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I'll concede bad journalism on my part; my post was rushed and not accurate. The important part is the following taken from the official European Human rights o

I'll concede bad journalism on my part; my post was rushed and not accurate. The important part is the following taken from the official European Human rights on rights to a fair trial (6.3): "Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of...". Publicly announcing the desired arrest goes against this idea, and that suggests systemic failure inside Sweden, and subsequent bad journalism that started in sweden and is being copied else where, particularly by the nytimes. If you compare EU coverage of the leaks; death tolls, frago 242 (an order not to actively prevent torture) and civilian casualties were the lead. In the US it has been Assange's private life. That smacks of an agenda, and nytimes actually spiked a story on frago 242 and a google search for "site:nytimes.com frago 242" comes back with 4 useless results. Search "site:guardian.co.uk "frago 242" and you get 164 good results. The initial stub was utter trash, barely above a copy-and-paste of a Swedish tabloid with the good bits removed. The nytimes pushed this article as soon as they could without possibly fact checking. The lengthened article is a little bit better, but still uses any excuse to push the rape charges and the idea that he is a wanted man. More accurately is Assange perhaps facing charges of molestation which is a better translation, and what did he do? Assange claims he had sex (there has been a claim else where this could be unprotected sex) with multiple partners who found out and retrospectively took revenge through legal proceedings. And remember the media has pushed the "rape" charges without evidence, initially just hearsay and from leaked police reports. Again that goes against the idea of a fair trial. I believe there is deceit or incompetence somewhere, and that is not produced from cognitive dissonance. The evidence I use is how botched the process has been. If there was evidence of rape, a very serious claim, he could have been arrested in Sweden at the time. He was told he was free to leave, without even the need for an interview. Months have gone by and no attempt had been made. Now he is out of the country (Sweden) it all conspires to portray him as a guilty man on the run. That is the narrative that is being pushed; ignoring the 15,000 deaths the Pentagon lied about, the hint of a molestation is more important.

roel_v 16y ago
Well the funny thing is that he's not being charged yet. He's wanted to be interrogated as a suspect. This article from the ECHR does not even guarantee that one needs be told what one is suspected of until charges are being brought against them. Someone can be held for investigation or for reasons of public safety for quite a while without this article being any resort, and after that time another article (on speedy trial, don't know by heart which one it is) will constitute a violation of the Convention. In a case against Russia somewhere in the 1990's this period was set at a few years (i.e., several years was too long). Several cases have held that being detained for a few months did not yet constitute a breach. Apart from this, the ECHR does not mention (as far as I remember - it's been a few years since I last studied this) that charges need to be kept confidential. Anyway, I'm going on a tangent here. Your original post implied that the Pentagon somehow convinced or coerced the NYT and the Swedish newspapers to run a smear campaign against Assange. Maybe the reporting isn't great, it's hard to say; it's quite common for breaking news to be posted in raw form and then to be updated later. Your claims that the NYT has an 'agenda' because they don't run items that you think are important is rather paranoid too imo. It's the exact same argument that Teapartiers use to 'prove' that the NYT, WaPo etc. have a 'liberal bias' - they take some minor event that they feel is important and say 'look, the mainstream media are burying the truth!' If they'd have to report on every news item that comes on the wire every day, they'd need to put out a phone book size newspaper every day. Now, that there is incompetence somewhere, that I'm willing to believe. Actually I'm pretty sure there's plenty of incompetence, it's everywhere, no matter where you look. But incompetence and a government conspiracy that extends to newspapers and tv stations across the world, those are not even remotely in the same league.

roel_v 16y ago

Well the funny thing is that he's not being charged yet. He's wanted to be interrogated as a suspect. This article from the ECHR does not even guarantee that one needs be told what one is suspected of until charges are being brought against them. Someone can be held for investigation or for reasons of public safety for quite a while without this article being any resort, and after that time another article (on speedy trial, don't know by heart which one it is) will constitute a violation of the Convention. In a case against Russia somewhere in the 1990's this period was set at a few years (i.e., several years was too long). Several cases have held that being detained for a few months did not yet constitute a breach. Apart from this, the ECHR does not mention (as far as I remember - it's been a few years since I last studied this) that charges need to be kept confidential. Anyway, I'm going on a tangent here. Your original post implied that the Pentagon somehow convinced or coerced the NYT and the Swedish newspapers to run a smear campaign against Assange. Maybe the reporting isn't great, it's hard to say; it's quite common for breaking news to be posted in raw form and then to be updated later. Your claims that the NYT has an 'agenda' because they don't run items that you think are important is rather paranoid too imo. It's the exact same argument that Teapartiers use to 'prove' that the NYT, WaPo etc. have a 'liberal bias' - they take some minor event that they feel is important and say 'look, the mainstream media are burying the truth!' If they'd have to report on every news item that comes on the wire every day, they'd need to put out a phone book size newspaper every day. Now, that there is incompetence somewhere, that I'm willing to believe. Actually I'm pretty sure there's plenty of incompetence, it's everywhere, no matter where you look. But incompetence and a government conspiracy that extends to newspapers and tv stations across the world, those are not even remotely in the same league.