Assange and good for Ecuador.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In Ecuador ... asylum seeks you, senor.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ya because no covert intelligence agency anywhere has ever used a Honey trap.....
In Democratic Ecuador the government saves you???
Tomorrow is another day...
Assange is a political refugee, he needs a hide out because a large and a very powerful organisation (and more than one) are after him for disseminating information that those powerful organisations want to keep quiet.
If Assange falls in the hands of American government, he is going to be made an example of, and it's going to be worse than Vietnam for him, sort of like what they did to Bradley Manning but maybe times 10.
Isn't it amazing, 60 years ago people wouldn't have believed if somebody told them, that America could become this....
You can't handle the truth.
Great. How does that make Chavez any less of a dictator that jails people for speaking out against him?
First, he'll have to learn to drive on the other side of the road. Then a crash course in Spanish won't hurt.
Here's a starter: Alto! = Stop! Tus papeles por favor = Your papers please
He's going to Ecuador, not Texas...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
America? Free?
In the US, you are free to:
Work a drudgy job
Pay taxes, deducted weekly from your pay, and levied higher if they think you didn't pay enough over the course of the year.
Pay taxes at the fuel pump
Pay taxes at the grocery store
Pay taxes when you buy alcohol or tobacco
Pay taxes when you somehow manage to buy a luxury item
Pay taxes on your property anually
Pay taxes on your vehicle
Pay levies for public scools
Be assaulted by police, who illegally confiscate any recording devices you have.
Speak publicly and exercise your right to assemble and address grievances in authorised "free speech zones"
Be subjected to brutal beatings if you exercise those rights anywere else
Be subjected to brutal beatings if you exercise those rights in the designated areas, if the message is controvertial or inconvenient
Be innundated in outright lies and yellow journalism 24/7 during election years
Choose which political dick you want up your ass for the next 4, 8, or 10 years (depending on level of govt)
Buy legal immunity if you are wealthy enough
Get totally shafted in the legal system if you aren't
Get enjoined as a spurrious "john doe" in a copyright case with flimsy evidence
Have your internet unplugged through mere allegations.
Get presumed guilty until proven innocent in matters involving copyright via the DMCA
Be arrested for spurrious offences only tangentally related to interstate commerce
Be detained indefinately without evidence or council if even suspected of engaging in terrorism
And so much more!
Just look at all those freedoms! The USA is a GREAT place to live!
Hello captain obvious.
Paying taxes *is* a requirement for a healthy state. No question. The issue is just what percentage of personal income should be extracted as taxation, before the system becomes onerous. The point of listing so many as to point out that not only does the US have taxes, we just about have taxes for *everything*.
Wanna get married? There's a tax for that!
Inherit property? There's a tax for that too!
Etc.
It isn't that I am opposed to taxes. Far from it. I am opposed to onerous, continually compounding taxes.
This "all or nothing" rhetoric that jumps straight to "move to somalia then!" As an argument is *NOT* acceptable.
Apparently the story from the Guardian is false.
https://rt.com/news/assange-granted-asylum-ecuador-298/
I don't *NEED* to point to an alternative, to be justified in lampooning the faults of my own country.
Amusingly, this is exactly why we have first amendment rights in the first place, which is a genuine good thing that many other countries DON'T have.
I don't need to give examples of perfect, candycane and strawberry unicorn spooge gushing utopias in order to point out that there's knee deep bullshit in my back yard. The existence of the bullshit, and that it is in my back yard are self-sufficient in that deterimation.
I don't require a bullshit free back yard to point to, as a source of comparison.
Yes, that's the yarn which has circled in the fanboy echo chamber. Which has essentially no correlation with reality. Do you really think that two separate British courts, including the high court, reviewed the charges against him and confirmed that they met the definition of rape even in the UK, if that was the case?
Here's a brief summary of what was actually alleged. And here's the court's more detailed fact-finding (you should definitely read the latter). There's nothing "suspicious" about how the case was handled unless you don't actually know how the case was handled (which, of course, has been the main goal of Assange's backers).
To briefly summarize the *actual* accusations, they're that Assange quickly began trying to make out with the first woman, which she initially went along with, only to have him try to force her legs apart and pin her down trying to force sex without a condom, to wherein she consented to sex with a condom to prevent it from happening to her without a condom, only to find out later that the condom was "broken". That night she told a friend about the "violent" (her words) sex with assange, and then moved out of her *own apartment* to get away from him. Concerning the other girl, he had tried to sleep with her without a condom over and over, something which she had never done in her life, even with her previous long-term boyfriend. She kept refusing. He stayed up while she fell asleep, and she woke up to him having sex with her without a condom (if you don't think that having sex with a sleeping person is rape, imho, you're a sick bastard). And yes, she understandably freaked out after it and tried to force him to get an STD test, which he refused.
As for the whole "they didn't decide it was rape until talking together" thing, that's the most offfensive part to me. Do you know how hard it is to admit to even yourself, let alone others, that you were raped? I called mine "an unwanted sexual experience" and whatever other weasel words I could get out of to avoid using that term for myself. It took three months of denial and trying just to move on with my life before I could accept what happened to me. There's a reason most rapes are never reported. You just want to put it in the past and forget about it; the last thing you want to do is have to relive it, to face the person again, to have all sorts of vile allegations leveled against *you*, etc. But if I had found out shortly afterwards that the next day that the guy who attacked me had done the same sort of thing to another girl? I don't know how I would have reacted, but it certainly would have changed the picture.
As for the CPT, they criticize everyone. That's their job. The report on Sweden is no worse than on any other state, and a lot better than a number. And as for giving suspects to the US, Assange felt so comfortable with Sweden that he was *applying for residency* when he was charged with rape. And then fled to the UK from there, which is ten times the US lackey Sweden ever was.
We're practicing our labials.