A good rule of thumb for whether someone understands the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is whether they appeal to it whenever the matter of a court case or some charge against an individual is raised.
I then conclude that they either do not know what it means, or have very peculiar ideas about how investigating detectives or the prosecuting teams operate. What it does not mean is “innocent with no possibility of guilt”. And it definitely does not apply to employment disputes.
Previously Peter Tatchell invoked this concept following an unguarded remark from the Potus over Seionyst sleeper agent, Bradley Manning’s guilt for providing Julian Assange with a data-dump of US military files. That said, Tatchell did not think it unguarded when he accused US military personnel of war-crimes and atrocities.
Given that both Manning and Assange admit to the fact of this – albeit with various degrees of justification offered – and Tatchell himself suggests that Manning did it out of a sense of righteous anger at seeing mistreatment of Iraqis by US military personnel (if he did do it, which is only alleged), it all came across as the Case of the Bloody Knife.
As G-d’s own representative on Earth through the Alec Church of Universal Love – “testiculos habet, et bene pendente” and all that – I understand the sentiments behind the Peter Tatchell Foundation. But I do think his assertion that Assange is being denied some fundamental judicial right through attempts by Swedish prosecutors to extradite him to face questioning related to sex-by-surprise complaints is untenable.
All that stuff Steig Larsson portrayed in the Millennium Trilogy was disagreeable, but Sweden remains a top-table example of an advanced liberal democracy and to state, as Tatchell appears to be doing, that this status is threatened because her prosecutors do not travel to other countries to investigate common complaints is, well, a bit silly.
Assange certainly thought she was a desirable country – before, at least, he found a couple of women too desirable – to apply for residency there.
