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What US Militarism Has to Do With Japan's Quest to Slaughter More Whales
Whaling, it turns out, has very little to do with whaling and much more to with how powerful nations want to dominate the world's oceans.
Aug 26, 2024
In early August, the crew on Japan’s new whaling factory ship dismembered a male fin whale, the first commercial catch of the species in several decades. A few days earlier, Paul Watson was arrested in Nuuk, Greenland. He sits in a Danish prison, waiting a decision on his extradition to Japan. Given the Japanese courts’ record of 99.9% conviction rate for criminal cases, and issues with Japanese justice system, if extradited, he will probably spend the rest of his life imprisoned.
A few months ago, a paper led by Norwegian government scientists showed that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just one small part of the Southern Ocean. Also in Antarctic waters, the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has been running a research program which, as the the Institute states, is the “aimed at the sustainable use of whale resources in the Antarctic Ocean.” A new era of commercial whaling in the Antarctic looms.
Forty years ago, the International Whaling Commission introduced the whaling moratorium—a pause in slaughter, to allow whale populations to recover. At the time, the belief by most in the whale conservation community was that by the time that whale populations finally recovered, those still engaged in whaling would have given up, making the moratorium permanent. That’s not what’s happened. Three nations—Japan, Norway, and Iceland—still engage in commercial whaling.
There are many arguments against whaling: it’s cruel, it has to be subsidized, most people in whaling nations don’t care about it, it’s traditional in very few places in Japan, whales don’t eat all the fish, instead they’re ecosystem engineers that contribute to carbon sequestration. These points have been made for many years, and have never had the slightest impact on the Japanese whaling bureaucracy. They’re not only irrelevant, they’ve proven pointless.
Whaling, it turns out, isn’t about whales at all. Japan’s primary interest in commercial whaling is to maintain their geopolitical clout to exploit other marine wildlife (“living marine resources”) internationally. Tuna, for example. This point’s been made recently in a couple of forums. For the Japanese government, whaling’s a thin-edge-of-the-wedge problem. The moratorium was a big win for marine conservation that couldn’t be repeated with other international fisheries.
Given this framing, the actions of the Japanese whaling industry over the past forty years are rational. Whaling is primarily about asserting dominance in international negotiations over access to marine wildlife, so whether or not Japanese people eat much whale meat is irrelevant. What matters is access to other fisheries by Japan’s pelagic fishing fleets. Subsidizing whaling is a minuscule price to pay. The primary role of Japan’s new floating factory, the Kangei Maru, is as a flagship, a symbol of Japanese hegemony in international maritime negotiations. So its $48 million price tag is trivial. A Ford class US aircraft carrier, with a build cost of around $13 billion and an annual upkeep of $700 million, puts that in perspective. The Kangei Maru’s costs are a rounding error.
Despite Japan leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in late 2018, the Japanese fisheries bureaucracy still controls the activities of the pro-whaling bloc. This September, the IWC meets again. One rumor currently swirling is that the Japanese will rejoin the IWC with a reservation to commercial whaling, one way to demolish the whaling moratorium. Another appeared a couple of weeks ago, when the prestigious scientific journal Nature published an opinion piece calling for the IWC to be dismantled. The article’s first author is a former chair of the IWC, who with his coauthors, argue that the IWC is now a “zombie” organization that has outlived its usefulness and should be dismantled.
Interesting timing.
Once, the threat of US sanctions in response to “diminishing the effectiveness” of the IWC regulated the manner in which the whaling bloc engaged there. That threat—obviously—no longer exists. How have the whalers brought the U.S. to heel on whaling? What’s their lever?
There was a belief in the NGO community that the threat of withholding IWC quotas on U.S. Inuit bowhead whaling was driving U.S. acquiescence. The pro-whaling bloc engaged in brinkmanship on this several times in the past. But the “Aboriginal Subsistence” whaling issues at the IWC have been resolved, removing this threat. Besides, ending the IWC would put bowhead whaling management back entirely with the U.S., internally. It can’t be that.
It’s here the military comes in. The U.S. has around 55,000 military personnel based in Japan. This is, for example, almost the size of the Australia’s active duty defense forces. Their weaponry includes some the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Most of those personnel are based in Okinawa, where there were over 6,000 criminal cases involving U.S. military personnel in the 50 years since the island was handed back to Japan in 1972. That’s a couple of crimes a week. And they include reported 134 rapes, or two to three reported rapes per year, including recent charges of the sexual assault of a child. Understandably, there is a vocal anti-US-base movement in Okinawa that regularly engages in mass protest.
These put Paul Watson’s “accomplice to assault” and “ship trespass” charges in context.
At the same time, the U.S. is reconstituting its forces in Japan, a buildup in response to the perceived threat to U.S. hegemony now posed by China. The Japanese government has leverage. Getting its way on whaling is Japan’s price for U.S. bases.
What could happen? Possibilities include Japan rejoining the IWC with a reservation that allows it to conduct commercial whaling wherever it wants. Perhaps the IWC will collapse. The recent Nature article shows that destroying the IWC is being considered. Returning the management of whaling to whaling nations? We know how that worked. And allowing Japan’s return to the IWC with a reservation will return the IWC’s role to that of a toothless body overseeing mass slaughter.
The huge U.S. military presence in Japan matters to the national security apparatus of the United States. The bureaucracy has worked with the Japanese government to see commercial whaling return. The return of commercial whaling is the U.S. military's quid pro quo for its regional dominance in the Pacific—not to mention its rapists in Okinawa.
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Supporters Rally Behind Assange as UK Court Hears 'Pathetic' US Case
"Let me be very clear: This case is about journalism," said a campaigner with Reporters Without Borders. "It is about press freedom. If they make an exception of Julian Assange, the rule will be broken."
Feb 21, 2024
Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marched the streets of central London on Wednesday demanding his immediate release after U.S. government lawyers argued to the British High Court that the journalist should be extradited across the Atlantic to face espionage charges.
"How pathetic the U.S. case is," Stella Assange, the WikiLeaks founder's wife, told a crowd gathered outside Wednesday's court hearing, which represents the final legal avenue in the United Kingdom to prevent his extradition to the U.S.
"What they're trying argue is that state secrets trump revealing state crimes," Stella Assange said of U.S. lawyers. "This is the balance they're trying to shift. They want impunity, they don't want to be scrutinized, and journalism stands in the way."
BREAKING: @Stella_Assange explains the arguments laid out by the prosecution#FreeAssangeNOW pic.twitter.com/60M286NkMb
— Free Assange - #FreeAssange (@FreeAssangeNews) February 21, 2024
A decision in the case—which will decide whether Julian Assange can appeal his extradition—could be weeks, or even months, away.
If the British High Court rules that Assange can't appeal, his legal team is expected to ask the European Court of Human Rights to halt his extradition to the U.S., where Assange faces 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and a possible 175-year prison sentence.
United Nationsexperts, international human rights groups, and even one British judge have argued that extradition to the U.S. would put the 52-year-old publisher's life at grave risk. Assange was unable to attend this week's hearings or even follow them virtually due to his poor health, his lawyers said.
But global calls from
press freedom groups, the government of Assange's home country, and others for the U.S. Justice Department to drop the case and let the publisher go free have not moved the Biden administration, which decided to continue pursuing Assange's extradition after inheriting the case from the Trump administration—whose CIA reportedly considered kidnapping or assassinating the WikiLeaks founder.
During Wednesday's hearing, the U.S. government's lawyers
argued that Assange's decision to seek out and publish classified U.S. documents—some of which exposed American war crimes—went "far beyond" what could be characterized as journalistic conduct, an argument that many journalists have rejected.
"It is impossible to overstate the dangerous precedent Mr. Assange's indictment under the Espionage Act and possible extradition sets: Every national security journalist who reports on classified information now faces possible Espionage Act charges," Laura Poitras, a journalist and documentary filmmaker, wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2020. "It paves the way for the United States government to indict other international journalists and publishers. And it normalizes other countries' prosecution of journalists from the United States as spies."
Assange's lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, similarly argued during the first day of the closely watched hearings on Tuesday that Assange is "being prosecuted for engaging in [the] ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information, information that is both true and of obvious and important public interest."
Thousands marched through the streets to the office of the UK Prime Minister in Downing Street following the conclusion of Julian Assange's court hearing today, calling for his immediate release | via @MintPressNews #FreeAssange #FreeAssangeNOW pic.twitter.com/YIpjdoT65j
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 21, 2024
Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, said following Wednesday's hearing that "in these past two days, we have heard nothing new from the U.S. government."
"We have heard them double down on the same arguments that they've been making for 13 years," said Vincent. "Let me be very clear: This case is about journalism. It is about press freedom. If they make an exception of Julian Assange, the rule will be broken—and no one, no journalist, no publisher, no journalistic source, no media organization can ever be confident that their rights will be respected again."
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Days Before Extradition Hearing, Australian Parliament Tells US to Drop Assange Case
The vote "gives the government a real mandate to advocate very, very strongly for a political solution to bring Julian Assange home," said the journalist's brother.
Feb 15, 2024
As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange awaits a two-day hearing before the United Kingdom's High Court next week on his possible extradition to the United States, lawmakers in his home country of Australia voted Wednesday in favor of pushing the U.S. and U.K. to allow Assange to return home instead.
"Enough is enough," said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese regarding the U.S. case against Assange, who published thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents in 2010 that included evidence of U.S. war crimes. "This thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely."
The prime minister joined 85 other lawmakers in voting for a motion proposed by Andrew Wilkie, an Independent member of the country's House of Representatives, to demand that the U.S. and U.K. drop the extradition effort and bring the case against Assange "to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia."
Forty-two lawmakers opposed the measure.
Assange has been held at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison for the past five years, having been arrested for skipping bail in a separate legal matter.
In the U.S., he faces 17 espionage charges over WikiLeaks' publication of the classified documents.
In 2021, a U.K. judge ruled that the U.S. could not extradite Assange on the charges, saying prison conditions in the U.S. would endanger Assange's life. The journalist's physical and mental health has been in decline since his imprisonment, and he has suffered a mini-stroke, severe depression, and suicidal ideation, according to his attorneys.
The Biden administration appealed the decision, and the following year a court ruled that the extradition could proceed.
The High Court is set to hear Assange's case on February 20-21 to determine whether he should be granted a full appeal to challenge his extradition, and his family and other supporters fear that if he loses the appeal, the U.K. could send him to the U.S. before he has a chance to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Assange's wife, Stella Assange, said at a news conference on Thursday that the journalist could be on a plane to the U.S. "within days" if he loses the case.
"If he is extradited, he will die," she said.
On Wednesday, Amnesty International reiterated its call for the charges against Assange to be dropped, citing both "the risk of serious human rights violations" against him if he is held in the U.S. prison system and "a profound 'chilling effect' on global media freedom."
"The risk to publishers and investigative journalists around the world hangs in the balance. Should Julian Assange be sent to the U.S. and prosecuted there, global media freedoms will be on trial, too," said Julia Hall, Amnesty International's expert on counter-terrorism and criminal justice in Europe. "The public's right to information about what their governments are doing in their name will be profoundly undermined. The U.S. must drop the charges under the Espionage Act against Assange and bring an end to his arbitrary detention in the U.K."
Albanese said it is generally "not up to Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded."
Speaking before Parliament ahead of the vote, Wilkie urged his colleagues to "stand for media freedom and the rights of journalists to do their jobs."
"Regardless of what you might think of Julian Assange," he said, "this has gone on too long... It must be brought to an end. And I'm confident that this Parliament can support this motion... It will send a very powerful political signal to the British government and the U.S. government."
Gabriel Shipton, Assange's brother, applauded Parliament for their show of support "at a crucial time" and said the vote "gives the government a real mandate to advocate very, very strongly for a political solution to bring Julian Assange home."
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Collateral Murder and the Persecution of Julian Assange
Perhaps the greatest crime that Julian Assange committed in the eyes of both Democratic and Republican governments was this: he dared to tell the American people some of the terrible things their government had done.
Feb 18, 2023
The first time I was asked to comment publicly on Julian Assange and Wikileaks was on MSNBC in April 2010. Wikileaks had just released the Collateral Murder video. The video, leaked by Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, was taken from the gunsight of a US Apache helicopter as the helicopter's crew killed 12 unarmed Iraqi civilians on a Baghdad street in 2007. Two Reuters journalists were killed and two small children were severely wounded (the Apache's crew killed the children's father as he attempted to assist wounded civilians). For three years, until Wikileaks released the video, the U.S. military claimed a battle had taken place and that aside from the two journalists, all the dead were insurgents.
The Army declared the journalists killed in the crossfire. The wounded children were ignored, even though the Apache's crew had recognized at the time they had shot children. "Well, it's their fault [for] bringing their kids to a battle." the helicopter pilots said on the video minutes after shooting them. There had been no battle.
In the studio, the MSNBC host asked another veteran and me for our thoughts on the video. Her question was about the apparent shock American audiences were experiencing watching the brutal reality of the Iraq War. We were both incredulous that more than seven years into the war, such a video would be shocking. What did you think we were doing over there?
The effects on the First Amendment and press freedom will be severe if Julian Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted.
I went to war three times. I have seen mothers with their dead children and have heard their cries in Arabic, Pashto, and English. Those cries were all the same. The hell of war that has consumed men, women, and children for decades and continues in unending forms is unimaginable to many of us. Even harder to swallow is knowing these acts of organized murder and mass suffering, perpetrated in our names, were not cruel accidents of war but the result of planned and deliberate policies.
The millions of victims of the US wars throughout the Muslim World are familiar with the violence of these wars. For Americans at home, such familiarity with the wars, their violence, and the consequences, did not exist. Julian Assange and Wikileaks helped to change that.
For publishing the victims of the wars and war crimes caused by the U.S. and the West, Julian Assange is being held in Britain's notorious Belmarsh prison, awaiting extradition to the United States. Assange's harrowing captivity began more than 12 years ago when a US rendition forced him to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I had the privilege of meeting him there in 2014. That visit allowed me to thank him for his witness through Wikileaks for the millions of war victims ignored, unnamed, and rendered voiceless. Over a decade on, his mental and physical health is failing, and Biden, despite his commitment to press freedom, has yet to budge on a pardon.
New York Times Vietnam war correspondent Neil Sheehan said the Pentagon Papers taught him that secrets were not kept by a government to protect its people from adversaries but rather to protect the government's actions from the knowledge of its people. Perhaps this is the greatest crime that Julian Assange committed in the eyes of both Democratic and Republican governments: he dared to tell the American people what their government had done.
The effects on the First Amendment and press freedom will be severe if Julian Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted. His persecution and torture already serve as a warning to journalists worldwide. And morally, Julian Assange’s imprisonment obstructs any reckoning we in the U.S. must do to contend with our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and their victims.
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Obama Pushed to Pardon Snowden Before Leaving Office
'This is one of those rare cases for which the pardon power exists'
Jun 27, 2016
Edward Snowden's lawyer is renewing a push for the famous NSA whistleblower's clemency from the White House before President Barack Obama leaves office in January.
He is unlikely to receive a more receptive hearing from Hillary Clinton, who has said he shouldn't be allowed to return without "facing the music."
--New York Magazine
"We're going to make a very strong case between now and the end of this administration that this is one of those rare cases for which the pardon power exists," said Ben Wizner, head of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and Snowden's legal advocate.
"It's not for when somebody didn't break the law. It's for when they did, and there are extraordinary reasons for not enforcing the law against the person," Wizner said.
Wizner discussed his plans with the journalist Andrew Rice for a New York Magazine cover story about Snowden. Although Snowden admits that "much of Washington remains hostile to him," according to Rice's article, he "is optimistic that he will find a way out, somehow."
Rice continues:
Maybe some Scandinavian country will offer him asylum. Maybe he can work out some kind of deal--whether outright clemency or a plea bargain--with the Justice Department. Wizner has been working with Plato Cacheris, a well-connected Washington defense attorney, but so far, there have been no official signals that the Justice Department would be willing to offer the kind of lenient terms Snowden would accept. And a window may be closing. He is unlikely to receive a more receptive hearing from Hillary Clinton, who has said he shouldn't be allowed to return without "facing the music." As for Donald Trump: He has called Snowden a "total traitor" and suggested he should be executed. "If I'm president," he predicted last year, "Putin says, 'Hey, boom--you're gone.'"
The latest news isn't good for Snowden: on Monday, Norway announced that it was dismissing a lawsuit from Snowden's lawyers seeking safe passage for the whistleblower to receive a free speech award in the country.
The U.S. government filed espionage charges against Snowden in response to his 2013 leaks, and he faces extradition if he travels outside of Russia.
"Oslo District Court has decided that Edward Snowden's lawsuit against the State regarding extradition should be dismissed," the court said in a statement.
Rice reports that Snowden told him "he would return [to the U.S.] and face the Espionage Act charges if he could argue to a jury that he acted in the public interest, but the law does not currently allow such a defense."
"These people have been thinking about the law for so long that they have forgotten that the system is actually about justice," Snowden said. "They want to throw somebody in prison for the rest of his life for what even people around the White House now are recognizing our country needed to talk about."
Indeed, only last month, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that Snowden "actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in."
In response, Snowden tweeted:
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EU Parliament Votes for Dropped Charges, Asylum Protection for Snowden
Resolution passed by European Parliament Thursday calls on member states to prevent whistleblower's extradition, rendition
Oct 29, 2015
The European Parliament passed a resolution Thursday urging its nations to afford NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden protection.
Passed by a 285 to 281 vote, the resolution calls on EU member states to "drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender."
Snowden, who's been residing in Russia since 2013, responded to the resolution on Twitter by calling it a "game-changer":
While the resolution is not binding, Wolfgang Kaleck, Snowden's lawyer in Berlin, told the Daily Dot in an email, "It is an overdue step, and we urge the member States to act now to implement the resolution."
The U.S.-based digital rights group Fight for the Future also welcomed the news. Evan Greer, the organization's campaign director, said, "We hope that this resolution leads to a binding agreement in the EU that allows Edward Snowden to move to whichever EU country he wants, and we hope he gets an epic party thrown in his honor when he arrives."
"The battle over mass government surveillance is a decisive moment in the history of humanity, and it's hard to think of anyone who has done more than Edward Snowden to educate the public about the grave risks that runaway spying programs pose to our basic human rights, the future of the Internet, and freedom of expression," he added.
The World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, advocates for an open Internet and called it a "landmark resolution." In a statement, it added, "We call on national leaders to publicly commit to respecting the will of the European people and offering Snowden asylum."
Berners-Lee said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session last year that Snowden "should be protected, and we should have ways of protecting people like him. We can try to design perfect systems of government, and they will never be perfect. When they fail, then the whistleblower may be all that saves society."
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Ecuador Accuses UK of Defying Laws of Political Aslyum in Assange Case
Foreign Minister says it is 'not acceptable' for UK to blame Ecuador over WikiLeaks founder's deadlocked legal case
Aug 17, 2015
Ecuador on Monday responded to the UK government over its statements on the languishing legal case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for more than three years.
Last week, the UK's Foreign Office lodged a formal protest against Ecuador for blocking Assange's case from moving forward, claiming that giving him asylum prevents Britain from extraditing Assange to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations. The Foreign Office called his extradition a legal obligation.
Ecuador's acting Foreign Minister, Xavier Lasso, rejected those claims. "It is not acceptable to try to place the responsibility for the lack of progress in this area over the last five years on Ecuador," he said Monday. "The republic of Ecuador will not take lessons from any foreign government, least of all those unaware of the institution of political asylum, its legitimacy, attached and enshrined in international law, and its humanitarian nature based on the sovereign equality of nations."
The British government had previously threatened to "violate the immunity of diplomatic premises" and has kept a police cordon outside the embassy around the clock at a sky-high cost to taxpayers, Lasso said. "The British government has the sole responsibility for such an invasive and unnecessary police deployment."
Three of the four investigations pending against Assange were dropped last week after the ability to bring charges expired. The WikiLeaks founder has repeatedly invited Swedish prosecutors to interview him at the embassy, but they have rejected those requests. Assange has said he fears that submission to Swedish authorities will lead to his extradition to the U.S. due to his work exposing classified Pentagon and State Department documents.
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Faces Extradition, Then...'The Simpsons'
Assange steps up his TV presence before court hearing
Jan 31, 2012
Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, will face potential extradition to Sweden tomorrow before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Seven judges will decide whether or not Assange will be sent to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault.
However, these pressures have not slowed down Assange. While under house arrest in the UK, he has managed to announce plans for a new talk show, which will be aired on the news network RT. In addition he will 'appear' in 'The Simpsons' 500th episode which will air on February 19, 2012.
In February last year, a [UK] court ruled that Assange should be sent to Sweden to answer [accusations of sexual assault]; he appealed, and lost. But two high court judges granted him leave to appeal to the highest British court, not on the circumstances of his own case but on a point of law: namely, whether a prosecutor had sufficient authority to require someone's extradition, as in Assange's case. Many legal observers were surprised when the supreme court not only agreed to hear Assange's petition, but said seven judges, rather than the usual five, would preside, "given the great public importance of the issue raised". The court will sit for two days, on 1 and 2 February, though the judges are unlikely to deliver their written verdict for a number of weeks. [...]
But Julian Knowles QC, a barrister specializing in extradition law based at Matrix Chambers, said the decision to might be more easily explained by the enormous public interest in Assange's case - "to send the message that the highest court in the land has looked at this case, and it's had the attention of the best legal minds in the country".
Whether or not the supreme court rules Assange should face a Swedish investigation, this is far from the only legal process the WikiLeaks founder fears. The US government is prosecuting an army private, Bradley Manning, alleging he is the source of many of WikiLeaks's high-profile releases; it has also opened a grand jury investigation with the purpose of deciding whether to prosecute WikiLeaks or its founder. That process is carried out in secret, without any rights of access for Assange or his lawyers.In Knowles's view, the law in this area - whether a public prosecutor is a valid judicial authority - has been comprehensively tested. "This point has been litigated before, and the courts have always reached the clear answer that while it may look odd to English eyes, common law eyes ... European systems don't have the same structure. The courts have always said that to make extradition work, you have to be flexible in your approach to what extradition is." The consequences if Assange were to win, he said, would be "very profound". "It would basically mean, until the law is rewritten, that extradition to Europe [would] become very difficult, if not impossible. Because in the vast majority of European extradition requests, the arrest warrant is issued not by a court, as it would be in England, but by a prosecutor."
It is much easier to predict what will happen if Assange loses. Though he would still have the option to make an application to the European court of human rights (as he has hinted he may do at earlier stages of the process), this would not delay his extradition, since Sweden is also a signatory to that convention. Instead, the extradition unit at Scotland Yard would agree with their Swedish counterparts a date, within 10 days, for Assange to be handed over, according to Knowles. The Australian would be required to present himself at one of the main London airports, where he would be handed to Swedish police, who would escort him on a flight to Stockholm. Once on Swedish soil, he would immediately be arrested. [...]
Whether or not the supreme court rules Assange should face a Swedish investigation, this is far from the only legal process the WikiLeaks founder fears. The US government is prosecuting an army private, Bradley Manning, alleging he is the source of many of WikiLeaks's high-profile releases; it has also opened a grand jury investigation with the purpose of deciding whether to prosecute WikiLeaks or its founder. That process is carried out in secret, without any rights of access for Assange or his lawyers. Many of the Australian's supporters fear the US will seek his extradition - from the UK, Sweden or elsewhere - with a view to prosecuting him for "conspiracy to commit espionage", based on a notional allegation that he may have "coached" Manning to leak documents to the site.
* * *
Whether Assange is sent to Sweden, or not, his image will remain immortalized in the US through the powers of the 'The Simpsons'. Reuters reports:
The activist/journalist -- lauded by some and reviled by others for his leaking of classified government information -- will make a cameo on the upcoming 500th episode of "The Simpsons."
During the episode -- which airs February 19 at 8 p.m. and is titled "At Long Last Leave" -- Homer, Marge and their lemon-hued brood are run out of Springfield and join an off-the-grid community outside of town, where they find themselves as new neighbors to Assange.
"Simpsons" executive producer Al Jean told Entertainment Weekly that Assange recorded his part from an undisclosed location last summer, while under house arrest in Britain.
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