Philosophy Now Forum

Assange has asylum. What an important, brave, nay historical move. Ecuador Viva! Whatever happens from here, they, the Ecuador leadership, took a major stand against the darkness in day we presently accept as contemporary life.

Ecuador is no stranger to media personalities sheltering in embassies though. Previously it was Carlos Perez hiding out in the Panamanian embassy to avoid a three year prison sentence for libelling President Correa. He, and the other two co-accused, were eventually pardoned by Correa but the message is clear: libelling il presidente can get you locked up.

I also wouldn't underestimate Correa's desire to piss off the USA, for a number of reasons, so I'd reserve judgement before I believed the hype and started the process towards canonization.

i think its pretty obvious that the ecuadorian government are not in this because of their love of doing good deeds

but that is neither here nor there

the attempts to extradite assange to sweden are obviously a pretext for handing him over to the us

he was in sweden for a month after the complaints were made and sweden voluntarily let him go after talking to him

so in this dispute ecuador is clearly in the right whatever their motives

Yes. Reserve judgement. But the decision made is an ethical one, it is Ecuador defending human rights against the US and UK.

If this is true it seems odd though because the UK has a very generous, to the US at least, extradition treaty with the US so it would probably have been easier to ask the UK to extradite him. Why go to the bother of trumping up charges in Sweden?

if they are not trumped up why did they keep him in sweden for a month voluntarily let him go and are now saying oops we want to talk to him again

why did they pursue him with vigor normally reserved for murderers and terrorists

why is the uk threatening to attack an embassy over it

anyone who thinks this is just about an unused condom is too stupid to live

why go with the farce with sweden rather than extradite him directly

well extradition treaties are not useful if you want to hold someone indefinitely without trial so your question is pointless

I don't know because, like the rest of, we're not privy to all the information. On face value it was deemed that crime he was accused of did not constitute rape and one month later this was reassessed and a rape charge was brought. It happens.



You seem to be suggesting that it's normal practice to just forget about people accused of crimes who leave the country. This isn;t the case and Sweden applied to the UK to return him under the auspices of the European Arrest Warrant framework that applies in any case where the potential sentence is one year or more which is clearly the case for someone accused of rape.



Presumably because someone at The Foreign Office, or whichever office issued the thread, is unbelievably naive or reckless.



You really can't contain the hyperbola sometimes can you.



So without all the information you've completely discounted the possibility that he may actually have a case to answer it seems.

I'm not saying that he did or didn't commit the crimes but I'm also not saying that just because the whole episode suits the USA they must have engineered it. Perhaps they did but it's all speculation at this stage.

Harsh but quite right in the position it holds.


The ideas Assange stands for are extremely prescient, the UK and US power structure knows this and this is why they would like him to disappear. He is seen as an extreme threat. Assange is part of a start of a much bigger movement in the making.

I'm not so sure the main interest to have him in Sweden is extradition. I think his enemies would like to see him go to court and be found guilty to some extent of what he is accused of. It's a more a battle to dim the Assange light in the public eye, which is still very strong. If the good boy look is tarnished they consider half their battle won..

This is it, power's first port of call, in power's defence, is to destroy the image of a person. Rapist would do it, but it hasn't, because, I believe, the people are open to seeing how the world really operates. The ideas he and others stand for are too prescient in the minds of many many people. However this situation plays out it will have prolonged ramifications as to the situation we find ourselves in the contemporary scene.

It's painful but slightly revealing how the mainstream media work to control what people think. The horrendous tabloids fire up the non-thinking by speaking continuously of the 'sexual allegations'. They employ non-thinking journalists/columnists to spout, project and reiterate the planted meme/obstacle, further into public (un)consciousness. Rape, is difficult to talk about, it is not easily pushed aside. And why would anyone try to push it aside, rape is an extremely violent, life damaging violation of every human right we hold dear. Though here, it is being used to destroy the image of Assange in the mind of the general public, and is in fact, a pre-thought-out political strategy of entrapment. It acts as a sticky glue-like focus point for all media to highlight brightly, without possibility of deviation. Creating a sort of false ceiling in thinking, so as not to be able to think about why Assange is really being hounded.