Assange: Guilty? Innocent? "Foreign Spy"? CIA Operative?

Tomorrow the 14th, Julian Assange has a hearing about why he's been in lockup in the UK for the last couple days.
Al Jazeera English has his lawyer talking about a few things that are worth noting. According to him:

from zdistrict.com

-the Swedish prosecutor who had Assange detained won't tell him what the evidence against him is, and won't come to talk to him. He has a right to both those things happening both under Swedish law, and UK law.


-he isn't actually charged with anything yet


-the penalty for espionage in the US is still death


-Russia and China have accused him of being a CIA operative.

    This entire Assange-In-Prison arm of the Wikileaks scandal and attendant fuck-uppery has been something I've been researching madly, but not posting a lot about. Why? Well frankly, because it's messy, and it makes me very angry.

   I take allegations of sexual crime of any kind very seriously. I also refuse to draw conclusions about someone's guilt or innocence with the ridiculously minuscule amount of information that's reliably available.

    If he did commit a crime, then he's a jerk, but it has nothing to do with Wikileaks, the cables, or the underlying threat to free press.

    If he didn't commit a crime, then the entire Swedish, American and International justice system has abandoned due process for a witch-hunt spurred by Yank politicians having a temper tantrum at their public embarrassment--and it's double-plus-worse, because they've devalued the severity of sex crime allegations by using them as holding charges.

    It's probably a little bit of both (as the laws governing sex crimes in Sweden are really, really different than they are here in Canada and most of the West), which is unimaginably worse. The women who are wrapped up in this have unfairly been subjected to intense scrutiny for the timing of their allegations, which no one bringing legitimate sex crime charges deserves. Assange has been denied a charge, a view of the evidence against him, and (unremarkably for holding charges) has been denied bail. The whole thing really, really smells of smear campaign--which is bad in all kinds of ways, even for the people orchestrating it.

    Watch this space; After the hearing, I'll have things to say.

...Oh and sidenote: CIA Operative? Really, Russia? Really?

Human Rights Day...and The Nobel Goes To a Jailed Activist

Dec 10th, every year, is Human Rights Day. I'd like to step on the soapbox for a second to encourage you to do something positive about it today, but Ethical Ocean already did an excellent job of it--and they sell awesome holiday stuff, so they actually give you a way how.

This year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is today, and the prize itself is being awarded to an empty chair--left for a guy currently in jail for peacefully protesting.

It's extra-plus-political, because China put him there, and everyone gets understandably twitchy around China. Especially when they tell you not to do something, and you go ahead and do it anyway.

Liu, from the Globe and Mail profile

Liu Xiaobo taught literature many moons ago, and joined his students in the Tiananmen Square protest and massacre in 1989. He's been jailed a number of times for speaking for democracy in China, and is conveniently jailed right now (they offered him release into exile for a signed confession, which he rejected).

Liu is awesome for a number of reasons, not least among them that he's proof that just because you got a literature degree doesn't mean you can't make a difference.

A salute and a nod, and a pantsload of money via the Nobel committee, to Liu Xiaobo--and an eyeball trained with interest on the reactions of China and their allies...

Assange and US Extradition: the Impending Shitmess

with love to Sean Boots
and the memecloud

The Aussie High Commission went to see their citizen-abroad Julian Assange in lockup today to talk about the--I'm gonna come right out and say it--INEVITABILITY of the US indicting him and trying to extradite him for charges, which would effectively turn him into Spartacus.

(Because once they've got you, they can charge you with what they want. As my friend Zélie reminds me, "They caught Ted Bundy on parking violations".)

The rumblings are that the Espionage Act  could be used to try to nail Assange to the wall. The act that was written in 1917, after the US jumped into WWI, in order to stop corn-fed Iowans going to the Kaiser with information.
Hmm.

People previously nailed under the Espionage Act include poet e.e. cummings (for not hating Germans), and the people at the New York Times that published the Pentagon Papers (which gets a lot of reference in this wikileaks craziness for similarity).  Probably most gobsmacking is that in 1983, East German citizen Alfred Zehe was convicted under the damn thing because according to the US courts, the Espionage Act also covers non-American citizens acting outside the United States.

Let me say that again: the Espionage Act, that a bunch of US dudes passed in wartime in 1917, is enforceable on EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.

So if I stop posting for a while and you know I'm not at work, check the gulags.

The Espionage Act is not without its critics, even within Americuh. A defense attorney in the Alfred Zehe case claimed his client was prosecuted as part of "the perpetuation of the 'national-security state' by over-classifying documents that there is no reason to keep secret, other than devotion to the cult of secrecy for its own sake."

Sounds suspiciously familiar, considering how much of the cables are taken to be public knowledge made more valuable only by the fact that they've got "TOP SECRET OMG" stamped on them 500 times.

Elsewhere in the world that isn't America, the UN Human Rights Chief is worried that wikileaks is getting the short end of the stick. Which might be the only action we get out of the UN, but is nice to hear.

And in the meantime, Beijing backs up Russia for the nomination of Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I wonder if Assange-related scandal will take the weekend off, so I can focus on those goddamn cables for a second.

Oh Russia, You Scamps!

"Julian Assange should be awarded Nobel peace prize, suggests Russia"

Yet another way to say "We mostly think Americans are being idiots" without starting another Cold War.


"Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him," the source from inside president Dmitry Medvedev's office told Russian news agencies. Speaking in Brussels, where Medvedev was attending a Russia-EU summit yesterday , the source went on: "Maybe, nominate him as a Nobel Prize laureate."

Watch out, Kremlin--Sarah Palin can see you from her house, and she thinks he's "UnAmerican". She might get you with those rifles she doesn't actually know how to shoot.