John Pilger

> we only found out it was false after the fact

The correct information was available, but largely ignored by mass media. For example:

> 13 March 2003

> The Blair Government has known, almost from the day it came to office in 1997, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were almost certainly destroyed following the Gulf War.

> Of all the pro-war propaganda of Blair and Bush, and their current threats giving Saddam Hussein yet another deadline to disarm, what may be their biggest lie is exposed by this revelation.

> Two weeks ago, a transcript of a United Nations debriefing of Iraqi general Hussein Kamel was obtained by the American magazine, Newsweek, and by Cambridge University analyst, Glen Rangwala (who last month revealed that Blair's "intelligence dossier" on Iraq was lifted, word for word, from an American student's thesis).

> General Kamel was the West's "star witness" in its case against Saddam Hussein. He was no ordinary defector. A son-in-law of the Iraqi dictator, he had immense power in Iraq; and when he defected, he took with him crates of secret documents on Iraq's weapons programme.

[...]

> In 1995, General Kamel was debriefed by senior officials of the United Nations inspections team, then known as UNSCOM, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The complete transcript, now disclosed for the first time, contradicts almost everything Bush and Blair have said about the threat of Iraqi weapons.

> For example, General Kamel says categorically: "I…

It's funny that when it comes to Assange, suddenly the UN group's findings become "non-binding". Did you read what they had to say about it?

> The Opinions of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention are legally-binding to the extent that they are based on binding international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The WGAD has a mandate to investigate allegations of individuals being deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary way or inconsistently with international human rights standards, and to recommend remedies such as release from detention and compensation, when appropriate.

> The binding nature of its opinions derives from the collaboration by States in the procedure, the adversarial nature of is findings and also by the authority given to the WGAD by the UN Human Rights Council. The Opinions of the WGAD are also considered as authoritative by prominent international and regional judicial institutions, including the European Court of Human Rights.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013&LangID=E

Journalist John Pilger also made the point that Britain and Sweden participated in and have previously supported this UN group:

> The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention - the tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations - last year ruled that Assange had been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden. This is…

Daesh have no more relation to salafism than what Bush and Blair's murderous excursions have to do with WMD or democracy.
Daesh apparently attracts two categories of people:

1. people suffering from PTSD who have lost much of their capacities to think clearly; specifically, part of butchered Sunni community in Iraq following the sectarian war fuelled by US invaders after years of deadly sanctions (they also include former members of Saddam's secular stasi-equivalent http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html), and some of the Syrians going through Assad's butchery.
This is no different from how a bunch of peaceful villagers turned into brutal group that was Khemer Rouge (http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves).

2.A tiny western group who are largely clueless about the world (almost entirely about religion), seeking certain warped sense of glory: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/04/jihad-fatal-attraction-challenge-democracies-isis-barbarism

On a different note related to welfare, Saudis are probably not that worse off in certain ways: any (poor) Saudi is eligible to receive funding/stipend from his/her government for studying in world's top universities, unlike many rich capitalistic states that are effectively no less of an oligarchy.

The two women say they were not raped, and were railroaded by Swedish police.

> "On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, "but the police were keen on getting a hold on him". She was "shocked" when they arrested him because she only "wanted him to take [an HIV] test". She "did not want to accuse JA of anything" and "it was the police who made up the charges". (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been "railroaded by police and others around her".)

> Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, "I have not been raped."

-from http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice

The following part from [0] seems relevant a bit too:

In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis.

Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her 'Triumph of the Will' that reputedly cast Hitler's spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the "messages" in her films were dependent not on "orders from above" but on a "submissive void" in the German population. "Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.

"Everyone," she replied, "and of course the intelligentsia."

[0] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwell-and-big-brothers-war-on-palestine-ukraine-and-truth

"Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president's plane in 2013 - wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden."

If you think of Sweden as ABBA, think again:

"In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US."

"The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation"

http://johnpilger.com/articles/assange-the-untold-story-of-an-epic-struggle-for-justice