There is a tendency to reduce this story to personality. Julian Assange may be an awkward eccentric, but he strikes me as being more reticent in public, particularly in the beginning of the Wikileaks experience. He seemed to gather a little more confidence later with growing media interest.

People cast Assange as either hero or villain. I have found many in the latter group light on facts, also having never read Wikileaks releases nor information now published through freedom of information. I guess I am biased in the other direction although 'hero' is not a term that I would use.

He has managed to unite Left and Right on issues of transparency and corruption, albeit the Right support coming more from the libertarian than Conservative ranks.

It is no secret why Assange would seek asylum from Ecuador having forged a bond with Correa during his World Tomorrow series interview; and both sharing similar views about US interference. Ecuador may not be the paragon of media freedom or freedom of speech but many a strange bedfellow has been forged in unusual and desperate circumstances.

There are so many inconsistencies in the US position not least the recent revelations gleaned from documents about extradition to the US and Grand Jury meeting with possible sealed indictment, despite continuing protestations from the US. No-one yet has disputed this meeting. Then there is refusal of Swedish authorities to interview Assange in London. Why? There is certainly precedent. Assange has not been charged he is wanted for questioning. The Swedes behaviour on this certainly warrants questions. It is also unfair on the women whose interest would be better served by getting on with the process.

The hysteria whipped up in the US calling for assassination, trials and death penalties would be enough to motivate me to seek asylum from any far flung country that would have me, especially in view of the lack of any real support from the Australian Government.

We've missed your level-headed analysis, Pelly....good to see you back : )

Thanks Poirot. I see you are still encouraging people to push those boundaries and look beyond. :)

It is just too co-incidental that my post on, of all days, Remembrance Day, 11 November 2009, to Brian Howes' OLO Discussion 'How secure is your internet from eaves dropping?' ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3156#76032 ) outlining the difficulty I was having with 'Server errors' in attempting to establish the topic 'An Apology to Klaas Woldring' on OLO, was in relation to the 2009 Electoral Reform Green Paper.

I these days consider Rudd's promotion of that issue under the auspices of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet was seen by some interests as threatening an already-operating clandestine system of 'automatic electoral enrollment and transfer of enrollment' in Australia. I think it was his perhaps unwitting threatened trespass into matters of electoral legislation and reform that was the underlying reason Rudd was seen by some as having to go.

We have Assange and Cablegate to thank for the revelations as to the reporting back to US diplomatic staff that was being done by some Australian politicians at around that time as to a perceived need and plan to replace Rudd, as subsequently happened, much to the surprise of the Australian public, on 24 June 2010.

It is interesting to see the knowledge displayed in 2009 by Brian Howes as to the extent of monitoring of internet traffic possible: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3156#74671 . This would seem to be along the lines of Assange's subsequent revelations as to Trapwire, and things like TartanMetrics persona management software.

A Google search revealed this information as to Brian Howes current situation: http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2012/phnx071912.html . It seems he is due to go on trial in Arizona on 5 September 2012. How he could possibly receive a fair trial, in the light of the 2007 publication relating to 'Operation Red Dragon' in the 'Arizona Narcotic Officer' magazine, I am at a loss to understand.

Perhaps OLO viewers would do well to read Brian Howes' entire thread in the light of Assange's subsequent revelations.

Also: http://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/07/24/leadership-chatter-assanges-passport-blonde-girls-in-short-shorts/#comment-45104

It is an opportune time to perhaps shed some light upon the now well known claim made by Swedish authorities that they haven't charged Assange with anything, they simply wish to question him further in relation to what they say are the allegations of sexual improprieties they have in hand.

This link to an article in Legal Week, 'The Assange case: defining rape and consent', by Felicity Gerry, contains an interesting admission that can only have come from the Swedish authorities: http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/blog-post/2201955/the-assange-case-defining-rape-and-consent

Felicity Gerry quotes from the Queen’s Bench Division (Julian Assange v Sweden [2011] EWHC 2849 (Admin)) report, after having explained that had Assange proceeded with partner ‘AA’ [Anna Ardin] without using a condom that such may have been within the technical definition of rape, puts before us the admission that:

"… AA told him she wanted him to put on a condom
before he entered her. Mr Assange let go of AA’s
arms and put on a condom which AA found for him.”

If the claim made in the recent 4 Corners program 'Sex, Lies, and Julian Assange' as to the other alleged complainant, Sophia Wilen, having refused to sign or continue with any complaint is correct, then by the provision of this admission by Ardin those Swedish authorities have admitted they have no case to question Assange any further about.

One could only conclude that they would be wishing to question Assange in the hope that in any answers he gave he would incriminate himself! That sort of explains why those Swedish authorities would not want to have recorded the questions they might like to ask anywhere but on Swedish soil where they could suppress the record. By reflected light of such hoped-for self-incrimination, the tacitly recognised US government intention to have Assange 'temporarily surrendered' for extradition could be seen as one of utter contempt for the letter and spirit of the Fifth Amendment of its own Constitution.

That is if the Swedes even bothered with 'questioning' before handing him over.

Posted by Belly, on Tuesday, 21 August 2012 at 5:59:18 PM:

"I am having trouble with my browser.
Dropping out and locking up, ......."

You have not been alone, Belly.

Belly, re your post of Wednesday, 22 August 2012 at 4:54:51 PM and your spell-checker problem, one way around it could be to first compile your posts within a text editor application (such as, under Windows, 'Write', or 'Word') that has a functioning spell-checker, then, after you have fixed any errors, copy and paste the post into the OLO posting pane. (Under Ubuntu Linux I use the text editor 'Gedit'.)

Doing that will also protect you from the risk of losing the post through taking too long in compiling it in the OLO posting pane direct, should you be working that way.

I had quite forgotten that I had run into a batch of server errors when attempting to start the 'An apology to Klaas Woldring' topic back in 2009. True it is that the OLO server hiccups every now and again at random, as GrahamY himself admits. Indeed, it would desirably need to do so, should any unidentified third party from time to time see reason to disrupt, via any 'back door' to the software, the conversation occurring on Australia's pre-eminent journal of social and political debate.

True it also was that some small alterations to my opening post had to be made so as to avoid running foul of the anti-spamming software at that time, but that was a well-understood separate issue to the server errors. In the light of hindsight, I think my online activity may have been being monitored back then because of the interest I had taken in the Brian Howes extradition. In which case the monitors may have not been so much Julia's Australian minders as they may have been offshore observers having the capacity to degrade individual poster's online experience.

What is right now befalling Brian Howes, a virtual nobody, unchallenged, foreshadows everybody's future. Assange has blown the whistle on it.