This article by Jonathan J. Ariel is currently topping the 'Today's most popular' display on the OLO main page where articles first appear when published. It has also commenced to appear on the 'This week's most popular display'. Although published on OLO early yesterday, Thursday 24 November, as a narrative article, it has, perhaps unsurprisingly, so far attracted no comment. Despite that, it had at some time between 10:00 AM and around 5:30 PM on Thursday appeared second from the top in the 'Today's most popular' display. See: http://twitpic.com/7j0e0l . It is definitely being read.

Early Wednesday morning, GrahamY, Editor of OLO, made this post in his blog, Ambit Gambit: http://www.ambitgambit.com/2011/11/23/has-wikileaks-paved-the-way-for-climategate-2-0/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

As can be seen even from the text of the link, Wikileaks as a phenomenon has been given credit for the 'outing' of at least some questionability behind what the 'gatekeepers' of public discussion widely insist is 'settled science' with respect to what was first known as 'global warming', but now goes by the name 'climate change'. This so called 'settled science' has been used to give us a carbon tax brought in on a lie by the same PM as seems to have completely abandoned Assange, an Australian citizen, to the present-day usages of outlawry.

Inasmuch as Assange has been credited with involvement in bringing about the wikileaks phenomenon, he at the very least deserves an opportunity for some crowd-sourced support, especially given the spineless non-performance to date of the Australian government in this matter. Hence this post to at the very least put Jonathan Ariel's article onto the OLO Articles Index page.

Considering that un-named others appear to have given them a blast in Stockholm, perhaps its time OLO viewers had the opportunity to also. To penetrate this little enigma: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4829#128779 and surf away.

Been lots of 'messenger shooting' lately, hasn't there!?

While I have my own misgivings about Assangegate it seems that this article (and the comments of Sen Scott Ludlum I heard on the radio) is based around a premise I have some problems with.
Do people really believe that Sweden is doing all this because they are acting as the United States' 'bitch'? Because this is what this line of argument come down to for me... Sweden is pushing for Assange's extradition not because they actually want to try him for the sexual assualts they accuse him of but because they want to get hold of him to make life easier for the Yanks to get at him...
I accept eventually it might be the case that the US could get at Assange more easily in Sweden then the UK, and that perhaps one day they might wish to (although I have heard it said several times that Assange's Wikileaks stuff broke no US laws), but I don't accept that Sweden is merely playing the patsy.

Poster 'J S Mill' asks:

"Do people really believe that Sweden
is doing all this because they are acting
as the United States' 'bitch'? Because
this is what this line of argument come[s]
down to for me..."

Just this morning I viewed this tweet on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/145479869231407104 . It provided a link to this site: http://pulsemedia.org/2011/12/10/the-terrible-beauty-of-wikileaks/ . That link to an essay on Wikileaks by one 'Idrees' contained, FWIW, this quote:

"In March 2010, WikiLeaks obtained a secret
32-pageUS Department of Defense Counterintelligence
Analysis Report with strategies for deterring
Wikileaks and hunting down its sources. The report
was produced in March 2008 showing that long before
the Apache video, the war logs, or the diplomatic cables,
Wikileaks [founded in 2006] had already been in
the Pentagon’s crosshairs."

Anyone surfing beyond the first page to which the link I posted earlier will eventually find the necessarily disjointed story as to how one of the leaked diplomatic cables (http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/11/08STOCKHOLM748.html) revealed discussions occurring in 2008 between Swedish and US negotiators. The object of these discussions was as to the US getting Sweden to sign off on an HSPD-6 agreement, one which, among other things, basically enabled extradition of any named person from Sweden without charge or hearing to the US.

Sweden's negotiators were seemingly politely demurring, in 2008. However, even without the sought-for agreement, Sweden already had non-bail for non-Swedish accused, and favourable 'temporary surrender' provisions with respect to extradition, within its law. Sweden also had its, how shall we say it, 'idiosyncratic' rape laws. Together, for the US, this probably made Sweden the best place to 'do' Assange. One of the plaintiffs in the rape allegations, FWIW, even claimed on the internet to have had a CIA connection! In August 2010, high summer with Assange in Sweden, were circumstances favourable to the US 'neutralising' the head of Wikileaks.

Assange escaped the net, however , arriving in Britain, probably the last place desired, as the lop-sided 2003 Extradidion Act provisions there were starting to attract public opprobrium.

`

You have to dig a bit for yourself, J S Mill.