Love actually

[Gob]

The British government must be quietly hoping that Julian Assange will still end up being extradicted to Sweden on charges of committing sex offences. What surely haunts them is an extradition battle launched by the United States - a scenario that federal prosecutors in Washington are already busying themselves with.

This would put the Cameron government in a tussle of wills, caught between a newly fired-up regiment of student protesters and its closest ally across the pond. Much of the country would be baying for David Cameron to have his "Love Actually" moment, named after the film starring Hugh Grant. The foppish, self-deprecating actor plays a British prime minister who, like all his predecessors, is reliably loyal to the American president -played by a mischevous Billy Bob Thornton.

The famed "special relationship" is marvellously intact until the prime minister catches the president in flagrante delicto, trying to seduce his secretary, a girl the PM also happens to fancy. The special relationship can withstand failing foreign wars and domestic party uprisings, but not a bruised prime ministerial libido.

I am not suggesting for a minute that Barack Obama has his eyes on one of David Cameron's aides. But Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never gave Britain their moment of defiance against the US. And Britain is still waiting. This yearning is like a distant throbbing ache. It needs to be satisfied at some stage, even with a more popular Barack Obama in the White House. It is about British self-esteem as much as about policy.

We saw stirrings of it with the mudslinging over BP's spilt oil. Opinion polls in the UK suggested that most Brits thought the embattled Obama administration was picking on a British company for political purposes. It takes a lot to protest FOR rather against an oil giant!

If the US starts extradition proceedings against Julian Assange on charges of espionage or the like you will see that yearning inflamed. Mr Assange is already the hero of a student movement that has lost faith in the current government. He embodies anti-establishment defiance. He is Marc Zuckerberg with an insurrectionist edge, made for and by the empowerment of the internet.

And don't think this will be confined to students who have discovered the joys of mounting barricades. The readers of Time Magazine, hardly a bunch of revolutionary "sans-culottes", wanted Assange as Person of the Year. The editor opted for Zuckerberg, arguably a safer choice.

We live in an age of popular insurrection, fuelled by a collapse of trust in the institutions, empowered by the web and social media. It is a rollicking tale with an uncertain outcome, but the latest chapter is about to be opened.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mattfrei/

[Lord Jim]

Oh goodie....

I was just thinking we don't have enough threads about scum boy....

Yeah, know-nothing "student protesters" always have a huge impact on governments and their policies...

I'm sure Cameron's shivering in his shoes....

ETA:

I will say this....

When I have seen the pictures and video footage of these brainless Asswipeange fans, in countries that are supposedly US allies, (they don't seem to get the fact that if US security is undermined, so is their own) it both saddens and sickens me....

I just have to remind myself that these loud mouthed ignoramuses don't really represent anything substantive...

We have our share of those types of cretins over here too....

[Sean]

The students are just the loud ones LJ. Most of Britain has been waiting for a PM to stand up to the US since the WMD fiasco in Iraq.

[Lord Jim]

Well Sean, I would suggest that taking a stand by rallying to the side of a fanatical America hater (who's actions have also endangered the lives of British troops serving in Afghanistan) would be the wrong fight to pick....

I assume Cameron has better judgment than that...that would really be pouring poison into the well of US-UK relations.

Here's how the smarmy little punk is viewed in this country:

Most Americans critical of WikiLeaks dump: poll

(AFP) – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe the WikiLeaks exposure of thousands of secret US cables went too far, and most support the arrest and trial of its founder Julian Assange, a poll showed Tuesday.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents in the Washington Post-ABC News poll said the documents dump "harms the public interest" -- a sharp turn from Americans' assessment of WikiLeaks earlier this year, when the anti-privacy website released thousands of Afghanistan war reports.

The latest poll, conducted by telephone of 1,001 adults, showed 59 percent of respondents wanted the US government to arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for revealing the diplomatic cables, many of which exposed embarrassing assessment of world leaders.

Just 29 percent said it was not a criminal matter, while the remaining 12 percent were undecided.

WikiLeaks in late November began releasing a treasure trove of 250,000 classified documents, mostly by US diplomats based in missions around the world.

Assange, the site's 39-year-old Australian founder, was in a London jail facing unrelated allegations of rape and molestation in Sweden. He was granted conditional bail by a British judge Tuesday, but remained behind bars as prosecutors were given time to decide whether to appeal.

The latest poll was conducted 9-12 December, while Assange was under detention, and had a margin of error of 3.5 points.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... a22aea.1a1

[Long Run]

WASHINGTON — Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe the WikiLeaks exposure of thousands of secret US cables went too far, and most support the arrest and trial of its founder Julian Assange, a poll showed Tuesday.
/ALeqM5gbBWLZDN7LpJP6ROHXGD4MNAo3_A?docId=CNG.e1b53ed2c86c87f9656a8f35aaa22aea.1a1

And they said common sense was dead.

[Gob]

[Scooter]

WASHINGTON — Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe the WikiLeaks exposure of thousands of secret US cables went too far, and most support the arrest and trial of its founder Julian Assange, a poll showed Tuesday.
/ALeqM5gbBWLZDN7LpJP6ROHXGD4MNAo3_A?docId=CNG.e1b53ed2c86c87f9656a8f35aaa22aea.1a1

And they said common sense was dead.

You mean like those polls that used to show 6 in 10 Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11?

[Sean]

The thing is LJ that the 'special relationship' between Britain and the US is not seen as particularly special by a lot of British people. A common perception is that it only works one way: that is that Britain supports the US in whatever madcap oil grab they happen to be on and in return receives a pat on the head... Don't forget that we're talking about a very proud race of people here... Alot of British people don't see why a person being a fanatical America hater (if indeed that is what Assange is...) should be a source of concern any more that if he was a fanatical Luxembourg or Mexico hater. If Cameron stood up and refused to bow to US pressure over this he would be lauded in the UK (by large sections of the public and media alike) and compared to Churchill!

This certainly won't have helped...

Anyway, I suppose the bottom line is this: Which side of the Atlantic would have more to lose if the special relationship was not so special anymore?

[Lord Jim]

If Cameron stood up and refused to bow to US pressure over this he would be lauded in the UK (by large sections of the public and media alike) and compared to Churchill!

If that's in fact true Sean, (the media part wouldn't surprise me...I know you have a lot of left-wing fringe media) I frankly find it disgusting; it would be a very sad commentary on the British people.

I'd like to see some polling on it.

[Lord Jim]

Well, here's some:

British people responding to the poll said by a spreak of 41% to 30% that Assange shouldn't be prosecuted for releasing the secret diplomatic cables, with the remaining 29% not having made up their mind.

More people agree than disagree that Wikileaks was right to release the cables, by 42% to 33%. The remainder, 25%, don't have a position.

Despite the prevailing opinion that the sex charges are a ploy, almost half of Britons, or 44%, say their government should send Assange to Sweden anyway for questioning. Twenty-nine percent disagree, and the rest say they don't know.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-13/worl ... s=PM:WORLD

I'm not thrilled by those numbers, but they don't paint as bleak a picture as the one I was getting from your post. It doesn't suggest that a majority of Brits are reflexively anti-American, regardless of the facts.

Also, I would note that this poll only dealt with the stolen classified diplomatic cables...

It didn't ask about the first dump, where scum boy endangered the lives of Afghans and Coalition troops by revealing sources and methods. I suspect a poll on that would find even less support for Asswipeange.

[Sean]

Why disgusting LJ? The British people have not been given much reason to believe otherwise.

A quick search on polls threw up this for starters...

Poll: Special relationship in trouble, but not dead


Relations between the US and UK have not improved since Barack Obama took office at the start of 2008, a poll of 2,360 Britons said today.

Since being inaugurated as the 44th president of the US, Mr Obama's foreign policy has been characterised by multilateralism and new overtures towards China, India and Brazil.

This has contrasted sharply with the approach of his predecessor George Bush, under whom the US forged a firm bilateral bond with the UK, particularly through his friendship with then prime minister Tony Blair and over the joint invasion of Iraq.

But as the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government finds its feet in Washington, a new poll showed that 74 per cent of Britons believe relations with the US have stayed the same or deteriorated since January 2008.
A YouGov poll for the Legatum Institute and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), conducted between May 10th and 12th, suggests the special relationship still exists, however.

Sixty-six per cent of respondents said they still had a positive view of the States, with 62 per cent regarding Washington as Britain's most important ally.

Despite the close ties between Mr Blair and President Bush being blamed for the former dragging Britain into war, 54 per cent said they regarded a personal friendship between presidents and prime ministers as important.

More pessimistically, eighty-five per cent said Britain had no influence over US policy, although 56 per cent said the war in Afghanistan served US-UK interests.
Only 28 per cent said British troops should be deployed to help protect US-only interests in the future, with the proportion rising to 46 per cent if Britain itself was threatened.
Last week new foreign secretary William Hague made Washington his first official destination to hold talks with US counterpart Hillary Clinton, where he hailed the "unshakeable alliance" between the two countries.

But with Britain superfluous to many of the most important aspects of Washington's foreign policy agency - such as with China and North Korea - and the traditional Tory scepticism towards Europe jarring with President Obama's preference of dealing with Britain and the EU combined, the future of the special relationship is in doubt, analysts claim.

"With a new government in Downing Street, the UK faces a difficult choice about its identity, its role in the world, and in particular its relationship with the United States," commented Dr Lisa Aronsson, head of transatlantic security programme at the USI.

Dr William Inboden, senior vice-president of the Legatum Institute, said the "special relationship is in trouble but it is not dead".

"While it still holds much traction in the minds of the American and British people, it needs sustained attention from the new Cameron government and the Obama administration to return to its former strength," he argued.

"The future of transatlantic relations, and the security and liberty of the global commons, depend on a vibrant alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom."

http://www.uknetguide.co.uk/Latest-News ... 81951.html

[Sean]

One other thing LJ, I didn't mean to imply that Brits are anti-American, just that a lot believe that the 'special relationship' means that Americans are finally learning the art of 'taking the piss'.

[Lord Jim]

Well, let's see how it looks if we highlight some other portions of that article:

Sixty-six per cent of respondents said they still had a positive view of the States, with 62 per cent regarding Washington as Britain's most important ally.

Despite the close ties between Mr Blair and President Bush being blamed for the former dragging Britain into war, 54 per cent said they regarded a personal friendship between presidents and prime ministers as important.

Now this is another sad commentary:

Only 28 per cent said British troops should be deployed to help protect US-only interests in the future, [a strawman question; no one has ever asked the British to do that] with the proportion rising to 46 per cent if Britain itself was threatened.

Less than a majority of the British people believe that they should deploy troops if Britain is threatened?

Wow....

A nation cannot long survive with that attitude....

[dales]

I suppose the defenders of England during her "darkest hour" are spinning in their graves.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Anyway, I suppose the bottom line is this: Which side of the Atlantic would have more to lose if the special relationship was not so special anymore?

Look what happened to the French when we decided they turned against us. So I would say at the very least it would mean no more English muffins. Forever renamed freedom muffins.

[rubato]

Well, let's see how it looks if we highlight some other portions of that article:

Sixty-six per cent of respondents said they still had a positive view of the States, with 62 per cent regarding Washington as Britain's most important ally.

Despite the close ties between Mr Blair and President Bush being blamed for the former dragging Britain into war, 54 per cent said they regarded a personal friendship between presidents and prime ministers as important.

Now this is another sad commentary:

Only 28 per cent said British troops should be deployed to help protect US-only interests in the future, [a strawman question; no one has ever asked the British to do that] with the proportion rising to 46 per cent if Britain itself was threatened.

Less than a majority of the British people believe that they should deploy troops if Britain is threatened?

Wow....

A nation cannot long survive with that attitude....

The numbers reflect the fact that people really hate being lied to and having their troops killed for a lie.

BushCo and the Republicans set US foreign policy back by decades.

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

Spot on. People were lied to and now see their sons, husbands, brothers, etc. coming home in body bags for no good reason.

Of course they are going to be unwilling to send troops into future conflicts, whether the gov't claims that the country is threatened or not, because they are going to naturally assume that they are being lied to.

[rubato]

To the degree that Assange undoes the lies he is doing us a service.


yrs,
rubato