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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the welcome-to-Ecuador dept.

Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange as its government attempts to find creative ways of getting Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London:

Ecuador says it has granted citizenship to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as officials try to find a way for him to leave the Ecuadorean embassy in London without risking legal action.

Assange, who is Australian, first sought refuge at the embassy more than five years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced an investigation over rape allegations. He was granted asylum, and has been holed up in the embassy ever since.

The original case against him has been dropped, but Assange remains inside the embassy. "He is still subject to arrest in Britain for jumping bail," The Associated Press notes. "He also fears a possible U.S. extradition request based on his leaking of classified State Department documents."

"Earlier this week, Ecuador said the situation was unsustainable and requested diplomatic status for Assange in hopes of springing him," NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from London. "A British government spokesman responded: 'Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.'"

Also at The Guardian.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Pav on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:28AM (7 children)

    by Pav (114) on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:28AM (#622055)

    I'm not so negative on the "average person". When people are polled issue by issue the majority actually would be considered "far left" in the American context. Why do people still vote for mainstream parties when they outside of their catchments? Well, firstly, half don't. Also, actual voters take on the "spoiler" argument and don't vote for third parties ie. the "least worst" option which, along with money in politics, has lead to a slide to the right.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:28AM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Sunday January 14 2018, @03:28AM (#622070)

    Also, there's substantial evidence that even when a majority of voters want the candidate that's "far left", strings are pulled to ensure that a different candidate will represent the supposedly left-wing party.

    For instance, 110,000 or so New Yorkers, who almost all just happened to be Sanders supporters, had their voter registrations destroyed or altered so they were no longer eligible to vote in the 2016 Democratic primary. There was a criminal case brought, which was settled with a very serious promise to never do that again, although doing this was a felony.

    Or, in Florida, after substantial questions came up about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz winning the 2016 primary in a statistically unlikely fashion, the ballots were destroyed while a case was pending that would have allowed her opponent's campaign to examine them. So far, no criminal case has been brought even though doing this was a felony.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:21PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:21PM (#622196)

      Hey, the democrats are good! They have the whole world convinced the the republicans did all the fraud, and all that was done was to expose DNC crimes that indeed should be prosecuted. Too bad we can't add 'projection' to that list...

      Trump is a dick, but the democrats are damn thugs, and their history backs that up, first being the southern racists they still are, and also allying themselves with the worker gangs (union bosses) up north to shake down small mining, trucking, and drilling companies. They are true gangsters in every sense of the word. Their so-called 'civil rights' crusade from the 60s is as phony as a three dollar bill. But it keeps the dumbass 'liberals' and their cash in the barn, doesn't it? And if you show them a mirror, and they become even more tribal than a Trump supporter. But that's where the problem is... with the voters, hardly matters which party

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @01:31AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @01:31AM (#622359)

        Wow... way to miss the point.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:08PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @04:08PM (#622194)

    When people are polled issue by issue the majority actually would be considered "far left" in the American context.

    ORLY? The polls done by the same pollsters that had polls predicting a Clinton win?

    Maybe these pollsters were doing more polls where they could get their soy lattes than way out in the boondocks.

    Or these polls were actually bullshit "polls" that were more about influencing voters than actually polling voters.

    See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html [independent.co.uk]
    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/07/politics/political-prediction-market-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/index.html [cnn.com]
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/clinton-has-90-percent-chance-of-winning-reuters-ipsos-states-of-the-nation-idUSKBN1322J1 [reuters.com]
    https://www.thewrap.com/every-poll-that-got-election-wrong-donald-trump/ [thewrap.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @12:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @12:58AM (#622343)

      ORLY? The polls done by the same pollsters that had polls predicting a Clinton win?

      The data was not wrong, which is reflected in the popular vote. Their interpretation of the data was wrong, since most of them failed to account for the electoral college, which is what allowed Trump to win.

    • (Score: 2) by Pav on Monday January 15 2018, @01:15AM (1 child)

      by Pav (114) on Monday January 15 2018, @01:15AM (#622351)

      So a country who has had (under the neoliberal policies of of both the left and right) half of its population become ceither poor or in poverty isn't for shifting tax back up to the wealthy (ie. to "Happy Days" levels - eg. 90% for the top marginal rate)? Isn't for a $15 minimum wage? Isn't for ending the war on drugs? Isn't for medicare for all? Isn't for free college tuition? Isn't for curbing foreign wars?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @01:36AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @01:36AM (#622361)

        Nope, they aren't. They're too worried about identity politics, gay marriage, famous guys groping famous girls, merry fucking christmas, and just about every other irrelevant distraction one can imagine.