In London, in 2010, a less hirsute Julian Assange releases and discusses some of the hacked documents over which he’s just been indicted (click on the photo for the entire event)

Initial Impressions Of The Arrest Of Julian Assange

Is it a major threat to the free press?

Video of Assange being forcibly removed from Ecuador’s Embassy in London (but with Ecuador’s blessing) was widely distributed by Ruptly, which is owned by the Russian government funded television network, RT

• This has dragged on for so long: Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for nearly 7 years. so it seems like the end of something. But really it’s just the beginning. Extraditing him to the U.S. will be an unusually arduous task. (Britain’s pledge that it does not extradite Assange — or anyone — to any place where he might be subject to the death penalty in his case is probably less of an issue than a lot of others: federal cases in the U.S. almost never result in the death penalty, especially when they don’t involve a U.S. citizen). However, there are a lot of steps still before Assange could be extradited to the U.S. And actually, it’d be a lot easier to extradite someone from one Western European country (or more technically “European Arrest Warrant” country) to another. So if Sweden decides to re-file sexual assault charges (that Assange says were Trumped up), and that originally sent him running to asylum at the embassy, that could entangle him for a while. And they now say they’re going to. Plus it also kind of seems like given the alternatives in front of him, he might actually angle for…