UK threatens to “assault” Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Assange Live Stream here: occupynewsnetwork on USTREAM: Julian assange Ecuador embassy. It's disturbing to see this happening in my own country. No matter what your opinions on Assange are, this is totally wrong, not to mention illegal. Anyway, I'm tired (it's 3:30am) here and I just thought I'd share the news. Edit: A verdict will apparently be decided at 1PM GMT.
Assange is screwed, he messed with the wrong people. Too bad, just goes to show the rest of us where we stand if we dare to shine the light of truth on the ruling powers....
No, it's war continuing material. This is the prime example of the war continuing on freedom of information.
There was a live stream hosted by activists in the early hours of this morning. I'm sure there's another somewhere by now. Well, my country is potentially breaking the law to pursue a man who's just done the job of a journalist. The only difference here is that some governments of the world don't want their dirty little secrets to spill over. Britain is basically acting as the lapdog of the US (again) by doing this. If you can't see a problem with this then I'm afraid I can't help you, really.
Assange and Bradley are heroes, and I am under the impression that the general population agrees more with this statement than the opinion of the US government that he is some kind of terrorist. They better back off, because I think the public opinion is largely one in favor of Assange. I don't know exactly who are pushing for his arrest, but if they are looking for re-election then I think this doesn't do them much good.
you'd be suprised. I'm on freaking Judge Napolitanos feed right now on an article he posted about the lesser of two evils. Here are some responses.
I have Al Jazeera on my tv in the background, and this story just came on. Ecuador has granted Assange asylum and the UK is publicly threatening to enter the embassy to extract Assange by force. There are plenty of people outside protesting, and this is Al Jazeera's second story (their first story has recently always been Syria), so quite a bit of media attention it seems. I do agree with you that for most Americans this is probably insignificant, since he's in the UK and they're trying to extradite him to Sweden, but I imagine that UK voters would not be pleased with a blatant violation of international law on their own soil, especially considering that most seem to like Assange. PS: Al Jazeera is such great news channel compared to the rest of what I get on tv. They were talking about this stuff for like 15 minutes and not once did I notice any partiality.
Yes. Much more interesting than the attention span that our american news network has, a span of a gnat.
I was watching the stream about 12:30am EST, hosted by a UK girl broadcasting from her phone, it looked like. Quality wasn't good, but she did a great job. She poked fun at the UK police officers standing outside the embassy, rang the doorbell to see if she could talk to someone inside, and kept going to the windows to catch a glimpse of assange. No such luck
That depends. A lot of people are on Assange's side here, but there are also a lot of people who've brought into the media spew about him. Some people still believe that this is still about the charges on him in Sweden, when all the attention our powers that be are giving him points to quite the opposite. The thing that really gripes me about this police action is that - in theory - the police are supposed to be there to protect British citizens. This is clearly not being done in our best interests. What's more, it's really damaging the country's image, especially after we did a pretty good job of hosting the Olympic Games. Peace.
You did a great job at hosting the Olympics! A lot of people complained about the heavy security and military presence, but I view that as something positive, at least this time the military is being used for their purpose, i.e. protecting the citizens of the country. As far as how many people in the UK are on Assange's side, I obviously don't know as well as you do. But I imagine that even many of those in favor of extraditing him would not agree with a police raid on the Ecuadorian embassy.
The only reason the military were there was because the private firm our government hired to do the security (G4S) screwed everything up, were understaffed and uncertain if a lot of there employees would even show up. So yeah, they had little choice but to put the military there at such short notice. And I'm glad you enjoyed it. I thought we were going to screw it all up horrendously, but was pleasantly surprised! But yes, I hope you're right. I hope enough people are outraged that our government are performing an illegal act on our own soil. Twitter's certainly fired up at the moment!
Yeah I know the story about G4S, I was just glad to see the military doing something productive. Assange has put himself in a pretty good position. Firstly, he has asylum in Ecuador. Secondly, a police raid on the embassy would be a huge controversy which would hurt the British government's public perception. Thirdly, he is drawing attention to himself and his "mission", if you will. Fourthly, even if he is extradited to Sweden, I reckon he would win the case. He just has to make sure he isn't extradited to the US.
The whole concept of embassies would be thrown out the door if the UK Gov does this - I mean why would anyone bother if the sanctity of sanctuary is not upheld?
Don't be silly! Our government wouldn't ever raid an embassy, they'd just remove the status of embassy first, then they'd raid the building! Because they have the right to do that, apparently... Well, actually they do, but that power is not meant to be used in situations such as this. Hooray for abusing the British justice system. Hague: We are determined to see 'alleged criminal' Assange extradited to Sweden