Quit your yappin. When I was your age, we used a wood-burning Slashdot. Old Tindery, we called it. Of course, back in those days, we didn't have the internet, we had to connect to it with a couple pieces of copper wire and some old fishing line, which back in those days was known as "trout twine". You could pick up a coil of trout twine and a shiny red apple for a nickel down at Bailey's Drug, but there was a nickel shortage due to the war, so I had to use five red cents which I got from picking a barrel full of cucumbers down in Birchton. "Greeny Sausages", we called them. I could eat a greeny sausage all day. Maybe two, but never three, because then my aunt would give me a whooping with her hickory switch for being greedy. And oh, you don't want to see Aunt Margie's hickory switch. It was a mule's leg in length and made of the most knotty hickory a lad ever did see...

Given that their automated camera happened to snap pictures of an adorable-looking but viscious killer squirrel, did it also happen to also snap a picture an evil jester, a whiny prince, or at least someone eating a fish cream sandwich?

If 94% of academic economists have fudged things to make their papers look better - what about commercial economists, where they have a stronger financial incentive? What about political economists?

At first I was worried - but then I realised their trust level is already slightly below that of lawyers.

Maybe you should look at the link I posted. There's one right there.

Perhaps they have a slightly different definition to you?

It'll take way too long to go into all of the evidence that's been leaked thusfar, and it should be pointed out that there's even more that's since been collected but which hasn't leaked. But it should be enough to point out that there was a judicial hearing by the Svea Court of Appeals, brought about by appeal from Assange, which involved a full court review of all of the evidence, including testimony from Assange's attorneys, and they ruled against him on all but one charge and found probable cause of rape. And then the Swedish Supreme Court refused Assange's appeal.

If you want I can go into what's out there, but really, that right there should be enough. It's anything but a "he said / she said" case, Assange and his defense team have really painted themselves into a corner on the SW case (the rape charge). They've admitted that she was refusing unprotected sex all night, but have tried to argue that the fact that she didn't push him out when it did happen counts as consent (see his lawyer, Ben Emmerson's testimony, where he goes on that "She may not have enjoyed the experience, but she clearly consented to it" because she froze and didn't push him out). Of course, that's nonsense; a person can't get "retroactive consent"; he had no consent at the time of insertion because the only answer he had previously gotten then was "no"; also, it's flatly illegal to F* a sleeping person in Sweden anyway (they tried to counter this by arguing that she was only "half asleep" at the time of insertion, due to one statement from one of SW's friends, ignoring SW's own testimony and even that the same friend contined on that "she woke up" to him having sex with her). Nor can one treat a person going into shock and thinking (accurately) that it's already too late to present disease as "consent".

Of course, I understand why his legal team got to that point, she had a very well documented paranoia of unprotected sex (lots of testimony to it, including from her previous boyfriend) and they have testimony from friends and SMS records sent that morning when Assange sent her out to buy him food (they later ate before she went to sleep) where she's talking about how mad she is at him for keeping on trying despite her saying no all night and for bossing her around. So it would have been a real stretch for them to argue, "Nah, what are you talking about, she loves unprotected sex!"

That's just for the SW case, there's also the AA case, but that's lesser.

Really, you're just going to ignore my above link to where Sweden itself, after public anger built up year after year, sent in their special forces disguised as airport workers to take over a CIA flight to block the US from extraditing people through their territory, creating a diplomatic incident with the US? Information disclosed by none other than Wikileaks?

Can you explain why the Swedish prosecutors would not come to the UK to talk to him?

I've done this far too often. Just search this page for the word "åtala".

The UK court rulings were based on their decision that the danger of being grabbed by the US was minimal.

That was just one of Assange's many arguments, and not one that his attorneys put much emphasis on. He mainly tried to argue malicious prosecution and an improperly issued EAW. Both were ruled against. In the lower court, the high court, *and* the supreme court.

Abandoned his girlfriend, left her to fend for herself with the authorities and media, the bastard.

First off, that has what to do with Assange raping a girl in Sweden? And secondly, from your article:

He described Mr Snowden as being "rather reserved" and having "very strong convictions of right and wrong and I'm sure that's why decided to throw caution to the wind and do all of this.

"He saw something that was gravely wrong and he wanted to do something about it. I support him and if I ever got word that I could help him I would try."

That's from the girl's own father of all people, praising Snowden. Are you sure you were reading the right article? Or did you just look at the headline and decide that this was some sort of article damning him for leaving his girlfriend?

the laws are laughable when it come to what they consider rape

Hey, did you hear the one about the girl who was so paranoid about unprotected sex that she not never did it with her previous boyfriend of 2 1/2 years but even made him get tested anyway? Okay, stop me if you've heard it! So she has this guy over, and he keeps trying to F*** her unprotected all night, and she spends all night telling him no, to the point that when he starts ordering her around the next morning and has her go out to buy him breakfast, she spends her time out texting friends and chatting with one in line complaining about how mad she's getting at him for it all. But - wait for it, wait for it - then she goes home, they eat, and she falls asleep... and wakes up to him F***ing her unprotected!

Har har, get it? Man, the crazy things that those loony Swedes call "illegal".

. They tried this with leaders of the Civil rights movement, and other movements of the 60's, and it continues to this day

Wow! The 60s! Damn you, JFK, how dare you try to set up Assange! Hey, I heard some really nasty stuff was done under president Garfield, perhaps you could trot that out as an excuse for why we should ignore the judicial rulings of every step of two countries' legal systems, including a full court hearing with all evidence reviewed and a finding of probable cause of rape, upheld by the supreme court.

And please, tell me more about this shadowy CIA conspiracy! I've been trying to outline it above, but I bet you can help fill in the gaps!

1. "The government" does not press charges. That's the judicial branch's job, not the executive. Every figure involved in the investigation at each step, from the initial investigating officiers to the two prosecutors to each of the three Swedish courts involved and the three British courts involved, have all ruled against Assange in some way. The most pro-Assange action of all was from Eva Finne, who first after issuing a warrant way too early, cancelled the rape charges to revoke the warrant, but still left open the molestation and unlawful sexual coersion investigation (and that was before SW's victim statement was even in the computer). All other figures involved have either supported charges of (2x molestation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x rape) or (2x molestation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion 1x rape). The latter is what currently stands against Assange on the EAW.

2. There is no "extradition warrant". There is an EAW (European Arrest Warrant). The EAW process is about surrender, not extradition. There's actually a big difference, it's more like a prisoner being passed of from one state to another in the US; EAWs also take precidence over extradition, and there's no government involvement in an EAW like there is with extradition.

3. No, the purpose of the EAW is not to question him. From the sworn statement of the prosecutor to the lower court: "Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries." Under Swedish law, a person is "anklagad" to get them into custody and then "åtalad" after a question on all charges in order to begin the trial process (which must commence after being åtalad within a fixed period of time). Hence Assange must surrender in order to be åtalad, and pointing out that he hasn't been åtalad as defense of his run from the law is totally circular logic. The concept of remote questioning is a red herring; as per the sworn statement, the goal is to indict him.

4. The concept that "the women don't want to press charges" is totally unsupported by any of the evidence. First off, the women have been almost completely silent since the event. We've only heard from one of them (AA) twice, and the other not at all. The most recent of said statements by AA was a comment on a blog on an unrelated topic where she remarked that a year prior (the time of the Assange case) she was the victim of a sexual assault and her assailant never faced justice, and instead he is just praised and she gets attacked for reporting it.

From the leaked police report (leaked by someone on Assange's team, by the way - the un-trimmed version shows a hand-written letter from Ny to Björn Hurtig, Assange's attorney, telling him that this is what he requested but that it's not to be made public), we know the following additional information. 1) AA did not say she was raped, but that she was a victim of lesser crimes (this matches up with the current charges, where there are no rape charges concerning her, but three lesser charges). 2) SW told several people that she'd been raped, before she had decided to go to the police - at a minimum, at least one family member, her ex boyfriend, and AA all say that SW told them she had been raped by Assange, and there are several other people to which she described the event but it's not known whether she used the word rape. 3) SW wanted to report the rape charge but was very upset how it developed into a media circus; she mainly hoped it would end with Assange submitting to a STD test and then would be dropped (she had a long history attested to of being very paranoid about STDs, to the point that in 2 1/2 years with her ex she had never allowed unprotected sex, and even that was after doing STD tests). 4) AA went with to support SW with additional evidence from her case. 5) SW did not "refuse to go on" when she learned that Assange had been arrested, as is commonly misreported; it says that the interviewer saw that she was having trouble focusing and so decided to terminate the interview. 6) SW volunteered to do a rape kit after #5, which belies the claim that she had changed her mind. 7) The two women have retained legal representation, who has continually pushed the case forward for them.

So yes, all together, I find your claim that "the women don't want to press charges" unsupported by the evidence. It'd be easier to know what they wanted if there wasn't this witch hunt against them (which they feared, which most rape victims fear) which has pretty much forced them into hiding, especially SW. They've gotten lots of rape and death threats from all this.

But anyway, I find it sad that we're even talking about this at all. Because pretty much the opposite of justice and fairness is trying to override the judicial system with the court of public opinion. I also find it sad how much Hollywood portrayals of rape have colored peoples' views of how most real-world rapes actually play out, especially in how victims are "supposed to react" for it to be "real" rape.

False. Among countless sources you can read which demonstrate the falsity of the "free to leave" claim, you can read the SMS logs between Assange's lawyer and the prosecutor, or the British Lower Court ruling. While Assange was leaving the country, his lawyer (Björn Hurtig) was pretending that Assange had no plans to leave and was setting up an interview between Assange and the prosecutors' office in Sweden. Later he tried to mislead the British lower court into thinking that he didn't know that the prosecutor's office still wanted Assange. The judge caught him in the lie, chewed him out (he's lucky he didn't get hit with sanctions), and received an official condemnation by the Swedish Bar Association.

Assange did face one round of preliminary questioning, and only concerning the girl that there are no rape charges concerning (AA). He has never been questioned about the girl that the rape charge is about (SW). That's what the interview that he was supposed to stand for when he fled Sweden was to be about.

There is no "different crime unit". The initial prosecutor, Eva Finne, was put on the case because the report was made during a weekend and she was the only one available. She initially opened an investigation into two counts of rape and various lesser charges - one count of rape against each woman. News of the investigation quickly leaked (as almost always happens in Sweden due to their whistleblower protection laws), which put the prosecutor in an awkward spot, as the name of a suspect isn't supposed to be released until they're charged. She quickly got a warrant issued against Assange - despite the fact that he had never refused to cooperate. This in turn led to a major backlash. She shortly thereafter she withdrew the rape charges to cancel the warrant, but left the investigation open into the lesser sexual assault charges. This in turn led to a protest being filed by Claes Borgström, the legal representative of the accusers, as SW's victim statement hadn't even gotten into the computer at the time, so there's no way the case could have been fairly reviewed. Sweden has an appeals board process at this stage, which is fairly commonly utilized in the Swedish judicial system. The board ruled in favor of the women, and the case was re-opened, which put the next senior prosecutor, Marianne Ny, on the case. Ny reopened the case for all five counts (it was later reduced to four on appeal; these four are what ended up in the EAW which stands to this day)

A bit about the nomenclature. I use the word "charges", but of course, that's an English term, the Swedish judicial system is structured differently. First you "anklaga" someone, then you "åtala" them. The first stage means you have to have a formal list of things they're approved of, you can get a warrant, the accused can appeal and get a court hearing (all of this happened, Assange lost with a finding of probable cause of rape, and had his loss sustained on appeal). The second stage (being åtalad) starts the process of the trial. The subject has to have everything they're being åtalad over put before them in questioning before the decision to åtala is taken, and then the trial must begin within a short, fixed time period. Hence, you anklaga someone to get them into custody, then you åtala them to try them. Assange has been anklagad but not åtalad. For the purpose of the EAW, being anklagad was ruled as being equivalent of being charged by every level of the UK judicial system, but Assange and a lot of his backers make much ado about him not being "charged", only translating åtalad as charged. Either way, what matters is Assange is charged to the maximum extent possible under the Swedish judicial system at this stage, as he has not surrendered to Swedish custody and thus cannot be åtalad.

I should probably include the sworn statement of the prosecutor (Ny) concerning the questioning: "Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries."

And this is Sweden we are talking about, a country with documented cases of cooperaing with the CIA on renditions.

Ah, this old canard. First off, name *one* country that doesn't have any bad marks in their Judicial history. Go on, do it. You're referring to a case that's over a decade old, and was one of the biggest scandals in Swedish judicial history, the case of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery. The Swedish foreign office was presented with evidence from Egypt (which turned out to be falsified) that the two, who stated that they were asylum seekers, were actually convicted terrorists. They also received a promise from Egypt that they would not be mistreated in custody, and ruled to have them extradited. The US agreed to transport them, and they were handed over to US and Egyptian. The US then used their (typically brutal) means to transfer the men to Egypt, wherein Egypt broke their promise and repeatedly abused them in custody. The case was made even worse by how quickly the two were deported, not leaving appropriate time for appeal before they were out of country.

What was the outcome? First off, it created a major national scandal in Sweden. The two men were repatriated to Sweden, given permanent residence, and paid a large compensation. The case led to a change in EU extradition law, which made it no longer possible to extradite based simply on promises of no mistreatment - the country has to have a track record of upholding their promises. It also led to an EU-wide (but especially in Sweden) backlash against the US extradition program. This built over the years and came to a head in 2006, where Sweden created a major diplomatic incident with the US by diguising their special forces as airport workers and hijacking a US rendition flight to stop the US from renditioning people through their airspace. And how do we know about that event? Why, Wikileaks, of course!

The reality is, while you can find incidents from any country in the world, Sweden has one of the world's best judicial systems. As I pointed out below:

The peer-reviewed World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Sweden #1 in the world for fundamental rights of the accused. Assange on at least two occasions called Sweden his "shield" before the incident due to their having such good whistleblower protections**, and was applying for residence there. It was only after he got anklagad for rape that he suddenly changed his tune and decided that Sweden is an evil US lackey bent on his downfall. Funny how that works.

Do you honestly think Assange didn't know about the Agiza and al-Zery case when he decided to move there and declared Sweden his "shield" and talked about how they have the best whistleblower protections and anti-extradition laws in the world?

Assange is not accused of anything by the US. There are no US charges against him. There is still an investigation open, but it's questionable that they'll ever even be able to charge him with anything. Just assuming that they did, a terrorism charge would get utterly laughed out of each of the *five* different bodies (Swedish courts, Swedish governments, British courts, British government, and ECHR) that would have independent veto authority over a US request. You might as well accuse him of of beating to death an astronaut on the moon, it's about as plausible. And the US could barely get Abu-freaking-Hamza extradited, an *actual* who everyone hated, a guy who was working to set up terrorist training camps in the US (and even when they finally did, a decade later, they couldn't even put him in a supermax prison because the EU considers that too cruel). And "actively harming US security and interests" isn't even a charge in the US, let alone anything that would even remotely meet even the basic double criminality standard.

LOL, okay, yeah. It's also illegal to render people from the EU to other countries

Ahem.

There's been more action taken in the EU against the US rendition program than anywhere else in the world.

Framing him was part of their attempt to discredit Wikileaks.

Why thank you, Amazing Kreskin, for your ability to know more than everyone actually involved in the case, including the three investigating officers, two (Gehlen, Wassgren) wanted him charged for what would become 5 charges (1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x molestation, 2x rape), while one (Krans) wanted him charged with 4 (1x, 2x, 1x); the original prosecutor (Finne), who began investigating for 5 (1x, 2x, 2x), but changed it to 3x (1x, 2x, 0x) before SW's statement made it into the system; the appeals board which found her in error for reducing it without having even reviewed the victim statement; the second prosecutor (Ny), who sought (1x, 2x, 2x); the lower court judge, who approved a warrant for (1x, 2x, 2x); the Svea Court of Appeals, who held a full court hearing on appeal from Assange, including testimony from Assange's attorneys and a review of all evidence, and reached an official finding of probable cause for (1x, 2x, 1x); the Swedish Supreme Court, who refused his appeal; the British lower court, who heard Assange's claims alleging flaws in the Swedish process and malicious prosecution, and ruled against him on all counts; the UK High Court, which did the same; and the UK Supreme Court, which again did the same.

No no, we don't need any freaking judicial system, we have Amazing Kreskin here to tell us what's what!

They did the same thing to Snowden in the early days, making all sorts of claims about his girlfriend.

Huh? Pretty much everything I saw about his girlfriend was supportive of Snowden, along the lines of "Look at what he sacrificed in order to release this information!" If there was anything trying to condemn him over his girlfriend, I sure didn't see it. And even ignoring that, what the media chooses to focus on in one case to do has no bearing on what every level of two countries' judicial systems rules on a completely unrelated case..

Oh come on now... the guy may be a tea party-aligned rape fugitive who overrode his political party to caucus with the Neo-Nazis, gave the dictator of Belarus an advance on leaks to be used in purges against his enemies, attempted to blackmail aid agencies by threatening to release information that could get their sources killed (including Amnesty International, to the tune of $700k), makes his volunteers sign 7-figure ultra-repressive NDAs, caused the defection of most of Wikileaks's staff due to complaints from authoritarianism to diverting the organization's money to himself, writes on his blog about how he's a god to women and women's brains can't do math, made a fake op-ed in the name of one of his opponents supposedly supporting him and promoted it with a fake twitter account in his name, wanted his book to be called "Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores", wanted it to be full of his sex stories and at one point interrupted his ghostwriter to leer at a couple of 14-year-olds before remarking that one was "fine until I saw the teeth", cyberstalked a 17 year old before he got famous, and so on down the line ad nauseum... ....that's still no reason to wish him ill.

Sex without a condom has some SERIOUS fuckin consequences huh?

Haha... because "On 17th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity" (charge #4 on the EAW, the one with the checkbox ticked for rape) is best summed up as "sex without a condom". Such a frivolity!

Come on, girls, stop this nonsense, don't you know that Assange is the awesomeest awesome that ever awesomed? So what if he waits until you're asleep to f*** you for a bit in a way that you explicitly and repeatedly prohibited while you were awake, it's not something to ruin a great man's life over - just lie back and take it!

The funny thing being that according to Wikileaks itself, in 2006 Sweden created a major diplomatic incident with the US by diguising their special forces as airport workers and hijacking a US rendition flight to stop the US from renditioning people through their airspace. The very Swedish foreign minister that Assange rails against (Carl Bildt) is the same guy who was prime minister when Sweden refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard to the US because Swedish law bans extradition for intelligence crimes.

No country is perfect, and every country has bad marks at some point on its record, so anyone who wants to can pick attacks for any country. However, in Sweden, these sort of things are few and far between. The peer-reviewed World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Sweden #1 in the world for fundamental rights of the accused. Assange on at least two occasions called Sweden his "shield" before the incident due to their having such good whistleblower protections**, and was applying for residence there. It was only after he got anklagad for rape that he suddenly changed his tune and decided that Sweden is an evil US lackey bent on his downfall. Funny how that works.

(** It's actually those very whistleblower protections that are responsible for why we know so much about the case. In Sweden, it's illegal to even look for a person who leaks documents if they consider it whisteblowing; as a result, pretty much every high-profile criminal case in Sweden leaks like a sieve)

"Pulling in every favor" - and your evidence is?

You do realize that it's an explicit violation of the Swedish extradition treaty with the US to extradite someone for political, military, or intelligence crimes, don't you? They couldn't even hand over Edward Lee Howard, the greatest CIA defector to the Soviets during the cold war, and he didn't even have the cover of being a journalist (Sweden having the strongest whistleblower protections on Earth, as repeatedly noted by Assange at the time when he was moving there). And I assume that you know that someone surrendered under an EAW requires both the consent of the receiving (Sweden) *and* sending state (Britain) to be forward-extradited to a third state, meaning that being surrendered under an EAW only increases your protections against extradition. Britain, of course, being the country that took most of a decade to hand over Abu Hamza, a guy everyone hated and who was setting up terrorist training camps in the US, and which wouldn't hand over at all Gary McKinnon (the most costly hacker of US military systems in history) because he (like Assange) has Aspergers. Oh, and I'm sure you you know the ECHR, the world's greatest refuge for people seeking to avoid extradition, has the final say.

Lets just see if I've got the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy(TM) down pat. For reasons only beknownst to them, they can only nab Assange from Sweden, not the the UK, or any of the vast numbers of far-easier countries that Assange regularly globetrots to. No, it has to be Sweden. Let's just take that as a given for some Unknown Shadowy CIA Reason. Now, Assange was applying to live in Sweden when the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy decided, "Instead of waiting until we're ready to nab him for our charges, since he's planning to live here, wouldn't it be so much more fun to frame him for a crime? Yeah! And let's pick a crime that has a pathetically low conviction rate! Let's not only frame him for rape, but let's frame him for rape but use a case that involves the women having consented to certain acts but not others, have them do delays and other actions that could potentially hurt their case, etc, just like in real rape situations, where victims don't live their lives as though they're about to be judged in a trial, instead of a phony "knife to the throat" hollywood-style rape case." Why? Because the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy just rolls that way, stop asking questions! And because our CIA psychics have foreseen this event for decades in advance, we can now activate Sleeper Agent SW who we've had spend decades misleadingly cultivating herself as a young Swedish museum worker with a lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex. Now, let's install our CIA Plant, Ms. Ny, to prosecute him - because of course, we at the CIA have infiltrated the top levels of all of the major governments' of the world's judicial systems just for this purpose (we also run all of their courts, so that we can have the Svea Court of Appeals, the Swedish Supreme Court, the UK District Court, the UK High Court, and the UK Supreme Court each rule against him in turn). But, for fun, let's have the prosecutor take several weeks to get him, and let's let the news totally leak out during the time that they're getting ready to arrest him so that Assange can run. And let's just let him flee the country, and not tell Sweden so that they can stop him. Then when he exhausts his legal options in the UK and jumps bail to run into the embassy of a country with an anti-western leader who's a fan of his, let's do absolutely nothing - it'll be fun!

Is this how it went down, in your mind? Great job, Shadowy CIA Conspiracy. Who's heading the CIA these days, Bozo the Clown?