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Ecuador due to reveal Assange plans 'this week'

Published: 14 Aug 12 06:55 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/42592/20120814/

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said he expects to respond to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's application for political asylum some time this week.


"Hopefully this week we will be able to make a statement on the matter," the leftist leader said in an interview with public broadcaster ECTV late Monday.

Assange, 41, took refuge at Ecuador's embassy in London on June 19 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is accused of sexual assault.

"We expect to have a meeting no later than Wednesday," Correa said, referring to his diplomats in London.

The WikiLeaks founder fears that from Sweden, he could subsequently be re-extradited to the United States to stand trial for espionage, after a trove of leaked US diplomatic cables and military logs were published on his website.

Correa has often been at odds with Washington and offered Assange asylum in 2010.

He has said the mere possibility that Assange could face capital punishment in the United States could be reason enough for his government to grant the activist's asylum request.

He has vowed that his government would not yield to pressure from Britain, Sweden or the United States in deciding whether to grant Assange asylum.

Assange's mother and former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon recently traveled to Ecuador to argue in favor of granting him asylum.

Even if Ecuador decides to grant Assange political asylum, it remains to be seen if British authorities would allow him to leave the country. In the absence of a safe conduct agreement between Quito and London, he could stay on embassy grounds indefinitely

AFP/The Local (news@thelocal.se)

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14:43 August 14, 2012 by GLO
Good news, one day he will be held to account. Assange, criminal, World Terrorist !!!! Time will tell......
15:52 August 14, 2012 by philster61
"World terrorist" ? You should look up the definition before you post radical statements like that. .... He is anything but a terrorist.......I certainly can't remember him ever having planned a bombing.Or a shooting. Or a campaign of violence. This is how terrorism is defined. To the best of my knowledge , all he has done is made public documents which reveal how elected officials really feel about their counterparts. Embarrassing for those involved but in a democracy necessary....
19:31 August 14, 2012 by OUIJA
15:52 August 14, 2012 by philster61

That is what I call a proper answer to a moron who does not know what freedom of speech means. But what can you expect, mate, I am quite sure that he is a buddy buddy from Ana Ardin(is that her name?) and from the Swedish prosecutor that in combination with the police invented a whole line of lies against Assange. And before many more continue in the line of GLO, I suggest everybody to go to the following link:

http://nnn.se/nordic/assange.htm

And, if after really reading all of its contents, GLO still continues in his line of writing without knowledge, than, pal, there is nothing more to do.

I truly hope there were more Assanges in the world. I am Assange!
19:56 August 14, 2012 by sgt_doom
Yet another bunch of reasons below (Trapwire, which is now fully operational in the USA, UK and Canada, and elsewhere -- and will one day be interfaced with their surveillance/attack drone networks) as to why the Transnational Capitalist Class is so hot to shut down Wikileaks, jail for life Bradley Manning, and destroy Julian Assange.

http://publicintelligence.net/unravelling-trapwire/

http://cryptogon.com/?p=30775
20:58 August 14, 2012 by pauldavid
Jesus, but people talk a lot of crap about that knob.
22:01 August 14, 2012 by OUIJA
#5 Pauldavid

Knobs like you are the ones talking a lot of crap about the only one in the WHOLE DAMN WORD who showed the WHOLE DAMNS STUPIT WORLD what freedom of speech should mean and represent.

sgt_doom: Good for you. Thanks
22:09 August 14, 2012 by tercel
Leaked U.S. Intel documents listed the names and villages of Afghan collaborators—and the Taliban is starting to retaliate. After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn't take long for the Taliban to react. The Taliban, a radical Islamic militia in Afghanistan, announced its gratitude to Wikileaks for the release and vowed to hunt down those revealed in the documents to be collaborating with the U.S.  It appears that they have now made good on that threat. Over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province's embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

Wikileaks founder and convicted Australian computer criminal Julian Assange claimed in a TIME interview that the leak was justified in the name of transparency.  Mr Assange said: "No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret —

Leaving aside the immaturity and callousness of such a stance—we didn't mean to hurt anyone but Tuff Sh@t on them. Anyway, so the Taliban are doing exactly what they said they would do, they are vowing to hunt down and murder anyone who is identified in the Wikileaks archive as having worked for the U.S. I hope Julian Assange sleeps well at night. His victims certainly won't.

Freedom of speech does not mean you can shout "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/02/taliban-seeks-vengeance-in-wake-of-wikileaks.html

http://registan.net/index.php/2010/07/30/taliban-use-wikileaks-to-hunt-murder-named-afghans/
03:33 August 15, 2012 by philster61
Freedom of speech does not mean you can shout "FIRE" in a crowded movie theate

If there actually was a fire, then that'd be the appropriate thing to shout...
04:48 August 15, 2012 by tercel
@ #8

The idea of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater arose from the Supreme Court's 1919 decision in the case Schenck v. United States. The Court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment, though it protects freedom of expression, does not protect dangerous speech. In the decision, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that no free speech safeguard would cover someone "falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."

Holmes wrote of falsely shouting fire, because, of course, if there were a fire in a crowded theater, one may rightly indeed shout "Fire!"; one may, depending on the law in operation, even be obliged to. Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, i.e. shouting "Fire!" when one believes there to be no fire in order to cause panic, was interpreted not to be protected by the First Amendment.

People have indeed falsely shouted "Fire!" in crowded public venues and caused panics on numerous occasions, such as at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall (London) in 1856, in Harlem in 1884,[1] and in the Italian Hall disaster of 1913, which left 73 dead.
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