This embassy is just a re-purposed apartment, a floor or two up from the ground, in a block of apartments. I assume the original bathroom facilities remain intact!
Otherwise he would have been flushed into the open weeks ago. 
Does the embassy deal with the public?(Ecuadoran citizen services and visa issuance for Brits) I’m wondering if say a Ecuadoran citizen goes to file a birth abroad report if Assange is just snoozing on a couch in the corner of the office or something.
From the stories I’ve read, Assange has an air mattress in a back room of the apartment.
There’s the rub. The claims that Assange is somehow being secretly persecuted by the US (via their loyal puppet Sweden ??? 
) are rather strained, and giving safe harbor to an accused rapist is definitely not an appropriate use for an Embassy.
I think the reality is Assange is just being retarded, or maybe grandstanding. From everything I’ve read there is little chance I think of him facing serious consequences in Sweden. There does not appear to be any reason for Sweden to extradite him to the U.S., and if there was the U.K. still has the right to object to such an extradition.
Finally, Assange isn’t under charges in the United States and I think it questionable he ever would be. I’m not actually sure he committed any crimes under U.S. law, in the Pentagon Papers case journalists released classified information and ultimately faced no criminal penalties. I don’t see that the case with Assange would be any different. The closest anyone came to suffering criminal penalties under the Pentagon Papers case were the two workers with security clearances who had illegally copied and released the documents. However the case against them broke down into a mistrial. The government officer involved in the WikiLeaks scandal is being charged just like the guys in the Pentagon Papers case, but I doubt the U.S. would try to prosecute Assange…they never tried to prosecute the New York Times journalists who published the Pentagon Papers.
And yet, if there was no political element to this, do you think that Britain would be mobilizing this much police to apprehend a non-violent one-time criminal whose crime was minor enough that charges weren’t originally filed? For comparison, how hard did Great Britain work to get Roman Polanski extradited when he was wanted for rape charges?
And, of course, what percentage of political prisoners are ever explicitly charged with ‘embarrassing the government’ compared to the percentage held for theoretically non-political crimes?
So there’s certainly an argument that Assange is being politically persecuted-- I’m not saying there’s no argument the other way, either, but it’s not a completely open-and-shut case, here.
Well things are about to get interesting, now that Ecuador have given him asylum.
Personally I think Assange is going to seriously regret this course of action. Indeed he has signed up for a lifetime punishment vastly worse than he could even have imagined being subject to had he let the law take its course. He will never be able to travel to the EU again. Nor indeed any country with an extradition treaty with Sweden. I doubt he would be able to travel home to Australia. He may well discover that Ecuador (assuming he actually makes it there) is the only place he can remain free. So he better get used to the idea. His days as a self appointed leading light of freedom on the Internet are about done. Ironically, if you were a nation setting out to ruin him, this is about the best outcome you could imagine. I really wonder how much he has thought this though.
But let’s slide on back to reality here: Sweden is investigating these charges. Sweden. The idea that Sweden is a puppet of the United States for carrying out a plan to hold Assange as a political prisoner is quite simply far-fetched, Truther-style conspiracy theory.
Yes that well known hive of right wing conservatism, long term lapdog of the US, Sweden has a lot to answer for. Overall it tends to prove the point that idiotic conspiracy theories have no political borders. What bothers me, as I wrote above, is that Assange has made this mess for himself to a large extent. He seems to believe the conspiracy theory enough to paint himself into a quite invidious corner. Indeed his best hope might be that he doesn’t make it to Ecuador, and that the political mess that results from a failed asylum bid enables him to escalate things to the point where Sweden finds it just too hard to pursue him anymore. Maybe that is his hope. It is time to pull up a chair and get the peanuts out.
Then, my friend, we would see desolation such as the world has never seen.
The Mother of All Battles!
Armageddon!
It seems to me that the British government is investing this much effort because it’s a very high-profile case and they don’t want it to look like Assange can flaunt the law because of his fame/notoriety.
Wasn’t Polanski in France and Switzerland? What would the UK have to do with it?
Nitpick: “flout.”
Assange was only permitted to roam about London because he promised he’d spend every night in a designated apartment, IIRC. I can see why Her Majesty’s Government is now a bit shirty about him seeking asylum.
Polanski specifically didn’t travel to the UK because they were willing to try to extradite him. Under French law, as a French national, the French wouldn’t extradite Polanski under any circumstances.
He could travel to various countries that wouldn’t extradite him, and to Switzerland which was willing to open proceedings but had never really bothered monitoring his movements enough to actually apprehend him. To the degree that he had property he frequently stayed in within Switzerland itself.
D’oh! :smack: Thanks.
I don’t know, I think I smell collusion in the air, myself.
I think there is a good chance that Julian has some dirt/leverage on Ecuador, seems possible. And the Ecuadorians find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Perhaps the British have offered them an out, that allows them to save face.
Including acting all indignant, when the embassy gets stormed. Then when the heat cools down, things go back to as they were. The Swiss get Julian, the Ecuadorians save some face, the British get their man. Everybody comes out looking good. Y’know, except Julian.
I’m just saying, it’s possible there is more going on behind the scenes than we know.
Why would Switzerland want Assange?
Which opens the door for me to ask an aside: why did Assange choose Equador, and what is their interest in protecting him?
The whole reason he’s doing this is because he does not believe the law was going to take its course. He’s not afraid of going back to Sweden and having this nonsense dropped for lack of evidence, he’s afraid that the US is going to disappear him and start using enhanced interrogation techniques on him.
IIRC, Wikileaks told them what the US ambassador was saying about them, so they told him to pack his bags.
Um yes, we hear that. The point was that that you would need to be astoundingly paranoid to actually believe that the Swedes would pack him off to the US. Of any western nation I think Sweden would have to rate as one of the least likely to kow tow to any such request from the US. If there was any actual possibility of capital punishment it would be illegal for them to do so.
Cynically, or not maybe, there is a counterpoint that says that he is really trying to evade what may turn out to be a strong case of rape against him, and at the same time boosting his international profile. He has certainly become a poster boy for some sections of the left of politics. Claims that he truly believes he is in danger of being executed in the US start to stretch credibility. But there is no shortage of conspiracy mongers pushing exactly that line. Hence why a nice comfy chair and big bag of peanuts are probably the best way of approaching this.
My bad, I meant Sweden.
They have a very strong case against him. At the time he was charged, the two young girls were still smitten and refused to testify. Julian knows that they have since grown into women, who now see their experience with him, from the viewpoint of adults, and are both anxious to testify. Julian knows his goose is cooked. He knew he had to scoot from that country and not return, I’m sure.