NYT: Investigate Four Questions Surrounding Assange Case

Editor's Note:  Here's an interesting side note for the Assange/Wikileaks puppet show.

Just Foreign Policy

Until now, major media have allowed U.S., British and Swedish officials to get away with claiming that the British and Swedish legal pursuit of Julian Assange has nothing to do with the prospect of a U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks, even though there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Recent developments in the case have given media an opportunity to revisit the issue.

Join us in urging the New York Times to pursue four basic questions whose answers are crucial to judging claims that there is no connection between the cases, and no danger that Assange would be extradited from Sweden to the United States, by signing the petition below.

We, the undersigned, urge you to work to establish answers to four questions which are crucial to judging official claims that there is no connection between the British/Swedish legal case against Julian Assange and the prospect of a U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks, and that there is no danger that Assange would be extradited from Sweden to the United States:

1. Why won't Sweden agree to question Julian Assange in the U.K.?

2. Why won't Sweden say that it won't extradite Assange to the United States if he voluntarily goes to Sweden?

3. Why won't Britain say that they won't agree to a U.S. extradition request for Assange from Sweden?

4. Why won't the U.S. say that it will not seek Julian Assange's extradition from Sweden?

Ecuador Grants Assange Political Asylum

Der Speigel

Ecuador on Thursday said it would grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the country's embassy in London for weeks now. Britain says it still intends to extradite the whistleblower to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of sexual offenses.

After months of house arrest in Britain as he awaited possible extradition to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual offenses, politicians in Ecuador have said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be granted political asylum in the South American country. The announcement came during a press conference by Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño in the capital city of Quito. The foreign minister described asylum as a "fundamental human right."

The decision comes in contradition to the stance taken by Britain, which has said it wants to extradite Assange to Sweden.

Assange has been residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 19 in order to prevent his extradition. Public prosecutors in Sweden want to question Assange about accusations that he sexually harassed two women during the summer of 2010 and also raped one of them. The Australian citizen has denied the allegations.

The British Foreign Office said in a statement sent over Twitter that it was "disappointed" by the decision in Quito. "Under the law, with Mr. Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, UK authorities are under binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden." The British government said it would carry out its obligation and that the Ecuadorean decision would not change that. "We remain committed to a negotiated solution that allows us to carry out our obligations under the Extradition Act."

Britain Says It Will Still Detain Assange

Earlier, a Foreign Office official said the British government would not permit Assange to leave the country, even if Ecuador provided him with asylum. The official said Assange would be detained by British officials as soon as he left the embassy.

Assange is trying to avoid extradition to Sweden because, he has claimed, he fears the government there will in turn extradite him to the United States, where he could face charges relating to the WikiLeaks release of hundreds of thousands of classified US government documents, most originating from the Pentagon or the State Department. The documents, which were reported on by a group of prominent international media that included SPIEGEL, shed light on the US role in Afghanistan, Iraq and other global hot spots.

Ecuador : 'We Are Not a British Colony'

Patiño said Thursday he had received written notice from British officials that they would "assault" the embassy in London if Ecuador didn't hand Assange over. "We are not a British colony," he said. "Those times are passed." He said any storming of the embassy would be viewed as "hostile and intolerable and, as well, an attempt on our sovereignty which would oblige us to respond with the greatest diplomatic force." The British Foreign Office denied it had made any threats against Ecuador. In a statement, officials said: "Throughout this process we have drawn the Ecuadorians' attention to relevant provisions of our law."

The Ecuadorean foreign minister said that Assange could face a real threat of political persecution as well as the death penalty if he were extradited to the United States due to the publication of the WikiLeaks cables.

Scores of police were sent to provide reinforcement at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on Thursday as the decision was announced.

dsl -- with wires

Quivering Heart

Mark Sircus

We now have the 49th volcano erupting this year and the year is young. Ecuador’s Sangay volcano unleashed a 2 km ash cloud the other day and if you don’t believe in global cooling it’s a good time to start because of the enormous amounts of ash and gaseous chemicals being spewed into the atmosphere. Since starting this essay, as you will see below, we have had another eruption making a grand total of 50 for the year. Perhaps before this is published it will be 51.

My heart was quivering the other day for the one I love most in this world is traveling for the next two weeks and I have a sinking feeling that something catastrophic is going to happen in the world and that we will be apart when that happens. When I say catastrophic I am not playing around with that word.

Somewhere, or perhaps even in many places at once, we are going to see the earth ripped asunder in a way that will probably make Fukushima look like a picnic. Unfortunately it’s not just my heart that is quivering; it is the crust of our planet that has suddenly become unsettled, throwing us into the rapids of the unknown.

My wife of course thinks I am being dramatic because I have been sitting in anticipation of these types of events for the past two years. But what has been happening this past week is pushing the line into the red zone and we literally have volcanoes all over the world blowing their stacks. Two days later I am calm but wish I could say the same for our planet.

You think I am crying or worrying too much? We just had an earthquake scientist warning that the planet could be cracking up after a series of massive quakes in just 48 hours.

 Gheorghe Marmureanu—from Romania’s National Institute of Earth Physics—says 39 quakes had hit the globe within two days.The series started with two massive quakes in Indonesia measuring 8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale rapidly followed within hours by three more in Mexico only slightly smaller. “There is no doubt that something is seriously wrong. There have been too many strong earthquakes,” said Marmureanu.

He added: “The quakes are a surprise that cannot be easily explained by current scientific knowledge. With the Indonesian quake for example, statistically, there should be one big earthquake in this part of Asia every 500 years. However, since 2004, there have already been three quakes with a magnitude of over 8, which is not normal.”

A fierce earthquake from the Nicobar Islands[1] could strike over Songkran, sending a tsunami crashing into the Andaman Coast, an expert warned yesterday after finding that the 8.6-magnitude Sumatran tremor three days ago was exceptionally deep. “Whenever there is a quake rooted in the [Earth’s] mantle, a following quake will be likely in the next few days,” said Professor Thanawat Jaruphongsakul, a senior seismologist at Chulalongkorn University. Click here for a complete list of earthquakes occurring between April 11, 2012 and April 16, 2012 throughout the planet.

April 19, 2012 – PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Mount Lamington is a stratovolcano in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea and it just woke up yesterday. Local community of Popendetta reported smoke and ash emission on March 25. After a long quiescent period, the volcano sprang suddenly to life in 1951, producing a powerful explosive eruption during which devastating pyroclastic flows and surges swept all sides of the volcano, killing nearly 3,000 people.

US needs Assange under arrest ‘while seeking Manning link’

Russia Today



Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, faces an uncertain future. Pr. Marcello Ferrada-Noli told RT why he thinks it’s convenient for the US to have Assange under arrest in Sweden.

Even considering the particularities of the Swedish legal system, there is the possibility of questioning Assange by various means, by phone, for instance, noted Ferrada-Noli, a Senior Advisor at Stockholm University. But, he added, there is a political reason why Assange is kept under arrest – and why several players are falling into place to let America get its hands on WikiLeaks' founder.

“In the US, the preparations for the trial [over Assange] are seeking a connection between WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, trying to make Assange accountable. For that they need time, they need to prepare this material. For that, of course, it’s highly convenient to keep him under arrest.”

The professor also mentions the biased image of Assange the media has been carefully drawing.
“I have seen most articles written in the period when I was studying this phenomenon, negative towards Assange – and not only negative in connection with the [sexual assault] allegations, but also negative ad hominem, describing his personality in unjustified and offensive terms.”

Ferrada-Noli spoke of the positive impact the WikiLeaks documents have had on democracy.

“The disclosures made by WikiLeaks, aimed to reveal the secrets that actually belong to the people that elected those authorities which are abusing the power by not telling the truth, and by that WikiLeaks is doing a huge favor to democracy.”

Swedish authorities want to question Assange in relation to sexual assault allegations, and some politicians in the US want him extradited there to stand trial for leaking tens of thousands of secret US government documents.

Nobel peace prize jury under investigation

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday.

The investigation comes after persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations.

If the Stockholm County Administrative Board, which supervises foundations in Sweden's capital, finds that prize founder Alfred Nobel's will is not being honored, it has the authority to suspend award decisions going back three years — though that would be unlikely and unprecedented, said Mikael Wiman, a legal expert working for the county.

Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010, and last year the award was split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

For this year's award, Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Cuban rights activists Oswaldo Paya and Yoani Sanchez are among the candidates who have been publicly announced by those who nominated them.

The secretive prize committee doesn't discuss nominations — which have to be postmarked by Feb. 1 to be valid — but stresses that being nominated doesn't say anything about a candidate's chances.

Lieberman accuses Norway of promoting anti-Semitism

Haaretz

Amid escalating tensions between Israel and Sweden, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday accused another Scandinavian country - Norway this time - of promoting anti-Semitism.

Israel and Sweden have been embroiled in diplomatic crisis this week, after a Swedish daily printed an article alleging that Israel Defense Forces soldiers harvested organs of Palestinians.

On Sunday, Lieberman moved his criticism on to Norway for marking the birthday of an early 20th century "pro-Nazi" author.

"I was amazed at the Norwegian government's decision to celebrate the 150th birthday of Knut Hamsun, who admired the Nazis," Lieberman told students at the Ariel University Center. "He gave the literary award he won in 1943 to Josef Goebbels, and praised Hitler in an obituary as a warrior for mankind."

But the foreign minister's criticism of the Scandinavian country did not end there.

"I remember that in the Durban-II conference," Lieberman said, referring to last April's UN anti-racism summit which was criticized as allegedly biased against Israel. "The Norwegian representatives were among the few who didn't walk out, and today I realize it's not a coincidence. How low can you go?"

In regard to the controversy over the Swedish article, Lieberman said that "the most annoying thing" was the fact that the Swedish embassy in Israel was reprimanded by the Stockholm government for condemning the allegations made in the article.

INSIDE JOB; SWEDISH BOMBS

aangirfan

The 'terrorist' explosion in Sweden, on 11 December 2010, was presumably the work of the military, using some brainwashed patsy.

The Swedish media reported on 12 December 2010:

A few hours before the explosions in downtown Stockholm, someone in the Swedish military contacted a friend to warn them to stay away from Stockholm's Queen Street, where the bombs went off. (The "terrorist bomb" in Sweden just got a bit weird.)

"A Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) employee warned an acquaintance to stay clear of an area in central Stockholm on Saturday where, several hours later, two explosions went off in what is being called a terrorist attack.

"If you can, avoid Drottninggatan today. A lot can happen there…just so you know," the message said, according to the TT news agency." (Military staffer knew about attacks: report - The Local)

In 1951, CIA agent William Colby, based at the CIA station in Stockholm, supported the training of stay-behind armies in neutral Sweden. (Sweden)

Since then the CIA and its friends have been very active in Sweden.