PeteFree.comUS lapdogs — Sweden embarrassed itself with 7 years of made-up Julian Assange accusations — while the United Kingdom kept compliant goosestep
© 2017 Peter Free
22 May 2017
American autocracy's lapdogs
After seven years, Sweden decided to drop sexual assault allegations against Wikileaks' Julian Assange. The knowingly false accusation was evidently beginning to embarrass even the US-toadying Swedish government.
You can see the BBC's timeline for the Assange case, here.
Laughably, the Swedes reportedly called this seven year stint, a "preliminary" investigation. That misnomer alone captures the enormity of Sweden's hypocritical incompetence.
This is (not coincidentally) the same nation that awarded warmongering, drone-murdering President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
When we think Sweden from now on, it will not have anything to do with supporting actual justice or demonstrating an even minimally competent ability to reason.
For its part — and proving itself to be cut from even deeper lapdog pusillanimity — the United Kingdom continues to hold its "jumping [extradition appeal] bail" arrest warrant over Assange's head.
We can infer that the Brits consider it is illegal to avoid extradition under false charges, even after the charge-initiating government de facto admits that it lied.
Mr. Assange will have to continue to accept the Ecuadorian Embassy's London lodging.
Emerging from its behind the scenes manipulation
The United States has prepared charges of its own against Assange. I put this ham-fisted prosecutorial inclination into relevant context, here.
What really went on — according to John Pilger
The internationalized Swedish position on Assange has been a lie, pretty much from day one. In fact, Sweden's first assigned prosecutor in the case reportedly dumped it for lack of substance.
No one (who is doing real doing police work) takes years to complete a sexual assault investigation. Nor do you need the suspect's testimony to file a legitimately grounded charge.
Writer John Pilger published his take on this American Deep State string-pulling in CounterPunch:
Contrary to its reputation as a bastion of liberal enlightenment, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees.
The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables.
“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network . . . “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights . . . .”
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – the tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations – last year ruled that Assange had been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden.
The Metropolitan Police say they still intend to arrest Assange for bail infringement should he leave the embassy. What then? A few months in prison while the US delivers its extradition request to the British courts?
If the British Government allows this to happen it will . . . be shamed . . . as an accessory to the crime of a war waged by rampant power against justice and freedom . . . .
© 2017 John Pilger, Getting Assange: the Untold Story, CounterPunch (19 May 2017) (excerpts)
The moral? — Ecuador is the only nation in this mix that exhibited a sense of justice and US-defying cojones
You can imagine the pressure that the United States Establishment is bringing to bear on this small Latin American nation — where the US-fled Spirit of 1776 is evidently now hanging out.
What would History's freedom-seeker Thomas Paine think?
He'd probably be writing in Spanish, not English, today.