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posted by martyb on Monday July 23 2018, @08:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-much-has-he-paid-for-room&board? dept.

Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next?

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the President's trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.

Moreno's itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he will meet with Spanish officials still seething over Assange's denunciation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain's central government against protesters marching for Catalonia independence. Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador's decision to silence him was Spanish anger over Assange's tweets about Catalonia. A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President's office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to the Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the UK within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.

[...] The central oddity of Assange's case – that he has been effectively imprisoned for eight years despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime – is virtually certain to be prolonged once Ecuador hands him over to the U.K. Even under the best-case scenario, it appears highly likely that Assange will continue to be imprisoned by British authorities. The only known criminal proceeding Assange currently faces is a pending 2012 arrest warrant for "failure to surrender" – basically a minor bail violation that arose when he obtained asylum from Ecuador rather than complying with bail conditions by returning to court for a hearing on his attempt to resist extradition to Sweden. That offense carries a prison term of three months and a fine, though it is possible that the time Assange has already spent in prison in the UK could be counted against that sentence. In 2010, Assange was imprisoned in Wandsworth Prison, kept in isolation, for 10 days until he was released on bail; he was then under house arrest for 550 days at the home of a supporter.

Assange's lawyer, Jen Robinson, told the Intercept that he would argue that all of that prison time already served should count toward (and thus completely fulfill) any prison term imposed on the "failure to surrender" charge, though British prosecutors would almost certainly contest that claim. Assange would also argue that he had a reasonable, valid basis for seeking asylum rather than submitting to UK authorities: namely, well-grounded fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution for the act of publishing documents.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @02:02PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @02:02PM (#711217)

    If Trump does?

    Bwahahahaha! You owe me a new keyboard! Trump seems to be true neutral, if not a touch of chaotic evil, but not lawful evil.

    Trump is not the one who cares that we learned how the DNC fucked over Bernie Sanders! @realDonaldTrump continues to offer his condolences to incel Brony Brogrammer Bernie Bros about the raw deal Bernie got.

    ---

    Though I see that the matrix has him [wsws.org]. Or maybe he's been replaced by a pod person, who knows. In reality, however, it's just the CIA hard at work--makes it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to continue feeling the Bern, because starting world wars is not something Trotskyists (Socialist Equality Party [wikipedia.org]) or (big L) Libertarians (but also small l, because libertarianism is not neoconservatism with a dash of anarcho-capitalism for flavor) are fond of.

    Of course, Bernie's endorsement of Hillary Clinton was the foreshadowing. He could have gone Green Party, after all, or given the Socialist Equality Party an infusion of mojo. But no. Democratic Socialists of America: the beta of socialism. Fuck beta.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 23 2018, @02:35PM (5 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 23 2018, @02:35PM (#711240) Journal

    Bernie may be a beta, but many of the millions of supporters he courted during the primaries were Democrats who were always going to vote for Clinton over Trump. And for good reason, since the Supreme Court picks will be Trump's biggest legacy, and we could easily have a President Pence if the establishment gets its way. Bernie endorsing a third-party or himself as a write-in would have only burned bridges with many of his newfound supporters and made more people blame him for Trump's victory.

    More people are paying attention to Senator Bernie today than ever before during his previous terms. Democratic-Socialists and other leftists are taking on establishment Democrats in the primaries. Bernie is likely going to feel too old to run in 2020, but he could use his influence to help suppress the Clintonian scum in the party and annoint a successor. Oh, and Bernie is already using his influence to curb the power of the superdelegates [npr.org].

    You call Bernie a beta socialist for endorsing Hillary, but he tried to do exactly what President Trump succeeded at: co-opting the party from the inside. He just had to adjust to a longer-term strategy since he couldn't actually beat Clinton in 2016. President Trump's win has shown many people the light. If you want to be successful, don't run as a third-party candidate even if you look like the ultimate political outsider. Instead, you forcibly take over one of the two parties, energize your fringe supporters, and get the mainstream supporters of that party to reluctantly back you.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @05:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @05:57PM (#711347)

      Unfortunately, the Democratic Party turned Bernie into a cuck. [blogspot.com] Ari Rabin-Havt might be controlling him.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @06:04PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @06:04PM (#711353)

      I suppose I don't so much as fault him for supporting Hillary. It made sense at the time, for all the reasons you give.

      However, I call him and the Democratic Socialists of America wing of the D team beta socialists because they seem to be consumed with the Russia narrative, and the Russia narrative is so imperative, all the things that Bernie was passionate about in 2016 seem to have fallen to the wayside.

      And that makes me sad. :-(

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 23 2018, @09:28PM (2 children)

        by Thexalon (636) on Monday July 23 2018, @09:28PM (#711449)

        However, I call him and the Democratic Socialists of America wing of the D team beta socialists because they seem to be consumed with the Russia narrative, and the Russia narrative is so imperative, all the things that Bernie was passionate about in 2016 seem to have fallen to the wayside.

        Then you aren't paying much attention: The Sanders wing of the party is far less interested in pushing the Russia narrative than the Clinton/MSNBC wing.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @10:33PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 23 2018, @10:33PM (#711472)

          Absolutely, the Russia thing is mostly a way that the establishment Democrats are using to hand wave away their particularly incompetent mismanagement of the party. That way there's probably a few democrats out there that will blame Russia for losing to Trump rather than on their corrupt organization that's more interested in being professional losers than giving the voters what they want.

          The voters want medicare for all, free college and various gun regulations, but the Democratic party can't get behind any of those extremely popular positions. It wasn't that long ago that the GOP was more or less on the ropes and had the Democrats not allowed corporate interests to corrupt the party, the GOP would be a thing of the past. Instead what we wound up was the DNC throwing races and allowing itself to be pulled further and further to the right and completely ignoring the wishes of the voters. The end result was huge numbers of seats being lost to a party that should really be a footnote at this point.

          • (Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:57AM

            by legont (4179) on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:57AM (#711547)

            The voters want medicare for all, free college and various gun regulations

            This is exactly what Russia has and what differs it from the US. The rest is absolutely the same.

            --
            "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.