Ecuador asks Britain to allow Julian Assange 'safe passage' for MRI scan

[struggle4progress]

Ben Quinn
Wednesday 14 October 2015 20.02 EDT
Ecuador has requested that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be allowed a “safe passage” out of the country’s London embassy to hospital for a medical examination. Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that it had made the request so that Assange .. could undergo an MRI scan as a result of pain in his shoulder ... Asked if Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy to visit a hospital a Foreign Office spokesperson said that it was a matter for the police ... Ecuador .. said that the Foreign Office had replied on 12 October that it would not permit the “safe passage” to the hospital ...
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/15/ecuador-asks-britain-to-allow-julian-assange-safe-passage-for-mri-scan

ECUADOR: Hey! Help me get this squatter out of my flat!
SWEDEN: Hi, Julian!Why not check out the excellent medical services Stockholm offers?
COVERT AGENT: No! Don't ever leave the embassy, Julian! I know you'd be blasted by a drone!
UK: What the bloody hell is this mess on my plate?

[JDPriestly]

1. Assange -- the messenger that those in power would really love to shoot.

What a strange time and world in which a truthteller is not allowed to get medical care, while liars run so many countries and have so much wealth and power across the globe.

Very strange. Very, very strange.

The truthteller is the hated one.

Makes me wonder why anyone on DU would hate someone so much just for exposing the truth.

Very strange.

Truth is power. Exposure of the truth is noble.

Lies and exaggerated secrecy to cover up the mistakes of he powerful are dangerous, harmful, perhaps as much of a threat to our national security as climate change, Isis, the Chinese and all our other threats combined.

We are our own worst enemies when we justify the excessive secrecy of the government of our country.

[ellenrr]

3. ++

[struggle4progress]

4. No one is preventing him from getting medical care: he is simply insisting he will not seek it

unless the UK agrees to overlook his violation of UK law

The claim -- that his own failure (to seek whatever medical care he might think he needs, unless the UK legal system meets his unrelated non-medical demands) somehow represents a violation of his right to medical care -- is a confusion of issues, very typical of Assange

He has on many occasions, conflated his entirely voluntary stay in the embassy with incarceration. Whether or not he is guilty of rape, as accused, he has repeatedly attempted to muddle somehow the apparent intent of Sweden to prosecute him on that accusation with the problem of Guantanamo. His stated fears, whether real or alleged, often verge on insanity: he has, for example, suggested that he could be assassinated by a US military drone if he leaves Ecuador's London flat

Some of this may spring from his own jumbled thought processes. That fact that he and his circle have no coherent analysis was made clear when he endorsed Ron Paul for US President and again in the Australian election when his party threw its preferences to right-wingers over the Greens. But his ideological habits, and his tendency towards conspiracy theory, certainly leave him vulnerable to covert manipulation, not only by anti-US agents, who could find publicity for his criticisms of the US convenient -- but also by pro-US agents who could find it advantages to neutralize him by feeding his paranoia

At present, in any case, he has effectively neutralized himself

[Octafish]

5. I care less that he endorsed Ron Paul than he exposed USA warmongers and banksters.

So, there's that for wanting to see him destroyed.

[struggle4progress]

7. Having read your posts here for years, I think you and I are actually quite close

in our ideological tendencies

It took me many years to realize that not everyone who says some things that I find abstractly agreeable can be a helpful ally -- and this applies in particular to my attitudes towards Assange

Support for Assange is not a useful surrogate for opposition to Guantanamo or (more generally) torture, for opposition to the Iraq war or (more generally) US military imperialism, or for opposition to the uncontrolled power of US financial elites -- though it can be a convenient surrogate for those too lazy to do the hard analytical and organizing work to wage an effective fight

Assange is not a helpful ally because he is an attention-seeker and an opportunist, at the center of a movement producing incoherent analyses that support Assange without raising mass consciousness in any usable way.

Wikileaks was an interesting idea but in practice it devolved into unintelligible mass data-dumps -- in an era where people are already overwhelmed with information. Most at DU, I expect, already knew that the US has had, for many years, a serious problem with the size and power of our so-called "defense" establishment and a similar problem with our inadequately regulated financial sector: whatever you may think, Assange did not suddenly awaken us to this fact

Assange's bizarre libertarianism would, by itself, merely warn that one should take a good look before jumping on his wagon, but after taking such a look most people will decide to stay away

[Rex]

6. He gets treated like the devil, yet some far larger devils and real ones backed up with facts

Bush/Cheney sit as free men, never a single worry about ever facing the laws of the land. But yeah Assange...we should REALLY be focusing on him and not the warmongers that got millions killed in a war based on lies. Impoverished an entire generation of children, brought death to millions of families and bankrupted the planet!

That is why I take some posters here with a huge grain of salt, they seem very myopic of current history.

[treestar]

2. He'd be safe in jail

What a lot of nerve. It's like this guy is above the law, don't you get it, people of the UK?