My fingers are crossed for Julian Assange, or, as they say here in the Czech Republic, I’m holding my thumbs. Nothing’s happened yet, and I hope nothing will, but reputable sources (Glenn Greenwald, for one) say that the Ecuadorian embassy in London is getting ready to hand him over to British Authorities.
You just can’t trust anybody, anymore. Maybe that’s being a bit harsh on Ecuador. They have hosted him for years, which was quite heroic of them. They are a small nation and, I imagine, the pressure from England and, even more so, the U.S., must have been tremendous.
Also, I suppose it’s possible they just got tired of having a permanent guest in the embassy. That’s what always happens on “I Almost Got Away With It,” a reality crime show, telling the stories of people who’d run from the law and got away with it for awhile. If you watch for awhile, you learn a couple of things. First, the police couldn’t catch a cold, as the saying goes. Second, most of these guys get caught because somebody calls the police and narcs on them. It’s al.ways like “Man, he’s my cousin and I don’t want to turn him in, but he just sits around the house all day drinking my beer and watching fucking television, so if you could come over and arrest him, that would be cool, here’s my address…..”
The big question is, though, what would happen if they do? The British have been howling for his arrest, but as far as I know he hasn’t broken any British laws, except for being in the country too long, and technically he hasn’t been in the country, because he’s been in the Ecuadorian embassy. There’s that trumped-up Swedish sex charge, I suppose they could extradite him to there. But, I suppose they’ll try to extradite him to the U.S., which is pretty horrifying as Julian Assange is not American and has broken no American laws.
I sure hope he’s got a good lawyer. I mean, a great lawyer.