Julian Assange Scarf Appeal

[steepholm]

I'm a bit confused by the repeated BBC news reports that most people in the USA want Julian Assange charged with treason. Is the US a province of Australia these days? (I don't keep up with foreign affairs as much as I should.) I do wish, though, that Mr Assange would stop appearing in "a white, open-necked shirt". He should realise that it's winter in this hemisphere! If he doesn't watch out he'll catch his death, and save the Swedish prosecutors their labour. And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

Comments

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Cover him with leaves, presumably.

[gillo]

Presumably the BBC shares the delusion that all humanoid inhabitants of this planet owe a fundamental allegiance to the US, which takes priority over anywhere they merely happened to be born or be a citizen of.

As for the scarf, the jury's still out on whether he needs or deserves one.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I can't speak about other Americans in general, but it is true that when some media nimnul asked Joe Lieberman, who claims to be a U.S. Senator, why the Justice Department hasn't charged Assange with treason, Joe paused and said, "I don't understand why that hasn't happened yet." Yes, he really did. Oh, come on, Joe, guess.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

In the Foxiverse, all things are possible.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, the guy who gave Wikileaks the documents sits in solitary detention, though they haven't gotten around to convicting him of anything yet.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I hadn't heard about this at all. Isn't their some kind of habeas corpus challenge that can be made, or does he lose those rights through being in the military?

[calimac.livejournal.com]

In a civilian case, you can be imprisoned under charge of a crime (and Manning has been charged) and, if refused bail, can be held there until trial. It is further true that, although the Constitution guarantees a "speedy trial," the term "speedy," like the term "limited times" in the copyright clause, seems to open to highly flexible interpretation.

I don't know what the military situation is regarding bail; what's striking in Manning's case is that he's being treated as severely as convicted violent criminals who have physically attacked other prisoners, and that this amounts to what John McCain would call torture when the North Vietnamese do it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I was so worried about misspelling 'habeas' that I misspelt 'there'. Cups, lips, slips.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

What bothers me with the Assange case though is that the chattering classes who would usually shout the odds that all guys are guilty as charged of any sexual assault of any sort and should be castrated unless they can prove themselves innocent (and Sweden has some of the stictest sex crime laws on the planet) suddenly start yelling that it's not trooooooo! when it happens to be a self publicising narcissist like Julian Assange.

Oh wait! A lot of his supporters are male tech geeks! That would explain a lot........... :o(

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's certainly true that if you were a government wanting to smear someone like Assange then this would be an obvious way of going about it, but of course that's not evidence either way. I've no idea whether he's guilty, or of what, any more than most people.

Did you happen to read the Naomi Wolf article I linked to in my previous post? I thought it provided an interesting perspective on this question of liberal inconsistency,

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I did read the Wolf article and what she says is true to a very large extent- as a historian I am all too well aware of the uses of rape as a weapon of war/nationalism- Wolf doesn't entirely get that.

She probably worked in one of those same rape crisis centres that refuse help to trans women..........

Liberal incinsistency? Oh yes and tinged with more than a little very illiberal hypocrisy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think the great American public has trouble grasping the idea that there's a world out there that isn't America.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of that idiot US preacher who was refused entry to the UK a while ago due to his blatant homophobia and then started ranting about his constitutional rights being abused.

Um.......wut?

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

huh? totally anecdatal, but none of the people I know think that. Although I must admit, we may be a relatively small and non-representative group these days.

What I love is that the Pentagon and the security agencies have all said that none of the information getting out threatens national security...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Indeed. And if the information did threaten national security, you'd have to ask why 2,000,000 or so government employees were given access to it.