I'm quite shoked by the level of the comments regarding Assange.
Whatever you think about the character is irrelevant. Law should be the basis on any action taken against him, whether he's a-hole or not. Now you can argue on whether his actions were legal (I mean, he broke US law but he's not US citizen nor living in the US so that's debatable).
However there is ZERO legal basis on having someone not being taken care of while in custody.
I really do not like Julian Assange as a person, I do not admire his work. He's a fraud, a con-man, and might also be a criminal. But a critical measure of a society is how equal justice is for all, even those hated by society. Tolerance of the abuse of prisoners or torture is a grave moral failure no matter who the perp is. Maybe the docs are all duped by the scammers around Assange, but it looks pretty abusive not to transfer him to a hospital.
Honestly, stuff like this just debases the word "torture." Waterboarding is clearly torture. Undergoing prolonged periods of solitary confinement while in detention is arguably torture. However, choosing to avoid needed medical care during an attempt to flee law enforcement is definitely in the "not torture" category. It's self-inflicted harm.<p>Self-inflicted harm doesn't elicit the same kind of moral outrage that true torture does. These efforts seem to me to be an attempt to exploit that moral outrage in order to benefit a particular person. If successful, the lack of clarity that introduces just creates extra doubt in cases of true torture that blunts the outrage.<p>Here are some similar cases:<p>After conducting a bunch of bombings, Eric Rudolph fled the FBI by living in a forest for years, feeding himself by gathering acorns and dumpster diving [1]. His choice to do that to himself is similar to what Assange did, and was not torture, either.<p>Rudolph's brother, bizarrely, decided to <i>cut off his own hand with a saw</i> to protest the FBI's treatment of his brother and its surveillance of his family [2]. If the FBI had done that to him, it'd have been a gruesome case of torture, but since he did it to himself, it's definitely not torture.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www-cgi.cnn.com/US/9803/09/briefs.pm/rudolph.amputation/" rel="nofollow">http://www-cgi.cnn.com/US/9803/09/briefs.pm/rudolph.amputati...</a>
“Mr Assange showed all <i></i>symptoms typical for<i></i> prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”<p>Emphasis mine. His terrible mental health condition is not under dispute. But I am disputing the use of the word torture, as opposed to 'symptoms typical for'.<p>Torture (noun): the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something.<p>While he was in the embassy he was fugitive and definitely under duress to turn himself in, no doubt. What rights and privileges is someone entitled to as a fugitive in comparison to their rights and privileges once in custody? My bias is anti Assange, for some common reasons some people are anti, I try to keep an open mind and be a compassionate person and feel compassion for his terrible mental health circumstances, yet articles like this, I read it with a pile of skepticism and just feels weak, lacking in evidence, overstating things and drawing inferences I think are poorly supported.
My uncle was a machinist in a large U.S. company back in the early 2000s when the employees decided to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.<p>According to him all it ended up doing was stifling innovation and rewarding mediocre lifers over the high performing employees.