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Assange Makes Statement Calling For an End To the "Witch Hunt"
An anonymous reader writes "After a statement from a window at an upper floor from the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange '... called on US President Barack Obama to "do the right thing" and for his government to "renounce its witch hunt against Wikileaks."'" However, the U.S. issued the following statement regarding Assange's stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy, "The United States is not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law,"
Not recognized, huh? Kinda like the multi-trillion dollar deficit, eh?
What a crock of shit.
Also applies to himself regarding facing up to the charges against him in Sweeden.
Oh you're right, people shouldn't know what their government is up to. What ever was I thinking?
Jules COULD HAVE gotten some people killed.
The actions described in the leaked cables and classified information show that the US government DID kill innocent people. Then tried to cover it up.
now you see the true face of your government
The dirty deeds done in the dark by dirty people who assumed it would always be dark... got people killed. Wikileaks just turned on the lights.
We don't live in a world of secrets anymore. Human communication is too rich and evolved for that kind of thinking. Finally, we can have some honesty and progress.
If it is, I'm certain the Chinese will be happy to know. Especially the next time we shelter one of their dissidents at our embassy.
wonder how they don't recognize it now..
for example in 1956, the US granted political asylum to cardinal Mindszenty at their embassy in Budapest, Hungary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu1TZVX72Aw&t=4m9s
you seem to have a blind spot, an out of contorl government in the pockets of wealthy elite killing and maiming innocents is DEFINETLY putting people at risk
No, we don't know that there was no sexual assault.
The only way we find out, is if he goes to Sweden and clears his name with the police, or the court.
I think that the United States is not thinking about Julius Assange as much as Julius Assange wishes they were.
The United States is not a party to the 1954 OAS Convention on Diplomatic Asylum and does not recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum as a matter of international law"
Once again the Obama administration shames us with its foreign policy. Let hope the Chinese don't remember this statement next time one of their dissidents shows up at our Embassy.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I don't see the conflict. The United States and China both support the Vienna convention which holds that the US embassy in China is under US law. If we shelter a dissident China is free to file an extradition request under the extradition treaty. Our ambassador to China has no authority to grant immunity from Chinese persecution but does have the authority to require paperwork.
and clears his name
No, that's not how criminal justice works at all.
You didn't spend very long thinking about that statement. There are many things you don't want to be public, besides national secrets and all, such as your tax information and various other private records.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Within 1 week of him going to Sweden, he would be in US custody and headed for Gitmo. And within a week after that, the sex charges would be dropped with a couple crying bitches on TV saying, 'oops, we thought he was someone else'. AND MOST OF AMERICA WOULD EAT IT UP as gospel.
Here's a guy saying that we should stop paying attention to the fact that he and his team helped deliver to regimes like Iran and North Korea thousands of sensitive documents having nothing in common other than the fact that a wish-I-hadn't-joined-the-military drama queen stole a giant, un-focused heap of them in a fit a pique... and then he spends months trolling through them looking for anything he can find that might make his idealogical opponents look bad, no matter the consequences for people under cover or working against oppressive regimes ... and then he says, "the witch hunt must end!"
He wants the "witch hunt" (what which hunt? the one where we already know exactly what happened and who did it?) to end so that he can continue his own actual witch hunt in peace and go back to having contentious sexual relations with groupies and getting fawning media coverage from his designated approved media desciples.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If the UK pulls through with its bullshit, China is free to declare the US embassy in China no longer protected, march in, grab whoever they want, shit on the smoldering parts (sorry, those flashbangs set the carpet on fire), waltz out and say "told you so".
It's the civilized US lapdog that first shat on the Vienna treaty.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Hell every story would be tagged that way. The janitors who run this site can't spend two minutes fact checking submissions that are already days behind Fark or Reddit.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Most US citizens live at a pleasant level of luxury with a sufficient sense of security and sufficient hope for a better future. Because of this, they would rather not get involved in politics very much at all (mostly they just vote to impose their morality on their neighbors, or to resist having their neighbors impose their morality on them).
The American public finds it very comforting to believe that they are safe and free and an example to the world of how to do governance properly. This belief is not challenged by their circumstances (as mentioned above), and so it persists despite the right-out-in-public actions that directly contradict this belief, and that the American government continues to take without hesitation or remorse.
In fact, the unchecked tyranny of the American government actually benefits most of the American people, as it ensures that Americans can continue to have their cheap goods and relatively steady jobs and not have to make any sacrifices to pay down the beyond-their-capacity-to-envision national debt.
Therefore, anyone who points out the real injustices perpetuated by the American government, most Americans just write it off as conspiracy theory nonsense, without expending the slightest modicum of effort at checking the facts. The problem isn't just that they don't know, but that they don't want to know. And they sure don't want to put themselves at risk, or make any kind of sacrifice, to protect those other people in other countries from their beloved government. Nor do they want to protect those boat-rockers right in their own country, as such boat-rockers seem to be spewing nonsense and offer only to make things worse for the very people of whom they are demanding action.
Until the majority of Americans feel the pain of their Government's actions, directly, they will NOT get up and hold their government accountable. They will just vote for the next charismatic man who uses words like "hope" and "change" and feel smug about having voted, as usual.
people shouldn't know what their government is up to
You're right. I suggest that we publish the names and photos of all undercover cops working against organized crime. Also, home addresses of the wives of people working covertly in places like North Korea or Yemen. Also, we should circulate a spreadsheet showing the schedule and routes of moving nuclear material. And when the government acts to put someone in protective custody or witness protecction, such covert activities - where the public doesn't get to know where the person is and what they're doing - should definitely be considered the sleazy act of an insufficiently GNU-Open-Secrecy-Is-Bad government.
Or is it possible that there are benefits, when doing things like talking to political parties in countries that are on the brink of a civil war, in being able to assure such a group that they can speak frankly while policy matters are hashed out?
What ever was I thinking?
Don't beat yourself up about it. Most other people don't think about reality, either.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I looked at that article, and the comments, and the article it linked to, but couldn't find a link to the cables directly, so I'll have to go with what's in the article.
All it suggests is that the US have an investigation into the leaks (and thus Assange) and that the Australians wanted to be kept informed. While yes, this suggests that they are thinking about him, I'm not sure if is indicative that they're after him as much as Assange seems to think. He may have broken US laws (at least, someone may have and he's the key piece in the puzzle), and they're investigating it.
The more he does (or doesn't do), and the more I read, the more I'm convinced he's either paranoid or using the cover of US oppression to escape doing some rather mean things in Sweden.
Just because someplace else is worse, doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to the problems we have here. And the situation here has clearly been deteriorating.
Since you brought it up, let's take 1989 for an example:
In 1989, the US was a place people fled TO, in order to get AWAY from repressive governments; not the government doing the repressing.
In 1989, you could go on that trip to Thailand without being irradiated with backscatter x-rays, taking you shoes and belt off, or getting felt up by some thug at the airport; and your friends or family could accompany you to the departure gate to see you off.
In 1989, you could pop over to some of the closer countries such as Canada, Mexico, or The Bahamas, for a visit; and be re-admitted to the US with nothing more than your drivers' license.
In 1989, no one had heard of a "free speech zone". The entire *country* was a free speech zone.
In 1989, you could go to concerts, amusement parks, nightclubs, and ballparks without being groped by some thug, having to show the contents of your pockets, backpack, or purse to another, going through a metal detector, or being under constant 1984-ish CCTV surveillance.
Maybe we're still free enough, in comparison to countries like China, to be considered "the land of the free". But we've been becoming progressively less free for years.
Imagine all the people...
Let's assume that the conspiracy theories are right for a second. Somehow U.S. agencies are behind the charges against Assange in Sweden and believe they have enough control over the Swedish judicial system, and in extension the Swedish government, to get him delivered into their hands.
Even if we assume that Sweden is an U.S. lapdog, we're still talking about a relatively open society, so this might be harder to do than in some other countries, but for the argument's sake: They really want to get Assange.
Knowing all this, what does Assange do? Try to escape to Ecuador, of course, because the same agencies who managed to arrange the situation in Sweden will have no chance of getting to him there. I mean, who have ever heard of U.S. clandestine operations in South America? And of course the government and courts of Ecuador is much less corrupt than those of Sweden.
Anyone else see a problem with this theory?
This is what I don't understand about the current conspiracy theory: Why would the US involve Sweden? I mean do the math. How many people has Sweden extradited to the US and how many people has the UK?
If the US wanted him they could just ask the UK to hand him over since I doubt anyone remembers the last time the UK refused a US extradition request.
Sweden is a democracy with extradition laws. Assange may never get his day in court. Personally I totally believe the possibility that the US would want to question Assange and detain him indefinitely, regardless of the international outcry. The USA is also a democracy, with a place like Guantanamo Bay, which is still running.
1) Naomi Wolf has been following this case since 2010: ...long enough to look up all the Swedish law and case histories she doesn't already have, particularly since the article above contains the news: "Well, I was in Denmark in March of this year at a global gathering for women leaders on International Women's Day, and heard extensively from specialists in sex crime and victims' rights in Sweden." ...that's March of 2010, nearly 30 months ago.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/post_1435_b_797188.html
2) Unusual case, indeed, but nothing about its unusual-ness relates to whether the original complaint merited charges, not after the original prosecutor declined to charge and a prosecutor clear across Sweden took the very, ahem, unusual step of deciding to re-start a case from outside their normal jurisdiction (it's federal, so they *could*, but it's very...unusual).
3) She is hardly accusing "the entire Swedish political elite", she just notes the Rove connection without drawing conclusions. The Rove story has been very hot in Sweden, because Rove is considered by many to have won elections in his past by abuses of the legal system, including, it is said, planting a bug in his own office and getting an investigation of his client's opponent started on the basis of it; and involvement in the framing of an Alabama politician for corruption, as reported by 60 minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml
It's quite normal for Karl Rove to have no provable connection at all to things that happen when he's around - like his old law partner starting the swift boat organization. People have generally started to regard him as smoke and start looking for fire.
I might add - it's funny for you to regard Naomi Wolf as unable to comment on Swedish law because she's American, but regard as obvious that Swedish politicians would look to an American for electoral advice in their very different system (no state-level, no third branch of government, no electoral college - it's a constitutional monarchy with a parliament).
Sweden is a democracy, can't argue with that one. It's just a democracy that helped with extraordinary rendition of suspects to where they were tortured - so you can kind of understand somebody's reluctance to hand themselves over to their tender mercies; the rendered guys never got that day in court of which you speak.
You go into valid points about the rape, but you missed the big one: how many "surprise sex" rapists are internationally hunted and extradicted on the level of a terrorist? I mean seriously, would you expect Australia or Sweden to go after every internationally-based guy who slept with a woman without a condom to the point of shutting down embassies? The sheer amount of effort going on here for a less-than-violent rape is ridiculous, and it wouldn't happen for almost anyone except Assange. Great efforts for something low on the rape scale.
Could it be that really they are seeking Assange for his Wikileaks efforts instead?
The Swedes have travelled to other countries to interview people. Why not Julian Assange?
Because they don't want to just interview him. They want to interview him as part of their prosecution procedure, where the interview is a formal sit-down-and-discuss-things-before-charging thing and (from my limited understanding of Swedish criminal procedural rules) they can't do the latter part outside Sweden, or at least, when he isn't in their custody. In the other cases (I don't have the facts to hand, nor have I read them, but would happily do so), it may be that the interview was pre-arrest warrant, rather than post-arrest warrant as in this case?
Secondly, why should the Swedes deal with him on his terms? He's accused of committing a crime, they have got a valid arrest warrant, and want to arrest him. He's being uncooperative and fighting them at every step (both legally and now illegally). Why should they go out of their way to make it easier on him?
Also, what makes Swedish soil easier for the USians to get at him on than any other soil, particularly English soil?
From what I understand, the maximum penalty he could receive is less than the time he already served "in custody" in the UK, plus a rather small fine, relatively speaking. Also, he is not wanted for a trial, but only for questioning. The Swedish police so far have not taken up the invitation to question Assange in the UK, personally, via teleconference or in writing. Even if he was extradited and went to trial in Sweden and indeed found guilty, they could only make him pay the small fine, since the time he spent in custody in the UK will count as well. The whole "witch hunt" has no merit, he already went to jail, is being restricted against his will for a long period and I doubt that he'd mind paying the fine if the result would be that he'd be able to walk around free again. Things just don't add up, there must be an alternate agenda behind all this. Don't get me wrong, this is not about Assange being right or innocent, this is about an extradition request that makes no sense.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
What U.S. laws did Assange break?
BM3