Julian Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassyin London, and seeking asylum in that country. I hope they grant it to him and the Brits, the Swedes and the U.S. all get over it and leave him alone.
Those aren’t gold bars in the picture, but they might as well be
The rape charge is absurd. It doesn’t meet the definition of rape in any country other than Sweden. Basically, he didn’t put on a condom. That may be a bit of a social faux pas in our STD conscious modern culture, but the girl (who may have been a bit star struck and stupid, I’ll grant that) had sex with him anyway, quite willingly. So, it wasn’t rape.
Secondly, everybody knows it’s not really about the rape charge. This is political intimidation, pure and simple.
What I don’t understand, though, is this: why Ecuador? They must have given him some indication that they’d grant him asylum. I’m sure he didn’t throw a dart at a map blindfolded (which is pretty much how I wound up in Thailand and that sure turned out to be a mistake). If he’d had a choice, I’m sure he’d have gone with one of the nicer lifestyle countries, like Japan or Canada or Swe…oops, scratch that.
His own country, Australia, has pretty much said they won’t protect him against the courts in Britain, Sweden and/or the U.S. It’s an indication that, although nobody likes the U.S. government any more, nobody wants to fuck with it. Well, maybe North Korea and Iran. Now, maybe Ecuador.
I have a suggestion for Ecuador (and this would probably work for Colombia, Peru or Bolivia as well): if you really want to piss off the bigshots, and give yourselves a huge financial boost at the same time, just legalize cocaine. Marijuana, too, just because it’s logical, but cocaine is your region’s major product. It’s as if China made rice illegal, or Ireland whiskey.
Legalizing it would draw tourists from all over the world, give your farmers a cash crop, make life a lot easier for your police and give a big, fat poke in the eye to the CIA.
But I digress. I hope that Ecuador grants Assange asylum, and that he is able to continue with the very important work of making it harder for powerful people to keep secrets.
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