What's Happening with Julian Assange, I Hear You Asking

A UK court has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual crimes.

[...]

Before the judgement, extradition lawyer Julian Knowles had said Assange would only be able to appeal to Britain's supreme court, the country's highest, if his appeal involved an issue of "real legal significance", as decided by an appeals court.

Knowles said that if Assange is permitted a further appeal, he would likely stay on bail for a couple of months. If not, "he'll be extradited within 10 days", he predicted.

Assange had claimed in his appeal that the alleged offenses would not have been regarded as crimes under English and Welsh law, a stance the judges rejected.

  alJazeera

Sorry, Jules. You were in Sweden.

And why isn’t alleged rape a chargeable offense in England and Wales? I must be missing something.

The case has cast a shadow over Assange and his whistle-blowing website which published a cache of more than 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables last year and caused a media sensation.

Which, I think is probably the point. But maybe he really did rape someone. Sweden would like to find out.

Does he have body guards? Or have he and Wikileaks been sufficiently screwed that no one cares?

Last month, Assange, an Australian citizen, said WikiLeaks would stop publishing secret cables and devote itself instead to fund raising because of a financial blockade on payments to the site by US firms such as Visa and MasterCard.

He said if the blockade was not ended by the turn of the year, WikiLeaks would not be able to continue.

Isn’t there another way to receive payments? I mean, FARC doesn’t use PayPal. Not that I’m comparing WikiLeaks to FARC. And why does fundraising prohibit publication of cables? NPR manages to put out a little bit of news while fundraising.

Anyway, we all owe a debt of gratitude to WikiLeaks. And perhaps some financial support.