WikiLeaks' Assange Hopes To Exit London Embassy "Soon" 299
An anonymous reader writes Julian Assange has hosted a press conference in which he indicated he is soon about to leave the embassy of Ecuador in London. From the article: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent over two years in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid a sex crimes inquiry in Sweden, said on Monday he planned to leave the building 'soon', but Britain signaled it would still arrest him if he tried. Assange made the surprise assertion during a news conference alongside Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. But his spokesman played down the chances of an imminent departure, saying the British government would first need to revise its position and let him leave without arrest, something it has repeatedly refused to do.
Hello! (Score:2, Insightful)
Over here! Look at me! I'm still here!
Re:Hello! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea Snowden really took his thunder away.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet he could work out a deal with Sweden for time served.
If the Swedish charges against him were legitimate he could.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:1, Insightful)
Except per Swedish and EU law tht would be illegal.
I dot know why you people keep bringing it up.
Eh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost want to believe he's deliberately teasing the authorities into increasing the surveillance around the embassy, at a time when that ongoing expense is causing angry murmurs the general public. That would be pretty clever.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except per Swedish and EU law tht would be illegal. I dot know why you people keep bringing it up.
That doesn't mean it won't happen.
I don't think it will, but stranger things have happened and I understand his concern.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you really so naive to think the law matters in a case like this?
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was also illegal in the EU for poland to host a CIA torture site. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. Its illegality is small comfort to those that suffered there. If not illegal, it was extremely uncouth for France, Spain, Portugal and Austria to collude in bringing down the Bolivian Presidential plane down to search it for Snowden. I get the impression that most western European countries seem to be quite happy to ignore their laws and customs if the US government asks/tells them to.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:4, Insightful)
You cant get "time served" for time you spent in a safe house evading the law. It doesnt work that way.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's law, and there's international diplomacy. If they yank him out of an embassy, every embassy is at risk of wanton search, and you can say goodbye to diplomatic immunity. If, at some point, Sweden extradites Assange to the US and there's a bit of outcry, they'll say "Oops, maybe we shouldn't have done that", and there will be no repercussions (except for Assange).
I haven't heard Sweden state that they will categorically not extradite him to the US, though.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:4, Insightful)
assange is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is totally off its constitutional rails.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:2, Insightful)
'nudge nudge' 'wink wink' would have simply put a bullet in his head over 2 years ago if they wanted to. The only person who cares about what Assange says at this point is himself. No intelligent person gives a shit what he says anymore, he's proven repeatedly that he's nothing more than an attention whore who twists things to promote his own personal agenda.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Swedish charges against him were legitimate he could.
Are you suggesting......it might not have been a legitimate rape?
Under Swedish law, when you have sex with your girlfriend, you've raped her if you have a fling with a young chick afterwards.
You had sex with her under false pretenses: giving her the impression that she's your girlfriend now.
Sweden is a feminist paradise.
Re:Hello! (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you expose government corruption, lies, murder, abuse of Constitution, etc? Then nobody cares about your aggrandizement.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Swedish charges against him were legitimate he could.
He has not ben charged as far as I know, there's only allegations. What's not legitimate about that?
I'm not fond of conspiracy theories, but when his unnameable accuser turns out to have been on the payroll of a group funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, working in Cuba to "assist" the Cuban people develop democracy, I have to wonder.
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit.
If he was going to be shipped to the US, England would have done it in the time they had the opportunity to do so well before he went into the embassy. You do realize there was plenty of time to do so right? No, oh thats right, you're just ignoring reality and using the tiny bits of silly things that you want to use to put assange on some silly pedestal.
If you really believe that he's afraid of Sweden shipping him to the US, you're an ignorant moron.
Character Assassination (Score:5, Insightful)
I see from the comments here that the governmental mission of character assassination of this fellow is largely complete and successful. Do you know Assange personally? Have you ever had dealings with him apart from seeing stories online and on TV about him? I don't and I haven't, and thus I don't pretend the biases against him that most people here seem to have been suckered into (nor do I have any bias toward him).
I don't find a coordinated corporate media campaign to ruin this guy unrealistic in the least, though.
Vitamin D deficiency; he needs to supplement (Score:4, Insightful)
Assange may well not be around for much longer without access to sunlight or at least supplementing with vitamin D. The article says: "Asked about his health, Assange said anyone would be affected by spending two years in a building with no outside areas or direct sunlight, a complaint he has made several times before."
According to these, he probably needs on the order of 2000-5000 IU Vitamin D3 daily as supplements:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org... [vitamindcouncil.org]
http://www.grassrootshealth.ne... [grassrootshealth.net]
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr... [drfuhrman.com]
He might need more for a while to catch up if he is already severely vitamin D deficient. The US RDA for vitamin D for most adults is about 5X-10X too low, so generally you don't get enough from food. Many indoor workers are vitamin D deficient these days, given we usually work, play, and commute inside something with windows that block UV-B radiation. Our carpets maybe won't fade from filtered sunlight, but our health will.
However, we don't know all the compounds that the human skin makes in response to sunlight. He might want to look into using special purpose UV-B lamps as well. Mercola talks about that:
http://articles.mercola.com/si... [mercola.com]
There are some rare health conditions like sarcoidosis that make vitamin D supplements problematical, so if he has any special health issues like that, he should talk to a knowledgeable doctor before supplementing.
Re:Hello! (Score:5, Insightful)
Over here! Look at me! I'm still here!
When a bunch of powerful people want to quietly vanish you, staying in the public's awareness could save your life.
Re:Obvious paid trolls are obvious (Score:0, Insightful)
Why do fucktards like you always think that anyone who doesn't agree with you is paid?
Re:How many years could he be charged with? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Assange was so terrified of those evil Swedes, those American puppets, that he was moving Wikileaks' base of operations there (after alienating the majority of his Iceland team) and applying for a residence permit there, right? That's why he called Sweden's laws [nytimes.com] and legal system [thelocal.se] his "shield" in multiple interviews, right? That's why Wikileaks leaked that in 2006 Sweden caused a major diplomatic rift [thelocal.se] with the US by outright disguising their special forces as airport workers to break into a CIA rendition flight to stop the US, right?
Funny how Sweden only became evil US lackeys after he was anklagad for rape.