Assange Watch

[raspberry-blower]

The Swedish authorities have already interviewed him about this. He was cleared. A new prosecutor has been brought in and could have arranged to meet or at least interview Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy but didn't.
Therefore there has to be an ulterior motive

[frank_begbie]

The Swedish authorities have already interviewed him about this. He was cleared. A new prosecutor has been brought in and could have arranged to meet or at least interview Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy but didn't.
Therefore there has to be an ulterior motive

I wonder what that could be?

[biffvernon]

Well it couldn't possibly be that the American Government did not like that he published a film of American soldiers shooting unarmed people in an Iraq street from a helicopter thus alleging that the American government is guilty of war crimes, could it?

(Amongst a host of similar things.)

[biffvernon]

You just couldn't make this up.

Now that Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project, has confirmed Karl Rove’s role as an advisor to the Swedish government in its prosecution of Julian Assange on sexual misconduct charges, it is important that we note the many glaring aberrations in the handling of Assange’s case by the authorities in Sweden.

Dr. Brian Palmer, a social anthropologist at Uppsala University, explained on Kreig’s radio show last month that Karl Rove has been working directly as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party. Kreig also reported, in Connecticut Watchdog, that the Assange accusers’ lawyer is a partner in the law firm Borgström and Bodström, whose other name partner, Thomas Bodström, is a former Swedish Minister of Justice. In that office, Bodström helped approve a 2001 CIA rendition request to Sweden, to allow the CIA to fly two asylum-seekers from Sweden to Egypt, where they were tortured. This background compels us to review the case against Assange with extreme care.

Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law, and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters, I can say with certainty that this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. New details from the Swedish police make this quite clear. Their transcript of the complaints against Assange is strikingly unlike the dozens of such transcripts that I have read throughout the years as an advocate for victims of sex crimes.

Specifically, there are eight ways in which this transcript is unusual:

More:
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/02/ei ... aomi-wolf/

[SleeperService]

I agree biff but the comments at the bottom of the piece suggest a bit of sloppy research. The actual actions are what matter not so much who made them but getting that detail wrong raises doubt about other areas.

Something stinks in all this. It's my understanding that the Swedes take the attitude that in certain situations things may get out of control. If you enter this situation you're partly responsible. It's odd that this all blew up AFTER the Wikileaks episode exploded

Mind you the Swedes are a wyrd lot, the Nobel Committee was noticeably against female scientists for a long time for example.

[UndercoverElephant]

I agree biff but the comments at the bottom of the piece suggest a bit of sloppy research.

Or people trying to make it look that way. Personally, I'm no expert on Swedish law.

[UndercoverElephant]

The Americans must be absolutely furious. We now have Ecuador calling an emergency meeting of South American states to support them, and Assange threatening to take the UK to the "World Court" at the UN if it doesn't grant him free passage out of the UK. They needed him out of there before this blew up into a massive international incident, now it's too late and I don't think they are going to get their man.

[Little John]

The UK and USA media will make great play of appearing to be on the "correct" side of this incident in Russia, of course, in order to deflect criticism away from their treatment of the Assange case.

Wheels within wheels......

[Little John]

The thing that keeps hitting home to me is the confluence of repression of the people all across the world, in very different regimes all at the same time. from Russia to Egypt to the US and UK.

It tells me that those at the top know the party is over. They know that hard times are coming. They know the people are going to start kicking off and are going to be less willing to endure seeing their elites living high on the hog while they, the people, get poor and poorer.

The fuckers at the top are getting scared.

Of us.

[vtsnowedin]

Eight generations ago the pioneer of my family was released from Newgate prison and allowed to emigrate to Boston with several members of his illegal church flock. They arrived on Sept. 18 1634 on the ship "Griffin. " as part of the Great migration of Puritans to New England.
England was indeed an evil empire then and would be today if you had the means.
To state that the USA is an evil empire above all others is to be simplistic at best.

I'm happy to be corrected but I think that the Puritans that left did so not to find liberty but to found a country devoid of it. Those that stayed fought the English Civil War and brought a Puritan to the level of a King yet few of those who left chose to return.
In America they had found a place where they could be completely intolerant of all other religious practices, a facet which led to the later explicit separation of church and state.

They also kept slaves.

Freedom it seems wasn't an inclusive concept.

You have an interesting take on 17th century American history. I doubt that many Puritans in the commonwealth of Massachusetts had the means or the inclination to return to England when their side won a civil war back home and there was no certainty that the war would stay won.
And yes the Puritans were very arrogant about the correctness of their religious views and intolerant of others but that was modified by the course of events and their grandsons in Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery in 1777.
As to the separation of church and state, that was a grand political compromise when they wrote the constitution as the thirteen colonies had as many different religious histories and doctrines and the only state religion that was acceptable to all was to have no state religion at all.
They learned a lot in a hundred and fifty years.

[UndercoverElephant]

The fuckers at the top are getting scared.

Of us.

Which do you think they are more scared of...us, or losing most of their own wealth?

Or is there no difference?

[JavaScriptDonkey]

They learned a lot in a hundred and fifty years.

Oh yes. I would never judge a nation by the actions of its forefathers.

My point was that they were only interested in religious freedom for themselves. They didn't seek to make a nation free for all comers but rather sought to make a place that they could control the religious practices of others.

That changed later and so much the better.

I wonder how pragmatic Assange will be now if a large enough bucket of dirt on his Ecuadorian hosts falls in his lap.

Would he publish?

[biffvernon]

Live feed from Ecuador Embassy.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupynew ... ium=social

Assange may be giving a statement 11.30 this morning.

What a lot of policemen there are outside the embassy!

[frank_begbie]

Live feed from Ecuador Embassy.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupynew ... ium=social

Assange may be giving a statement 11.30 this morning.

What a lot of policemen there are outside the embassy!

Thanks for that.

No wonder its costing over £50,000 per day!

How many coppers do they need? Its only one man ffs!

[vtsnowedin]

[My point was that they were only interested in religious freedom for themselves. They didn't seek to make a nation free for all comers but rather sought to make a place that they could control the religious practices of others.
,,,,,
,,,,,

?

Being in Newgate prison in the 1630's would tend to focus your attention on your own and your family's problems. Time to work on the world picture after you get that sorted.