"We've no idea if anyone plans to smuggle him a DVD"
You mean, it's not on Wikileaks yet?
Julian Assange continues to insist that Australia's government has done him no favours, but his nation of birth has supported his cause in one, indirect, way. Screen Australia, the Australian federal government’s national movie-funding-and-promotion agency, is one of the key production finance investors for the Australian-made …
Why the need to smuggle anything? The Police are not stopping mail to the embassy. Anyone can send post to the Ecuadorean embassy (Flat 3B, 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1X 0LS) or consulate (First Floor Uganda House, London, WC2N 5DX) and if you put "FAO Julian Assange" I'm pretty sure the staff should be able to work out which "guest" it is for. Of course, anyone that is likely to want to waste their money on buying that DVD and mailing it to A$$nut is probably the type that is already sending their knickers to the embassy on a daily basis since A$$nut crawled in there.
Please, please, stop writing about this bloke. For whatever "good" he believes he's done as the figurehead of an organisation, he seems to have decided that the due process of law in the Western liberal democracies that facilitated this "good" doesn't apply to him.
We shouldn't stoke his ego with any reporting at all. Until to chooses to respect the laws of this land and the terms of bail he previous chose to accept, can't we please just ignore him?
I'm pretty sure that every day there are people who would be prepared to abide by the laws of Britain and other European countries and on whom our resources would be better spent. His actions suggest that he's already decided he doesn't want any protection from the British and that he doesn't trust Sweden, so perhaps we should just walk away, stop spending police resource around the embassy, and if the Americans really want him, they can grab him between the embassy and the airport.
Obviously it's completely contrary to what I'd normally advocate, but if he decides my country's laws don't apply to him, then I'm damned if I'll support my taxes being used to "protect" him against a country that we trust and which signs up to the same principles we do.
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"You *have* heard by now that Sweden's dropped the rape charge, and is not pursuing the molestation charge haven't you?"
You may wish to check the date on that article - 21 August 2010 Last updated at 17:02 . A lot has happened in two years.
Mind you I thought he same thing when I saw the headline, but out of date articles in the "Most Popular" list, seem to be a feature of the BBC website.
Yeah, I noticed how that article had been autobombed to the top of the BBC's "most read" list. I'm tempted to write a script to hit the page on the US giving Emilio Palacio assylum (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19431682) just so the A$$nut Faithful and Wikitwit groupies can get an idea as to why Ecuador's Prez is suddenly so keen to help A$$nut. Of course, that would require the Faithful to develop the ability for independent thought.....
Of course, it helps when Wikileaks tweets the story to 1,621,029 followers a few hours before it shoots up the rankings: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/243670738899451905
Also, people may be interested in reading these articles. Not that they'll change anyone's mind of course:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/09/legal-mythology-extradition-julian-assange
Pushing that article up has been one of the more clever tactics by Assange's supporters.
They simply automated hitting that page, and as the "most read" page is just statistics based it came to the front. They got what they deserved for that as the page has now been removed in full by the BBC - both the above links now go 404 and the site search engine cannot find it either.
Personally, I wonder just how long the Ecuadorians can stand being in the same place as Assange. I predict Assange will not live in that embassy for 6..12 months as he stated, some "accident" will happen, like him waking up outside or tripping over a couple of stray Ferrero Rochers, needing a visit to A & E..
Give it time.
"....Who's to say Sweden won't do this again?...." There would be no need for an extraordinary rendition as A$$nut could be LEGALLY extradited from Sweden IF the US decided to press charges and issue a warrant. UNTIL the US does so and the Swedish courts get to examine the request, it is IMPOSSIBLE for the Swedes to guarantee that A$$nut would not be extradited to the US.
The fact that you are still posting such garbage weeks after it has been debunked means you are (A) really stupid, or (B) deliberately trying to mislead other readers, or (C) both! My opinion is that you are definately option C.
Maybe you should learn more about Sweden's past behaviour before comdeming Assange's current course of action. A good place to start is reading about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States#Sweden. Sweden has said that it will not guarantee that it won't do this to Assange. So if you were in his shoes, what would you think? Going to court in Sweden and facing whatever charges is not what worries hiim. Going to Sweden and finding himself on a plane to torture at the hands of the USA is. Sweden only has itself to blame for this situation. If Sweden hadn't of acted as the USA's lapdog in the past, nobody would be paranoid now.
This sequel to this film tells the story of an idealistic, young man who is used by an unspecified government agency to undermine the whistle-blowing organisation he helped to set up.
The plot gets going when the whistle-blowers release film of a helicopter pilot gunning down some journalists, greatly alarming the unspecified government, who had tried to cover it up.
In response the agency "turns" the hero and gets him to set up a honeytrap to ensnare the source of the leaked helicopter footage.
The suspected source, a naive young private, is then deliberately fed some spicy, but boring diplomatic traffic, of no real value, in the hope he will leak it.
He does. The consequent row pretty well puts the whistle-blowers out of business, cutting of their funds, and trashing their reputation. The hero, now apparently enthused with a sort of megalomania, continues to inflame the situation with his behaviour. It is not clear if this apparent megalomania is genuine or a result of some action by the government agency .
Shortly afterwards two female members of the whistle-blowing organisation discover what is really going on, and threaten to expose the hero. The hero just manages to escape to a country, where he thinks he will be safe.
Unfortunately the country he flees to has a close alliance with the country organising the deception, and the government agency now sees the hero as "compromised" and "dangerous". Several weeks of legal manoeuvring take place as the agency tries to extradite the hero, so they can "neutralise" him before he can do any more damage.
Eventually, realising their extradition efforts have failed, the agency offers the hero a "way out" by infiltrating the embassy of a hostile power...
Hang on ... I've just realised that's the Hollywood version.
Yeah, I wonder how that got there - NOT! The counter for the most read can be played with a script to hit the webpage repeatedly until it tops the list, no actual real readers required. Now, only the A$$nut Faithful would want to get the article up there, and it tells you all you need to know about their readiness to lie in that they want to pretend that - suddenly - hosts of real people just discovered and read that old article. But when self-deception is second nature I suppose they see nothing wrong with trying to deceive others.
Maybe they should have instead autobombed the page explaining how A$$nut had exhausted all legal means of avoiding extradition to Sweden (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18446295). But then I suppose that might be a bit too truthful for them.
> Now, only the A$$nut Faithful would want to get the article up there, and it tells you all you need to know about their readiness to lie in that they want to pretend that - suddenly - hosts of real people just discovered and read that old article.
Either that or someone is hoping Julian sees it and goes "oh, no need to stay in here then, I'm off down the shops. Oh, hello officer..."
How about a t v series about an English bounty hunter who bounds around the world pinching blokes the US wants to extradite but always is thwarted by tin pot dictators? We'd call it 'Extradition Impossible'.
Naturally Rowan Atkinson as the tough as nails bounty hunter.
"Julian Assange continues to insist that Australia's government has done him no favours, but his nation of birth has supported his cause in one, indirect, way."
Yet more spin control from Julian.
The truth is that until he asks them for help, he's not going going to get it.
If/when he get to Sweden, he has the option for asking for help. Somehow I think he won't ask his government for help, even though it would benefit him the most in Sweden. (IMHO)
Oh boy, the Dunce is strong with this one! Not only is that article from two years ago, before the charges were reinstated, but if you'd bothered to check the thread before posting you'd have spotted that you're only three hours behind the rest of the A$$nut groupies.
There was an Australian newspaper article that his father is accepting an Aboriginal Passport on Assange's behalf.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention...
1) it's about as valid as that Ordained Minister site where you pay $$$ and they send you a pice of paper that says you are now an ordained minister of the church of the flying spaghetti monster.
2) this is the same father from whom his mother had been running away in fear from all those years.
(go see the movie 'The Waterboy' and watch the ending. )
"There was an Australian newspaper article that his father is accepting an Aboriginal Passport on Assange's behalf."
He is desperate:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/52203
http://www.straight.com/article-774636/vancouver/julian-assange-will-be-awarded-aboriginal-passport
As of now my opinion is even more strongly than before that he is trying to avoid being convicted for rape. This has nothing to do with any of his smokescreen.