Well I guess that makes sense since I knew he was in an Ecuadorian embassy and it wouldn't make sense to have an Ecuadorian embassy in Ecuador, my mistake. Still the point remains that the years he spent in the Embassy the living conditions were reported to be pretty nice, something like a studio apartment or a hotel suite. As for the Belmarsh maximum security this is actually the first time I heard about that. I haven't really been following his story all that closely and it's been several years since I heard him mentioned in the news. Interestingly due to this new information I did do some research on what went on and discovered that at one point after he was first arresed by Scotland Yard he was detained initially in Wandsworth Prison but eventually made bail wih the conditions of residence in Ellingham Hall (a historic country house 120 miles NE of London) and he would have to wear an electronic tag. Then instead of appearing in court (which violated his bail) he applied for political Asylum which then began his time in the Embassy. The point being that he could have potentially had a much easier time had he not tried so hard to avoid the charges in Sweden
I have no particular feelings for or against Julian Assange. I do agree that the charges from the US seemed rather harsh and unfair since he himself did not steal classified inormation but rather just publish information Chelsea Manning took from the US government. I do however have some concerns about his successful evasion of several sexual offenses he was accused of in Sweden. I can't form much of an opinion though since ultimately the charges were dropped due to exceeding the statute of limitations of those charges. I know he claimed innocense of the charges but since he never proved it in a court of law and I never heard Sweden's case against him I have to take his claim of innocense with a big grain of salt. What I find most disturbing about all of that is he refused to cooperate with Sweden because he was afraid it was all just a ruse to get him somewhere that would allow him to be extradited to the US. The problem with that however is that Sweden wanted him for questioning years before any charges from the US was unsealed. The fact he was fearful that it was a ruse to extradite him to the US well before any charges were made known from the US suggests he knew what he did with the information from Manning was serious enough that the US might go to such efforts to get him. That is what they call in the court of law, consciousness of guilt.
The eventual charges from the US do seem to be bogus to me, not because it was Manning who took that information but because the things that information revealed wasn't really all that shocking. I mean the most damning things he released was evidence of the US spying on it's allies but most everyone knows that sort of thing goes on and that most if not all of those allies spy on the US as well. So really the information he released was more a matter of confirming what most people knew already but just never acknowledged they knew. He also released info accusing the US conspiring with other countries around the world to spark what is now called "The Arab Spring", which as we all know totally destabilized the Middleast more then it might have already been. I mean that sort of thing which could be described as helping to bring about regime change is something that many countries as well as the US have been involved in for decades perhaps even centuries. I mean sure it was embarrassing to the US to be exposed like that but is it really criminal to expose secrets if the secrets being exposed are also criminal?
). It's nothing super special, it just gives it a more interesting flavor. Another thing to try is substitute the beef with bison (I haven't tried that yet because we don't get much bison in the mid Atlantic). Of course it's perfectly fine with just good beef (80-20 ground round is my prefered beef) or with beef and pork. Adding lamb or substituting beef wih bison is just about giving it an above average flavor.
