Hardly persecution, Mr Assange (The Independent | Monday 20 August)

[struggle4progress]

Monday 20 August 2012

Julian Assange's soaring rhetoric from the balcony of the embassy of Ecuador today was, by now, a rather familiar performance ...

For all the bombast, however, the issue here is not WikiLeaks' diplomatic cables, or the US response to them, or the "dangerous and oppressive world" against which Mr Assange purports to be striving so hard. And what he signally failed to mention today was that he is all but incarcerated in the Ecuadorean embassy not because he is a fighter for freedom but because he is wanted in Sweden over wholly unrelated allegations of sexual assault ...

Mr Assange's words may have played well with the band of hardcore supporters gathered outside the embassy in Knightsbridge today. But the spectacle of a man supposedly so committed to honesty and absolute openness going to such lengths to avoid accounting for himself is losing him much support elsewhere.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-hardly-persecution-mr-assange-8061530.html

[hobbit709]

1. On a streak there aren't you

[treestar]

5. Wikileaks has raised a lot of money

Maybe they are paying the people who post all the boo-hoo about poor poor Julian.

[Odin2005]

3. Your pro-Police State propaganda is tiresome.

[treestar]

4. quote

But the fact remains that the commitment to pursue Mr Assange rests on the substantive criminal claims against him and the obligations of the diplomatic relationship between Britain and Sweden. Not only has the US made no move towards extraditing Mr Assange over WikiLeaks; that his fears did not extend to his prolonged stay in Britain – which is notoriously keen to oblige US extradition requests – only adds to suspicions of his motives.

that is so obvious you have to be a blind fanboy to keep insisting on the US "persecution" that's going to allegedly occur.

[hobbit709]

7. And maybe something like this has to do with it.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7548149-sweden-had-approved-us-rendition-flights-both-from-and-through-sweden

[Robb]

8. Sweden took a dramatic stand *against* rendition.

...Something we know about, ironically, thanks to Wikileaks.

http://www.swedishwire.com/politics/7497-cia-rendition-flights-stopped-by-swedish-military

An acute diplomatic crisis broke out between the United States and Sweden in 2006 when Swedish authorities put a stop to CIA rendition flights, according to the latest revelation from Wikileaks.

Daily Svenska Dagbladet wrote Sunday that Swedish Military Intelligence posed as airport personnel and boarded one of the two controversial extraordinary rendition flights during a stopover at Stockholm’s Arlanda International Airport. The suspected prisoner transfers were confirmed.

A few days before the incident US charge d’affaires at the American Embassy in Stockholm, Steven V. Noble, was summoned by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and questioned about the planned stopover. The Swedish military also set down rules for stopovers.

Steven V. Noble wrote in cables reveled by WkiLeaks that the Swedish government reacted strongly because rules had not been followed.

[treestar]

9. Wow

that makes it even more ridiculous.

Interesting that the fact that Sweden would not continue rendition flights was considered classified. It's not a dramatic revelation really. sounds like Bush era stuff.

[Cleita]

6. So tell us why you really hate this man that you would support

his being imprisoned by us? We are all eyes and ears waiting for your reasoning.