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.”
and yet (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:and yet (Score:3, Interesting)
If by "home" you mean "Gitmo"
So you really, honestly believe that if he'd answered the questions that the Swedish investigators wanted to ask, that he'd have been sent from Sweden, via some flavor of rendition, right to Gitmo? Assange's nearly Jobs-like reality distortion field is definitely getting to you. Or, you're just trolling in the interests of ... what, exactly?
Naive (Score:3, Interesting)
“I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”
He's in self-imposed exile and he made it worse on himself by running into the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place. Somebody needs to tell this twit that life is unfair, get used to it.
Re:and yet (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing being that according to Wikileaks itself, in 2006 Sweden created a major diplomatic incident with the US by diguising their special forces as airport workers and hijacking a US rendition flight to stop the US from renditioning people through their airspace [thelocal.se]. The very Swedish foreign minister that Assange rails against (Carl Bildt) is the same guy who was prime minister when Sweden refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard to the US because Swedish law bans extradition for intelligence crimes.
No country is perfect, and every country has bad marks at some point on its record, so anyone who wants to can pick attacks for any country. However, in Sweden, these sort of things are few and far between. The peer-reviewed World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Sweden #1 in the world [worldjusticeproject.org] for fundamental rights of the accused. Assange on at least two occasions called Sweden his "shield" before the incident due to their having such good whistleblower protections**, and was applying for residence there. It was only after he got anklagad for rape that he suddenly changed his tune and decided that Sweden is an evil US lackey bent on his downfall. Funny how that works.
(** It's actually those very whistleblower protections that are responsible for why we know so much about the case. In Sweden, it's illegal to even look for a person who leaks documents if they consider it whisteblowing; as a result, pretty much every high-profile criminal case in Sweden leaks like a sieve)
Re:Diplomatic immunity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Haha... because "On 17th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity" (charge #4 on the EAW, the one with the checkbox ticked for rape) is best summed up as "sex without a condom". Such a frivolity!
Come on, girls, stop this nonsense, don't you know that Assange is the awesomeest awesome that ever awesomed? So what if he waits until you're asleep to f*** you for a bit in a way that you explicitly and repeatedly prohibited while you were awake, it's not something to ruin a great man's life over - just lie back and take it!