1. Actually time yourself going down the highway when you're on a long trip, from the moment you begin to decelerate to begin to get gas, to the moment you're back on the road up to highway speeds, and don't leave out the things people often due during stops long trips (why long trips? more in a second), including bathroom breaks, buying something at the convenience store, cleaning the windshield, heading over to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat, whatever. Time a number of different stops on a long trip and average them out. You'll find they're a lot more than 5 minutes. EVs have all of that extra stuff too, mind you, but a lot of them can be done while charging, and even for the other stuff, you're adding a constant overhead, which reduces the ratio of the non-constant aspect (the actual filling itself).
2. Why constrained to long trips? Simple - because people don't stop at charging stations when they're not on long trips. It's pointless. You charge at home, and maybe when parked at other places like work or a mall if there happens to be a plug near you. It's a great inconvenience of gasoline cars which EVs don't have that one must regularly waste time at gas stations in their daily lives regardless of how long trips are. Overall gasoline car drivers waste a lot more time "filling up" than EV drivers. (and if you disagree and think the mere act of plugging and unplugging gives the edge to gasoline drivers somehow, then that still doesn't help with the wireless EV charging that's getting a lot of focus now, where you merely have to park and you start getting charge)
3. The page you linked for dimethyl ether said nothing (that I noticed) about generation from just electricity and, say, air/water. It did say that in the lab it can be made from cellulosic biomass (although it should be noted that no cellulosic fuel techs have thusfar worked out at a commercial scale). Let's just say you can do that, and that you get the 1000 gallons per acre-year reported for switchgrass.That's 0,93 liters per square meter-year. It's reported at 19,3 MJ per liter, so we have 18MJ per square meter per year. Let's say we lose 5% of this to distribution, and then burn it in a car running at a typical 20% average efficiency (peak is significantly higher, but peak isn't what matters). We have 3,4 MJ per square meter per year.
Now what if we ran EVs on solar panels on the same land? Let's say the solar farm is 50% covered with solar panels and gets a capacity factor (clouds, night, etc) of 20% and a cell efficiency of 20%. 1000W/m, so 20W/m electricity is produced on average. That's 20 joules per square meter per second, so 631 MJ per square meter per year. We reduce it by the average US grid efficiency of 92% and an average wall-to-wheels EV efficiency of 80% and we get 465 MJ per square meter per year. 136 times as land-efficient as the biofuel alternative
Now let's say we leave out all of these lossy bioprocesses behind and generate some sort of biofuel straight from electricity at a very unrealistic 80% efficiency (most processes for realistic fuels are way lower), plus the same generous 5% distribution losses, and that it's afforable. And let's say that they all burn their fuel at an impressive 40% efficiency (even fuel cells, while higher in peak efficiency, generally can't do that tank-to-wheels in real-world vehicle usage). Thus we get 192 MJ per square meter per year, 41% that of the EV. Are you really comfortable with plastering 2.4 times as much of the earth's surface with solar panels? Or 2.4 times more wind turbines, 2.4 times more dammed rivers, 2.4 times more nuclear power plants and uranium mining, etc? Is that, in your view, an ideal solution, even in this comparison highly biased in favor of fuels versus electricity?
Electricity is the universal energy currency, and we shouldn't be wasting it converting it between different forms needlessly. Not only does it mean a dramatically worse impact on the planet, it also
Now of course gas stations don't always have fully occupied pumps and that's the point, so that almost whenever you arrive, there's a free pump available.
That actually doesn't help your argument any. The longer it takes to fill up, the more you smooth out the random demand fluctuations.
Let's say the time per pump is 5 minutes and the time per charger is 30 minutes, so we have to build 6x more chargers to service the same number of vehicles (and that you have to build the charging stations more frequently due to the range). So we'll compare a 4 pump gas station with a 24 charger EV station. So let's say that we get the following rate of people arriving (picking some numbers at random):
1:00: 1 pump in use 1:05: 0 pumps in use 1:10: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting 1:15: 4 pumps in use, 5 people waiting 1:20: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting 1:25: 4 pumps in use, 0 people waiting 1:30: 0 pumps in use 1:35: 2 pumps in use 1:40: 1 pump in use 1:45: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting 1:50: 4 pumps in use, 6 people waiting 1:55: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting 2:00: 3 pumps in use, 0 people waiting.
What about the charging station?
1:00: 1 charger in use 1:05: 1 chargers in use 1:10: 7 chargers in use 1:15: 14 chargers in use 1:20: 17 chargers in use 1:25: 17 chargers in use 1:30: 16 chargers in use 1:35: 18 chargers in use 1:40: 13 chargers in use 1:45: 14 chargers in use 1:50: 17 chargers in use 1:55: 17 chargers in use 2:00: 18 chargers in use
With the gas station, 23 people needed to wait, some of them for a rather long time. With the charging station, nobody needed to wait. Despite the fact that the charging is 1/6th the speed, that doesn't actually imply you need 6x more chargers. In the above example, we see that the gas station should have had 8 pumps while the charging station 18 chargers, or 2.25x more.
More on the other problems with your post in just a second - I just felt that this particular aspect deserved a whole post on its own.
Not to mention that building a gas station takes a heck of a lot longer.
It's one thing I don't get about EV opponents. Not only are EVs supposed to not have any new inconveniences relative to gasoline vehicles, and not only do inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have that EVs don't have not count toward EVs, but EVs aren't even allow to have the inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have. It's always stuff like "EVs suck because it takes 11 days to build a fast charging station, but don't bother checking into how long it takes to build a gas station!" or "EVs suck because batteries are flammable (Ed: even though most EV battery types aren't particularly flammable), but don't bother asking about the flammability of gasoline!" or "EVs suck because batteries are heavy and bulky, but don't bother asking about the weight and size of internal combustion engines vs. electric motors!" or "EVs suck because batteries are toxic (Ed: Actually, most types nowadays have little toxicity), but don't bother asking about the toxicity of the several tonnes of gasoline the average driver puts into their car every year, their filling spills and fumes, their oil leaks, etc, and the massively dirty industry that produces all this!" Etc.
Nuh uh! There are also compressed air cars - they only explosively decompress upon tank failure!;)
At least with batteries, flammability or explosiveness aren't a fundamental requirement of how you're trying to propel the vehicle, just an unfortunate side effect of some variants of the technology (even not all types of li-ions are flammable). There's lots of people who assume that flammability is a consequence of electrical energy density, but that's just not the case. The actual charge/discharge lithium batteries via intercalating into the anode or cathode is more an atomic-scale equivalent of compressing air into a tank, you're having little affect on the substrate flammabilities and you're not even changing their chemical bonding, you're just cramming lithium ions into the space between their atoms. The flammabilty of some types comes from side effects, such as flammable electrolytes or membrane failures leading to lithium metal plating out; these aren't a fundamental aspect of the energy storage process.
Now, li-air, that involves an actual lithium metal electrode, and that is fundamentally flammable. Of course, so is gasoline. I have no doubt that they can reduce fire risks on li-air cells and keep them properly contained to prevent failure propagations. My bigger issues with li-air are its terrible efficiency, lifespan, and cost. I'm certain the latter would come down, and I expect that they can improve the lifespan, but I'm a bit uneasy about how much they can improve its efficiency. Right now, they're as inefficient as a fuel cell. : Who wants to waste three times as much power per mile as is necessary?
It is a non-sequiteur. The energy density of a li-ion battery doesn't even approach the theoretical maximum storage for the element lithium shifting between ionization states. That's hardly the only way this article is terrible, mind you. My head hurt every time they said the word "efficiency", it's like they were using it to mean everything possible except for actual efficiency. And if I read it right - who knows, the article is such a total mess - the researcher isn't talking about reducing battery cost, but increasing longevity. But maybe that was mangled too.
You're arguing against Tokamak fusion. But what about, say, HiPER? Looks to me to be a much more comercializeable approach, yet it's still "mainstream" fusion, just a slight variant on inertial confinement ala NIF to make it much smaller / cheaper / easier to have a high repeat rate (smaller compression pulse + heating pulse rather than a NIF-style super-massive compression pulse). The only really unstudied physics aspect is how the heating pulse will interact with the highly compressed matter; NIF and pals have pretty much worked out the details of how laser compression works out. Beyond this, pretty much everything else is just engineering challenges for commercialization, such as high repeat rate lasers, high-rate hohlraum injection and targeting, etc.
I've often thought (different topic) about how one can get half or more of fusion's advantages via fission if you change the game around a bit. Fusion is promoted on being passively safe (it's very hard to keep the reaction *going*, it really wants to stop at all times), it leads to abundant fuel supplies, and there's little radioactive waste (no long-term waste). But what about subcritical fission reactors? Aka, a natural uranium or thorium fuel target being bombarded with a spallation neutron source. Without the spallation neutrons, there's just not enough neutrons for the reaction, so the second the beam gets shut off, the reactor shuts down, regardless of what else is going on. It'd be a fast reactor, aka a breeder, aka, your available fuel supplies increase by orders of magnitude. And your long-term waste would be much, much less in a well-designed reactor. Spallation neutron sources have long been proposed as a way to eliminate long-lived nuclear waste by transmuting it into shorter-lived elements.
Wrong, you're talking about charge 2 on the EAW, which is only a molestation charge, not rape. charge 4 on the EAW is the rape charge and concerns a different woman. All of the charges are:
1. On 13th – 14th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Stockholm, Assange, by using violence, forced the injured party to endure his restricting her freedom of movement. The violence consisted in a firm hold of the injured party’s arms and a forceful spreading of her legs whilst lying on top of her and with his body weight preventing her from moving or shifting.
2. On 13th – 14th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Stockholm, Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity. Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge.
3. On 18th August 2010 or on any of the days before or after that date, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Stockholm, Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity i.e. lying next to her and pressing his naked, erect penis to her body.
4. On 17th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.
Please follow the case better if you wish to comment about it.
Once again, Assange fanboys go all out to dismiss the rape charge against him without even knowing enough about it to even keep the two women involved straight.
There are two women involved here: AA and SW (and no, their names haven't been scrubbed, but it's a sick testament to our society than rather than letting justice run its course, everyone wants to lead a personal witch hunt against the accusers, and I certainly won't help enable it). AA is the one who tweeted (but not what you said she tweeted) and who has been to cuba and wrote a blog (which doesn't say what you say it said). SW is a low-level museum worker who did none of the above. The rape charge only applies to SW. There are no rape charges concerning AA, only three lesser charges - 1x unlawful sexual coersion and 2x molestation.
The fact that you don't know even this most fundamental basic aspect of the case yet want to pontificate about it speaks volumes as to how much you are just willing to assume the innocence of Assange and that the women are just lying sluts trying to set up an innocent man. Which always happens with famous people and their fans. When you hear people talking about "rape culture", that's a very big part of it.
Now, let's correct your misrepresentation of the facts in detail.
1) There are no rape charges concerning AA. She described a series of unpleasant experiences, first to friends, later to police, involving the pinning of her down to try to force sex, her consent in exchange for the use of a condom which she feels he deliberately broke, and his repeated acts at later periods such as rubbing his naked genitals against him after she had told him no. She became so uncomfortable around him that she moved out of her own apartment to avoid him. The events therein form the basis of the unlawful sexual coersion and molestation charges. The tweet in question was not "Julian is FANTASTIC", it was "Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world's coolest smartest people in the world". She was at a party full of political activists, one of the people there being Julian. At the same party, according to testimony collected by the police, she warned a friend about Julian.
2) She did not file a rape complaint. All of the testimony speaks to that she went to the police to support SW in her going to the police to report a rape by bringing up what Julian had done to her. Which is only what a person would expect. SW had already at that point, according to testimony, been telling friends and family that she'd been raped by Julian. SW's goal in going, however, was not prosecution but to try to force Julian to take an STD test. AA's blog (again, NOT SW, who the rape charge is about) entry was something she copied years ago from someone else about how to break an ex boyfriend up with his new girlfriend, and the first two rules basically sum up as "don't do it". And seriously, do you honestly think if millions of fanboys combed through everything you've ever written on the net that they couldn't find something to attack your character with?
3) See my reply to the post above yours, and pay particular attention to the fact that the Svea Court of Appeals has already reviewed all evidence in a full court hearing with testimony from Assange's attorneys and ruled against him, and the Swedish Supreme Court refused Assange's appeal.
4) How does a person "convince" a person of anything while they're asleep? Is Assange capable of doing Inception?
5) Again, you're talking about AA, not SW. The attacks against AA are the most ridiculous six degrees of separation thing I've seen in ages. It's something penned by Israel Shamir, a famously misogynistic and antisemitic author, as well as being the guy who's famous as being the person who gave unreleased Wikileaks information to the dictator of Belarus which he then used in a purge of political opponents (google "Israel Shamir" and "Belarus"). The argument he posted on Counterpunch basically goes like this: AA
Nobody has backed out of anything. Both women still have legal representation pushing the case forward. They've been trying to stay out of the public eye, but one made a remark on a blog half a year ago about how she was a victim of sex crimes and the perpetrator still hasn't been brought to justice and his fans keep making excuses for him. Does that sound like having "backed out of said accusations" to you?
No, it's not "his word against hers". The Svea Court of Appeals has found probable cause for rape, and the Supreme Court upheld it, does that sound like "his word against hers"?
Just what we know from what's leaked so far, which is just a fraction of the evidence: everyone whose close to SW has testified that she's had a lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex. Her former boyfriend of 2 1/2 years testified that when they were together it was "unthinkable" to her, that not only did it never happen, but she even made him get STD tested before protected sex. As for the night in question, here's the leadup that neither Assange nor his legal team have issued any dispute to: that he and SW went home together, where they were making out and she repeatedly refused the unprotected sex that Assange sought. He reluctantly consented to protected sex at least once. Assange's attorney even described (while trying to claim that there was no rape) that his client was "pushing the boundaries of what she felt comfortable with", so there's no dispute to this, Assange's team admits to it. In the morning Assange sent her out to buy him breakfast. Here we have phone records, SMS records, and interviews with those talked to to back up SW's report, and no dispute registered from Assange's team: that she complained bitterly about how mad she was getting at Assange for repeatedly trying to F* her unprotected against her will and for bossing her around. In line she also ran into her brother, who described her as looking very upset when the conversation turned to Assange. She returned home with the food; they ate, and she fell asleep.
Now, that entire thing thusfar is not disputed by any party. What Assange's team claims happened next is that she was "half awake" and consented to unprotected sex (what she says, and told many people before going to the police station, is that she woke up to him doing it). Let's reiterate: the woman with an extreme lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex who was immediately before falling to sleep complaining to her friends about Assange trying to have unprotected sex with her and bossing her around, suddenly wakes up and says "Let's f*** without protection".
Is it any wonder the guy keeps losing legal cases?
I'm against violence in general, actual rape,
No, when you automatically believe everything you hear about a guy accused of rape because you like the guy and assume any charges against him are a giant conspiracy, and calls F*ing a person while they're a sleep in a manner they expressly prohibited "stuck his boner in a place that it shouldn't have been", an act that one can "hardly blame the person who did it" - you're nothing but an enabler.
Huh? The guy in that article was already åtalad (indicted) and awaiting an appeal when he died. How is that supposed to be arguing in any way shape or form that you can åtala someone who's not in custody? Under Swedish law, once someone is åtalad, there's a time limit until they must be tried. A person is anklagad to get them into custody, then åtalad to bring them to trial. And the British court system has at every level ruled Assange to be in a state equivalent to charged under the British legal system. But do you somehow know more about Swedish and British law than the Swedish prosecutor, the Swedish judge who issued the warrant, the Svea Court of Appeals that found Assange (after a full court hearing and all evidence reviewed) as having probable cause for rape, the Swedish Supreme Court which refused Assange's appeal, the British Lower Court, the British High Court, and the British Supreme Court? If so, my apologies, SuperLawyer - please return to the Justice League immediately!
By all means, please point me to the part in Swedish law that overrules Sweden's constitution separation of powers clause and the extradition law's clearly spelled out order of proceedings which make it clear that the government isn't even allowed to give a nonbinding opinion until after the courts take up a case.
Secondly the guy has every reason to be concerned given various European countries involvement in illegal renditions AND torture
Yet strangely it didn't seem to bother him when he was outright trying to move to Sweden - he had nothing but praise to heap on Sweden and their legal system then. It was only after he was anklagad for rape that Sweden turned into an evil US lackey. And then he had no problem being in the UK out in the open, and talked about his respect for their legal system. That is, until he lost there, and they too became an evil US lackey. And now we're supposed to believe that both of his personally chosen countries, plus the ECHR, aren't enough?
The British court system has ruled him to be charged. Assange and his attorneys like to play word games between being anklagad and åtalad (see elsewhere in this article's comments for details), but the simple fact is, as far as Britain is concerned, he's charged.
And no, they're not "extrading people for questioning". From the official sworn statement of the Swedish prosecutor submitted to the British courts:
10. Once the interrogation is complete it may be that further questions need to be put to witnesses or the forensic scientists. Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries.
Right. The Great White Brootherhood not a white supremecist cult! And the organizer considering herself to be Jesus Christ doesn't make them a cult! And was purely harmless - that's why they were raided, all the children removed, and the founders prosecuted, right?
Please, give me a break here. The Family sought to "collect" children with pronounced aryan traits. She furthermore did everything she could to make them look more aryan, including bleaching their hair. The children were taught that Anne was their mother, and that everyone else in the cult - including their real parents - were aunts and uncles. Byrne held that a holocaust was going to wipe out humanity and that the children would become the inheritors of the Earth. The cult's motto was "Unseen , Unheard and Unknown", and breaches of that were punished severely. The kids were malnourished, raised in a dimly lit building surrounded by barbed wire and given daily doses of tranquilizers. They were carefully hidden from visitors. They were supposed to shower with their eyes shut so they wouldn't see their naked bodies and to not wash their genitals. Establishing friendships with other children was a punishable offense. They had to listen to regular "meetings with the master" where they were told of the importance of being a good disciple. Read what her daughter wrote about it here. Random excerpt (though there is all too much to mention):
Anne Hamilton-Byrne believed in discipline absolutely. We believed we were her children. She was, we were told, Jesus Christ reincarnated. This was rarely explicitly said by her: it was more assumed by how she referred to herself and acted. Her religion was based on distorted perceptions of the Hindu notion of "karma": that you reap what you sow. Suffering as children was supposed not just to expiate the sins of this life, but also the sins of our past lives. Suffering built up our chances of salvation and redemption. Anne's religion practically called for child-abuse.
Because she travelled so much she left two books of instructions called 'Mummy's Rule Books'. These books listed penalties for infractions. They had entries such as : "If David rocks or sways during meditation, he is to be hit over the head with a chair" and rules about everything, even about how many hours of piano practice each child was to do. These were signed by Anne. She encouraged the Aunties to belt us.
The guiding principle of our rigid existence was discipline. Discipline was the word used to justify abuse. It was discipline that we had to agree with no matter what.
It was enforced in the early days with beltings and the deprivation of food by the missing of meals almost every day. Later this changed to public humiliation, lines to write, the missing of 'privileges' and less common but more severe beltings.
We often had to watch others being beaten. If we took our eyes away that would be interpreted as disapproval and if you disapproved that was a worse crime. Public beatings were held to flush out insubordinates. Anyone who got upset or refused to look or appeared to be disagreeing that the person should be punished, got beaten as well.
Punishments came in waves. Whatever Anne considered the best way of disciplining us was enforced until she changed her mind. So I remember harsh times and softer times.
We were always belted and kicked around from when we were very young with hands and feet or with anything they could find, but looking back I can see differences in the times and the ways we were punished. But always we were punished. Anne believed it was good for us. It fitted in with the karmic principles that the sect used to justify suffering and pain.
But no, a harmless hippie commune, clearly! Run by Jesus Christ herself!
F*ing a sleeping girl to work around her explicit and repeated refusal to consent to your preferred form of sex (what Assange is charged with, #4 on the EAW) IS RAPE, in every developed country on earth, and every level of the British court system have confirmed that what he is charged with matches to their equivalent crimes in the UK (they'd actually have worse sentences). And it damn well should be considered rape, and the fact that all of these Assange fanboys try to do a "it's not rape-rape!" thing with it is sickening. Let me be explicit: If I give you permission to F* me in a certain way, and explicitly refuse a different way, and I wake up to you F*ing me in the way I explicitly banned, You're Committing Rape. Period. End of story. And FYI, Sweden actually has some of the most lax rape laws in Europe, but even in Sweden, that's still rape.
Your claims that the women were "coerced" are absurd. SW according to everyone's testimony had a right proper freakout immediately after the event and told friends and family that she'd been raped, before she went to the police. And even before the event she'd been complaining to friends via SMS (and when she was out buying food) about how mad she was getting at Assange for continually trying to f* her in the way she prohibited. The fact that the women, after talking about what happened to each of them, decided to go to the police together, is bloody well what one would expect in such a situation. At the police office they were separated and interviewed separately. And no, it's a complete myth that SW "refused to go on with the investigation", as many fanboys claim - the leaked police report explicitly states that it's the interviewer who decided to terminate the investigation, and that SW then consented to a rape kit (sound like someone who didn't want to go on with the investigation?) and said she wanted a legal representative (who then pushed the case relentlessly forward - sound like someone who didn't want to go on with the investigation?).
Trying to get people charged with crimes like rape to trial is the very thing the EAW was created for. In what bloody world is rape not a "serious crime"?
He was never free to go; that's a myth spread by his attorney, who received an official condemnation by the Swedish Bar Association for lying about that in court as well as a major dressing down from the judge (he's lucky he didn't get hit with legal sanctions). There was never a time period where he was not under investigation, and when he fled the country, his attorney was actively pretending that Assange was getting ready to come in willingly (and then after he got to the UK, Hurtg continued stalling, pretending Assange was going to be coming immediately back). If you want to see all the nitty-gritty, you can read the Ny SMS logs, they've been released.
To go into more details about the early stages: AA and SW walked into a Stockholm police station and made the report, and were interviewed by two separate officers. As it was a weekend, the only available prosecutor, Eva Finne, took the case. There were a total of three initial investigating officers - Wassgren, Krans, and Gehlen. Wassgren and Gehlen felt, from the interviews, that Assange should be charged with five counts (2x molestatation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x rape); Krans felt it should be 2x, 1x, 2x. News quickly broke that Assange was being investigated. This is supposed to be illegal, the name isn't supposed to be disclosed at this stage but Sweden has some crazy-strong whistleblower protection laws (part of the reason Assange was moving there in the first place), you can't even investigate to find out who made a leak, so it always happens when cases involve famous people. Finne quickly had a warrant issued for Assange's arrest for the two rapes - even though he had not at that point refused to cooperate. There was naturally a huge backlash, and Finne withdrew the warrant (thus dropping the rape charges), but kept the investigation open for the molestation and unlawful sexual coersion charges. It was during this time that Assange was interviewed; since the only investigations open referred to the lesser charges, that's all he was interviewed about. Meanwhile, the legal representative of the women, Claes Borgström, appealed the decision (Sweden has a police appeal board, which is frequently used for cases like this and isn't particularly unusual); the fact that Finne had dropped the rape charge concerning SW before SW's statement had even gotten into the computer system made it pretty obvious that the case hadn't gotten a fair hearing, and the board ruled in favor of the women. The case was thus transferred to the next prosecutor up, Marianne Ny. Ny reopened the investigation for all five counts, and tried to get Assange back in to interview him for the dropped charges. The team meanwhile did lots of followup interviews and forensics collection and testing. It was during this time that Assange fled to the UK. Ny spent over a month trying to get Assange to come back, continually reaching out to his attorney, even the day before she went into court to get a warrant for him. A judge approved the Swedish warrant (thus he was formally anklagad, the Swedish stage for trying to get a person into custody so that they can then be åtalad, which is the stage that leads to trial) and subsequently the EAW was issued. The original warrant was open for the full five counts. Assange appealed to the Svea Board of Appeals (Sweden has a strong defendents rights process, even though he was hiding from the law he was still able in absentia to appeal the investigation), and a full court hearing was held involving a full review of the evidence and testimony from Assange's attorneys. For the most part, he lost - one of the rape charges was dropped, but the other and all of the others were upheld, leaving a formal finding of probable cause of rape, molestation, and unlawful sexual coersion. Assange appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court. His appeal was rejected. He then moved through the appeals process in the British system, first the lower court, the high court, and the Supreme Court, alleging malicious p
Ah, the old anklagad / åtalad word game... (Assange is anklagad but not åtalad, but you can't be åtalad until you're in custody, so he's using the fact that he's not åtalad to argue for not having to ever enter into a situation where he can be åtalad; being anklagad is ued to get a person into custody, while being åtalad is used to try them)
Perhaps some day, your descriptions of the case and Swedish law will come within a ballistic missile's range of the actuality. Until then, I won't be holding my breath.
Their description of Swedish rape law is to reality as fish are to bicycles. Sweden actually has some of the most lax, backward rape laws in Europe. For example, several years back there was a case where a teenage girl was gang raped by three men, but only the first could be charged because she had given up struggling after the being beaten into submission by the first and hadn't registered an objection to the other two.
What Assange is *actually* charged with, the rape charge (#4 on the EAW) is:
4. On 17th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.
To put it quite plainly, he's charged with, when a girl who was paranoid about disease and pregnancy refused to have unprotected sex with him, he waited until she fell asleep and then started F*ing her unprotected. Which is F*ing rape, and the fact that people keep trying to pretend that it's not "real" rape, I find sickening.
The Swedes certainly are, or they would have issued a warrant for his arrest rather than for questioning.
When will this myth die? From the official sworn statement of the Swedish prosecutor submitted to the British courts:
10. Once the interrogation is complete it may be that further questions need to be put to witnesses or the forensic scientists. Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries.
There is an EAW out for him. It lays out four charges: 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x molestation, and 1x rape. The checkbox for rape is marked next to he rape charge (#4). Every level of the British court system has reviewed the warrant and reached the same conclusions: Everything he is charged with in Sweden would be their equivalent crimes in the UK (including rape), the warrant is legitimate, and he is wanted for the purposes of prosecution, not merely questioning.
Wrong. Sweden *additionally* has restrictions in their extradition law banning extradition for intelligence and military crimes, beyond the general EU restrictions. Which is why they refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard (the most major CIA defector to the USSR) after only a very brief preliminary investigation; it's simply banned to extradite for such crimes. Think the US didn't really want Howard? Not to mention that the UK *also* has veto over any extradition, as the sending state under a EU surrender request , so he'd be *safer* in Sweden (it's an extra barrier). And here we're talking about the UK, the country that wouldn't even hand over Gary McKinnon, the most damaging hacker of US military systems on record, because "he has aspergers" (as if Julian I-Have-To-Wear-Specific-Jackets-To-Write-Specific-Documents Assange doesn't?). Think the US didn't really want McKinnon? And of course, the ECHR has veto power over every step of the way - the ECHR which is often considered the greatest refuge for people fleeing extradition on Earth, the same court body that goes so far in terms of protecting the rights of suspects and prisoners that it ruled that you can't ban UK prisoners who are in prison from voting or sex offenders serving time for their offenses from having access to (government paid) reproductive services.
And what praytell was the plan here? Instead of waiting until Julian, famous for being a globetrotter, goes to a trivially easy nation, let's insist on getting him in the nation that *he himself* chose as the most difficult? And then let's not have a single person even watch him to warn the Swedes when he leaves or warn the British when he jumps bail? And let's complicate the whole thing with competing local charges?
The conspiracy theory is so far into fantasyland that parents in Narnia could use it as a bedtime story for their kids. And Assange knows this. Whenever it's pointed out, he always changes the subject. He lost one of his biggest supporters this way, Jemima Khan, who posted a huge chunk of his bail, but now considers him a "new L. Ron Hubbard" because of his dodges on this issue.
Oh come on now. Sweden should change their laws and override the separation of powers clause in their constitition because it's ASSANGE we're talking about. I mean, don't they know that he's just the AWESOMEST AWESOME that ever AWESOMED and everything revolves around him?
Yes, Assange was so terrified of those evil Swedes, those American puppets, that he was moving Wikileaks' base of operations there (after alienating the majority of his Iceland team) and applying for a residence permit there, right? That's why he called Sweden's laws and legal system his "shield" in multiple interviews, right? That's why Wikileaks leaked that in 2006 Sweden caused a major diplomatic rift with the US by outright disguising their special forces as airport workers to break into a CIA rendition flight to stop the US, right?
Funny how Sweden only became evil US lackeys after he was anklagad for rape.
He phoned ahead to the police station to tell them he was coming. There were two phones on his lap but he answered neither one himself. A French journalist was following the car but lost us. At the police station, Sarah stopped and said: ‘Shall I do the honours?’ I watched as she went out and searched the bushes.
‘Is she checking for paparazzi?’ I asked.
‘I wish,’ said Julian.
‘What then?’
‘Assassins.’
There was this incredible need for spy-talk. Julian would often refer to the places where he lived as ‘safe houses’ and say things like, ‘When you go to Queensland there’s a contact there you should speak to.’
‘You mean a friend?’ I’d say.
‘No. It’s more complicated than that.’ He appeared to like the notion that he was being pursued and the tendency was only complicated by the fact that there were real pursuers. But the pursuit was never as grave as he wanted it to be. He stuck to his Cold War tropes, where one didn’t deliver a package, but made a ‘drop off’. One day, we were due to meet some of the WikiLeaks staff at a farmhouse out towards Lowestoft. We went in my car. Julian was especially edgy that afternoon, feeling perhaps that the walls were closing in, as we bumped down one of those flat roads covered in muck left by tractors’ tyres. ‘Quick, quick,’ he said, ‘go left. We’re being followed!’ I looked in the rear-view mirror and could see a white Mondeo with a wire sticking out the back.
‘Don’t be daft, Julian,’ I said. ‘That’s a taxi.’
‘No. Listen to me. It’s surveillance. We’re being followed. Quickly go left.’ Just by comical chance, as I was rocking a Sweeney-style handbrake turn, the car behind us suddenly stopped at a farmhouse gate and a little boy jumped out and ran up the path. I looked at the clock as we rolled off in a cloud of dust. It said 3.48.
‘That was a kid being delivered home from school,’ I said. ‘You’re mental.’
People turned up out of nowhere. No one introduced them properly, and they didn’t have titles anyway: they were just Carlos or Tina or Oliver or Thomas. One night in Ellingham Hall, a French guy called Jeremy came in with a sack of encrypted phones. Julian always seemed to have three phones on the go at any one time – the red phone was his personal one – and this latest batch was designed to deal with a general paranoia that newspapers were hacking all of us. It was always like that: sudden bursts of vigilance would vie with complete negligence. There was no real system of security or applied secrecy, not if you’ve read about how spy agencies operate. Julian would speak on open lines when he simply forgot to take care. The others kept the same mobiles for months. And none of them seemed to care about a running tape recorder. Granted, I was there to ask questions and record replies, but still, much of what they said had nothing to do with the book and they simply forgot about it. Only once was I asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, when Julian gave me a hard-drive containing very sensitive material, but they forgot I had the drive and never asked for it back.
The guy was living like a character in a spy novel long before he started Wikileaks; he's a total paranoid regardless of what threats are actually present. The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.
Slashdot Mirror
As for my other issues with your post.
1. Actually time yourself going down the highway when you're on a long trip, from the moment you begin to decelerate to begin to get gas, to the moment you're back on the road up to highway speeds, and don't leave out the things people often due during stops long trips (why long trips? more in a second), including bathroom breaks, buying something at the convenience store, cleaning the windshield, heading over to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat, whatever. Time a number of different stops on a long trip and average them out. You'll find they're a lot more than 5 minutes. EVs have all of that extra stuff too, mind you, but a lot of them can be done while charging, and even for the other stuff, you're adding a constant overhead, which reduces the ratio of the non-constant aspect (the actual filling itself).
2. Why constrained to long trips? Simple - because people don't stop at charging stations when they're not on long trips. It's pointless. You charge at home, and maybe when parked at other places like work or a mall if there happens to be a plug near you. It's a great inconvenience of gasoline cars which EVs don't have that one must regularly waste time at gas stations in their daily lives regardless of how long trips are. Overall gasoline car drivers waste a lot more time "filling up" than EV drivers. (and if you disagree and think the mere act of plugging and unplugging gives the edge to gasoline drivers somehow, then that still doesn't help with the wireless EV charging that's getting a lot of focus now, where you merely have to park and you start getting charge)
3. The page you linked for dimethyl ether said nothing (that I noticed) about generation from just electricity and, say, air/water. It did say that in the lab it can be made from cellulosic biomass (although it should be noted that no cellulosic fuel techs have thusfar worked out at a commercial scale). Let's just say you can do that, and that you get the 1000 gallons per acre-year reported for switchgrass.That's 0,93 liters per square meter-year. It's reported at 19,3 MJ per liter, so we have 18MJ per square meter per year. Let's say we lose 5% of this to distribution, and then burn it in a car running at a typical 20% average efficiency (peak is significantly higher, but peak isn't what matters). We have 3,4 MJ per square meter per year.
Now what if we ran EVs on solar panels on the same land? Let's say the solar farm is 50% covered with solar panels and gets a capacity factor (clouds, night, etc) of 20% and a cell efficiency of 20%. 1000W/m, so 20W/m electricity is produced on average. That's 20 joules per square meter per second, so 631 MJ per square meter per year. We reduce it by the average US grid efficiency of 92% and an average wall-to-wheels EV efficiency of 80% and we get 465 MJ per square meter per year. 136 times as land-efficient as the biofuel alternative
Now let's say we leave out all of these lossy bioprocesses behind and generate some sort of biofuel straight from electricity at a very unrealistic 80% efficiency (most processes for realistic fuels are way lower), plus the same generous 5% distribution losses, and that it's afforable. And let's say that they all burn their fuel at an impressive 40% efficiency (even fuel cells, while higher in peak efficiency, generally can't do that tank-to-wheels in real-world vehicle usage). Thus we get 192 MJ per square meter per year, 41% that of the EV. Are you really comfortable with plastering 2.4 times as much of the earth's surface with solar panels? Or 2.4 times more wind turbines, 2.4 times more dammed rivers, 2.4 times more nuclear power plants and uranium mining, etc? Is that, in your view, an ideal solution, even in this comparison highly biased in favor of fuels versus electricity?
Electricity is the universal energy currency, and we shouldn't be wasting it converting it between different forms needlessly. Not only does it mean a dramatically worse impact on the planet, it also
That actually doesn't help your argument any. The longer it takes to fill up, the more you smooth out the random demand fluctuations.
Let's say the time per pump is 5 minutes and the time per charger is 30 minutes, so we have to build 6x more chargers to service the same number of vehicles (and that you have to build the charging stations more frequently due to the range). So we'll compare a 4 pump gas station with a 24 charger EV station. So let's say that we get the following rate of people arriving (picking some numbers at random):
1:00: 1
1:05: 0
1:10: 6
1:15: 7
1:20: 3
1:25: 0
1:30: 0
1:35: 2
1:40: 1
1:45: 8
1:50: 6
1:55: 0
2:00: 1
What happens in these scenarios? First, gasoline:
1:00: 1 pump in use
1:05: 0 pumps in use
1:10: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting
1:15: 4 pumps in use, 5 people waiting
1:20: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting
1:25: 4 pumps in use, 0 people waiting
1:30: 0 pumps in use
1:35: 2 pumps in use
1:40: 1 pump in use
1:45: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting
1:50: 4 pumps in use, 6 people waiting
1:55: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting
2:00: 3 pumps in use, 0 people waiting.
What about the charging station?
1:00: 1 charger in use
1:05: 1 chargers in use
1:10: 7 chargers in use
1:15: 14 chargers in use
1:20: 17 chargers in use
1:25: 17 chargers in use
1:30: 16 chargers in use
1:35: 18 chargers in use
1:40: 13 chargers in use
1:45: 14 chargers in use
1:50: 17 chargers in use
1:55: 17 chargers in use
2:00: 18 chargers in use
With the gas station, 23 people needed to wait, some of them for a rather long time. With the charging station, nobody needed to wait. Despite the fact that the charging is 1/6th the speed, that doesn't actually imply you need 6x more chargers. In the above example, we see that the gas station should have had 8 pumps while the charging station 18 chargers, or 2.25x more.
More on the other problems with your post in just a second - I just felt that this particular aspect deserved a whole post on its own.
Not to mention that building a gas station takes a heck of a lot longer.
It's one thing I don't get about EV opponents. Not only are EVs supposed to not have any new inconveniences relative to gasoline vehicles, and not only do inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have that EVs don't have not count toward EVs, but EVs aren't even allow to have the inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have. It's always stuff like "EVs suck because it takes 11 days to build a fast charging station, but don't bother checking into how long it takes to build a gas station!" or "EVs suck because batteries are flammable (Ed: even though most EV battery types aren't particularly flammable), but don't bother asking about the flammability of gasoline!" or "EVs suck because batteries are heavy and bulky, but don't bother asking about the weight and size of internal combustion engines vs. electric motors!" or "EVs suck because batteries are toxic (Ed: Actually, most types nowadays have little toxicity), but don't bother asking about the toxicity of the several tonnes of gasoline the average driver puts into their car every year, their filling spills and fumes, their oil leaks, etc, and the massively dirty industry that produces all this!" Etc.
I don't get these people.
Nuh uh! There are also compressed air cars - they only explosively decompress upon tank failure! ;)
At least with batteries, flammability or explosiveness aren't a fundamental requirement of how you're trying to propel the vehicle, just an unfortunate side effect of some variants of the technology (even not all types of li-ions are flammable). There's lots of people who assume that flammability is a consequence of electrical energy density, but that's just not the case. The actual charge/discharge lithium batteries via intercalating into the anode or cathode is more an atomic-scale equivalent of compressing air into a tank, you're having little affect on the substrate flammabilities and you're not even changing their chemical bonding, you're just cramming lithium ions into the space between their atoms. The flammabilty of some types comes from side effects, such as flammable electrolytes or membrane failures leading to lithium metal plating out; these aren't a fundamental aspect of the energy storage process.
Now, li-air, that involves an actual lithium metal electrode, and that is fundamentally flammable. Of course, so is gasoline. I have no doubt that they can reduce fire risks on li-air cells and keep them properly contained to prevent failure propagations. My bigger issues with li-air are its terrible efficiency, lifespan, and cost. I'm certain the latter would come down, and I expect that they can improve the lifespan, but I'm a bit uneasy about how much they can improve its efficiency. Right now, they're as inefficient as a fuel cell. : Who wants to waste three times as much power per mile as is necessary?
It is a non-sequiteur. The energy density of a li-ion battery doesn't even approach the theoretical maximum storage for the element lithium shifting between ionization states. That's hardly the only way this article is terrible, mind you. My head hurt every time they said the word "efficiency", it's like they were using it to mean everything possible except for actual efficiency. And if I read it right - who knows, the article is such a total mess - the researcher isn't talking about reducing battery cost, but increasing longevity. But maybe that was mangled too.
How do they work?
Oh, right..
You're arguing against Tokamak fusion. But what about, say, HiPER? Looks to me to be a much more comercializeable approach, yet it's still "mainstream" fusion, just a slight variant on inertial confinement ala NIF to make it much smaller / cheaper / easier to have a high repeat rate (smaller compression pulse + heating pulse rather than a NIF-style super-massive compression pulse). The only really unstudied physics aspect is how the heating pulse will interact with the highly compressed matter; NIF and pals have pretty much worked out the details of how laser compression works out. Beyond this, pretty much everything else is just engineering challenges for commercialization, such as high repeat rate lasers, high-rate hohlraum injection and targeting, etc.
I've often thought (different topic) about how one can get half or more of fusion's advantages via fission if you change the game around a bit. Fusion is promoted on being passively safe (it's very hard to keep the reaction *going*, it really wants to stop at all times), it leads to abundant fuel supplies, and there's little radioactive waste (no long-term waste). But what about subcritical fission reactors? Aka, a natural uranium or thorium fuel target being bombarded with a spallation neutron source. Without the spallation neutrons, there's just not enough neutrons for the reaction, so the second the beam gets shut off, the reactor shuts down, regardless of what else is going on. It'd be a fast reactor, aka a breeder, aka, your available fuel supplies increase by orders of magnitude. And your long-term waste would be much, much less in a well-designed reactor. Spallation neutron sources have long been proposed as a way to eliminate long-lived nuclear waste by transmuting it into shorter-lived elements.
Wrong, you're talking about charge 2 on the EAW, which is only a molestation charge, not rape. charge 4 on the EAW is the rape charge and concerns a different woman. All of the charges are:
Please follow the case better if you wish to comment about it.
Once again, Assange fanboys go all out to dismiss the rape charge against him without even knowing enough about it to even keep the two women involved straight.
There are two women involved here: AA and SW (and no, their names haven't been scrubbed, but it's a sick testament to our society than rather than letting justice run its course, everyone wants to lead a personal witch hunt against the accusers, and I certainly won't help enable it). AA is the one who tweeted (but not what you said she tweeted) and who has been to cuba and wrote a blog (which doesn't say what you say it said). SW is a low-level museum worker who did none of the above. The rape charge only applies to SW. There are no rape charges concerning AA, only three lesser charges - 1x unlawful sexual coersion and 2x molestation.
The fact that you don't know even this most fundamental basic aspect of the case yet want to pontificate about it speaks volumes as to how much you are just willing to assume the innocence of Assange and that the women are just lying sluts trying to set up an innocent man. Which always happens with famous people and their fans. When you hear people talking about "rape culture", that's a very big part of it.
Now, let's correct your misrepresentation of the facts in detail.
1) There are no rape charges concerning AA. She described a series of unpleasant experiences, first to friends, later to police, involving the pinning of her down to try to force sex, her consent in exchange for the use of a condom which she feels he deliberately broke, and his repeated acts at later periods such as rubbing his naked genitals against him after she had told him no. She became so uncomfortable around him that she moved out of her own apartment to avoid him. The events therein form the basis of the unlawful sexual coersion and molestation charges. The tweet in question was not "Julian is FANTASTIC", it was "Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world's coolest smartest people in the world". She was at a party full of political activists, one of the people there being Julian. At the same party, according to testimony collected by the police, she warned a friend about Julian.
2) She did not file a rape complaint. All of the testimony speaks to that she went to the police to support SW in her going to the police to report a rape by bringing up what Julian had done to her. Which is only what a person would expect. SW had already at that point, according to testimony, been telling friends and family that she'd been raped by Julian. SW's goal in going, however, was not prosecution but to try to force Julian to take an STD test. AA's blog (again, NOT SW, who the rape charge is about) entry was something she copied years ago from someone else about how to break an ex boyfriend up with his new girlfriend, and the first two rules basically sum up as "don't do it". And seriously, do you honestly think if millions of fanboys combed through everything you've ever written on the net that they couldn't find something to attack your character with?
3) See my reply to the post above yours, and pay particular attention to the fact that the Svea Court of Appeals has already reviewed all evidence in a full court hearing with testimony from Assange's attorneys and ruled against him, and the Swedish Supreme Court refused Assange's appeal.
4) How does a person "convince" a person of anything while they're asleep? Is Assange capable of doing Inception?
5) Again, you're talking about AA, not SW. The attacks against AA are the most ridiculous six degrees of separation thing I've seen in ages. It's something penned by Israel Shamir, a famously misogynistic and antisemitic author, as well as being the guy who's famous as being the person who gave unreleased Wikileaks information to the dictator of Belarus which he then used in a purge of political opponents (google "Israel Shamir" and "Belarus"). The argument he posted on Counterpunch basically goes like this: AA
Nobody has backed out of anything. Both women still have legal representation pushing the case forward. They've been trying to stay out of the public eye, but one made a remark on a blog half a year ago about how she was a victim of sex crimes and the perpetrator still hasn't been brought to justice and his fans keep making excuses for him. Does that sound like having "backed out of said accusations" to you?
No, it's not "his word against hers". The Svea Court of Appeals has found probable cause for rape, and the Supreme Court upheld it, does that sound like "his word against hers"?
Just what we know from what's leaked so far, which is just a fraction of the evidence: everyone whose close to SW has testified that she's had a lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex. Her former boyfriend of 2 1/2 years testified that when they were together it was "unthinkable" to her, that not only did it never happen, but she even made him get STD tested before protected sex. As for the night in question, here's the leadup that neither Assange nor his legal team have issued any dispute to: that he and SW went home together, where they were making out and she repeatedly refused the unprotected sex that Assange sought. He reluctantly consented to protected sex at least once. Assange's attorney even described (while trying to claim that there was no rape) that his client was "pushing the boundaries of what she felt comfortable with", so there's no dispute to this, Assange's team admits to it. In the morning Assange sent her out to buy him breakfast. Here we have phone records, SMS records, and interviews with those talked to to back up SW's report, and no dispute registered from Assange's team: that she complained bitterly about how mad she was getting at Assange for repeatedly trying to F* her unprotected against her will and for bossing her around. In line she also ran into her brother, who described her as looking very upset when the conversation turned to Assange. She returned home with the food; they ate, and she fell asleep.
Now, that entire thing thusfar is not disputed by any party. What Assange's team claims happened next is that she was "half awake" and consented to unprotected sex (what she says, and told many people before going to the police station, is that she woke up to him doing it). Let's reiterate: the woman with an extreme lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex who was immediately before falling to sleep complaining to her friends about Assange trying to have unprotected sex with her and bossing her around, suddenly wakes up and says "Let's f*** without protection".
Is it any wonder the guy keeps losing legal cases?
I'm against violence in general, actual rape,
No, when you automatically believe everything you hear about a guy accused of rape because you like the guy and assume any charges against him are a giant conspiracy, and calls F*ing a person while they're a sleep in a manner they expressly prohibited "stuck his boner in a place that it shouldn't have been", an act that one can "hardly blame the person who did it" - you're nothing but an enabler.
Huh? The guy in that article was already åtalad (indicted) and awaiting an appeal when he died. How is that supposed to be arguing in any way shape or form that you can åtala someone who's not in custody? Under Swedish law, once someone is åtalad, there's a time limit until they must be tried. A person is anklagad to get them into custody, then åtalad to bring them to trial. And the British court system has at every level ruled Assange to be in a state equivalent to charged under the British legal system. But do you somehow know more about Swedish and British law than the Swedish prosecutor, the Swedish judge who issued the warrant, the Svea Court of Appeals that found Assange (after a full court hearing and all evidence reviewed) as having probable cause for rape, the Swedish Supreme Court which refused Assange's appeal, the British Lower Court, the British High Court, and the British Supreme Court? If so, my apologies, SuperLawyer - please return to the Justice League immediately!
By all means, please point me to the part in Swedish law that overrules Sweden's constitution separation of powers clause and the extradition law's clearly spelled out order of proceedings which make it clear that the government isn't even allowed to give a nonbinding opinion until after the courts take up a case.
Yet strangely it didn't seem to bother him when he was outright trying to move to Sweden - he had nothing but praise to heap on Sweden and their legal system then. It was only after he was anklagad for rape that Sweden turned into an evil US lackey. And then he had no problem being in the UK out in the open, and talked about his respect for their legal system. That is, until he lost there, and they too became an evil US lackey. And now we're supposed to believe that both of his personally chosen countries, plus the ECHR, aren't enough?
The British court system has ruled him to be charged. Assange and his attorneys like to play word games between being anklagad and åtalad (see elsewhere in this article's comments for details), but the simple fact is, as far as Britain is concerned, he's charged.
And no, they're not "extrading people for questioning". From the official sworn statement of the Swedish prosecutor submitted to the British courts:
Right. The Great White Brootherhood not a white supremecist cult! And the organizer considering herself to be Jesus Christ doesn't make them a cult! And was purely harmless - that's why they were raided, all the children removed, and the founders prosecuted, right?
Please, give me a break here. The Family sought to "collect" children with pronounced aryan traits. She furthermore did everything she could to make them look more aryan, including bleaching their hair. The children were taught that Anne was their mother, and that everyone else in the cult - including their real parents - were aunts and uncles. Byrne held that a holocaust was going to wipe out humanity and that the children would become the inheritors of the Earth. The cult's motto was "Unseen , Unheard and Unknown", and breaches of that were punished severely. The kids were malnourished, raised in a dimly lit building surrounded by barbed wire and given daily doses of tranquilizers. They were carefully hidden from visitors. They were supposed to shower with their eyes shut so they wouldn't see their naked bodies and to not wash their genitals. Establishing friendships with other children was a punishable offense. They had to listen to regular "meetings with the master" where they were told of the importance of being a good disciple. Read what her daughter wrote about it here. Random excerpt (though there is all too much to mention):
But no, a harmless hippie commune, clearly! Run by Jesus Christ herself!
F*ing a sleeping girl to work around her explicit and repeated refusal to consent to your preferred form of sex (what Assange is charged with, #4 on the EAW) IS RAPE, in every developed country on earth, and every level of the British court system have confirmed that what he is charged with matches to their equivalent crimes in the UK (they'd actually have worse sentences). And it damn well should be considered rape, and the fact that all of these Assange fanboys try to do a "it's not rape-rape!" thing with it is sickening. Let me be explicit: If I give you permission to F* me in a certain way, and explicitly refuse a different way, and I wake up to you F*ing me in the way I explicitly banned, You're Committing Rape. Period. End of story. And FYI, Sweden actually has some of the most lax rape laws in Europe, but even in Sweden, that's still rape.
Your claims that the women were "coerced" are absurd. SW according to everyone's testimony had a right proper freakout immediately after the event and told friends and family that she'd been raped, before she went to the police. And even before the event she'd been complaining to friends via SMS (and when she was out buying food) about how mad she was getting at Assange for continually trying to f* her in the way she prohibited. The fact that the women, after talking about what happened to each of them, decided to go to the police together, is bloody well what one would expect in such a situation. At the police office they were separated and interviewed separately. And no, it's a complete myth that SW "refused to go on with the investigation", as many fanboys claim - the leaked police report explicitly states that it's the interviewer who decided to terminate the investigation, and that SW then consented to a rape kit (sound like someone who didn't want to go on with the investigation?) and said she wanted a legal representative (who then pushed the case relentlessly forward - sound like someone who didn't want to go on with the investigation?).
Trying to get people charged with crimes like rape to trial is the very thing the EAW was created for. In what bloody world is rape not a "serious crime"?
He was never free to go; that's a myth spread by his attorney, who received an official condemnation by the Swedish Bar Association for lying about that in court as well as a major dressing down from the judge (he's lucky he didn't get hit with legal sanctions). There was never a time period where he was not under investigation, and when he fled the country, his attorney was actively pretending that Assange was getting ready to come in willingly (and then after he got to the UK, Hurtg continued stalling, pretending Assange was going to be coming immediately back). If you want to see all the nitty-gritty, you can read the Ny SMS logs, they've been released.
To go into more details about the early stages: AA and SW walked into a Stockholm police station and made the report, and were interviewed by two separate officers. As it was a weekend, the only available prosecutor, Eva Finne, took the case. There were a total of three initial investigating officers - Wassgren, Krans, and Gehlen. Wassgren and Gehlen felt, from the interviews, that Assange should be charged with five counts (2x molestatation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x rape); Krans felt it should be 2x, 1x, 2x. News quickly broke that Assange was being investigated. This is supposed to be illegal, the name isn't supposed to be disclosed at this stage but Sweden has some crazy-strong whistleblower protection laws (part of the reason Assange was moving there in the first place), you can't even investigate to find out who made a leak, so it always happens when cases involve famous people. Finne quickly had a warrant issued for Assange's arrest for the two rapes - even though he had not at that point refused to cooperate. There was naturally a huge backlash, and Finne withdrew the warrant (thus dropping the rape charges), but kept the investigation open for the molestation and unlawful sexual coersion charges. It was during this time that Assange was interviewed; since the only investigations open referred to the lesser charges, that's all he was interviewed about. Meanwhile, the legal representative of the women, Claes Borgström, appealed the decision (Sweden has a police appeal board, which is frequently used for cases like this and isn't particularly unusual); the fact that Finne had dropped the rape charge concerning SW before SW's statement had even gotten into the computer system made it pretty obvious that the case hadn't gotten a fair hearing, and the board ruled in favor of the women. The case was thus transferred to the next prosecutor up, Marianne Ny. Ny reopened the investigation for all five counts, and tried to get Assange back in to interview him for the dropped charges. The team meanwhile did lots of followup interviews and forensics collection and testing. It was during this time that Assange fled to the UK. Ny spent over a month trying to get Assange to come back, continually reaching out to his attorney, even the day before she went into court to get a warrant for him. A judge approved the Swedish warrant (thus he was formally anklagad, the Swedish stage for trying to get a person into custody so that they can then be åtalad, which is the stage that leads to trial) and subsequently the EAW was issued. The original warrant was open for the full five counts. Assange appealed to the Svea Board of Appeals (Sweden has a strong defendents rights process, even though he was hiding from the law he was still able in absentia to appeal the investigation), and a full court hearing was held involving a full review of the evidence and testimony from Assange's attorneys. For the most part, he lost - one of the rape charges was dropped, but the other and all of the others were upheld, leaving a formal finding of probable cause of rape, molestation, and unlawful sexual coersion. Assange appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court. His appeal was rejected. He then moved through the appeals process in the British system, first the lower court, the high court, and the Supreme Court, alleging malicious p
Ah, the old anklagad / åtalad word game... (Assange is anklagad but not åtalad, but you can't be åtalad until you're in custody, so he's using the fact that he's not åtalad to argue for not having to ever enter into a situation where he can be åtalad; being anklagad is ued to get a person into custody, while being åtalad is used to try them)
Perhaps some day, your descriptions of the case and Swedish law will come within a ballistic missile's range of the actuality. Until then, I won't be holding my breath.
Straw men usually are.
Their description of Swedish rape law is to reality as fish are to bicycles. Sweden actually has some of the most lax, backward rape laws in Europe. For example, several years back there was a case where a teenage girl was gang raped by three men, but only the first could be charged because she had given up struggling after the being beaten into submission by the first and hadn't registered an objection to the other two.
What Assange is *actually* charged with, the rape charge (#4 on the EAW) is:
To put it quite plainly, he's charged with, when a girl who was paranoid about disease and pregnancy refused to have unprotected sex with him, he waited until she fell asleep and then started F*ing her unprotected. Which is F*ing rape, and the fact that people keep trying to pretend that it's not "real" rape, I find sickening.
When will this myth die? From the official sworn statement of the Swedish prosecutor submitted to the British courts:
There is an EAW out for him. It lays out four charges: 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x molestation, and 1x rape. The checkbox for rape is marked next to he rape charge (#4). Every level of the British court system has reviewed the warrant and reached the same conclusions: Everything he is charged with in Sweden would be their equivalent crimes in the UK (including rape), the warrant is legitimate, and he is wanted for the purposes of prosecution, not merely questioning.
Assange Consented To Be Extradited, Says British Home Secretary
Wrong. Sweden *additionally* has restrictions in their extradition law banning extradition for intelligence and military crimes, beyond the general EU restrictions. Which is why they refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard (the most major CIA defector to the USSR) after only a very brief preliminary investigation; it's simply banned to extradite for such crimes. Think the US didn't really want Howard? Not to mention that the UK *also* has veto over any extradition, as the sending state under a EU surrender request , so he'd be *safer* in Sweden (it's an extra barrier). And here we're talking about the UK, the country that wouldn't even hand over Gary McKinnon, the most damaging hacker of US military systems on record, because "he has aspergers" (as if Julian I-Have-To-Wear-Specific-Jackets-To-Write-Specific-Documents Assange doesn't?). Think the US didn't really want McKinnon? And of course, the ECHR has veto power over every step of the way - the ECHR which is often considered the greatest refuge for people fleeing extradition on Earth, the same court body that goes so far in terms of protecting the rights of suspects and prisoners that it ruled that you can't ban UK prisoners who are in prison from voting or sex offenders serving time for their offenses from having access to (government paid) reproductive services.
And what praytell was the plan here? Instead of waiting until Julian, famous for being a globetrotter, goes to a trivially easy nation, let's insist on getting him in the nation that *he himself* chose as the most difficult? And then let's not have a single person even watch him to warn the Swedes when he leaves or warn the British when he jumps bail? And let's complicate the whole thing with competing local charges?
The conspiracy theory is so far into fantasyland that parents in Narnia could use it as a bedtime story for their kids. And Assange knows this. Whenever it's pointed out, he always changes the subject. He lost one of his biggest supporters this way, Jemima Khan, who posted a huge chunk of his bail, but now considers him a "new L. Ron Hubbard" because of his dodges on this issue.
Oh come on now. Sweden should change their laws and override the separation of powers clause in their constitition because it's ASSANGE we're talking about. I mean, don't they know that he's just the AWESOMEST AWESOME that ever AWESOMED and everything revolves around him?
Yes, Assange was so terrified of those evil Swedes, those American puppets, that he was moving Wikileaks' base of operations there (after alienating the majority of his Iceland team) and applying for a residence permit there, right? That's why he called Sweden's laws and legal system his "shield" in multiple interviews, right? That's why Wikileaks leaked that in 2006 Sweden caused a major diplomatic rift with the US by outright disguising their special forces as airport workers to break into a CIA rendition flight to stop the US, right?
Funny how Sweden only became evil US lackeys after he was anklagad for rape.
Link
The guy was living like a character in a spy novel long before he started Wikileaks; he's a total paranoid regardless of what threats are actually present. The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.