My comment was referring to the 1.5 years Assange lived openly in London, while Sweden was trying to get him extradited. I don't believe they'd storm an embassy to get him, but a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.
> a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.
It probably would be out of character for them to do that in one of their 5-eyes partner's countries. Keeping that relationship is high priority for the US because they get tons of intelligence in return.
Plus kidnapping a 'terrorist' and kidnapping a 'journalist' (air-quotes for both) are two different things in how the world will respond. The outcry over the Italian terrorist kidnapping was pretty small but taking Assange off the streets of London would be huge.
The collateral damage video was published on April 5, 2010.
Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy on 19th June 2012.
The Interpol warrant for his arrest is dated 30 November, 2010.
He was in the UK for two years after leaving Sweden before he entered the embassy. Had he really been fearful of extradition to the US, why would he choose to run away to the country which (at least at the time) has the strongest ties to the US?
He did not run to the UK. The charges in Sweden had been dropped and he was allowed to leave the country. I'll give you that the UK is a bad choice to go, but at the time he was free and clear of any charges. Only after he was in the UK, Sweden reopened their investigation, and at first reported him as a "witness" they'd like to interview, and that's what they based their request for extradition on. He wasn't "accused" at the time Sweden filed.
His "pre-text" wasn't that he feared the UK would extradite him to the US, but that the UK would extradite him to Sweden, which would extradite him to the UK. So he was fearful of Sweden, not the UK. You can say that this is stupid or even claim he cannot genuinely believe that and is therefore disingenuous, but unless a true mindreader shows up, we cannot know what he thought and feared, really.
>He did not run to the UK. The charges in Sweden had been dropped and he was allowed to leave the country.
True - I'd forgotten that part.
In any case - the case was reopened in November 2010, and Assange didn't enter the embassy until June 2012. If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.
In addition to the above, EU law forbids extradition chains (Assange extradited from the UK -> Sweden, and then Sweden -> US) without explicit permissions from all involved countries.
> I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone
Probably, but there are likely extreme hurdles to such "disappearing" of well known persons (especially those who are not universally hated). Having the technical capability is one thing. Effectively acknowledging its use in a mostly friendly, sovereign country is a very different matter.
Extraditing from Sweden would probably require the permission of the UK government, who are generally more than willing to bend over backwards for the US on this kind of thing. What it avoids is getting the UK courts involved; how much that matters in practice is an interesting question. Also, I don't think the US was ready to extradite him yet back in 2010.
Edit: yep, arrest warrant supposedly issued in December 2017 over his work with Manning back in 2010.
It wouldn't avoid the UK courts getting involved; consent from the UK for onward extradition from Sweden is subject to judicial review, much like any other extradition request.
> wasn't that he feared the UK would extradite him to the US, but that the UK would extradite him to Sweden, which would extradite him to the UK
I assume you mean "extradite him to the US"
Why would Sweden extradite him to the U.S. when the UK wouldn't?
Either way, he promised the UK courts he wouldn't flee. Then he fled. Now he's been arrested for skipping bail. Good. Everytime someone skips bail, it makes it harder for innocent people to get bail when they are charged with crimes they didn't commit.
I don't know what he was thinking? Maybe he had memories of Pinochet not being extradited from the UK? Maybe he had memories of the Swedes doing the bidding of the US re:thepiratebay?
> and things like acid attacks against women are decently common.
Wait, what? Where's your source on this.
Via google I can find references to one case from 1997 and one from 2002, and that's it. The idea that this would in any way be "decently common" here is preposterous.
Acid attacks are not common, but a lot of young immigrant women live under quite repressive family conditions, and can not see a doctor for their sexual health with their family knowing about it.
There are other, more recent cases of acid or threat of it, eg [1], though I'd say acid attacks are not particularly common in Sweden. Many more cases in UK, for instance. There are more actual cases of defenestration ("falling from the balcony") in Sweden.
In any case the leak of health information is nothing to laugh at e.g. for those who live under threat of "honor violence".
London Metropolitan Police showed a sharp rise in attacks, with 465 recorded in 2017
Particularly common in London, and amongst some immigrant communities. Other countries are not so far behind, and I gather it is quite common in some of the developing world, like India and Pakistan.
This probably is due to incentives - carrying a knife may bring a long prison sentence, carrying a bottle of acid or lye as weapon did not. UK changed sentencing guidelines last year.
Now, sure, especially in London. It's grown as a weapon of choice phenomenally quickly over the last 5 years, from almost nothing.
Seems like it may have been noticed being used for honour attacks in communities in London, Bradford, Leicester etc, and escalated from there. A particularly horrible form of attack.
This is from a friend with a similar problem who talked to a guy working with the feature, so YMMV:
Supposedly, the feature works at least in part by analyzing your playlists and giving recommendations based on what the people with similar songs in their playlists have there as well. He claimed to be receiving less Finnish rap m after removing his playlists with northern Swedish rap, so you could try that approach if you still have any Chinese/Korean playlists.
I just remove the few offending songs from my discover weekly, which I don't find too much of a hassle, but it doesn't seem to learn from that.
I agree with you but also believe e-voting undermines the integrity of the democratic system as a whole, black-box or not.
How it currently works where I live is that, at the start of election day, all the volunteers and officials who are working for the day are allowed to inspect the urn, check for hidden compartments, and so on to ensure it's empty (And anyone can sign up to volunteer). Then they receive and place the votes in the urn together, and it remains sealed until the counting commences.
This creates a transparency that is simply not possible with an electronic solution. Even if it was possible to go through all software and hardware being deployed (A project which by itself would take years and cost millions), and the problem of being able to cast anonymous votes without the possibility of anyone finding out what you voted for was solved, you still hand over the democratic control of the election process to a small technological elite who will be doing these checks, while you gain very little from actually doing so.
Denmark tried to put an e-voting system in place a few years back but failed because one of the parties that was intially in favor where swayed by an angry group consisting in large part made up of computer science professionals and students.
If we're looking at the swedish game industry you also want to add Paradox Interactive and Dice to that list.
Our general technology industry is "restructuring", with pretty big layoffs at the large companies. The same week this spring Sony and Ericsson gave advance notice of upcoming layoffs to 1000 and 2000 people respectively.
While not a catastrophe in itself, and a several companies stepped in to offer jobs, it's worrying as a general indication of the state of our technological industry.
