Julian Assange Plans Modeling Debut At London Fashion Show 173
An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible new direction for Julian Assange. Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September. The Australian WikiLeaks founder will reportedly model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has been seeking refuge for the past two years. He is avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of sex offences. “Julian’s been in the embassy for two years and it’s important that he doesn’t slip into obscurity,” said Ben Westwood. “I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”
New category of Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is now at level of E!.
Modeling debut? Good grief.
Fifteeen minutes of fame. (Score:4, Insightful)
Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September.
What begins as tragedy ends as farce.
Re:Fifteeen minutes of fame. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pulling in every favor" - and your evidence is?
You do realize that it's an explicit violation of the Swedish extradition treaty with the US to extradite someone for political, military, or intelligence crimes, don't you? They couldn't even hand over Edward Lee Howard, the greatest CIA defector to the Soviets during the cold war, and he didn't even have the cover of being a journalist (Sweden having the strongest whistleblower protections on Earth, as repeatedly noted by Assange at the time when he was moving there). And I assume that you know that someone surrendered under an EAW requires both the consent of the receiving (Sweden) *and* sending state (Britain) to be forward-extradited to a third state, meaning that being surrendered under an EAW only increases your protections against extradition. Britain, of course, being the country that took most of a decade to hand over Abu Hamza, a guy everyone hated and who was setting up terrorist training camps in the US, and which wouldn't hand over at all Gary McKinnon (the most costly hacker of US military systems in history) because he (like Assange) has Aspergers. Oh, and I'm sure you you know the ECHR, the world's greatest refuge for people seeking to avoid extradition, has the final say.
Lets just see if I've got the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy(TM) down pat. For reasons only beknownst to them, they can only nab Assange from Sweden, not the the UK, or any of the vast numbers of far-easier countries that Assange regularly globetrots to. No, it has to be Sweden. Let's just take that as a given for some Unknown Shadowy CIA Reason. Now, Assange was applying to live in Sweden when the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy decided, "Instead of waiting until we're ready to nab him for our charges, since he's planning to live here, wouldn't it be so much more fun to frame him for a crime? Yeah! And let's pick a crime that has a pathetically low conviction rate! Let's not only frame him for rape, but let's frame him for rape but use a case that involves the women having consented to certain acts but not others, have them do delays and other actions that could potentially hurt their case, etc, just like in real rape situations, where victims don't live their lives as though they're about to be judged in a trial, instead of a phony "knife to the throat" hollywood-style rape case." Why? Because the Shadowy CIA Conspiracy just rolls that way, stop asking questions! And because our CIA psychics have foreseen this event for decades in advance, we can now activate Sleeper Agent SW who we've had spend decades misleadingly cultivating herself as a young Swedish museum worker with a lifelong paranoia about unprotected sex. Now, let's install our CIA Plant, Ms. Ny, to prosecute him - because of course, we at the CIA have infiltrated the top levels of all of the major governments' of the world's judicial systems just for this purpose (we also run all of their courts, so that we can have the Svea Court of Appeals, the Swedish Supreme Court, the UK District Court, the UK High Court, and the UK Supreme Court each rule against him in turn). But, for fun, let's have the prosecutor take several weeks to get him, and let's let the news totally leak out during the time that they're getting ready to arrest him so that Assange can run. And let's just let him flee the country, and not tell Sweden so that they can stop him. Then when he exhausts his legal options in the UK and jumps bail to run into the embassy of a country with an anti-western leader who's a fan of his, let's do absolutely nothing - it'll be fun!
Is this how it went down, in your mind? Great job, Shadowy CIA Conspiracy. Who's heading the CIA these days, Bozo the Clown?
Re:and yet (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess if you were in Snowden's shoes, you would have sought asylum somewhere other than Russia. Of course, by now you'd be back home rotting in solitary confinement awaiting your trial. A trial in which you have no ability to challenge the evidence presented against you.
But please, tell us where you would seek asylum from the US. Afghanistan? Iran? North Korea? Can't decide?
Perhaps you should worry about your own credibility.
Re:Diplomatic immunity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not disagreeing with the other facts you stated, but the girls did not press charges, nor did the swedish gov't - the got an extradition warrant so that they could question him. The fact that the refuse to do this via webcam, phone, letter etc and that they are doing this even though the women don't want to press charges shows that the extradition is political.
Re:and yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahem. [thelocal.se]
There's been more action taken in the EU against the US rendition program than anywhere else in the world.
Why thank you, Amazing Kreskin, for your ability to know more than everyone actually involved in the case, including the three investigating officers, two (Gehlen, Wassgren) wanted him charged for what would become 5 charges (1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x molestation, 2x rape), while one (Krans) wanted him charged with 4 (1x, 2x, 1x); the original prosecutor (Finne), who began investigating for 5 (1x, 2x, 2x), but changed it to 3x (1x, 2x, 0x) before SW's statement made it into the system; the appeals board which found her in error for reducing it without having even reviewed the victim statement; the second prosecutor (Ny), who sought (1x, 2x, 2x); the lower court judge, who approved a warrant for (1x, 2x, 2x); the Svea Court of Appeals, who held a full court hearing on appeal from Assange, including testimony from Assange's attorneys and a review of all evidence, and reached an official finding of probable cause for (1x, 2x, 1x); the Swedish Supreme Court, who refused his appeal; the British lower court, who heard Assange's claims alleging flaws in the Swedish process and malicious prosecution, and ruled against him on all counts; the UK High Court, which did the same; and the UK Supreme Court, which again did the same.
No no, we don't need any freaking judicial system, we have Amazing Kreskin here to tell us what's what!
Huh? Pretty much everything I saw about his girlfriend was supportive of Snowden, along the lines of "Look at what he sacrificed in order to release this information!" If there was anything trying to condemn him over his girlfriend, I sure didn't see it. And even ignoring that, what the media chooses to focus on in one case to do has no bearing on what every level of two countries' judicial systems rules on a completely unrelated case..
Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Assange is not accused of anything by the US. There are no US charges against him. There is still an investigation open, but it's questionable that they'll ever even be able to charge him with anything [washingtonpost.com]. Just assuming that they did, a terrorism charge would get utterly laughed out of each of the *five* different bodies (Swedish courts, Swedish governments, British courts, British government, and ECHR) that would have independent veto authority over a US request. You might as well accuse him of of beating to death an astronaut on the moon, it's about as plausible. And the US could barely get Abu-freaking-Hamza extradited, an *actual* who everyone hated, a guy who was working to set up terrorist training camps in the US (and even when they finally did, a decade later, they couldn't even put him in a supermax prison because the EU considers that too cruel). And "actively harming US security and interests" isn't even a charge in the US, let alone anything that would even remotely meet even the basic double criminality standard.
Re:Diplomatic immunity? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. "The government" does not press charges. That's the judicial branch's job, not the executive. Every figure involved in the investigation at each step, from the initial investigating officiers to the two prosecutors to each of the three Swedish courts involved and the three British courts involved, have all ruled against Assange in some way. The most pro-Assange action of all was from Eva Finne, who first after issuing a warrant way too early, cancelled the rape charges to revoke the warrant, but still left open the molestation and unlawful sexual coersion investigation (and that was before SW's victim statement was even in the computer). All other figures involved have either supported charges of (2x molestation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x rape) or (2x molestation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion 1x rape). The latter is what currently stands against Assange on the EAW.
2. There is no "extradition warrant". There is an EAW (European Arrest Warrant). The EAW process is about surrender, not extradition. There's actually a big difference, it's more like a prisoner being passed of from one state to another in the US; EAWs also take precidence over extradition, and there's no government involvement in an EAW like there is with extradition.
3. No, the purpose of the EAW is not to question him. From the sworn statement of the prosecutor to the lower court: "Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries." Under Swedish law, a person is "anklagad" to get them into custody and then "åtalad" after a question on all charges in order to begin the trial process (which must commence after being åtalad within a fixed period of time). Hence Assange must surrender in order to be åtalad, and pointing out that he hasn't been åtalad as defense of his run from the law is totally circular logic. The concept of remote questioning is a red herring; as per the sworn statement, the goal is to indict him.
4. The concept that "the women don't want to press charges" is totally unsupported by any of the evidence. First off, the women have been almost completely silent since the event. We've only heard from one of them (AA) twice, and the other not at all. The most recent of said statements by AA was a comment on a blog on an unrelated topic where she remarked that a year prior (the time of the Assange case) she was the victim of a sexual assault and her assailant never faced justice, and instead he is just praised and she gets attacked for reporting it.
From the leaked police report (leaked by someone on Assange's team, by the way - the un-trimmed version shows a hand-written letter from Ny to Björn Hurtig, Assange's attorney, telling him that this is what he requested but that it's not to be made public), we know the following additional information. 1) AA did not say she was raped, but that she was a victim of lesser crimes (this matches up with the current charges, where there are no rape charges concerning her, but three lesser charges). 2) SW told several people that she'd been raped, before she had decided to go to the police - at a minimum, at least one family member, her ex boyfriend, and AA all say that SW told them she had been raped by Assange, and there are several other people to which she described the event but it's not known whether she used the word rape. 3) SW wanted to report the rape charge but was very upset how it developed into a media circus; she mainly hoped it would end with Assange submitting to a STD test and then would be dropped (she had a long history attested to of being very paranoid about STDs, to the point that in 2 1/2 years with her ex she had never allowed unprotected sex, and even that was after doing STD tests). 4) AA went with to support SW with additional evidence from her case. 5) SW
Re:and yet (Score:4, Insightful)
There's been more action taken in the EU against the US rendition program than anywhere else in the world.
By that point people had already been rendered and were already being tortured. It's well documented. There are lawsuits against EU governments for helping the US do it in progress right now.
Can you explain why the Swedish prosecutors would not come to the UK to talk to him? They didn't want to arrest him at the time, just talk. He invited them over, there is precedent for such visits, and yet they declined.
The UK court rulings were based on their decision that the danger of being grabbed by the US was minimal. You can argue that it was or it wasn't, but Assange was in an impossible situation where he believed there was a strong possibility of being rendered and yet was unable to provide evidence of it for obvious reasons. His choice was risk that or run, so he ran.
Pretty much everything I saw about his girlfriend was supportive of Snowden
You obviously didn't look very hard. The VERY FIRST link from a google of "snowden girlfriend" turns up:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
Abandoned his girlfriend, left her to fend for herself with the authorities and media, the bastard.
Re: and yet (Score:4, Insightful)
See Hobson's Choice [wikipedia.org].
By the fact that his passport was revoked while transiting Russia, Snowden's choice went from "which country do I seek asylum in" to "do I seek asylum in Russia or not at all?"
(perhaps he could still have got himself smuggled out in a diplomatic bag or some other James Bond shenanigans, but considering the Evo Morales grounding incident [wikipedia.org], that might not have worked out so well)