Amicus, in the second post to this thread, says:

"I heard an interview on the ABC
(The Australian ABC) last night
with the lawyer for the two women,
and he kept saying under persistent
badgering by the interviewer, that
this has nothing to do with wikileaks,
that it is a civil case."

It very well may be a (Swedish) civil case, but to claim that it has nothing to do with Wikileaks would appear, from this Reuters news item dated 3 December 2010 by Adam Cox and Niklas Pollard, titled 'WikiLeaks' Assange to fight any extradition: lawyer' (See: http://reut.rs/f78FSP ) , to be at the very least an extremely naive and possibly misleading one.

The item reported, amongst other things, that:

"Assange has spent much of his time
in Sweden lately, and was accused
earlier this year of sexual misconduct
by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers."



Two women interested enough in what Wikileaks was doing to work for the organisation as volunteers, eh?



Whilst such a work relationship of itself would in no way excuse any non-consensual sexual activity, the prospect that the women had volunteered for the purpose of gaining inside knowledge of what Wikileaks was about, and/or engineering a deliberate sexual compromising of Assange, is one that any worldly-wise person would have to entertain given the interests that may be seen to be threatened with disadvantage arising out of the Wikileaks revelations.

Hurtig (Assange's Swedish lawyer) was reported in the news item as saying:

"I have seen the documents, and I can't
say that I think it is a set-up by the
CIA or something, but I suspect that there
is someone else who is pushing Sweden to
(take) these most unproportional measures
that they are doing right now, and is pushing
Sweden to push Interpol to make this arrest
warrant public. I think somebody has an
interest in getting Julian to Sweden and maybe
asking for him to be extradited to another
country (from there)."

Or having Sweden declare him persona non grata and deport him to ..... Australia?

@amicus, are you a troll or do you just have serious problems with basic reading comprehension?

You asserted that it would be unfair to Palin's reputation to say that she was calling for Assange to be killed. A few of us then quoted the statements where she had done exactly that. And someone else pointed out that since she is avowedly pro-execution, to say that she is pro-execution is not bad for her reputation. She ENJOYS the reputation she has as an ignorant gun-toting US-chauvinist.

So: what we have is that you are wrong in fact, and your internal logic is broken anyway. We have a term for that: Not Even Wrong. Your arguments don't even make enough sense to refute. Good luck with that.

@ amicus, you have clearly shown yourself to be free of logic or reason. Nowhere have I indicated I hate the US. There is no point in "hating" a country. One can disapprove of a country's policies on certain issues, but countries are full of people who are have varying ideas about things.

Now, as for being a "left wing nut", I used to be an extremely pro-US supporter. I supported the Vietnam war and volunteered for the army, opposed the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and even as a child wanted Australia to become a part of the US.

Your problem is, you have no idea who you are speaking to, what their beliefs or ideals are and just make it up based on a few words.

I think it fair to say, based upon your own comments, that you have some serious reality issues and can't take an objective and logical stance.

The thing is, sometimes the US does good things, sometimes it does bad things, sometimes it does just plain stupid things and other times, it does pointless things.

I certainly have neither love nor hatred for the US but I reserve the right to have an opinion on what it does and what some of its prospective leaders have to say.

I think you should get over your US fetish. It isn't healthy.

These governments take their populations into war based on lies, and then when someone tells the truth they cry "Kill him!"

Visa, PayPal, Amazon, all these closed down their commercial associations with WikiLeaks. Yet they are private organisations who stood to profit from their continued association. So why did they break their links? Just felt like cutting their profits I suppose? Obviously they resiled from contact in fear of the consequences threatened by the same ugly statists who are literally threatening to murder Assange for daring to tell the truth.

Go Wikileaks! Julian Assange for Australian of the Year!

You people have already tried this bloke and found him to be a saint.
Espianage carries big penalties, If this is found to be the case he will probably die. I would not have an opinion either way until clear evidence was one way or the other.
This bloke supposedly raped a couple of volunteers working for him, i makes you think he is working from a chook shed somewhere.
You must admit he is compromising the wellbeing of some nations, by publication on a world scale.
The publishing of critical sites was in no ones interest, except terrorists.
On whose authority is he working for

A couple of you are going very close to having posts deleted and profiles suspended.

Here is what Sarah Palin actually said. Took me a couple of minutes to track it down. Presumably others could have done the same.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/serious-questions-about-the-obama-administrations-incompetence-in-the-wikileaks-/465212788434