Re: Maybe not Friday.
"There's rather more levels to this than the ambiguous rape case."
Oh really? For a start the UK cannot allow Assange to be extradited to the US without Swedish permission, and the Swedes have already said this will not be forthcoming. In addition, whilst an EAW is in force the accused must be sent to the arresting country and only there.
The quickest thing to do would have been for the Swedes to remain silent, not request an EAW, and for the US DoJ to issue an extradition request under the ToniBler we-bend-over-for-theUS agreement. Assange would have been there as quick as you like.
The problem with your argument is that Assange, as pointed out, is not an American national and it is difficult to conceive of how to charge a non American national for leaking documents that arrived through a third party.
On unprotected sex (the matter in hand), starting with the sorts of sentences handed down where infected people have not disclosed and unprotected sex took place:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026598/David-Golding-gave-girlfriend-Cara-Scott-herpes-JAILED-14-months.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11097934
An appropriate article on living by the "sword":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/03/assange_documents_leaked/
The incriminating Today Programme interview:
Q: That leaves us with the fact, because you accept this, that one of those women at least did make a complaint against you.
JA: Not even a complaint. It appears, from the records that we do have, the suggestion is that they went to the police for advice and they did not want to make a complaint. What they say is that they found out that they were mutual lovers of mine and they had undertaken sex and they got into a tizzy about whether there was a possibility of sexually transmitted diseases. They went to the police to…
Q: They wanted you to have a test as well.
JA: …to have a test.
Q: Did you have a test?
JA: Ridiculous thing to go to the police about.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm ]
Ridiculous? The man is alleged to have had unprotected sexual intercourse where permission was given only for protected sex.
Assange the self styled journalist and ethics:
"A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind."
[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen ]
NB, "the gullible"
"An Australian official has described as "incredibly irresponsible" Wikileaks' release of a US cable that appears to name Australian terror suspects.
The cable was among more than 130,000 confidential US cables released by the whistle-blowing group, many of which did not remove the names of sources.
Such information has previously been redacted in Wikileaks releases."
[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14722030 ]
“ 'Of course I'm a goddamn journalist.' ”
[ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/28/assange_journalist/ ]
"Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files obtained from unknown informants. The information they contained is now apparently lost, irrevocably. The documents in question were stored on the WikiLeaks server until late summer 2010, when Domscheit-Berg left the organization, taking the files with him upon his departure.
Now Domscheit-Berg says that these documents were 'shredded over the past few days in order to ensure that the sources are not compromised.' "
(How wise)
"The Guardian felt strongly that the secret material ought to be redacted to protect informants or bystanders named in it, and Julian was inconsistent about that. I never believed he wanted to endanger such people, but he chose to interpret the Guardian’s concern as ‘cowardice’."
[ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting ]
(How uncharacteristically wise of the Guardian)
[ http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/assange-battle-escalates-ex-wikileaks-spokesman-destroyed-unpublished-files-a-781581.html ]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/assange_claims_suing_guardian/
No lawsuit yet.
"He is vain, secretive, paranoid and jealous, prone to leering at young women and making frequent sexist jokes – and that's not the view of one of his many enemies, but of a friend who regards him sympathetically." and "Earlier O’Hagan had watched as Assange leered at two 14-year-old girls as they walked past a café table at which they were sitting. O’Hagan writes how Assange thought they were “fine”, until he saw one was wearing braces."
[ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/10655638/Paranoid-vain-and-jealous-the-secret-life-of-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange.html ]
" 'People are finally seeing the darker side of Julian Assange, the fact that he doesn't tell the truth, that he lies,; Gibney said."
[ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alex-gibney-fires-back-at-657677?mobile_redirect=false ]
"Assange pleaded guilty to 24 offences before Judge Leslie Ross, who said the crimes were ''quite serious'' and ''troublesome behaviour''.
''The intrusion into these computers was quite extensive, it carried with it the potential to cause particular harm, I thought,'' the judge said."
[ http://www.smh.com.au/national/for-lonely-teenager-assange-a-computer-was-his-only-friend-20110114-19rcq.html ]
“ 'Of course I'm a goddamn journalist.' ”!!!
"Police spoke to Miss W's ex-boyfriend, who told them that in two and a half years they had never had sex without a condom because it was "unthinkable" for her. Miss W told police she went to a chemist to buy a morning-after pill and also went to hospital to be tested for STDs. Police statements record her contacting Assange to ask him to get a test and his refusing on the grounds that he did not have the time.
On Wednesday 18 August, according to police records, Miss A told Harold and a friend that Assange would not leave her flat and was sleeping in her bed, although she was not having sex with him and he spent most of the night sitting with his computer. Harold told police he had asked Assange why he was refusing to leave the flat and that Assange had said he was very surprised, because Miss A had not asked him to leave. Miss A says she spent Wednesday night on a mattress and then moved to a friend's flat so she did not have to be near him. She told police that Assange had continued to make sexual advances to her every day after they slept together and on Wednesday 18 August had approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her."
[...]
"The Guardian understands that the recent Swedish decision to apply for an international arrest warrant followed a decision by Assange to leave Sweden in late September and not return for a scheduled meeting when he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor. Assange's supporters have denied this, but Assange himself told friends in London that he was supposed to return to Stockholm for a police interview during the week beginning 11 October, and that he had decided to stay away. Prosecution documents seen by the Guardian record that he was due to be interviewed on 14 October."
[ http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden ]
"Between 3:13 and 3:30 it is quite clear to me, as both a former infantry sergeant and a photographer, that the two men central to the gun-camera’s frame are carrying photographic equipment. This much is noted by WikiLeaks, and misidentified by the crew of Crazyhorse 18. At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution, video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable."
[ http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/reaction-on-military-blogs-to-the-wikileaks-video/ ]
As I type these lines Julian Assange has been "arbitrarily detained" at the Ecuadorian embassy. Perhaps now he will have his day in court for bail jumping and for alleged sexual offences.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
